Two www browser surprises today. I downloaded Mozilla 1.0 for Mac OS X, a piece of software which previously has been slow and flakey with a dodgy UI. Somewhere in the previous few milestones it's become extremely fast, stable, and with as consistent and usable an interface as any other Mac app. It's a monumental achievement for this browser/platform to have been open source and have reached version 1.0 today, but even more impressive is how polished and solid it is. That's surprise number one.
Next. I stumbled upon StumbleUpon.com, a collaborative filtering system for finding new websites. Any 'site you're on you can thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Based on your interests (checkboxes in a categories list) these recommendations are used to suggest places for people with similar interests to go. Or you can click Stumble to go to a randomly selected 'site yourself. Surprise two follows. As a Mac user, I'm not very used to software, or browser extensions, or especially browser toolbars installing. But this one worked. Out the box. With Mozilla. It just worked. Hey, there's a whole new platform here! (And I'm using StumbleUpon too. It looks good. Their design is polite, and they don't ask me to register.)
Two www browser surprises today. I downloaded Mozilla 1.0 for Mac OS X, a piece of software which previously has been slow and flakey with a dodgy UI. Somewhere in the previous few milestones it's become extremely fast, stable, and with as consistent and usable an interface as any other Mac app. It's a monumental achievement for this browser/platform to have been open source and have reached version 1.0 today, but even more impressive is how polished and solid it is. That's surprise number one.
Next. I stumbled upon StumbleUpon.com, a collaborative filtering system for finding new websites. Any 'site you're on you can thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Based on your interests (checkboxes in a categories list) these recommendations are used to suggest places for people with similar interests to go. Or you can click Stumble to go to a randomly selected 'site yourself. Surprise two follows. As a Mac user, I'm not very used to software, or browser extensions, or especially browser toolbars installing. But this one worked. Out the box. With Mozilla. It just worked. Hey, there's a whole new platform here! (And I'm using StumbleUpon too. It looks good. Their design is polite, and they don't ask me to register.)