As usual I’m not promising any kind of regular schedule but we’ve been talking about what we can do to improve Max Geek and we’re quite happy to take suggestions. So, enjoy the show, it comes in at just over an hour.

• MGUWC Update
• NASA Finds Water on the Moon
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• Wouldn’t ya like to be a hamster too
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• Sezmi is cool
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• Modern Warfare
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• Microsoft hates mobile apps
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• I for one welcome our new droid overlords
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• Microsoft ripped off Apple?
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• Apple hates Netbooks
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This cast comes in at 1 hour and 4 minutes so sit back and enjoy the show.

The concept of Live Mesh is pretty simple and not really new. Basically it’s a way to store your documents online. The real difference in Mesh is not just about online storage, it’s about syncing files. When you create a Live Mesh folder on the Live Mesh Desktop you can access it from anywhere. By that I mean any web browser, or any Windows, OSX or Windows Mobile device with the software installed. When you’re using the actual application it seamlessly keeps your local version of that folder in sync with the online version. Sounds simple and really it is.

The thing is this goes beyond just having your word documents anywhere you want. If you use your windows mobile phone as your camera you can simply designate the photo folder on your phone as a Live Mesh folder and now all your photos are instantly on any computers you have set up. I take a picture on my phone and as soon as Mesh syncs I’ve got it on my netbook and my laptop. For the first time my data really does follow me everywhere. Once Office Live releases I’ll actually be able to sit down at any computer and write and with apps like Photoshop online I can edit my photos too. But wait, there’s more.

Live Mesh also gives you collaboration tools. You give other users permission to access your documents and even see a history of who’s changed files. With a few more features this could become an important project management tool. We’re already starting to use it at work to keep Marketing files up to date when people are on the road or at home. Basically Live Mesh truly puts your data in the cloud. What’s next?

We’re seeing phones with very capable digital cameras and capable digital video cameras aren’t far behind (even an 8 megapixel camera doesn’t make for very good video, it’s just not designed for moving pictures). So now my home movies are anywhere I am. Now imagine a Live Mesh app on XBox 360 and other media extenders. This is one step away from streaming home videos. Who needs a DVD with their movie burned to it. Heck, it’s possible there could be a TiVO app to extend this too. Now we’re talking a few years down the road but this sort of tech is enabling a truly digital age. In fact I think we have to call the coming age something different, maybe the cloud age. That’s where everything is heading and Microsoft has finally seen the light.

We’re finally getting real competition in the cloud app arena, Google may not be the top dog much longer, especially if Office Live delivers the ambitious set of features we expect to see. Web based apps are becoming more and more powerful everyday, they’re a bit behind the curve when compared to desktop apps but they are starting to close that gap. When you can go to a webpage, log in and have access to your own desktop, complete with webapps and documents nothing is left to tie you down (except for games, but with bandwidth increasing the future holds live streaming game content that’s another article though). On average web apps require fewer system resources that installed apps. What this means is as more apps migrate to the web and as technology progresses, computers capable or running these apps will decrease in size. A future of wearable computers is in sight, netbooks are just the first step.

Google didn’t really get the ball rolling but the certainly brought public attention to the ball. Now Microsoft is refining the ball and reinventing themselves in the process. The future of Microsoft isn’t Windows and they’ve seen that. The world of computers is changing in such a way that my generation could get quickly left behind if we don’t keep up with changing software technology. I know plenty of people from my fathers generation stuck in a pre-GUI world and the cloud is changing everything again.

“Google may discover a product that violates the developer distribution agreement … in such an instance, Google retains the right to remotely remove those applications from your device at its sole discretion”

Wow, that sounds a lot more ominous. I mean this doesn’t sound like it’s about viruses. Frankly I don’t trust Googles agreements. Google is a big fan of quietly slipping in things that are consumer unfriendly in those agreements and while I haven’t read the agreement (not for lack of trying, all I could find was the SDK license agreement) it worries me. I’m sorry but the software I want to run on my device is my damn choice. This is one thing Microsoft gets right, they don’t forceably remove software, you don’t have to run the malicious software tool. I mean this is an open source OS, isn’t the point to be able to run whatever we want. I can understand Apple, but Google?

I should mention that Google has promised to attempt to recover your original purchase price from the developer. Actually that part worries me more than anything. I paid for software and they want to remove it?  None of their damn business. If they want to check for viruses and social engineering scams great, give me the option to opt out of their interference. Frankly I don’t need their help and I don’t want it.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Google has abandoned their original mission statement, do no evil. Now their goal seems to be to do no evil as long as it’s convenient and doesn’t limit our control over everything. Google is rapidly becoming the new evil empire. While Microsoft is trying (although not always very successfully) to correct their past mistakes, Google has embraced their power we all know power corrupts.

• Windows 7 going on a diet.
• LHC
• VooDooPC shake up?
• Sony Vaio TT
• Warhammer Online
• EA eases up on Spore DRM
• New TV Shows – Fringe and 11th hour – can they stop shooting themselves in the foot?
• Mobile Minute
  • Palm OS Nova delayed
  • Windows Mobile 7 delayed
  • Android

There you have it, another fine episode. Look for us next week, maybe we won’t double our target time.

• Google Chrome
• New CTIA devices
• New LOTRO stuffage
• SPORE, HUH, WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

The Spore portion of the show is a bit heated. Take a listen and as always feel free to tell us what you think. Of course if you’re wrong we’ll be more than willing to explain why ; )

Does this rumor even make any sense? I mean what could Google want with a game company? Especially a 3D first person shooter (FPS) game company. Googles traditional roles in the industry have been about information and advertising. This would be the first time they got into a strictly for profit software venture. I mean advertising is for profit, but that’s not what I mean. This would be the first time Google would straight up charge for their product. Unless of course they go free, which with a license like Half Life, sorry, it just isn’t happening. I mean I can see a 2D webbased game company being bought by Google to release totally free ad supported games. But with an FPS game, there’s too much overhead for that. So why?

The answer is simple, advertising. The next big thing in gaming is advertising. IN game ads are already popping up all over the place, sports games, racing games (Burnout Paradise City has CompUSA ads, which I find hilarious). With Googles focus on advertising as income I can see them wanting to get into that space. So we could see ads for real products in the next Half Life game. But it goes deeper than that.

I said earlier that Google won’t be giving Half Life away, there’s really just no way, but I can see them having other advertising supported games. Smaller 3D games, even 2D games. There is a lot of potential here. I’m guessing Google has some other ideas I haven’t thought up.

If this really happens (and I’d say there’s a 50/50 chance this is true) then it means we’ll be seeing a new Half Life game, probably developed by the very same people who have been doing it all along. We’ll also see Valve ramp up design and focus towards new markets. This could mean some very interesting Half Life spin offs. Puzzle games, games which tie into the larger game. Mini games available both on in the game and out of the game. This could also put Google in a whole new venue, gaming consoles. I can see a lot going on there too.

I’m split on whether we’ll actually see this thing go through. I think it could be very interesting though.

There is another milestone, this is the first to be continued Max Geek. Rick and I just ran out of time and we were just getting started on politics. Next week sometime Rick and I will do a mini Max Geek Political cast to wrap things up. Without further ado I bring you the Max Geek 25 show notes.

• Does Google Chrome shine?
• XBox 360 price cuts, does this mean the XBox is ready to be replaced?
• Spore, it’s coming and it’s going to rock
• Politics
  • National conventions, do we need them?
  • Attack ads
  • Palin, we start in on the discussion but have to stop halfway through.

So, stay tuned next week, we should have a regular episode and a mini episode on politics with me and Rick.

I have IE 8, Flock (a derivative of Firefox) and Chrome installed on my computer. I’ve been running head to head comparisons of the 3 since I downloaded Chrome yesterday and for a week before that I was comparing IE 8 and Flock trying to decide which would be my primary browser. It’s no secret that I’ve not been a Firefox fan, other than a brief flirtation when Firefox 2 came out, I’ve been an IE 7 guy. There are several features I like and Firefox 3 has had a recurring memory leak problem which pops up every couple of updates. So, it’s going to take quite a browser to convince me to change my ways. First let me start with the competition.

IE 8

I’m not all that impressed with IE 8 as a new version of IE, it really feels more like IE 7.5. I’ve heard rumors that it’s different under the hood and handles things better. IE 8 is definitely faster, it certainly gives Firefox 3 a run for it’s money. IE 8 still has the thumbnail view of all opened tab, which both Flock and Chrome are missing (I’m running all these browsers stock, no extra plug-ins, plug-ins tend to really increase the memory usage of Firefox). IE 8 also has compatibility mode, a good choice by Microsoft, except it shouldn’t be needed. The biggest complaint about IE 7 has always been standards compliance, one thing that made me start to consider a switch from IE was a problem with WordPress 6.1 which makes it impossible to write a post from IE. Now blame has to be laid at the feet of both WordPress and IE 7, the latest update to 6.2 didn’t fix the IE 7 problem, which is actually a PHP problem, something that should have been easily fixable. Still IE 8 has new compatibility problems thanks to the changes under the hood. With compatibility mode it’s not a deal breaker, but it certainly doesn’t help IE 8′s case. One of the niftiest new features of IE 8 is it color codes tabs so you can see which tabs were opened from other tabs. Makes it easier to organize the millions of tabs I often have opened.

Flock (based on Firefox 3)

Flock is a social web browser. It’s got some interface improvements over Firefox and it’s got a side pane for keeping track of your favorite social networking sites (Twitter and Facebook are the ones I use, MySpace is coming sometime this year but isn’t supported at all yet). It’s every bit as fast as Firefox. The main thing this has going for it is the social networking stuff. Firefox 3 in general while slightly faster than IE 7 isn’t fast enough to negate what I feel is better tab management in IE 7 and when compared to IE 8 Firefox doesn’t even have the speed edge. For other people there are things to like, plug-ins being the main thing really. Plug-ins aren’t for me. The other advantage is built in spell check, which I like, but isn’t a deal breaker. The social networking tools and spell checking in Flock just aren’t enough for me to ditch my thumbnail view and the tab management I prefer in IE 8.

Chrome

Google has got some things right with Chrome. It’s interface is at least as good as IE 8 and Firefox. It’s missing the thumbnail view I like and it doesn’t show you child tabs by color. Those can be forgiven if Chrome gets enough other things right. Chrome has the built in spell checking and matches IE 8 and Firefox 3 in speed tests on my big notebook. Chrome is actually faster on my HP 2133. Tab management in general in Chrome is as good or better than in IE 8, if it just indicated child tabs and had thumbnails. Chrome does a few unconventional things as well, it drops the home button and combines the search box and address bar. Ditching the home key is strange to me, combining search and address bars is completely natural however. Another thing Chrome does is put the tabs at the top of the window. This is nice when working full screen but fairly in different when working windowed, at 1680 x 1050 full screen is a waste of screen real estate.

There has been a lot of talk about the application shortcuts in Chrome. Frankly that’s not all that big of a deal to me. All they are is website shortcuts that open into a tabless and address barless Chrome window. I prefer to keep as few windows opened as possible. The other feature Chrome offers is a set of thumbnails of your most frequently visited websites every time you open a new tab. It’s not bad but it’s not a huge feature by any means. Still with as much time as I spend online a little time saving never hurts.

I talked about compatibility issues in IE 8 (the biggest being google reader, although those are all fixed with compatibility mode). Chrome has it’s own compatibility issues but no mode to fix them. The most noticeable downside is I can’t play my Facebook games, that damn Heroes game is addictive and I don’t even watch the show anymore. The other thing is the WYSIWYG preview in WordPress doesn’t work. What is it about the WordPress write post page that causes problems in browsers? These compatibility issues should be fixed as Chrome moves forward, at least I hope they will be.

Conclusion

One thing I haven’t addressed is security. How secure a browser is is always changing. New exploits are found everyday in both Firefox and IE, I’m sure the same will be true of Chrome. The real question is how quickly will Google respond to these new threats. I’m not sure if there is a streamlined update process for Chrome, we can only hope they don’t expect us to download a new client every time they plug a security hole or add a new feature.

On my HP 2133 Chrome is a no brainer, it runs faster than Firefox or IE 8 on that machine. On a system with more resources the speed difference is negligible but on a slow netbook Chrome is much faster. On my primary machine though I’m still trying to decide. I’ll probably be running Chrome along side either IE 8 or Flock.

Chrome has all the makings of both a Firefox and IE killer and it’s got the Google brand behind it. I think its real strength will be on netbooks and other low end PC’s. In the end though which browser you use is a personal preference just like which OS you use. All I can say is give Chrome a try and see if it’s your cup of tea.