Android tips and tricks

Android tips and tricks

Many of the tips are specific to Android 2.3 so mind it.

                       Tips

• Visual cue for scrolling: When you are in a scrollable list (like your Gmail inbox) and you reach the end of the list it shows an orange hue—a visual cue that you can’t scroll anymore.
• Notification bar icons (Wi-Fi, network coverage bars, etc.): Turn green when you have an uninhibited connection to Google, white when you don't. Hint: if you're in a hotel or airport using Wi-Fi, the bars won't turn green until you launch the browser and get past the captive portal.
• Voice actions: Tell your phone what to do by pressing the microphone icon next to the search box on the home screen, or long press the magnifying glass. You can tell it to send an email or text message (“send text to mom, see you for pizza at 7”), call someone ("call mom"), navigate somewhere (“navigate to pizza”), or listen to music ("listen to Mamma Mia").
• Find things you’ve downloaded from your browser: Your downloads are now neatly collected in a Downloads manager, which you can find in the apps drawer.
• Turn a Gallery stack into a slideshow: In Gallery, when you are looking at a stack of photos, put two fingers on the stack and spread them. The stack spreads out and the pictures flow from one finger to the other, a moving slideshow that lets you see all of the photos.
• Walk, don’t drive: Once you’ve gotten directions within Google Maps, click on the walking person icon to get walking directions.
• Easy text copy/paste from a webpage: To copy/paste from a webpage, long press some text, drag the handles around to select the text you want to copy, and press somewhere in the highlighted region. To paste, simply long press a text entry box and select paste. Gmail is a bit different: you need to go to Menu > More > Select Text.
• Turn your phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot: Go to Settings > Wireless & Networks > Tethering & Portable Hotspot. (You may have to pay extra for this feature.)
• Look at Maps in 3D: With the latest release of Google Maps, you can now look at 3D maps. Tilt the map by sliding two fingers vertically up/down the screen, and rotate it by placing two fingers on the map and sliding in a circular motion, e.g., from 12 and 6 o’clock to 3 and 9.
• Cool shutdown effect: When you put the phone to sleep, you’ll see an animation that resembles an old cathode tube TV turning off.

Keyboard tricks

• Shift+Key to capitalize a word: In Gingerbread (and supported hardware), you can Shift+Key to capitalize a letter instead of going to a separate all caps keyboard.
• Auto-complete: The space bar lights up when auto-complete can finish a word.
• Quick replace: Tap on any previously typed word, then tap on a suggestion to automatically replace it with the suggested word.
• Easy access to special characters (like numbers, punctuation): Press and hold any key to go to the special character keyboard. You can also press and hold the "," key for an extensive punctuation keyboard.

Applications

• Angry Birds: Popular game that lets you knock down blocks by slingshotting birds.
• Astro: Awesome file explorer app. Browse and access the directories on your phone, and take full advantage of its capabilities. Great if you’re a power user.
• Chrome to Phone: This one is really useful for Chrome users. You can send anything you browse on your computer to your phone. So if you are heading out to a restaurant or party and look up directions on your computer, just click the “send to phone” button (requires Chrome to Phone extension) and that exact page will open on your phone. Same with virtually any webpage.
• Flash: Install from Android Market to watch Flash videos embedded throughout the web. Runs even better on Gingerbread.
• Fruit Ninja: A juicy action game that tests your ability to smash flying fruit. A fun time-killer on the bus or train.
• FXCamera: Popular photo sharing app with slick effects and filters.
• Google Maps: Use your device as a GPS navigation system with free turn-by-turn voice guidance, and take advantage of other Google Maps features like Street View, Latitude and Places.
• Instant Heart Rate: Measure your heart rate using your camera.
• Phoneanlyzr: Track your phone usage: who you text most, call most, average call length distribution, etc.
• RemoteDroid: Control your computer from your phone. Gives you a mobile wireless mouse and keyboard. Great if you’re using your computer for music or movies.
• Shazam: Identifies virtually any song you are listening to.
• SoundHound: Record a snippet of a song and get it identified instantly. You can even hum (if you can carry a tune!).
• Tango: A free, high-quality video call app that works on both 3G and Wi-Fi. If your device has a front facing camera (e.g., Nexus S), you will love this app.
• YouTube: New UI. Plus, portrait-mode player, and view comments and drop-down box video information

Do inform me for any more tricks on this issue.....

Google Expands to a New Frontier: The Human Body

GOOGLE'S NEW BODY BROWSER

With Google's new Body Browser, you can unravel the human body and -- of course -- search for any organ or bodily structure.

The company that wants to be your everything for search has just brought its technology to a new area: the human body. 

Google has just unveiled Body Browser, a detailed 3D model of the human body. Running only in browsers that support the new WebGL graphics standard (currently just Google Chrome or the latest Firefox beta), Body Browser lets you peel back the body's anatomical layers, zoom in, and navigate to parts that interest you. 

Click to identify bits of the human anatomy, or search for muscles, organs, bones and more. The ability to zoom in and out of the body, and to unravel it at the click of a mouse, is entertaining and informative.

You can also share the exact scene you are viewing by copying and pasting the corresponding URL. Can't recall quite what the fibular collateral ligament looks like, for example? That's the one on the outside of the knee, of course; you can find it with a quick search and share it with your anatomically inquisitive friends. Hunting for a close up view of the sternum? You can see that, as well. 

The product is available currently from the Google Labs site, where the company unveils early versions of new projects.

Google Fiber to make 100 times faster

GOOGLE FIBER 

Earlier this year we announced an experiment we hope will help make Internet access better and faster for everyone: to provide a community with ultra high-speed broadband, 100 times faster than what most people have access to today.

This week I joined Google as vice president of Access Services to oversee the Google Fiber team. Over the past several months I’ve been following the progress the team has already made—from experimenting with new fiber deployment technologies here on Google’s campus, to announcing a “beta” NETWORK OF 850 HOMES AT STANFORD—and I’m excited for us to bring our ultra high-speed network to a community.

We had planned to announce our selected community or communities by the end of this year, but the level of interest was incredible—nearly 1,100 communities across the country responded to our announcement—and exceeded our expectations. While we’re moving ahead full steam on this project, we’re not quite ready to make that announcement.


 Stay tuned for an announcement in early 2011.

Google's Chrome OS

Using Google's Chrome OS Laptop of the Future

The Chrome Cr-48 netbook might just be a reference design—as in, most folks won't ever be able to use it—but it is what Google thinks a Chrome laptop should be. And it has some pretty nice touches. Updated. Here are some quick impressions on the hardware and software that we gleaned from about an hour's worth of usage. Advantages:- • Plain matte finish both inside and outside the lid feels nice—the antithesis of shiny MacBooks • The trackpad really does not like having two fingers on it at once. It's not multitouch, but you can use two fingers for right clicking. • Window switching with Alt+Tab is fast, and feels like switching workspaces (Spaces on OS X) • Fairly light and fairly thin • The keyboard keys are separated like MacBook and Envy, so I'm definitely used to typing on it • No function keys, instead, you have actually web-useful keys like back, forward, reload, fullscreen, next window and several standard laptop keys • Shutdown and resume really is almost instant • The screen doesn't get incredibly bright, but it gets bright enough for indoor use • Gmail calling works! It's only slightly laggy, and I sound like I'm in a closet, but otherwise, it works Dis Adv:- • It's definitely still a netbook—there's an Atom processor inside—so heavy duty computing is out of the question • YouTube is limited to 480p, even on 1080p videos. There's just no option to select the higher quality • Hulu is choppy, but it's not unwatchable • Gmail noticeably is slower than on a MacBook Pro • There's only one USB port Update: Extended impressions. Google really wants people to use the web, and having a web-only computer pretty much forces you to do so. I've been using the Cr-48 for a few hours now, and I can both say that it's the best netbook I've ever used, as well as the most limiting computer I've ever used. The experience of using a web computer Being locked into a browser for everything you do on a computer can be frustrating. It's modal computing—something that Apple seems to be pushing with their OS X Lion—so you're always working in one maximized window. You can still multitask in the sense that things are going on in tabs and windows that you're not looking at, but you can't really see more than one thing at once. Except, as a notable example, the fact that GChat windows pop up no matter where you are, effectively enabling web-based apps to transcend the window they belong to. Some quirks and pains of using a web browser are more significant when you're using one as an operating system. The search button, Google's "replacement" for the caps lock key, brings up a new tab. Logically, you'd assume the search button allowed you to say, search in Gmail, if you were in a Gmail window, or search your previous chat transcripts if you were in GChat. Also, Flash has crashed a lot. It doesn't take down the tab that it's in when it crashes, but you have to reload every single tab that you have that uses Flash. But overall, working entirely in a web browser isn't too bad, as long as you have web-based versions of things you need to do. I'm not quite there, but I'm convinced that with a few weeks effort, I can be. The prototype hardware Again, because Google doesn't intend this particular Cr-48 model to be an actual product, there's no need to review the hardware. However, there are touches, ideas and themes that Google has put in that they would like their hardware partners to carry on. The SD card reader on the side is quite handy, as is the existence of a USB port. The keyboard is also matted and nice to type on, and matches the rest of the finish. And I can't emphasize enough how cool it is to be using an unbranded, unmarked, totally generic laptop. This is like the Nexus One/S of notebooks. I suppose the fact that this is running an Atom processor is holding it back from being a blazing fast experience, even if all you're doing is web-based computing. Alt-tabbing may be fast, but everything else, like Google docs, Gchat, and other things that are supposedly lightweight will run slower than you're used to. I mean, when was the last time that Google Docs lagged on keypresses for you? So, hopefully the third-party manufacturers that do do Chrome OS notebooks find a way to balance extended battery life with the need for slightly more powerful hardware. It's a very good secondary machine, or travel machine, but in order for it to be a primary machine, you're gonna need more juice.

Discover more than 3 million Google eBooks from your choice of booksellers and devices

Google eBooks :To improve access to the cultural and educational treasures we term them as books. Google eBooks will be available in the U.S. from a new Google eBookstore. You can browse and search through the largest ebooks collection in the world with more than three million titles including hundreds of thousands for sale. Find the latest bestsellers like James Patterson’s Cross Fire and Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, dig into popular reads like Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken and catch up on the classics like Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities and Gulliver’s Travels. We designed Google eBooks to be open. Many devices are compatible with Google eBooks—everything from laptops to netbooks to tablets to smartphones to e-readers. With the new Google eBooks Web Reader, you can buy, store and read Google eBooks in the cloud. That means you can access your ebooks like you would messages in Gmail or photos in Picasa—using a free, password-protected Google account with unlimited ebooks storage. In addition to a full-featured web reader, free apps for Android and Apple devices will make it possible to shop and read on the go. For many books you can select which font, font size, day/night reading mode and line spacing suits you—and pick up on the page where you left off when switching devices. You can discover and buy new ebooks from the Google eBookstore or get them from one of our independent bookseller partners: Powell’s, Alibris and participating members of the American Booksellers Association. You can choose where to buy your ebooks like you choose where to buy your print books, and keep them all on the same bookshelf regardless of where you got them. When Google Books first launched in 2004, we set out to make the information stored in the world’s books accessible and useful online. Since then, we’ve digitized more than 15 million books from more than 35,000 publishers, more than 40 libraries, and more than 100 countries in more than 400 languages. This deep repository of knowledge and culture will continue to be searchable throughGoogle Books search in the research section alongside the ebookstore. Launching Google eBooks is an initial step toward giving you greater access to the vast variety of information and entertainment found in books. Our journey has just begun...

Facebook Planning Email Service Launch

Facebook is hosting a special media event on Monday, November 15, where the company is expected to introduce its own email service code named Project Titan. The service apparently includes a full-on Web-based email client and will give Facebook subscribers their own @faceboom.com email address,according to TechCrunch.

Facebook email may be on the way

Facebook isn’t saying yet what it plans to announce at its press event, but the invitations do hint strongly towards an email or message-related service. If the social networking company does in fact roll out a new email service, it could include features such as the ability to prioritize messages based who you interact with most on Facebook.

Assuming a new email service is on the way, that could account for a recent dispute between Facebook and Google over accessing contacts from Google Gmail user accounts. Google blocked Facebook users from moving their Gmail contacts to the social networking service, but a workaround has already surfaced that lets Facebook users get at their Gmail contacts.

Facebook isn’t dropping any more hints about its Monday event, so for now word that a new email service will be launched should be considered speculation.

Google Chrome Beta Can 'Prerender' Web Pages

One of the most recent builds of the Google Chrome browser offers support for an intriguing new feature: "prerendering" of Web pages, offering even faster Web browsing by guessing which pages you'll visit next.

In the 9.0.576.0 build and subsequent versions of Chrome for Windows and Linux, the new build "add[s] support for page prerendering", according to the changelog. The feature had previously been part of the open-source Chromium technology. The new Chrome build is part of the Chrome beta channel, and users who use the standard "stable" Chrome builds must download the beta version.

The concept of prerendering should be something like a "crystal ball," where Chrome predicts which site a user will visit next, preloads it, and then delivers the content almost instantly. In the "about:flags" section, prerendering is described as "speculatively prerenders complete webpages in the background for a faster browsing experience". It is turned off by default.

A Google spokesman characterized prerendering as "an experiment". "While we are always working to improve the speed of Google Chrome, this particular feature is still an experimental idea that is in the very early phases of development," he said in email. "Over the coming months we plan to work on prototyping the feature in Chromium builds behind a flag to test out various approaches and see if this is a feasible way to improve browser speed."

In a sense, Google already launched a similar feature on Tuesday, the same day as the prerendering feature went live. Then, Google launched Google Instant Previews, which preloads a portion of the page when a special "magnifying glass" icon is clicked.

"We match your query with an index of the entire Web, identify the relevant parts of each Web page, stitch them together and serve the resulting preview completely customized to your search—usually in under one-tenth of a second," Raj Krishnan, a Google product manager, wrote in a blog post describing Google Instant Previews. "Once you click the magnifying glass, we load previews for the other results in the background so you can flip through them without waiting."

Whether or not the feature actually works at this point is uncertain. ConceivablyTech, which tested the feature, found that, when turned on, the feature seemed to improve the load times of Web pages, but not consistently, with most improvements confined to smaller, less efficiently coded sites. It's also not clear which Web sites or links Chrome will choose to pre-load, although hovering over an HTML link would seem to be a good indicator that a user intends to click on it.

In informal PCMag.com tests, I found that some Web sites, such as Engadget, seemed to load more quickly than others. ReadWriteWeb for example, seemingly loaded slightly slower when using the new Chrome build. ConceivablyTech also noted a small spike in traffic when hovering over a link; I did a few times, but not consistently.

Loading a Web page often depends on pulling information from several different servers to load ads and other modules, however, and it's unclear how deep Google goes in loading this data. It's also unclear whether, even enabled, the new technology is even turned on.

Google representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

The beta Chrome browser also includes performance enhancements like "Snap Start," which enables an experimental TLS extension which removes a round trip from HTTPS handshakes, supposedly increasing performance. Verbatim Instant also makes the address bar load URLs as you type suggestions into it.

Other experimental features include the ability to toggle between top and side tabs and to also disable outdated plugins that may have known security vulnerabilities.

Samsung Galaxy Models

A Pocketable Train Wreck:

This is it. The Galaxy Tab is the first Android tablet meant for humans. But is it actually fit for humans? No.

Samsung Galaxy Tab (Sprint)
Price: $399 w/ contract, ($599 w/out)
Display: 7 inches @ 1024x600
Processor: 1GHz ARM Cortex A8
Memory and Storage: 512MB RAM, 2GB built-in + 16GB microSD
Cameras: 3.2MP (rear); 1.2MP (front)
Monthly Data Plans: 2GB for $30; 5GB for $60

Put simply, the Galaxy Tab is the first post-iPad tablet that matters, because it's the first tablet that's trying to be legitimate competition. It aims to break a lot of ground. Powered by iOS's biggest rival, the Tab essentially kicks off the next generation of tablets. And, at the size of a paperback, it's one of the first to seriously test how well a seven-inch tablet really works. There's a lot riding on this thing.

Here's the thing about tablets: Size is everything. Size is the whole point. It's what makes browsing, reading, creating and sharing better on a tablet than on a phone, even if they're both running the same software.

If you take iPhone apps and simply scale them up for the iPad, most of them don't feel right. If you take Android apps and scale them up for the Tab, the majority of them—Twitter, Facebook, Angry Birds—work perfectly. (Except for when they don't, like The Weather Channel.) That's because the Galaxy Tab is small enough that apps simply blown up a little bit still fundamentally work. Which means, conversely, that there's almost no added benefit to using the Tab over a phone. It's not big enough. Web browsing doesn't have greater fidelity. I don't get more out of Twitter. A magazine app would be cramped.

Videos do look better than they do on a phone, but a bigger tablet would be even better.

There is no way to not feel like a total dorkface while typing on this thing. In portrait, it's like tapping on a massive, nerdy phone. In landscape, it's just dumb. You still have to thumb type, only you're stretching out further, and text entry swallows up the entire screen. Swype might be dandy on a phone, but on a seven-inch screen it doesn't work so well—you have to travel a lot further to sketch out words. In other words, you get the worst of a phone's input problems—amplified.

In the places where Samsung tries to make the Tab feel more like a tablet than a big phone, it's not afraid to borrow liberally from what Apple's done on the iPad. The music app (a huge improvement over the standard Android player) bears an uncanny resemblance to the iPad's iPod app, while the faux-realness of the Calendar, Contacts and Memo apps feel like Chinatown knockoffs of Cupertino software.

The Tab feels like a grab bag of neglect, good intentions and poor execution. Example: Samsung's built-in task manager, with one-touch kill switches to free up gobs of RAM, is plenty effective at dealing with apps running in the background. But why does it have to be there in the first place. Should you really be actively managing background apps?

Typically, the point of a compromise is to bring together the best of both sides. The Tab is like a compromise's evil twin, merging the worst of a tablet and the worst of a phone. It has all of the input problems of a tablet, with almost none of the consumption benefits. With more apps geared to its tweener size, it could be a lot better, but it's not clear they're coming anytime soon, if ever. The Tab is an awkward first attempt at this kind of tablet—wait for somebody else to do it better.

None of these "4G" networks is really 4G

 The Dirty Secret of Today's 4G: It's not 4G

Right now, every major carrier in the US is touting a "4G" network that's either available or being rolled out. Sprint is pushing WiMax. AT&T and Verizon are pushing LTE (Long-Term Evolution). T-Mobile is pushing HSPA+ (High Speed Packet Access Evolved). They're all faster than the "3G" speeds than we're used to, with WiMax and HSPA+ delivering consistent, real-world speeds of anywhere from 3Mbps-12Mbps today. But a rep for the ITU told me flatly, "The fact is that there are no IMT-Advanced—or 4G—systems available or deployed at this stage." Calling their newer, faster networks "4G" is "completely marketing" by the carriers, says Gartner analyst Phil Hartman.

The ITU has actually just decided which technologies are officially designated as IMT-Advanced—"true 4G technologies" in its eyes—after looking at six candidates. The winners:LTE-Advanced (LTE Release 10)and WirelessMAN-Advanced (aka 802.16m aka WiMax Release 2). In other words, the next versions of today's LTE and WiMax. Despite sharing the names, and being developed by the same groups as their predecessors, the for-serious 4G networks will be "pretty different" at a technical level, says Hartman.

If you think top speeds of 300Mbps for LTE and 72Mbps for WiMax are impressive, true 4G makes them look downright pokey. Today's 4G is "not anywhere near what the 4G experience will be in 10-15 years," says Hartman. You're talking about speeds of "up to a gigabit a second" in a wireless LAN, and 100Mbps for fully mobile applications. In other words, true 4G is a massive leap, not a dainty skip forward. There's also little things, like full capability for voice in LTE-Advanced, which there's no standard for in the current LTE spec.

The goal of true 4G is to create a superfast, incredibly interoperable, basically ubiquitous global networks. What we've got now and in the very near future is pretty good, and definitely better than what we've had. But they're no 4G.

The Fascinating Story of the Twins Who Share Brains, Thoughts, and Senses

This is one of the most surprising and awesome tales ever told in the history of medicine. These twins are Tatiana and Krista Hogan. Their brains and sensory systems are networked together, but they have separate personalities. Their story defies belief.

So much, in fact, that Tatiana and Krista Hogan shouldn't be alive at all. Their chances of surviving the pregnancy, birth and first months of life were almost zero. Surprisingly, they turned four on October 25, and they are still healthy and happy, as you can see in the photo above.

They play Nintendo Wii games against each other, they fight for toys and they share food and physiological functions. But they also share their senses. For example, one can pick an object out of her field of view, while the twin looks at the object.

Most importantly, however, they can share each other thoughts, like their grandmother—Louise McKay—describes:

They share thoughts, too. Nobody will be saying anything, and Tati will just pipe up and say, ‘Stop that!' And she'll smack her sister.

Scientists are nothing short of absolutely amazed. Here you have two kids, completely different from each other, with their own distinct personality, but with connected brains and sensory systems. Dr. Douglas Cochrane—neurosurgeon at Vancouver's Children's Hospital—has tested their networking abilities:

Their brains are recording signals from the other twin's visual field. One might be seeing what the other one is seeing.

Nobody can possibly imagine how this may work and feel for them. And since they haven't developed their full verbal skills yet, scientists can't ask them about it. I don't know if they will have a lot of answers for them, however. If they ask me how I see or smell things, there is no way that I could accurately describe it. These actions just happen. Like you and me, they have no other point of reference. Their life is the only one they know. For them, sharing thoughts and senses is the only way things could be.

But whatever the implications for science and philosophy are, their mother is just happy and grateful for every day with them. She also believe they're here for a reason but, "we just don't know the reason yet."

I don't know what that reason could be, but the mere fact that they are alive, happy, loving and being loved, is enough for me. [Macleans]

RockMelt - Your Browser. Re-imagined. Connect for an invitation.

RockMelt Browser Comes Out from Behind Its Rock

• 

We first heard about RockMelt, a browser startup backed by the Netscape developer Marc Andreessen, just over a year ago. It's been in stealth mode since then, but finally on Monday a beta version became available to the public. It's based on the fast, highly HTML5-compliant Chromium foundation that comes from Chrome Browser.

PCMag.com met with RockMelt's founders Eric Vishria and Tim Howes last week for an early look at the new browser software. Entering a competitor into a full field that includes Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera, not to mention an even more direct socially enhanced-browser competitor, Flock, may seem questionable, but Visheria and Howes made a fairly compelling case for it. Their point was that the current all-purpose browsers don't reflect most people's actual usage patterns.

Reinventing the Browser
"At RockMelt we are reinventing the browser for the way people use the Web today," said Howes. "We think this has changed dramatically from the way people used it just a few short years ago. But all the browsers available today, although they've gotten a lot faster, are still just about navigating web pages. We built features into the browser to address people's three top browsing behaviors: interacting with friends, consume news and information, and searching."

RockMelt builds in support for social networks and news/information sites in the form of left and right margin toolbars that alert users any time there's new content to consume. At this beta launch, support for Facebook and Twitter is built in, and you'll even have to log in using your Facebook credentials to start using the browser. This also means anywhere you run RockMelt, your settings and alert statuses will be synced via the cloud.

The left rail shows icons for your contacts, indicating whether they're online and available for chat, which you can engage right from the sidebar that pops out. And this chat is richer than that inside Facebook, allowing collaborative Web photo and video viewing. You can choose which of your top Friends you want to have icons appear for in the rail, and search for any of the rest. Each user icon also shows if the Friend has new posts or messages for you to read.

On the right side of the browser is a column of site icons. Again, Facebook and Twitter are prominent here, offering full viewing and posting of any updated content. But you can also add any news or information site, and clicking on its icon will pop out a list of the most recent articles, using the site's RSS feed. Any panel that pops out can be torn out to live on the desktop as a separate window.

A New Kind of Search
One of RockMelt's most helpful innovations is what it does for search. The browser adds a separate search box to Chrome's Omnibox, but when you enter a query, just the results appear in a panel. You can click on any of these to view the full site in the main window. Since all the sites are preloaded as soon as you enter the search query, the experience is much more responsive than a standard search process. The idea sort of takes Bing's right-side text previews to the next level.

Another very common browsing behavior that RockMelt facilitates is sharing Web pages. Nearly every Web page, including this one, has some kind of "Share" interface. RockMelt bypasses this with its own Share button right in the browser. This spares you from logging into each sharing site separately, since you'll already be logged in. Having one button in the browser also means you won't have to hunt for the sharing feature on the site, since there's no consistency among sites as to where this will appear.

"There's a reason we designed the edges; this is a new UI construct," Vishria told us. "They're thin, but there's a lot of power there, but it doesn't get in your way when you're working. If you look at the product overall, it's a browser that's much more personal than anything else. It's my friends, my sites, my services. The cloud service enables the push notifications, and allows me to log in from any Mac or PC RockMelt instance and get exactly my experience."

What About Privacy?
I asked the RockMelt founders about a topic that often gets internet users hot: Privacy. A browser that you log into and that stores your Facebook content on its servers might be cause for a raised eyebrow, considering all the flack Facebook itself has gotten. Here's the answer I got: "We're not running ad networks, so we're not trying to target users in any way. We're not storing personal information about users and what they do. We anonymize info about what users are doing for the sole purpose of making RockMelt better. We never record info about users, what they're doing online, searches they're doing, anything like that." Sounds reassuring enough.

Though you could do a lot of what RockMelt does with extensions, the percentage of the overall Web-browsing public that actually uses bookmark buttons, let alone looks for and installs extensions, is minuscule. Having these tools pre-built into a browser could end up in more utility for average users. And the preloaded search result pages could save users a lot of time navigating back and forth between result links and the search page.

Finally I asked how RockMelt would make money: "There is a proven business model for browsers today, around the one feature that is built directly into browsers, search. We think in the future that there will be opportunities to build additional services into the browser as well. You can imagine gaming or commerce, for example. But for now, we're focused on building our user base–we're on a race to a million users–and the most effective way to get there is by building the best product possible."

The RockMelt beta can be downloaded in versions for Mac and PC starting today from rockmelt.com.