How Social Technologies Saved the Story
Chrome Changes Everything
After using the new Google Web browser for the past two days, I can say that I love Chrome.
Sure, it lacks Mac support (for now). Sure it is missing a plugin API (for now). Sure, you miss this widget or that widget.
But play with Chrome for a few days and learn to do things its way and the way you think about the Web will change. Playing with Chrome reminds me of a few other tech experiences in my life: When I first played with a Macintosh computer, when I saw a beta for a little product called AOL, the first time I got my hands on Mozilla.
So, what's the big deal (and what does this have to do withe modern journalist? Patience my inverted pyramid-addicted friend!)?
First, why Chrome is a revolution.
In a word, speed. It's fast. Really fast. It's so fast that you realize you have dumbed down your speed to match the puttering pace of your Web browser. You start to notice server lag for the first time in a long time. The browser renders so fast that lazy server architectures are caught with their pants down, expecting glacial screen draw times.
Because it is fast, you speed up. You move through sites more quickly because you don't have to wait. And this brings up the second important Chrome feature--a really good implementation of tabs.
I know we have had tabs around for years. But this is the first time that tabs work the way they are supposed to. Need a new window--click a button and one appears instantly, with links to the things your are most likely to need next. What to pull out a tab to look at later--drag it off and it starts its own window. There are a ton of little tweaks and features that make these tabs a real delight to use. And, as a result, you start using tabs like crazy. But not like Firefox tabs where you leave 20 of them open at a time to keep track of stuff. Nope, you close tabs when they get in the way because they are so easy to open again.
And, finally, the so-called Omnibar works great. Shoving the search bar and the location bar together seems like a kludge at first. But it turns out that it streamlines looking for stuff. You start to think of search terms and sites as strings and even search engines as strings. Spend a little time teaching Chrome what you like, and it makes smart suggestions that save lots of typing. After a while, it feels like you are working with a partner (Hello Mr. Licklider!)
Now, rather than try to explain why all this will change the face of the Internet forever, and in a good way, let me talk about why I think this is going to change, and challenge, journalism in ways that it is, once again, just not ready to handle.
Yesterday, I found a set of links on a topic that interests me: urban games. Normally, I would open up a bunch of tabs to contain these link and then leave them open for a day or two until I got around doing something with the pages. This time, I did the same thing, but I tore off the five or six tabs, drug them together in their own window. Now I have a window with tabs, all related to a topic of interest.
Chrome doesn't have a way for me to send this set of tabs to a pal, or to store them into some permanent folio. But I suspect this is functionality that will come soon.
This matters because what I just described is the newsgathering and editing process in a nutshell. If you want to add newswriting in there, all I need to do is put together a Google Doc and add it to the set of tabs.
You might think I am dreaming, but I see this as a primary way that people will share folios of information with each other, over the Web, in a few short years.
Blogs only hinted at what "citizen journalism" could do. Chrome may not have the news business in its sites (yet), but the writing is on the wall.
With a truly fast Web comes more power "cloud computing" applications. Most importantly, people can access and assemble information as easily as they consume it today. It wont be a second thought for me to collate tabs of info, probably annotated with voice or text, and send them out to a list of subscribers or posted to my blog.
So, let me try and wrap up this little love letter to Google:
Playing with Chrome made me excited about the Web, again. It points to the obvious fact that with Web 2.0 we got used to slow, clunky stuff. That's about to change. Anyone who thinks that they are New Media now will quickly seem as out of date as all those MySpace pages.
Want to reinvent journalism? Get ready to start over again!
-- David
Sure, it lacks Mac support (for now). Sure it is missing a plugin API (for now). Sure, you miss this widget or that widget.
But play with Chrome for a few days and learn to do things its way and the way you think about the Web will change. Playing with Chrome reminds me of a few other tech experiences in my life: When I first played with a Macintosh computer, when I saw a beta for a little product called AOL, the first time I got my hands on Mozilla.
So, what's the big deal (and what does this have to do withe modern journalist? Patience my inverted pyramid-addicted friend!)?
First, why Chrome is a revolution.
In a word, speed. It's fast. Really fast. It's so fast that you realize you have dumbed down your speed to match the puttering pace of your Web browser. You start to notice server lag for the first time in a long time. The browser renders so fast that lazy server architectures are caught with their pants down, expecting glacial screen draw times.
Because it is fast, you speed up. You move through sites more quickly because you don't have to wait. And this brings up the second important Chrome feature--a really good implementation of tabs.
I know we have had tabs around for years. But this is the first time that tabs work the way they are supposed to. Need a new window--click a button and one appears instantly, with links to the things your are most likely to need next. What to pull out a tab to look at later--drag it off and it starts its own window. There are a ton of little tweaks and features that make these tabs a real delight to use. And, as a result, you start using tabs like crazy. But not like Firefox tabs where you leave 20 of them open at a time to keep track of stuff. Nope, you close tabs when they get in the way because they are so easy to open again.
And, finally, the so-called Omnibar works great. Shoving the search bar and the location bar together seems like a kludge at first. But it turns out that it streamlines looking for stuff. You start to think of search terms and sites as strings and even search engines as strings. Spend a little time teaching Chrome what you like, and it makes smart suggestions that save lots of typing. After a while, it feels like you are working with a partner (Hello Mr. Licklider!)
Now, rather than try to explain why all this will change the face of the Internet forever, and in a good way, let me talk about why I think this is going to change, and challenge, journalism in ways that it is, once again, just not ready to handle.
Yesterday, I found a set of links on a topic that interests me: urban games. Normally, I would open up a bunch of tabs to contain these link and then leave them open for a day or two until I got around doing something with the pages. This time, I did the same thing, but I tore off the five or six tabs, drug them together in their own window. Now I have a window with tabs, all related to a topic of interest.
Chrome doesn't have a way for me to send this set of tabs to a pal, or to store them into some permanent folio. But I suspect this is functionality that will come soon.
This matters because what I just described is the newsgathering and editing process in a nutshell. If you want to add newswriting in there, all I need to do is put together a Google Doc and add it to the set of tabs.
You might think I am dreaming, but I see this as a primary way that people will share folios of information with each other, over the Web, in a few short years.
Blogs only hinted at what "citizen journalism" could do. Chrome may not have the news business in its sites (yet), but the writing is on the wall.
With a truly fast Web comes more power "cloud computing" applications. Most importantly, people can access and assemble information as easily as they consume it today. It wont be a second thought for me to collate tabs of info, probably annotated with voice or text, and send them out to a list of subscribers or posted to my blog.
So, let me try and wrap up this little love letter to Google:
Playing with Chrome made me excited about the Web, again. It points to the obvious fact that with Web 2.0 we got used to slow, clunky stuff. That's about to change. Anyone who thinks that they are New Media now will quickly seem as out of date as all those MySpace pages.
Want to reinvent journalism? Get ready to start over again!
-- David
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Brad King on -
Wow, this has made me want to give Chrome a chance. I haven't downloaded it yet because I love Firefox -- I can't imagine something outstripping it. I also can't imagine letting a company control my browsing experience again.
But I'm a big believer in David's mind -- and if he likes it, it's worth my time. I'd love to hear what others think (and I'll post my thoughts later this week).
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Permalink Reply by David on -
No need to fear Chrome. It's a classy Google play.
They made their stake as a service provider. They can see that the Web needs to grow so they can grow their service offering. Firefox is hobbled by an old infrastructure. There's nothing to prevent Mozilla from releasing FF 4 with a Chrome backend.
So, in that sense, it's not Chrome versus FF or IE. It's speed and stability versus old tech. What's to choose!?
No coincidentally, it's the same argument as old media versus new. That's a bad question. The question is, "Do you want versatile, relevant and progressive real time media or do you want ossified, packaged and produced glossy media?
Go.
David
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Permalink Reply by Dan Koabel on -
I tried Chrome a few days ago, and have been using it since. I still have to open up Firefox for certain tasks, but for the most part it's become my default browser already. I'd miss my Firefox add-ons much more if it wasn't for the fact that most of them are already built in to Chrome.
It seems like Google put a lot of thought into this, and you're definitely right about it changing the game.
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Permalink Reply by David on
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After playing with Chrome for a week, I can honestly say that it needs a lot of work. But I stand by my initial impression. This is the begining of a new movement forward for the Web. Chrome sets a new benchmark, and I expect we will see Chrome optimized applications that force everyone else to advance.
But what has me most intrigued is how Chrome is pushing me to manage information a different way. Twitter did the same thing, but you could see that Twitter is a small evolutionary step. Chrome is this big movement that will carry lots of other applications forward.
What has changed?
I am tending more toward Web-based applications--Gmail, Google Docs, I depend more on rapid access of information and move quickly, probably "laterally" would be a good term, through information.
This is a subtle shift from what I was doing a month ago--application centered focus, and loading lots of information and surfing it serially in tabs when I had time.
I guess we'll see if this wave goes any place. But my money stays on "yes".
David
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Permalink Reply by Brad King on
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I have been using Web-based applications for awhile now (and this semester, I run everything through web-based app) so my shift isn't quite that big. Right now, the Google Toolbar is what is keeping me from moving to Chrome.
I love the functionality -- although I feel that Adblock won't be a part of the Chrome toolset, an absolute must for me (and if I'm wrong, please tell me how to get that -- but until they get Google Toolbar working with Chrome, I'm not going to switch.
It's absolutely stunning to me how much I use Google Toolbar.
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