Have Laptop Will Travel

Play Quake on your browser via HTML 5

This here is the future of gaming, folks. One day in the not-so-distant future, we’ll be playing games on our browsers – without any plugins of some sort.

Played Quake Live before? If you haven’t I suggest you do it – it’s an excellent port of Quake Arena with better graphics, and you play on your browser. However, it uses a plugin, so it’s not exactly the most optimal way to play games on your browser. Same goes for Flash-based games like Farmville.

So what if you can play Quake 2 on your browser – with no plug-in needed? All you need to do it woud be HTML 5 and WebGL. And Google has pulled it off, apparently. Check out the video demo:

According to Download Squad:

They started off with Bytonic Software’s Jake2, a Java port of the open source Quake engine. From there, they re-compiled the engine using the Google Web Toolkit (also OSS), created a WebGL renderer to display the graphics, moved multiplayer communications from UDP to WebSockets (part of the HTML5 spec), and bolted on an emulated filesystem to allow game and preference saves.

However, I’ve looked for the download link in the Google Code page. I can’t find it anywhere. [Read more…]

New Google Chrome beta features zippier performance

Subcribers to Google’s beta channel can now play with a new beta of Google’s hot Chrome browser. Non subscribers will usually get the stable builds of these beta versions at a latter date.

So what should we expect from this beta? Well, first, it is going to be a faster browsing experience. Benchmarks show that a 30 percent increase in performance can be expected from the new build. The benchmarks used are the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks, this means you can expect significant speed boosts in running JavaScript.

The improvements do not end with faster performance though. Google has programmed Chrome to be smarter in prioritizing the loading of pages when a user opens a new web page while other pages are still loading.

Chrome’s New Tabs page has also been improved along with the unique Omnibox. The New Tabs page is now customizable. Users can now pin frequently visited sites in certain locations. The Omnibox now also includes icons next to the suggestions as a way of differentiating between a web site address or a bookmark. An additional aesthetic improvement is the addition of customizable themes.

If you want to try it for yourself now, subscribe to Google’s beta channel. But if you’re not a fan of unstable betas, then just wait for when Google officially releases it.

Twitter retention rates not satisfactory

>raman amplifierter is getting massive attention from practically everyone lately. It’s gotten to the point where a person as mainstream as Oprah has appeared on Twitter. Of course, with Ms. Winfrey’s involvement, Twitter’s traffic has received a 24 percent boost. That’s a great help in Twitter’s continued growth. But according to studies, Twitter may not be getting the full benefits of this increased attention.

Reports have come in that Twitter is not getting the retention rate that it needs to ensure continued growth. Nielsen Online reported that 60 percent of Twitter users do not return the following month. This means that Twitter’s retention rate is only pegged at 40 percent, and that’s Post-Oprah figures. Pre-Oprah, the retention rate was only at 30 percent.

Even though a high retention rate does not necessarily guarantee a big audience it is still considered important. For instance, MySpace and Facebook had a retention rate that was twice that of Twitter’s right now. When these two sites exploded into the public consciousness, the retention rate increased and are now pegged at 70 percent.

I’d love to find out what strategies Twitter will use to increase retention among its users. This will be a make or break phase for the new kid in town.

Happy birthday Opera!

Opera, the web browser that enjoys a strong cult following, is on its 15th year today.

The browser was first developed in late April 1994 bt Geir Ivarsoy and Jon von Tetzchner, who is currently the the CEO of the company.

According to Opera, there are 40 million people who are now using its browser all over the world.

Happy birthday Opera! Here’s to more years as a successful and viable choice as a browser. God knows we need choices when it comes to browsers.

Next Firefox version to be released in a few days

Firefox’s never version is almost done and to mark it, what may be the final beta will be released on Thursday.

A bit of confusion is being generated though because of the version numbering. Logically, it should be version 3.1, but according to Mozilla the new version will be named 3.5. An explanation is that the new version is much more than a slight or incremental improvement over the previous version and thus would deserve a bigger number jump.

Firefox 3.1 or 3.5 will have changes in the private browsing mode, the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, and also new standards support. This new version will also be released a week before the release of the final version of Internet Explorer 8.