I just found something odd...if you have Safari Windows installed, apparently it uses IE's proxy settings instead of it's own. If you click Edit->Preferences->Advanced->Change Settings, Safari pops open the IE Internet Options dialog box. Firefox has it's own proxy settings built-in, but apparently Apple decided to use the Windows proxy settings. I guess that's not a bad idea, but it surprises me.

On a whim, I checked how Google's chrome handles proxy settings, and it does the same thing as Safari, it uses the IE settings.

I have been working with Google Maps a lot lately, and one of the things I find myself doing a lot is figuring out the exact lat/long of a point on the map, so that I can place a marker, or center the map. There are numerous sites out there that let you click a map and get the lat/long, but I don't like most of them. Today I found one that really works well, at iTouchMap.com.

The reason why I like it more than the others is because it's a lot easier to fine tune your coordinates to get the marker exactly where you need it. When you first click the map to start pinpointing your location, it sets a marker on the map. If you find that the marker is not quite where you need it, you can just drag the marker a little to get better coordinates (and it has a fun bouncing animation when you drop the marker). With the other tools I've used you have to click on the map again to get a new coord. set, and when using that little hand cursor instead of a pointer (as is standard in all Google Maps), it's hard to get it just right.

I installed Google Chrome, Google's new browser. My first impression is that it's very plain. I don't expect this to take off in large numbers, because I think most web surfers will want more features than it currently offers.

As far as web site support, I tried CFQuickDocs, and everything worked fine. I was expecting parts of the site to be nonfunctional, because Google wrote a new JS engine (dubbed V8) from the ground up, but everything works fine. I also tried Gmail, and holy crap it's fast! In Firefox on my machine, Gmail takes from 5-15 seconds to load. In Chrome, it loaded in about 1 second!

It will be interesting to see how fast JavaScript heavy sites run in Firefox 3.1, which will have a much faster JS engine dubbed TraceMonkey.

...but very slightly. They still have the #1 spot, but their numbers fell a bit from June to July. I was a bit surprised to see that Google doesn't even have more than 50% of the market...I was under the impression that their lead was much wider than it is.

According to this c|net blog entry, two companies released numbers for July this last week:

comScore Networks:
43.7%-Google (down from 43.7 % in June)
28.8%-Yahoo
12.8%-Microsoft
5.9%-AOL
5.4%-Ask Jeeves

Nielsen/NetRatings:
49.2%-Google (down from 49.4 % in June)
23.8%-Yahoo
9.6%-Microsoft
6.3%-AOL
2.6%-Ask Jeeves

I'm now officially drooling over the new Google CL2. It's a calendar app that looks very cool, and I'm drooling because I can't have it (here's an unauthorized review with screenshots). It's a very limited beta right now, but I'm assuming that it will be free like most of their other stuff. The thing I'm most excited about is SMS notifications. Create an event, set an alert, and tell it to SMS you. Your calendar will then follow you everywhere (as long as you remember to charge your cell phone). :)

Ok, I've actually been the instigator of a lot of Firefox conversions. But I just noticed today that someone clicked my 'Get Firefox with Google toolbar' button a few days ago, and actually downloaded and installed Firefox! :) That means Google pays me $1, and there's one more person browsing happily. I've had that button in the top left of my blog since Novemeber 7th, 2005. 10 people have clicked it, but only one person actually installed Firefox. 1 out of 10 ain't bad though.

I've been checking Google Video more and more these days, because there's some pretty good stuff there. Yesterday I was going to show my parents the Office Linebacker video, and I saw that you can view all the superbowl commercials there. It's a nice setup, as you can view them all at once and it will play them back-to-back. I really think that the Internet will take more and more market share from TV. I don't think TV will ever go away, but TV networks might lose people that don't mind watching things on a computer, and are on the computer anyway. And you have a lot more control over your programming on the Internet, DRM aside; Which shows to watch, and when to watch them. You don't have to pay $40/mo for 150 channels, when you only watch 10 of them.

I ran across this site today that is doing a search engine experiment. They let you perform a search using their interface. It grabs search results from Google, Yahoo, and MSN. You take a gander at the results (and even click on them if you want) and then pick which results are more relevant. But you don't know which results match which engine until after you've made your choice (a typical blind survey).

They have had over 7500 participants so far, and the results show Google is ahead: Google-41% Yahoo-32% MSN-26% Am I very surprised that MSN is in last place? No. ;) In case my wife is reading this, yes I do know that this isn't a scientific study.

I've always admired Google for making so darn much money from Ad revenue, but I never really thought Google's Adsense program worked that well for web site owners. Well, now I found out I'm wrong.

I have this little site I built for ColdFusion developers called cfQuickDocs. It basically is a quick reference to look up CF tags and functions. I decided to throw a simple 'Google Ads' line at the top of the page, and so far this month I have made more than double the hosting costs for that site and this blog! Admittedly, I am on a very cheap web host, but I never expected to make that much money. The only bad thing is that I have to wait for my total earnings to reach $100 before Google will send me a check...<sigh>, oh well I can wait. :)

I ran across this song on Google's blog today. Apparently Matt Waddell, of the Google Mobile Team, was so inspired by the things that Google local for mobile can do, that he wrote a song about it. Its called Get lost and found on your phone. Pretty silly, but funny too.

I really liked how you can listen to the song easily right there, because they embedded it in a Flash file. So no stinking WMP or Real Player, just push play on their little interface and it goes. I really hope more and more content providers start taking advantage of the flash player, and put their video/audio in flash format. Its SO much easier to deal with, and the flash player has 98% market penetration. And no annoying spyware or other crap like that.