Google+ adds more features to profiles, makes cover photos HUGE

Google hasn’t forgotten about its Google+ ambitions after all. It also appears they might have read my article from last month as they integrated a couple of the changes I recommended. Oh, who am I kidding. Google doesn’t read my writing!

It started last week when they made the push for Google sign-in capabilities through the API (suggestion #1 in last month’s article). Today, they made three more changes:

Public Google+ reviews are linked from the profile page. The image above was taken from such as review list.
Your story, places, and links are now visible on your About tab.
The cover photo behind the profile pic is now absolutely humongous. You can upload an image up to 2120 x 1192. Here’s my cover photo:

All in all, they’re pretty meaningless changes. The important thing to consider here is that they’re making unimportant changes. That’s a good sign. It means that they are still interested in turning this into a destination for people rather than just a venue to house the personal information that people are willing to give and the +1 data that they crave. Maybe they’ll turn this into a full blown social network after all.

Chrome overtakes IE to become world’s most popular browser

It was only a matter of time. Google Chrome, the internet browser they introduced in 2008, has been growing like crazy, passing Firefox to become the 2nd-most popular browser worldwide in the last quarter of 2011. Last week, it took the top spot from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which has held that position for what seems like decades.

Global traffic analytics company StatCounter has been tracking the data for years. Following Firefox are Safari at #4 and Opera at #5.

One asterisk on the numbers: Firefox allows users to block their usage data making it invisible to StatCounter. With some estimating that up to 10% of their users taking advantage of these privacy settings, it’s not enough to move them up on the list but it makes it as close to a 3-way tie as possible with all three likely holding around 30% of the worldwide non-mobile browser web traffic.

Last month, we reported that Chrome is already dominant in South America and in the lead in Asia.

Kinect to a full version of Internet Explorer with the Xbox 360

It could be a play to increase the number of Internet Explorer users. It could be a differentiator between them and Playstation. It could be both. Either way, Xbox 360 users may soon have a Kinect-driven full version of Internet Explorer available to them for full web browsing in between games of Call of Duty.

By applying voice and gesture control, Kinect integration may have people surfing the web while waving wildly and screaming madly. There is no time frame laid out at this point, but expect to hear something before E3 in June.

Rockmelt Crashes and Burns: Nobody’s Extinguishing The Flames

We were planning on writing about Rockmelt, a new social browser that is the modern-day Flock of Chromium, here on Techi today, but it appears that the browser is having a rocky start. After installing it, giving it access to Facebook, and finally starting the browser, the social magic that should have been has turned into disaster.

Where there is originally supposed to be a bar on the left and right sides of the browser to show me my friends and social website connections, there is nothing. In fact, much of the browser, at this point is useless. All I am left with is a little swirly icon on the top-left of the browser that gets me nowhere.

I’m not the only one. I’ve received several Tweets from people confirming that they are having trouble, too.

Instead of us praising Rockmelt, it has now revealed a critical flaw. The browser’s core functionality is completely broken at this point, and it is probably because it relies on Facebook’s API. It could be just a glitch in the system, or it could be something more serious like Facebook actually blocking Rockmelt. Either way, it reveals that the browser is not ready for the primetime.

Sadly, I can’t even use the “share” link on the browser to share content with friends, which is supposedly tied into the Facebook API as well.

Of course, this is a new product that is only being released to those who are invited, but I can already see that this is a huge problem. I believe Rockmelt talked about investing the time to consider other ways to “login” to Rockmelt, but I believe the company should forego any such attempt. The browser should not rely on any single service to operate, as is being proven right now.

It should just work. Instead, at this point in time, it doesn’t offer me anything but the same basic functionality as a Chromium browser. Sigh.

Anyways, below is a screen shot showing what the browser should look like. But this rocky start has already left a bad taste in my mouth.

Update: After a long time of reloading Rocketmelt, I finally got it to sign in correctly. So now this is actually what Rocketmelt looks like from my perspective, at least when it actually works:

Google+ adds more features to profiles, makes cover photos HUGE

Chrome overtakes IE to become world’s most popular browser

Kinect to a full version of Internet Explorer with the Xbox 360

Rockmelt Crashes and Burns: Nobody’s Extinguishing The Flames

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