As a raving Firefox fan for years, I can’t believe I’m writing this post. My love for all Mozilla products has always been because they “just work”. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case for me.

Over the past week, Firefox has been acting up – mainly sluggish page loads and running processes, even after the browser has been closed. Basically, this just means that I can’t run Firefox again until I end the process in Task Manager.

Google Chrome has been my #2 browser for several months, so I decided to give it a try. Within a day of serious use, I’m sold. As I posted earlier, Google is planning an entire OS built on the Chrome idea – browser/desktop integration. Chrome makes a great start with my current favorite feature – application shortcuts.

Take any website you visit, add an application shortcut, and you’ve now got a shortcut right on your desktop. Clicking this will open your page in a special Chrome page that’s set apart from normal browsing. This way, you can essentially add shortcuts to your favorite sites, saving a few steps if you just want to check your Gmail, Facebook or Twitter (or your Joupes account!).

JavaScript effects and plugins (like LightBox) are faster in Chrome than any other browser I’ve used. Page surfing is smooth and fast-loading. Despite it’s limited customization, Chrome looks good and the lack of buttons works to its advantage by freeing up lots of real estate. Other little design features like the downloads section, highlighted entry text boxes and “Most Visited” (much like the Fast Dial plugin for Firefox) links are icing on the cake.

Well done, Google. You’ve won me over. I look forward to you doing the same thing when Google Chrome OS comes out.

For the past few months, a good friend (and past guest blogger) and I have been working on something called “Joupes”.  We have reached a fairly stable and working version, and we think it’s time to release it for testing.  Now, I have played this release over and over in my head, each fantasy involving a large room filled with web and social media experts, a sexy shirt microphone, bottles of the finest water, and a large screen projector to display the project.

Alas, that’s not going to happen – yet.  For the time being, I’ll have to settle for this blog.  So, without further ado, we are pleased to announce the beta release of Joupes.  Applause welcome.

Fantastic – another brightly colored logo, a weird name, and no explanation at all. Here goes.

What are Joupes?

Basically, Joupes are goals.  You can have short term goals or you can have long term goals – but they are all Joupes.  Joupes.com brings both long term and short term tasks to a simple, one page site – organizing by type and date due.

Ok, awesome – but why do I care?

The fact of the matter is, you might not care.  But you should.  Studies show that people who have written life goals are up to 10 times more successful financially than those that don’t.  We’ve taken this idea of written goals and applied it to short term tasks (or “to-do’s”) as well.  Hopefully, the combination of seeing your life goals staring you in the face, as well as being able to check off daily tasks, will help you be more productive.

I’m busy, I can’t log into a website everyday to manage to-do’s!

This is where Joupes gets neat.  With SMS (text-messaging) reminders, your tasks come to you!  That’s right – when you add a task to your Joupes list, you can set reminders to receive text messages before a task is due!

Hopefully that answers a few questions about the nature of Joupes.  Throughout the next few weeks, we will be sending out beta invitations to select individuals for testing.  If you’d like to be considered for an invite, sign up here.  Obviously, as it’s in beta mode, we’ve got lots of works to do.  We have so many different ideas and added features from the site, it can get a little difficult to keep the simplicity.  There is surely more to come, and I hope you’ll stick around to see it.

Big Prize. If you’re on Facebook or Twitter, there’s a good chance you’re somewhat familiar with the name. Whether you check the fan page every hour, are constantly confused by the odd little sayings your friends write on their wall, or your Twitter homepage is sprinkled with #moonfruit tweets – you’ve seen the name.

In less than two weeks, and with over 140,000 fans at last check, Big Prize is taking over – by giving stuff away!  The people at Big Prize seem to understand something very basic to human nature – we like free stuff.  Want to attract a lot of people?  Give them really expensive things…for free.

Now, as with every “free giveaway” program, Big Prize has raised plenty of skepticism, especially after the consecutive winnings of Ben Scott.  Ben was one of the people I got to talk with, and he has a very interesting story about Big Prize.  Ben actually won 4 different prizes – 3 t-shirts and an iPod Touch.  While a lot of people posted some pretty rude things about him, he won it all fair and square, simply tweeting responses when he received Twitter SMS updates.  That’s not good enough for some people, and Ben gave up 2 of his shirts to calm the storm of people essentially angry over the fact that they didn’t win.

To be fair to those truly wary, I was also a tad hesitant at first.  However, after doing a little reading, tweeting, Facebook stalking (and discovering that it’s sponsored by Startlike), I was (and am) sold.  So how can someone just give away iPhones, MacBooks and golf clubs?  The answer is pretty straight forward, and involves something my mom has hounded me about for years – budgeting.

As with any company, Startlike has a marketing budget.  This is how they can give away awesome little freebies that we all love so much like t-shirts and koozies (honestly, what is it about free shirts that makes us salivate?).  It’s also how they can afford to chuck out more iPhones than self-taken mirror shots on an middle schoolers Facebook.  Which do you think is more effective – banner ads, pens, and rubber key chains or TaylorMade drivers, iPhones, and MacBooks?

As Michael Scott (Regional Manager of Dunder Mifflin Paper Co. in Scranton, PA) has taught us, this is what’s called a “win-win-win”.  Big Prize experiences an exponential growth of fans (hopefully attracting partners), Startlike gets more attention, and all the fans and Twitter followers get the opportunity to win stuff.  Viral marketing at its finest, in my opinion.  Traffic, fans, and interest grows through Facebook “word-of-mouth”, with minimal-to-no direct advertising.

Ok, so all that’s fine and dandy – but why do you care?  As the end consumer, you just want to know that you aren’t getting scammed.  That’s where I come in.  Over the past few days, I’ve been gathering interviews from a few people who have been Big Prize winners.  Everyone I talked to was happy to answer my questions – I guess free iPhones tend to put people in a good mood.

Now, as Facebook is geared towards sharing information with friends, most people I talked with found Big Prize through the wall posts of friends or direct referrals.  Michelle Cramer, however, saw something about it on her Startlike homepage.  A few days ago, I wrote a post about how much I enjoy my own Startlike homepage, and it’s neat to see a winner who uses it on a regular basis.

Basically, though, I just wanted to find out if winners actually got their prizes, and if they got them quickly.  My answer:  a resounding double yes.  Everyone I talked with had great communication with Big Prize, and they received their prizes about a week after winning.

“They were really quick about it, within a week I got it.” – Binal Patel

“They told me on June 29th or 30th I would get the gift card . . . on July 8th. I got it on July 2nd.” – Benjamen Scott

“The prize . . . arrived by postal mail the following week. No muss, no fuss.” – Eric Alderman

“I received my [prize] about a week after winning it, which in my opinion is pretty quick!” – Michelle Cramer

So, after speaking to 4 completely satisfied winners, I can safely say that yes, Big Prize is giving things away – no scams, no ploys.  “No muss, no fuss.”

Now, explaining why I’m a Big Prize fan is like trying to explain to my best friend Daniel (a Celtics fan) why I’ve been a die-hard Laker for 11 years – they’re the best program in the league, backed by some terrific players (in Big Prize’s case, Startlike), and Kobe Bryant is the finest example of hard work, dedication, and fundamental perfection the NBA has to offer.  Ok, so that last one didn’t really apply at all, but it’s my blog.

Show me another company that can give away thousands of dollars in free stuff, carry on great personal customer relations, generate thousands and thousands of Facebook fans in a few days, and represent themselves with a gnome.  In the meantime, my computer’s broken, and I could really use a MacBook – so excuse me while I keep playing.

In keeping with the theme from the past few posts, Google has just introduced an easy way to recover your password.  Hopefully you’ll never have to use this – but just in case, it’s nice to have it set up.

To activate this feature, just go to your Google Account page.  Click here to go to it, as I’m sure many of you have never seen this page before (I hadn’t).  Then, just click “Change password recovery options” and add your mobile number.

Be sure to keep this number updated, as switching mobile numbers could result in your reset code being sent to a random person.

Today, Google announced their plans to release an operating system dubbed Chrome OS.  So far, it’s mainly targeted at netbooks, though there are plans for release on all computers.  As with the nature of Google, the focus will be simplicity and effective use.  That is, it will be visually very basic, lightweight, and very user friendly compared to (though they didn’t mention it by name) Windows.

One of the neat things about this planned OS is the focus on a “webtop” environment.  I think Google is the perfect company to dive into this – making email, web browsing, and file access easier and quicker than ever.  As someone who uses every major Google web application (Gmail, Docs, Reader, Calendar, and Maps) quite frequently (and on my Blackberry), I have to say that I’m very excited about this.

Now, I’m not going to even begin to speculate on how Chrome OS will operate.  I think that anyone who does so is a fool – Google has shown us again and again why we shouldn’t predict with them.  They blow us away with simplicity.

Bottom line, I think we have something very exciting in store just around the corner.  Get pumped.  They have taken on a massive project, though.  Even though the technology world is abuzz and tweeting like crazy about this release, the vast majority of desktop users won’t be ready to switch their OS for years.  This isn’t a big deal now – face it, this OS is for the people already using netbooks and web applications.  However, if they are going to truly change the way operating systems work, they will have to prove that they have a safer, simpler, and more reliable alternative to Windows.

What do you think are the major obstacles that lie on the road between Google and a successful Chrome OS launch?  Will they succeed?  Will it be a worthy opponent to Windows?  To OS X?  Unix?!

Before I officially start this post, I want to make a few things very clear.  First, I am a big fan of Startlike.  Since they are based in Columbia, SC, I feel like it’s necessary to also say that it has nothing to do with their location (or the recent BigPrize project!).  Basically, I just want you to know that this isn’t a suck-up post (though I would never say no to a t-shirt).

So what is Startlike, and why do I like it so much?  It’s pretty simple.  Startlike is a customized homepage, featuring a daily photo from the category of your choice.  Essentially, it gives you a great looking homepage with a Google search bar, news, customized and quick links to your email and Facebook.  You can choose your favorite category from Exotic Escapes, Golf, Hunting and Fishing, SCUBA Diving, Skiing, Space and Astronomy, and The Great Outdoors.  After selecting one of these, you’ll see a different image from that category each day.  You can also link your Starlike page to Facebook to get a more personalized experience and share images easily.

OK, so why does Startlike fit me so well?  Well, it’s simple.  Usually, when I start Firefox, I have a few shortcuts that I immediately open in tabs (I find it easier than starting each in a tab, as this slows FF on startup).  Coincidentally (or not?) enough, they are Gmail, Facebook, and my Google web suite – Reader, Calendar, Analytics, and usually the search page.  With Startlike, I get all this (thanks to my quick links), as well as customized news and, most importantly, the daily picture.

Now, I’m a little different than most computer geeks.  I love love love love love pictures of nature, natural phenomena, and golf courses.  As a college kid who spends way too much money to play horribly on the course, I like to soak up the beauty of the different courses when I play.  Every desktop (work, home, school) I have is complete with either a majestic ice mountain, a great looking beach, or a fresh, dew-dropped golf course.  Now my homepage has a different one each day!

Anyway, even if you are a web hermit, you owe it to yourself to use Startlike.  If nothing else, your white start page will be replaced by a gorgeous picture from something that interests you.  So get started.  Now.

ConvergeSC was, in my opinion, a huge success.  Sure, some of the presentations were over my head, but they were still very interesting.  For the next few days, I’ll be posting some summaries from the many pages of notes I took throughout the day.  Thankfully, most of the speakers used lists, so summarizing will be easier.  Either way, their talks will hopefully be very helpful and informative.

To start things off, I’ll talk a little bit about the first presentation by Geno Church.  He talked about creating a brand movement (as opposed to other marketing tools like simple ads, etc).  In this type of approach, word-of-mouth is biggest determining factor for your movement.  It’s not just telling about your product, or even showing off customer testimonials – it’s about creating an entire customer base that really loves your product, site, or service.

Church used the example of Fiskar – a household name and the maker of a classic product.  However, until recently, they had no movement.  No one talked about them, though many people used their scissors everyday.  Thanks to the people at Brains on Fire, however, all that changed.  Within 20 weeks, there was a 600% increase in the number of online mentions of “Fiskar”.  Fiskateers was born, and there are currently over 5000 regular users.  All because of a movement.  Geno lists ten characteristics of movements.

Movements…

• are built on a passion for something.
• begin with a first conversation.
• have inspirational leadership.
• put passion to the test (perhaps by using invitations).
• empower people with knowledge.
• encourage ownership.
• have powerful identities.
• live online and offline.
• make advocates feel like a rockstar.
• GET RESULTS.

Read more about the Fiskateer project.

As you can tell, I loved ConvergeSC.  I got to meet a few really cool people, and I learned a great deal.  So, if you were there (and even if you weren’t), I’d encourage you to do just one thing – subscribe to my blog.  I mean, really – it works for both of us.  You want some mildly informative, sometimes humorous, but always sexy (you’ve read this far, why not throw that in?) posts to read.  And I want loyal readers.

So, I’m attending my first “web conference” tomorrow.  You might remember I did a post some time ago telling about ConvergeSC and how excited I was – and now the time has finally come.  I’ve never been to anything like it before, and I don’t really know what to expect.

Oddly enough, as the time has drawn closer and closer to tomorrow, more and more connections between my friends and the speakers at the conference have been popping up.  After a recent search on Twitter for “convergesc”, I realized just how big this thing is.  People from all over the state are coming in – web designers, developers, teachers and students.  Big time web developers, companies, and bloggers will be there – and it’s all happening in one of my classroom auditoriums!  As you can tell from all the giddy small talk, I’m EXCITED.

Anyway, I’ll be tweeting (or twittering?) from the conference tomorrow, as I’m sure many people will be.  Look forward to pictures, updates, and a summary coming in a few days.

I got back from our family vacation earlier this afternoon.  The first 4 days of our trip was to camp in Virginia (near Rugby, I believe) and from there we went to stay in Boone, NC for 2 days.  This post serves two purposes – the first to link to pictures of the trip (just in case, for some reason, you’re interested).  The first linked photo below will take you to my Flickr set (more pics to come) and the second to my public Facebook album, though I would love for you to friend request me (as a few readers have already done)!

The second is a quick thought about mobile technology.

As you well know from my posts, I have a Blackberry.  Now, I am all for taking time away from electronic gadgets and gizmos to enjoy creation and rest.  However, car trips are a different story.  Now, I’ll follow up this post with one soley dedicated to this, but I discovered Pandora for Blackberry on the 5-6 hour ride up to the mountains.  It’s amazing.  First of all, it’s free.  Second, it’s easy to use, doesn’t take up much space, and buffers quickly.  If your iPod playlists are getting dull on car rides, Pandora for Blackberry is the way to go.

As a side note, it was great having my camera and iPod as well.  Obviously.  I debated whether to even say it, but it honestly amazes me how much we can do nowadays.  Especially on mobile devices.  I can watch movies, catch up on TV shows, and listen to custom playlists, audiobooks, and podcasts wherever I am, at the push of a button.  I have better specs on my $125 camera than anyone would have imagined a few years ago.  But I digress.  My point is simply that we often take for granted everything we can do with this stuff.  Technology is awesome.

As is the nature of Palm, simple design flaws keep this device from being anything close to an iPhone killer.  Let’s face it – a large part of the reason the iPhone is so big is because it looks good, and it’s easy to use (but mostly because it looks good).

OK, so what’s right with the Pre?  In terms of software, almost everything.  It looks as if Palm has FINALLY gotten a modern look for their OS.  In other words, it looks good – really good.  In a lot of ways, it looks a lot better than the iPhone software.  It is apparently Linux-based, and debutes a new operating system called webOS.  Basically, it works with different social networking, email, and web sites to make your life easier.  That sounds stupid, but that’s what it does – web searching, organizing, etc is much easier with the Pre than other smartphones.

Obviously, the phone is touchscreen, and many iPhone-like guestures and icons are used for navigation.  The display looks good for the most part, yet the screen is a little small and doesn’t look as flat as the iPhone’s.  The phone can, however, run multiple applications at the same time, using what seems like multiple workstations (like the multiple desktops in popular Linux distributions) for organization.

My real problem, however, is the slide out keyboard.  First of all, you cannot have a slide ANYTHING on a phone that’s considered to be an iPhone killer.  Part of the appeal of Apple’s smartphone is that it’s heavy duty – it’s metal, solid, and simple.  The Pre is plastic, it slides, and it’s more complex (read: cheap) looking.  Second, the keyboard is tiny.  And it doesn’t appear to be very raised.

All in all, Palm’s got a lot of work to do.  A bigger screen, an alternative to the small plastic keyboard and metal encasing would be a good start.