Geekery, mind mapping and Chrome

This week I must first direct you to a classic bit of geek entertainment from the world of chemistry, a blog entry by Derek Lowe on Corante.com titled "Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride".

Dioxygen Difluoride has two fluorine atoms and two oxygen atoms and is also called FOOF because that's the noise it makes (only very, very loudly) when provoked by just about anything. Read the post and you'll be glad that the worst thing that can happen to you in IT is an occasional electrical shock or stubbing your toe on a server rack (if you've experienced something nastier drop me a note and I'll compile a list).

So, on to other things that have attracted my attention recently. First, check out TopicScape, a mind mapping tool published by 3D-Scape. (I discussed mind mapping software quite some time ago in this column. TopicScape takes a somewhat different approach by producing a 3D representation of what you're thinking about.

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This week I must first direct you to a classic bit of geek entertainment from the world of chemistry, a blog entry by Derek Lowe on Corante.com titled "Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride".

Dioxygen Difluoride has two fluorine atoms and two oxygen atoms and is also called FOOF because that's the noise it makes (only very, very loudly) when provoked by just about anything. Read the post and you'll be glad that the worst thing that can happen to you in IT is an occasional electrical shock or stubbing your toe on a server rack (if you've experienced something nastier drop me a note and I'll compile a list).

So, on to other things that have attracted my attention recently. First, check out TopicScape, a mind mapping tool published by 3D-Scape. (I discussed mind mapping software quite some time ago in this column. TopicScape takes a somewhat different approach by producing a 3D representation of what you're thinking about.

I've installed and beaten up the student edition and, while I like the concept, the graphics are a little disappointing and it is definitely a fiendishly and perhaps overly complex product (see this more detailed review). I'll give TopicScape a rating of 3 out of 5. If you are hot on mind mapping, this product should interest you. Let me know what you think.

I've become very enamored of Google's Chrome browser, which has become pretty compelling over the last few months. What really pushed the browser over the acceptability edge was support for extensions (plugins to you Firefox users and add-ons to you IE adherents) released in January.

The 10 best Chrome extensions for work and play

Chrome extensions are catalogued at Chrome Extensions and cover all sorts of categories, including alerts & updates, appearance & functioning, language & translators, and social & communications. While the list still isn't as long as, say, Firefox's, what is available has vastly improved the functionality and usability of Chrome.

For example, one of my favorites is CoolIris, an image collection display utility that is crazy cool. Then there's Xmarks Bookmarks Sync, which back ups and synchronizes your bookmarks across computers and browsers and is also available for Firefox, Safari and IE (I covered Xmarks some months ago in my Network World Web Applications Alert newsletter.

So, what's stopping me from going completely over to Chrome? Not much. Chrome is fairly bug free, which is impressive for such a young product (if you keep getting occasional "server not found" errors go to the options section and uncheck "DNS precaching" … works like a charm).

There was one missing extension that was, at least for me, a real show stopper: RoboForm. RoboForm is a form filling and recording utility that I have relied on for years and its absence from Chrome was a big deal. While it is now finally available, Chrome support is a little odd.

For example, the user experience with this version is unlike Roboform in other browsers. It also works differently. Unlike previous versions it stores all of your logins online, a strategy that is inline with Google's direction and consistent with the architecture of Google's forthcoming Chrome OS. Alas, this version of RoboForm is buggy and it seems to annoy my bank when I try to log in (my bank sees invalid characters in the name and or password). If you're a RoboForm and Chrome user, let me know if you've found similar problems.