Starcraft II beta impressions

I am in the Starcraft II beta thanks to a connection who shall remain anonymous unless he chooses to identify himself. Thanks, anonymous awesome guy!

I won't necessarily post many updates on this blog, but feel free to follow my initial impressions and the ensuing discussion on this thread at the Motley Fool. If any new threads start on the same board, you can keep an eye on my participation here.

The targets of my shameless fanboyism

When I got to thinking about posts I could write on Castles of Air, I got to pondering cool stuff that I like.  There aren't a huge number of things that reduce me to shameless fanboy praise; normally I tend to be critical of even things I like.  However, there are certain topics where, if someone brings them up, I can't help jumping in and waxing poetic about their sheer awesomeness.  In no particular order except for my stream of consciousness, they are:

• Joss Whedon
• George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire
• Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach
• Douglas Adams
• Back to the Future
• Blizzard Entertainment
• Valve Software
• The Internet
• Web 2.0
• Senator Al Franken
• PZ Myers
• Star Control II
• Steve Meretzky's A Mind Forever Voyaging
• Richard Feynman
• "Weird Al" Yankovic
• Queensryche's Operation: Mindcrime
• Jon Stewart
• Most books by Ken Follett
• Jim Henson
• Chuck Jones
• W.A. Mozart
• Gilbert & Sullivan
• Rachel Maddow
• Portable music devices + Podcasts

...I think that about does it.

Actually there are quite a lot of them, I guess.

This is not the Bush Administration

The White House has a blog.

With a guy who's a technology expert.

They're using it to, like, communicate stuff.

About policy.

It's been updated several times already in the few days it's been up.

And they're encouraging feedback.

Happy.

Google makes yet another bid to run your life

So Google is now competing with Explorer and Firefox with their newest application, Chrome.  And I said, "Sure, just go ahead and take control of more of my online information and habits."  I mean, besides being my search engine, they already own this blog, my email, and a lot of my documents; keep track of my feed reading habits and my addresses, and maintain some of the code I've written; as well as being providing a desktop search application and a fun geographical visualization toy.  Did I leave anything out?

I can't say I'm not worried about them either turning evil or just disappearing someday.  But damn it, I can't help myself... I really LIKE having all the stuff I need online where I can access it from home, work, and any other computer in the world.  I suppose if Google does become an evil power, this is probably what it will look like.  It wouldn't be the first time that "The Onion" printed something that turned out to predict reality.

In the meantime... yes, I'm typing this from Google Chrome.  I am weak.  It doesn't even support any plugins, and yet for the moment I'm willing to use it even without themes, mouse gestures, ad blockers, or even getting my bookmarks updated automatically by del.icio.us.

A few points in Chrome's favor so far:

1. It starts up VERY FAST compared to the other browsers... although this might have something to do with the lack of plugins.
2. It has a very compact interface, and does a lot of creative things to keep the screen space clean, like sticking the "search page" bar in one place.
3. As you're typing an address, it automatically searches for likely completions and shows you the name of the page where you'd wind up.  (To be fair, Firefox 3 also appears to do something like this.)
4. Searches and URLs are entered in the same box.  Usually it makes the correct choice, but you can pick from a menu to clarify what you want.
5. When you open a tab, it shows you your favorite web destinations, along with thumbnail images of what they look like right now.
6. You can drag tabs outside the window to create a new window, or drag a tab from one window to another.

All pretty cool.  Firefox (my primary browser) might imitate some of the new hotness, but for now I'm keeping Chrome Beta as my default browser, and I'll look forward to seeing what they release in the next few patches.