Web Worker Daily

Two small pieces of recent Google news were just announced that merit a mention, since both have ramifications for web workers. First, Google has put a date on a Mac beta build of Chrome, meaning there’s finally an end in sight to one of the company’s most egregious oversights. Also, a new change to Google Wave should reduce inbox clutter, and maybe make it more usable for those finding it hard to adjust it (like me).

Let’s get to that great news first. While the “new” web browser has now been available for download to Windows users for over a year (the beta was first released last September), Mac users only recently got access to a stable developer’s build of Chromium, and that’s far from a release version of the software. Luckily, the new Mac beta is said to be on track for an early December release. Read the rest of this entry »

I used to use Google Alerts all the time to keep me apprised of what was going on in the world of Apple tech, for another gig I have writing online. It was a great solution, but eventually, Twitter’s real-time information flow became much more useful for me.

But the problem with Twitter is that it’s kind of unwieldy. I follow a lot of people, and even though I have multiple accounts to follow different groups of people, a lot gets lost in the stream. Twitter clients with built-in search help, but at a glance, Google Alert-like results would be ideal. Thankfully, there’s a service that does almost precisely that. It’s called TweetAlert. Read the rest of this entry »

Generally speaking, when I’m sharing recently discovered web tools, I try to organize them along a common theme, or a goal that they can be used to achieve. This time around, I just wanted to share three somewhat unusual, but genuinely useful, web tools with you. Trying to fit them into a specific theme or goal would only detract from their myriad possible applications, so without further ado, here they are:

printfriendly — Make Any Site Printer-Friendly

Many sites nowadays will have a “printer-friendly” button, which often just strips the web page of any fancy CSS and gives you a bare-bones text document that won’t eat up too much of your precious ink or toner. I know that for all the recent web site work I’ve done for clients, I always make sure to include just such a version. Unfortunately, not everyone does the same. Read the rest of this entry »

Facebook only just announced that it would be making its stream API public, and now it’s following up with the launch of a new Adobe AIR desktop app that takes advantage of those capabilities. Yes, it’s an AIR app, which makes it slightly icky right away, but native desktop clients will no doubt follow in short order.

AIR app or not, the real question is: Will this bring Facebook back into my daily professional life? Read the rest of this entry »