No this in not just a skinned Firefox with integrations to Google’s API. It’s a brand new browser.

So what does Chrome has under its hood?

For starters Google is using Apple’s open source WebKit rendering engine like the one Safari uses. This comes as a surprise to me. I would have guessed that Google would be using Mozilla’s Gecko engine, as seen in Firefox, due to Google’s close ties with the Mozilla open foundation group.

I’m glad that google decides to use WebKit. I find that WebKit renders pages faster then other browsers.

Google Chrome also introduces ‘V8′. A JavaScript virtual machine build from the ground up. The virtual machine leverages the concepts of hidden class transitions, precise garbage collection, machine code generation and other super-cool-leet-ninja codes to make JavaScript heavy web application snappier.

This is important as JavaScript now plays an important role in web development. Take a look at your Facebook page. Do you think Facebook could create its super slick webpage without using any fancy JavaScript Ajax-ish web-fu?

If Google launches its browser with just those two features, I’m already sold. However there is more.

Google Chrome will introduce a few peculiar design choices. One of them is its tab design. Google Chrome has its tab displayed at the top of the browser instead of the more traditional look of having the tab below the address bar and other buttons.

Aesthetically this is very functional as each tab will look like it is its own area. Functional-wise, this is also true. With its multi-process design, each tab will have it’s own process. This speed up the overall performance of the browser. This also prevent a bad tab from crashing your entire browser, our your entire computer.

We all need more speed and reliability when it comes to surfing for porn research materials on the web.

Google Chrome includes a task manager for all of its tab. This will show you which tabs are hogging your resources.

There is also something that they are calling the ‘Incognito’ window. This browser window does not record anything you do. Somehow I think this feature will soon dub as the ‘porn mode’ as a more technical term.

As if that wasn’t enough, Google Chrome might include Google Gears. If this browser gets popular, Google Gears will be on more computers and more potential users. When we start to see sites taking advantages of Google Gears, this is when we will see some really true rich Internet application taking off.

Google Chrome sounds perfect, might be too good to be true. I wonder how the folks over at Mozilla will take this. Whatever it is, there will be yet another another browser kicking Microsoft Internet Explorer’s ass.

Google will launch its beta anytime now. Keep watching google.com/chrome. Windows version first, Mac OS X and Linux version in the works.

Google being Google has put up a comic explaining the product. Techcrunch has screenshots and some videos of what seems to be a working running Google Chrome.

Tiny Ghost is not your ordinary web comic, it do not even claim to be one. In fact it does not sees itself as a comic at all. I think itelf is having a hard time figuring out what it really is.

Each entry shows two pictures side by side and each picture has a one sentence caption. With just that, a whole story is been created. Each story so compelling that, I’ve lost a whole day of productivity in the office, I was going through each story on Tiny Ghosts.

Each two piece photos together with its caption comic is actually a jumping off point to create an entire story. Create entire worlds, characters and your own storyline in your head. If thinking is something you do often and something that isn’t to difficult for you to do, you wont be having any problem here.

It’s about what it feels like to be a monster/ghost/robot/toy/etc. but not the scary kind. It’s about being frightened of war and what you might turn into when you grow up if you aren’t careful. It’s about loss and longing and love and hope and being small and scared of a big world and not knowing your place in it and wanting to belong but always being on the outside and not being sure that God loves you but really hoping he does even though pretty much everyone else thinks you are a weirdo. Stuff like that.

That is the main theme of Tiny Ghosts, according to the author.

To some, Tiny Ghosts is nothing but a manic-depressive faux artsy more to the ‘emo’ side, but to me it’s simply amazing.

Tiny Ghosts comic is not funny, nor is it trying to be funny. It is just,.. beautiful.

Unlike Wikipedia, Knol holds authors accountable for the articles they write. Each articles are known as a ‘knol’. Knol authors take credit for their writing by providing their credentials to identify him or herself. This is done by disclosing credit card number, phone number or anything that can be use to validate real names.

Each articles are either created by a single author or a team of author collaborating. Other users can submit changes, but they have to be approved by the article’s original authors, before any changes available to the public. It’s a more moderated Wikipedia.

Google says that they encourage multiple people to create articles on the same subject. This gives a certain subject views from multiple perspective. There will also be a ranking system where users / readers could rank an articles. The whole platform relies in the wisdom of crowds.

An interesting note on Knol platform is the monetization opportunities. According to TechCrunch, each authors could participate in revenue sharing program by including Adsense with their articles.

This will work. Since its Google we’re talking about here. It is fairly easy for them to have Knol articles ranked first in Google search as opposed to Wikipedia entries which most of the time has a high ranking in Google search. But that’s just evil, and Google don’t do evil.

Currently there is nothing much on Knol. Right now the articles varies from Lung Cancer to Backpacking to Toilet Clogs to Devil Me Cry 4.

As with all Google’s beta service, the design looks like crap, aesthetically speaking.

As for the question of whether Google’s Knol will be a Wikipedia killer, I’ll leave it to this Knol article entry on Wikipedia.

All that aside Yahoo and Google had announced a non-exclusive advertising service agreement where Yahoo could use Google’s advertising services in Yahoo’s web assets in U.S. and Canada. This gives Yahoo access to use Google’s Adsense / Adwords services throughout their site. Aspect to see Google Adsense in Yahoo’s search result pages some time soon.

In addition to that, both Yahoo and Google will work on enable interoperability between instant messaging service of both companies. This will result on a better broader online communication services. GTalk isn’t doing that well so this is a good thing for Google. You might be able to chat on your YM buddies on your GMail account in the future.

Yahoo is estimating that this deal will bring in up to $800 million additional revenue per year in the long-run, a $250-$450 million in the first twelve months after implementing Google ads.

I’ve to admit that my math is not that good, so you can correct me if I am wrong in saying that $800 million is less then almost $12 billion Microsoft is offering for Yahoo a few month ago. Not to mention that this deals solidifies Yahoo’s position as a distant second place to Google.

However, if I were Yahoo, I think I too will choose this deal over what Microsoft is offering. This agreement is not a merger between Yahoo and Google. It is more like Yahoo signing up on Google Adsense program. This does not prevent Yahoo form making similar arrangements with others. This does not mean that Yahoo will be using Google’s search engine, Yahoo will still continue to run its own search engine.

Yahoo is free to make use of Google advertising service as much or as little as they wish. This gives Yahoo some revenue while still maintain to be free in building other ventures. Some of Yahoo’s project looked promising. Yahoo! Live for example is one of them. Yahoo might just come back with the next big thing.

I uses quite a few of Yahoo products, Flickr, Del.icio.us and Yahoo Messenger. I would want Yahoo to stay relevant and keep making this product better.

Google likes to keep their project in ‘Beta’, forever is possible. Gmail is one of those forever ‘Beta’ products. If you notice, there is still the ‘Beta’ tag under the Gmail logo.

Up until recently nothing much had change with Gmail ever since the open it to public. It was an invite only deal in the early days, but most people got the invite.

The Gmail team takes good care of the look and feel of the whole app. Even adding a ‘delete’ button is a big deal for them. So to rollout new features they are taking a different approach.

Instead of having two versions, old version and new version, you can now pick and choose features to see which suits you best. Introducing Gmail Labs. Since this is a tryout run, you may then send feedback to Gmail team on which features should be incorporated to Gmail.

You can access this feature by going to the settings panel and clicking the ‘Labs’ tab. There are 13 Lab features at the moment and more are expected to come.

Here are some features I’m using:

• Quick Links: Adds a box to the left column that gives you 1-click access to any bookmarkable URL in Gmail. You can use it for saving frequent searches, important individual messages, and more.
• Superstars: Adds additional star icons. After enabling this feature, you can choose which icons you wish to use in the “General” Settings page. This gives more options to differentiate my started item then the normal yellow start.
• Fixed width font: Adds an option to the reply dropdown menu that lets you view a message in fixed width font. I like fixed width fonts.
• Mouse gestures: Use your mouse to navigate with gestures. Hold right-click and move the mouse left to go to a previous conversation, move it right to go to the next conversation, and move up to go back to the inbox view. Of cause you need a two button mouse for this, but hey mighty mouse has two buttons.
• Signature tweaks: Places your signature before the quoted text in a reply, and removes the “–” line that appears before signatures. I’ve been asking for this.

I like how the developer from the Gmail team add features with minimal change of the overall user interface (UI). It’s just the same Gmail only it gets better.

There are two camps when it comes to modern computer users. Some prefer to interact with their machines with a graphical user interface, while there are others who still prefer the more old school way of interaction with computers, using a command line interface.

GUI (Graphical User Interface) and CLI (Command Line Interface) both have their pro and cons. GUI makes the learning curve for users easier but a GUI based operation might take up computing resources. CLI on the other hand consume less resources but has a steeper learning curve than a GUI.

On the web however, there is no such thing as CLI, or is there? Google has always had a certain CLI-esque in its home search page. One search box, although there are two buttons ‘search’ and ‘I am feeling lucky’, most of the time you just hit return(enter) when finish typing your search query, very CLI-ish.

With Goosh, Stefan Grothkopp took a few steps further and create what looks like a Unix-like shell interface for Google. Goosh, the unofficial Google Shell, is a command line interface for the many feature Google offers. Web search, images search, blogs search, news and even translate.

Though I doubt that this will be much useful to me or others, but I’ve to say this is really cool.

If you have an okey internet connection. You like music. You enjoy finding new, rare music. You like to share music. Then you better bookmark muxtape.com on your browser.

Muxtape, a web based service that brings the art of creating mixtape into the digital age. Muxtape is mixtape 2.0. This pretty neat little site has been serving user-generated playlist, streaming free to the masses since its launch in March.

Both the idea and its implementation of this site is simple. Registered users will have their own Muxtape url. You then upload 12 mp3s to your account and share the url with anybody you wish to. That is about it.

The implementation is very basic yet aesthetically pleasing. There is not notes, album cover arts, no play / pause button. Click one of the blocky colorful grid of available muxtapesto to get the playlist track. Click on one of the title and it starts to play.

No fancy folksonomy tagging crap, there is no way to search by genre, there is none of the social networking follow your friends crap. You can only add a ready created muxtape as favorate, that’s about it. I love its simplistic nature. It’s random, as Forest Gump would put it, just like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’ll get inside.

Check out my muxtape at jibone.muxtape.com, a collection of rare, old, nostalgic and new music. If you have already created your muxtape, I would love to hear it. Post on the comments section.

Web based apps are the future. Few software based companies had notice this trend and are experimenting with web technologies and the possibilities. Adobe is one of such companies.

Adobe have been experimenting with the web space for sometime. They first had released Kuler, a web based application for generating color themes. Then they come out with a web based application, Photoshop Express that was hyped as the ‘web based Photoshop’. It’s not much of a Photoshop replacement just a basic image editing application. Nevertheless, it’s pretty impressive the fact that it’s web based.

Adobe’s new web app Buzzword is pretty impressive too.

Buzzword is Adobe’s answer to an online web based word processor. Buzzword was originally created by Virtual Ubiquity, a Boston-based startup, which had join Adobe System, sometime in December 2007.

You may notice that all three of Adobe’s web based application are powered by Flash technology. In the era of Web2.0 with Ajax being the hyped catch phrase, Adobe decides to use what they know best, Flash.

I’m not much of a Flash developer myself, and I do despised websites that are 100% Flash with long annoying Flash intro. However, in a rare occasion I sometime found a Flash site or Flash based web app, made in the right way. Desktop Tower Defense was one of it, and Buzzword is another, although I think Buzzword is somewhat a mix of technology, Flash and Acrobat (Flash Paper?).

If you are running Safari 3.1, you may find that Buzzword doesn’t support your browser, but it seems to support Safari 3.0, might just be a bug. Ignore the warning and just start the application.

When you sign-up, login and start using Buzzword, you will notice the ‘lickable’ user interface. Yes ‘lickable’ is a technical term for something beautiful, stylish, elegant and all around coolness.

I like the how the toolbar is presented. Functionalities are grouped together and represented as icons. Mouse over and click to reveal more. This simplify the screen and lets you focus your visual attention on the document.

Buzzword could be viewed as a direct challenge to Google Docs. Both of them are free web based application. Both of them allows comments and collaboration. Both of them pretty much does the same job, but Buzzword has a more appealing layout.

If Adobe is really serious in venturing into web based application business, then there is a new player in town. Who knows maybe in a near future, Adobe’s Flash based online office suite might take out Google dreams of web office, crash Zoho‘s plans and defeat Microsoft’s dominance in office suite software. If this is the direction Adobe is taking. It is pretty far-fetched though.

“So what are you doing?”

That is often the question asked by our friends and family. Although it might seem annoying to some, when asked that all the time but when we know what our friends are doing we feel more connected.

The little things you do, like what you have for lunch, what book you currently reading or what shows you are watching might be interesting to someone you know.

These days we have blogs that one could use to update their friends and family, but real life happens in between blog posts. This is where a micro-blogging platform such as Twitter comes in handy. Twitter takes the mundane ‘what I’m having for lunch’ posting off away from blogs.

Twitter is a web based service that makes it possible for one to share byte size updates between friends and family, or strangers. With Twitter you could update your followers about the things in your life and you could also follow the people of interest to you via the web.

I am a late comer when to twitter. Although I might have signed up in the early days, but only recently that I’ve started to actually use Twitter.

At first glance, a Twitter page look like blogs, with short posts. Look again you will see that each page is personal, containing updates from friends and people you follow. You might see a different side of the people you thought you had known.

You follow your friend’s updates, your friend follow your updates. Twitter works because it is simple, a tweet is only 140 character long. With a limitation like that you are forced to make your update short and to the point.

Twitter as a micro-blogging platform actually has the potential to be something more. Twitter is what you and your network makes of it. You could use it to broadcast ideas or inquires to your followers.

If you have more then a thousand followers you might find it to be a useful tool. Like this guy who ‘tweets’ his way out of the Egyptian jail.

There are many ways to get your ‘tweets’ and to ‘tweet’ from. You can track and follow Twitter on the web or on your mobile phone. By making their API available, other are able to develop third party apps that interacted with Twitter. Twitterrific of Icon Factory is a great app to distract you from work with all the Twitter updates.

Right now I hardly got any followers, but I am using Twitter as a stalking tool to keep track of web people like Leo Laporte, Kevin Rose, Jason Calacanis and more. When a tech story broke, most of the time you will see it first on Twitter.

If you are not on Twitter, give it a try. I you already are on Twitter don’t forget to follow me on Twitter.