Google is starting to remind me of the evil flying brains from Futurama: once Google has collected and organized all the world’s information in their datacentre they will destroy Earth so that no new information can be created.

It started with Google Earth: we could view satellite images of the entire planet, with enough detail to see the tops of people’s heads. Then there was the slightly creepier Street View, which allowed us to see straight down people’s driveways and look at others as they walked down the street. The latest venture seems to be sorting and organizing prescriptions.

What does everyone else think: a harmless company looking to make information easily accessible for all, or an alien race of super intelligent brains intent on learning everything until they destroy the Earth?

Recently I purchased myself a shiny new Sony Vaio Z series notebook. My main reason for choosing the Vaio Z was the size weight: it’s a reasonably powerful 13.1″ laptop at 1.5kg including the battery, a weight which rivals a lot of the 10″ netbooks out there. The model I purchased, the Z16 (Australia has different model numbers to the USA) was one of the lower specced models, however it still features a respectable Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 processor (2.4GHz) and 2 gigabytes of DDR3 RAM (I added a second 2GB module a few weeks after purchasing the laptop).
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The beta version of Google’s own Web browser, dubbed ‘Google Chrome’, was released today. Ten minutes ago I installed it.
As with most things Google, the user interface is very minimal and clean. There are no menu bars and the address bar also serves as the search box and history bar which is a nice idea. All settings (saved passwords, bookmarks, etc.) can be imported from other browsers such as Firefox or IE which makes for an easy transition.
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Last week Microsoft released the second beta of Internet Explorer 8. This new version of IE is at last a step in the right direction for Microsoft, as compliance with CSS standards is now a major priority.

I downloaded the new beta and started the installation, only to be met with the message

A previous build of Internet Explorer 8 is already installed on your computer. You must remove it before installing the latest version of Internet Explorer 8.

Apparently upgrading the previously installed version was too big an ask. Never mind, I thought, I’ll just uninstall the older version of IE8. But wait, it’s not listed with all my other programs in ‘Uninstall or change a program’ (or ‘Add/Remove programs’ if you’re running Windows XP).

It took me a few minutes to figure out, but Internet Explorer 8 is actually listed under the ‘view installed updates’ list rather than the list of installed programs. Great, now I can go ahead and install the new version!

Today I stumbled across the Cuil (pronounced “cool”) search engine, which claims to have indexed more pages than any other search engine: 121 billion. Developed by former Google employees, Cuil features an incredibly attractive interface complete with search suggestions and thumbnail images alongside some search results.
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