NiallOK’s Blog

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Blogging is going to be fairly “thin on the ground” here for a wee while as my laptop is basically dying.

There’s a fault with the power input section of the motherboard and it’s only charging the battery when the power is OFF. When it’s ON, the battery discharges fully within about 20 minutes and the machine shuts down. It won’t run off the mains alone. I’ve tried a few things to get this fixed myself but to no avail and frankly, as it’s over 5 years old and well out of warranty by now, it looks like it’s time to put it “out to pasture”, as it were.

Will be a wee while before I can afford to shell out for a new one though, so blogging will be light for now. For your blogtertainment (suuuuure, it can be a word…), why not check out Rick, Damien, Ken, Twenty or Ruairí? G’wan…

I’ve given the blog a slight make-over, with a new theme (based on the “Bella” theme from the WPGlamour site. I think it looks nice, clean and sharp so I’m happy with it… Also added the “related posts” feature and will add new plugins and features soon.

That’s all for now!

I’m posting this entry using the just-released beta of Google Chrome, the new browser from search giants, Google, and I have to say, on first impressions, I’m pleasantly surprised by how good it is - it’s fast, was easy to install, is easy to use, and has a nice clean interface.

It’s practically identical to Firefox 3 in a lot of ways yet stands on it’s own (in a sort of Safari way - except better) in others - including its design - with the tabs neatly tucked into the titlebar and the address bar doubling (or is it ‘trebling’?) as a search entry box and bookmarks launcher. It’s quite tempting after using it for only about half an hour to switch over to it as my primary browser… but I’ll give it a while yet!

Also, as it seems pretty streamlined and lightweight, I wonder will we see a mobile phone version coming out soon…?

Definitely one to watch.

Coverflow … “invented” by Apple in order to create an attractive way of flipping through your albums on your touch-screen iPod … adapted by various software applications (including one I use quite a bit - VirtualDJ) - and now, also being used by searchme to make their “visual” search engine.

I don’t honestly know how long searchme is around, but I’ve just come across it. It’s a clever idea, and it works better and seems to give better (and more interesting) search results than Cúil (the new search engine kid on the block that claims to have a database many times bigger than Google’s). It even allows you to search videos, with the ability to actually play the videos inline within the 3D search results interface, which is quite a nice feature.