Google Chrome (or Chromium)

Recently has been released the Google Chrome, the new google application that is going to give them the control of the world. Just kidding, this new web browser is quite awesome. I downloaded it 10 minutes after it was made available and start working with it. 

The first thing I missed where my delicious plugin that I use frequently on Firefox, but this has been easily solved. Just with some Bookmarklets (small pieces of javascript code bookmarkable) I already have the buttons. Now just need to configure the keyboard shortcuts.

The second thing I missed was Portability. I actually use the portable version in all my Windows computers, on Linux the regular one suffices, because I am able to sandbox everything to a directory: No registry, no hidden folders... As Google Chrome source has been released also as Open Source with a BSD license, tons of developers are workin on this. Actually, the day after the publication of the browser, the first version of Chrome Portable was made available. And it rocks! I am at present using it and I guess is going to replace my Firefox Portable implementations in a brief time... 

The only thing that scared me was the Google Terms of use that you have to accept before using the Google Chrome executable... but thanks to Chromium and the BSD license you can get rid of it easily!

Globalization and Inequality

Recently I had the opportunity to read a brief note on the results of a work of the International Monetary Fund that has two news. One of them is good and the other is bad. I know that the IMF is not an independent NPO that has no interests in globalization, but I want to think that the papers published are actual independent science.
The bad news is that globalization, and more specifically technology, has a negative consequence in the inqualities of the world. That is, as technology and direct foreign investment gets into a country, inequality rises. Notwithstanding increase global trading reduces it.
The good one is that although it is true that globalization negatively influences inequality, as the Gini coefficients show, the overall states of the population increases in absolute terms. That is, the poor are less poor and the rich get richer.

I have been always of the idea that globalization, the good one, is positive for the world. The conscience that we all are in the same planet. fight for the same things and have the same fears may save the planet from a final war. Additionally, global trade has given prosperity to the world in absolute terms. Never has been as many people as today living with the standard of living we have. Of course, never has been also so many poor people. Anyhow globalization, from my point of view, may take the solutions to some of the present problems of the world. Opening trade barriers in the developed countries, especially those that refer to farming and agricultural products, will increase the possibilities of poor countries to produce products for what they are competitive enough and that can profit. Of course, the process of globalization must change, but rising new trading barriers and strengthening the national borders will not get the solution. The possibility of killing 6 billion people in the world to go back to the eighteenth century is not acceptable.

Simplification Age

One of the most amazing things of the Internet Era is the change made by two people, Larry and Sergei, to start competing with a lot of full-of-images web portals with a simple rectangle in the middle of a white page. Substituting all the WWW information by a simple rectangle may seem a bit pretentious, but it turned to be the key move in the new century history of the Information Society. It meant the possibility of accessing the wanted information in bulks of irrelevant one. Google had indexed in 2005 almost 9 billion pages. Access all this information would take hundreds of years for an only person and putting more people surfing was not the solution even, this was the strategy of yahoo paying thousands of surfers and rating and describing pages and it did not work. So, a solution had to be found and google did it.
Nowadays a new problem arise, and google is trying to give its solution. Time has become the most appreciate resource in western people lives. Social relations, news information needs, professional time management, long life learning... all this issues make people hungry of time and needed of organisation. A simpler manner to go on with his and her lives would be the big deal in these times. iGoogle is the start point: Give people a Calendar, news, mail account management, and you'll make people work, learn and live in a more efficient way.
This new effort in going further with the simplification has started in the digital world and is been lead by google but let's see how is it translated to the physical world. Simplification is seen as a bad characteristic in a complex and subtle world like our is and it may not be as straightforward applicable.

Electronic Medical Prescription

Recently I've been reading a lot on programs started to achieve the possibility of Electronic Prescription (EP) in medical environments. It's interesting how something technically so near and available may take a lot of time to reach us. Technically an EP is just an electronic document signed and digitally processed... and its that complicate.
First of all we are talking about an issue that has had a lot of discussion around it: Medical Information. From a lot of time ago Medical Information and the Medical Record is one of the most zelously kept tresures. Laws are really tough in what can you do even with your own Medical Record. It's understandable then that EP has a lot to overcome on Personal Data Management Policys.
Because that, recently have been a bit of polemics around it. I'm sure finally we all will take with us our medical information, if not because it can save our lives, simply because it will be easy and secure enough to assure our compromised information will not be revealed to we don't want to.