Soft District

Did you ever get into Second Life? Basically, you could consider it a game, but for a lot of people, it's more than just that. As an example, it's enough to say that, a few months ago, I read an article about a real world company involved in the real estate business... in Second Life! So, we have real estate brokers arriving at the office, starting the computer, getting into Second Life, and then doing what one real estate broker usually does - selling properties, virtual ones, to be more precise, and earning money, but real money, this time. Now, you are probably wondering what's the link between all this and SoftDistrict, aren't you? I'll get to it right away...

My friends, it's all about Google! No, it's not about Google Docs, Google Mail, Blogger or another service/application currently developed by the Californian IT giant that we are all familiar with. For now, this is still a pet in Google's backyard, but they have decided to show it to the world, although they claim this is only 20 percent done, for now. What is it? Google Lively, of course!

OK, but what is Google Lively, after all? If we talk about its delivery form, it's interesting to notice that for now, Lively is only available to Windows XP or Vista users, but there's even more - you have to be running Internet Explorer or Firefox, because other browsers are not supported yet. The good part for those in the Mac and Linux worlds is that clients for these platforms are on the way, so they will probably be able to check out Google's virtual world pretty soon, too.

So...what to do to get in? Nothing easier - just grab the client, fire up one of those two browsers I mentioned, and then log in using your Google account credentials to the Google Lively website. Before that, you could also browse the Google Lively rooms or the Google Lively catalog, just to see what to expect for now...

Some of the rooms already look extremely well, but I guess their creators also spent more than a few minutes customizing them! In the future, I am sure that Google Lively will allow you to add virtually any possible content, especially live media, since YouTube and Flickr content is already available, as stated by Google's Niniane Wang:"If you enter a Lively room embedded on your favorite blog or website, you can immediately get a sense of the room creator's interests, just by looking at the furniture and environment they chose."

I could say a lot more about Google Lively, but the movie above should tell you all there is to know in a glance, for now. Leaving all else aside, let me get to my last personal impressions...

In only a few hours since entering for the first time the Google Lively world, I experienced about 3 crashes. Well, we're talking about a Beta, and since they claim it's only 20 percent complete, this can be overlooked. More than just rooms, I would like to see some kind of connectivity with Google Maps, maybe a way to place a virtual room on the map, in the real world, or create a virtual world similar to ours, where land could be owned, companies could get into business, and so on. I know it sounds like Second Life, but I am sure Google can make this different and, above anything else, better.

I know I promised to continue the race for the Firefox addons world record, and you can bet I won't leave that waiting for too long, but Google Lively is a subject that deserved all my attention today. While most people will probably consider it still too sketchy to be taken seriously, I advise them to look back at Google's Gmail early days...

Most of the Firefox users I know have a lot of addons, no matter if they're running Firefox 2 or Firefox 3. Now, the problem appears when some of those addons start crashing, or when Firefox ends up eating huge amounts of memory. Yesterday, I read an older article on CybernetNews about having 200 addons installed in Firefox, and this made me think about taking things to a whole new level... Since all that was happening back in 2006, when Firefox 3 was not ready yet, and to have 200 addons installed and notice how the browser behaved with one or two sites opened is already a bit outdated, I decided to try and go for a new Firefox 3 world record as of 2008!

Obviously, things are not that easy as it seems, because I have a really rough ride in mind for Mozilla's pet, my computer, and myself as a user. Here's what I want to do:

1. First of all, I will be using Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit, and the last Firefox 2 version. No matter what people may say about it, Vista seems to have a better memory management than XP, and I also think it may all get a bit more interesting in Vista...

2. I won't start installing extensions right away, because there's one more thing I have to do first - create a group of sites able to stress the browser a little from the beginning. I am not talking about more than 20-30 sites - those from our network, and then some big ones, like IMDB, Google, Microsoft.com, Yahoo, 2Advanced.com and maybe another 2-3 Flash sites...I'll let you know when that is done, don't worry!

3. The sites in the group will be set to open with Firefox, and then I'll start installing extensions. I'll tell you next time how I will choose those extensions.

4. After installing a batch of 50-100 addons, I will perform some tests to see how is Firefox handling them. More about those tests, in the next episode, of course!

5. If the browser doesn't crash and it doesn't run out of memory either(hah! I would like to see that!), I will try to reach the 500 addons installed mark(Guinness Book, here I come!), but this is only the first part...

6. As soon as I reach an insane number of addons installed in Firefox 2, I will install Firefox 3 over it, and this should keep all settings intact and, more important, all addons. If Firefox 2 would crawl with that whole bunch of extensions installed, we'll see the real difference between the two versions of the browser for sure.

Now, some last thoughts... If you want to get involved, feel free to drop your comments at the end of the article, I surely want to get some fresh ideas from other Firefox power users! If you want to steal my idea, at least give us a backlink... More people doing this would mean more results for the tests, and it may even give some interesting data to Mozilla and the producers of those plugins we'll install, who knows...

At last, I can tell you this - tomorrow, I'll setup the group of sites to use, we'll go through my Firefox 2 settings and currently installed addons once more, I'll tell you a few things about the software and hardware I am using, and then we'll get ready for the first 50-100 addons, which I hope to have installed and running by the end of the week, if not even sooner.

So...what do you think? "Firefox with many addons" doesn't mean 10, 20, or 50. Firefox with many addons means "as much as it can carry," and if I reach 500+, I won't need to get into Guinness Book, although that would be a nice achievement. The record set by Firefox 3 made me think about a record I can set by using it, and since I am not up for "longest Web browsing session," here you have it - over 500 Firefox addons installed & running, headed your way!!!

Do you remember the 5 Firefox 3 Tips article? There are so many Firefox tricks to master, and even if you're not using the Internet on a daily basis, I am sure you'll find some time savers to match your way of handling a computer. After all, Internet users are, basically, split into two big categories: those that can't get enough, and those that use the computer at work, but are not IT or media professionals, and when they get home, they usually try to avoid using it more than a few minutes per day, just as much as they need to read some emails or copy some DVDs they shot last weekend.

OK, so no matter the user category you think you belong to, I have some goodies ready for you! Ready or not, here I come, you can't hide... ;)

1. To open one of the recently closed tabs, but not the last one - simply go to the History menu, and then point to Recently Closed Tabs. As you can see, only the first one in the list has a keyboard shortcut associated with it, Ctrl+Shift+T, a combination we talked about already, in the Firefox 3 review, if I recall it well. Getting back to our tip here, all you have to do is click one site in the list, or use the Open All in Tabs command to open all at once.

2. Are you a programmer, and need to troubleshoot a page you are working on? Just load the page, and then press Ctrl+Shift+J to bring forward the Error Console or, if you like to waste precious time, go to the Tools menu, and then click on Error Console, as slow as possible, if you're paid on an hourly basis...;)

3. At last, you should know how to report fake websites and those that cause problems in Firefox 3, to help making everyone's life better. How to do that? Just go to the Help menu, and pick on of these two options - Report Broken Web Site or Report Web Forgery. After you do that, you'll surely feel better, believe me! ;)

I know there may be more than just these, so come out and say it loud. I can't hear you! What? Louder! I will retreat now, you have that add your comment button below, use it!