I have tried both SRWare Iron and ChromePlus, though not using as primary web browser.

I compare the both software based on my personal preference:

Because of the WMA problem, I prefer SRWare Iron. But I think these features can all be integrated in future, because Chromium 4.0 is still in beta version.

Now, technology aims to cloud computing because of the importance of social networks. Especially the services like Facebook and Twitter. Besides, Google produces Chrome OS so that everything can be done through Internet. No installation of office suite, one can create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.

Next, synchronization of the documents, bookmarks, personal profile or profile setting becomes important also. Google Chrome 4.0 provides built-in bookmark syncing.

Not only Google Chrome, but Opera 10.10 also provides similar feature: Opera Link and Opera Unite. Opera Unite allows file sharing; Opera Link allows syncing bookmark and other settings.

Previously on Allen’s Blog (I like this phrase), I talked about Google Chrome alternative.

There are more, Portable Chrome from PortableApps and ChromePlus. Now I am trying on ChromePlus, it uses Chromium 4.0. That means it can install with the extensions like Firefox. Maybe the extension developers will port the Firefox extensions to Chrome, then Chrome can act like Firefox.

If you like portable applications, surely you know about PortableApps.com. I think the most prominent projects of the website are OppenOffice Portable, Firefox Portable, and GIMP Portable. But recently, since I subscribed the RSS, there are more and more new applications in PortableApps.com, such as the game like “Frets on Fire”, the online game “The Mana World”, etc.

This is very interesting. Portability is a very convenient feature because this allows us to bring our applications by using a USB pendrive. And sometimes, we need administrative privilege to install the applications. But portable applications just let us extract it, then we can run the applications anywhere.

Previously I said that Firefox is just like an OS (Operating System), with the add-ons like the applications. If this is the metaphor, then all the bookmarks will be the important files that we own.

Sometimes I will reformat the harddisk and reinstall Windows due to some error, registry corruption, virus infection, some unexpected performance, etc.

And recently, I found that my Firefox have some problems. When the Firefox opened for a long time, 2 or 3 hours, there will be a high CPU usage. Which hinders me to work properly. I don’t know what happened, may be add-ons. I tried to uninstall some of the add-ons, but the problem still there. So, the final solution is “reformat” it.

I have tried Google Chrome. Sure it is nice, because it is clean and simple. But, I still prefer Firefox as the default web browser. So, if you are interested in Google Chrome, and still using other default web browser, you can try the followings:

Portable Chrome (Chromium)
SRWare Iron

I am now using Iron portable version. Very nice.

These days, I learnt to read the Gregorian chant music score. Then I tried to figure out how to play the music score through the PC (virtual piano). I used MidiPiano Suite before. It is quite nice. It can save and open the MIDI files.

Then, since open source cross-platform software development is very active currently, I tried to search some cross-platform music related software from the Internet. The followings are the software I found (including close source freeware), but I haven’t tried every software:

If you want to download the file from Rapidshare or Megaupload frequently, a suitable download manager is needed. This type of websites for file hosting is called one-click hosting. So, I have tried several downloaders, not only support Rapidshare and Megaupload, but also other sites like hotfile.com, badongo.com, sendspace.com, etc.

Universal Share Downloader - Russian freeware. First file hosting downloader I used. Good.
RapGet - I always failed to download the file using it.
RDesc - Spanish freeware. Not bad. Just as good as Universal Share Downloader.
JDownloader - Just found it recently. Very good. Requires JRE.

When we are busy using our computer, normally we will open a lot of windows, web browser, word processor, file explorer, audio player, video player, PDF reader, etc. Especially, we need to open a lot of word processors and refer to one another.

There are 3 tools I used in Windows XP to help me for the window management.

allSnap - All the windows has the snap feature when we resize them. So, you can adjust them with better arrangement.
Taskbar Shuffle - When we open a lot application, our taskbar will be full of items. If we switch off the “group similar window” feature, then there will be a lot of items in taskbar. This tool allow us to drag and drop our own taskbar item manually, so we can put two word processors side by side.
TaskSwitchXP - Alt-tab replacement. Too many applications, alt-tab might be useless, because we need to tab tab tab to the application. But still don’t get what we want, because we can only see the icons. This tool allows you to preview the application and integrate with the mouse.
Visual Tooltip - Mouse over to the taskbar item, a thumbnail will be shown. Just like Vista.

Just upgrade my web browser Firefox to version 3.5. Because it is 3.5, some extensions (addons) cannot be used. The Google Notebook extension cannot be used. This is a bad news for me. Because the development of Google Notebook is stopped. Thus, no more Google Notebook extension for Firefox 3.5.

Google Notebook is very nice for note-taking. Because, we do not need to bookmark everything because of part of the page we like. Sometimes when we are surfing net, we might like some quotes. Using Google Notebook, we can highlight the quotes, and save it.