I noticed today that Mozilla have made an ‘Aurora‘ (or pre-beta) build of Firefox available, meaning that they now have nightly, pre-beta, beta and release versions of their browser available. I guess this is all part of their plan to increase the release frequency for new versions of Firefox.

Of course, having multiple releases of the browser at varying stages of readiness is an idea that Google Chrome has been using for quite some time now. And as for frequent releases – the dev channel of Chrome is currently on version 12, with major new versions being pushed out every 6 weeks!

There’s no denying the influence that Chrome has had on every other browser. The UI layout is now widely mimicked - as is the technical infrastructure that makes it the quickest and most secure web browser. Also, Chrome has ensured that web standards and infrastructure are moving at the same rapid pace as when I first got an internet connection in the mid 90′s.

This display of affection for Chrome has been inspired by my use of a Cr-48 at work (it still feels awesome that ‘at work’ means ‘at Google’!). Chrome OS is looking good so far and it’s made me realise how rarely I need a desktop operating system while I’m not actually sat at my desk. I no longer have to worry about losing files – everything is stored on the web. The laptop itself is super-light and has a battery that lasts for a whole working day if I need it to. Also – it was kind of magic the first time I signed in to see all my bookmarks and settings already configured, after it seamlessly synced with both my google.com and gmail.com accounts. The only negative so far has been its shoddy response to multitouch scrolling on the trackpad.

Like tablets, I don’t see Chrome OS as a replacement for a ‘main computer’ but for portable computing I am much preferring it to the Xoom. I’ll write a post about my Xoom at some point – I’m a big fan of that, and especially Honeycomb, but I don’t think tablets are laptop-replacements and this post is already too long.

Of course, another thing about both Chrome OS and Android is that they’re open source software. As people fragment away from using Windows on their desktops and laptops, I think it’s awesome that two of their main choices are open source operating systems.

Yeah that's right, we have Segways.

I’ve been at Google for a week now although it really doesn’t seem like it. I’ve been meaning to get some photos but I keep forgetting (apart from the segway ones from a few hours ago) so here are the edited highlights:

I’ve explored the whole office space – taking in the Liquid Galaxy Google Earth booth, pods for having naps, the gym (I didn’t stay in there very long), the beach huts, the sushi bar, the deli and the main cafe serving 3 amazing meals every day. I also have the most kitted out desk I’ve ever had – MacBook Pro, a beast of a workstation, dual 24″ monitors and a nerf gun with a laser sight. Well, I say “laser” but a more accurate description would be “weak red LED behind a lens”.  Oh, and at the end of the week I rode round the office on a Segway! I even avoided breaking my legs, unlike one unlucky colleague a few months ago (notice the missing grip on the left-hand Segway – the other casualty of that incident).

The work itself is crazy. So many different systems, acronyms, technologies and products but I’m not allowed to talk about all that in public so I won’t…

Read the title! Woot! I’ll be joining the AdSense team in London, so I’ve done a bit of homework to try out the product and added an AdSense banner to this page.

Working at Google is something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time – old housemates reminded me how much I used to talk about their offices while I was at university, and that was nearly 7 years ago now. I’m so excited by the idea that I hope I can get some sleep tonight.

I don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing on AdSense yet, or indeed what I should talk about on a public blog so I’ll keep the details light for now. I DO know, though, that I’ll be sent to Mountain View for induction training in a few weeks time, which I’m very excited about. Once I’ve got some advice on what is permissible I’ll try and post some photos and an account of what it’s like to be a ‘Noogler’.

I’m quite a big fan of Buzz, despite its many teething issues. Like most of what Google does, the technology is open and builds on or creates standards everybody can use. I found this article while reading about how it all works – if you like knowing how web applications work then you’ll probably find it interesting.

While Facebook, MySpace and Twitter all want to get everybody to communicate within a little closed off, monopolised area of the internet. Buzz is based on technologies you can read about and use for yourself – no Facebook Connect button required.

People say that social network sites are by their nature monopolistic: if people join the one that their friends use then there will always be just one or two major players in each country. Buzz is an attempt to do things differently though. If Buzz takes off (and the initial plans are followed through) then lots of different sites can be views on the same data in the same way that I can talk to anyone with an email address.

On the internet this has always been the right approach to technology. The web took down the closed gardens of Compuserve, MSN and AOL because it was open. Email is open and far more useful than AOL messaging was, or Facebook messaging is now. HTML5 will (hopefully) kill off Flash because you can use it without plugins and you can write it without paying Adobe for expensive software. Gordon – a Javascript Flash runtime is worth a look too, but it’s still interpreting a broken and closed technology.

Obviously Google isn’t being altruistic – if Buzz became popular and people still chose to use GMail as the client then they’d be fine with all the extra advertising – but by allowing anybody to use the technology they’re giving Buzz every chance of becoming the web’s social network.

I can’t believe it was nearly 6 months between blog posts. The flurry of activity that started this blog, and my iPhone development hobby, was ended pretty quickly when Google asked me to interview. I may blog about that at some point (I have plenty of notes), but it means asking for permission from the recruiters as I may have clicked through a Non-Disclosure Agreement without realising it.

Suffice to say, it took up about 4 months of my spare time thanks to a very drawn out interview (and re-interview) process. It ended badly in that I didn’t get a job, but other positives came from it too…

So I got an invite to try out Google Wave. It’s very reminiscent of earlier chat applications from when I first got an Internet connection – I’m thinking ICQ and PowWow.

The live chat thing is great and is the feature that most makes me nostalgic for the early chat clients. Seeing people type, make typos, correct themselves and rephrase what they’ve said is very engrossing. This is a novel experience (and I only have one contact at the moment, until my invites get to my friends) but seeing what people are writing as they write it means conversation can flow faster and you feel more involved. You know when people are typing and when the wave has their focus, so you know if you need to be paying attention or whether you can get on with something else for a few minutes. It’s a lot more immediate than just seeing “so-and-so is typing a message…”.

That said, it could be a nightmare to deal with lots of communication in Wave. I think having the option to enable this within GMail would be very useful – but not for every email conversation. I like the idea of publishing Waves to blogs and using them as the commenting mechanism – this was in one of the intro videos. The idea of a group of friends editing a holiday/weekend plan together sounds nightmarish, an etiquette needs to evolve or be enforced by the wave itself. I can’t see it replacing email entirely – email is far too well entrenched now, and it has a lot of advantages over Wave.

It seems like a more direct replacement for IM clients. Most of the time you’ll use it as a straight chat window, so maybe there should be an option to lock it down to that functionality. It would also be great for document collaboration but how then far is Google Docs from having that same functionality?

These are just some initial thoughts, it will be interesting to see how it changes and what ways it works with other applications. What would be crazy is if this became a proper paradigm in the way that email, IM or social networks did – it’s too complicated for most people, but maybe as time goes by it will seem more normal.