When there is no standard there is no same approach for same things and we have chaos.
But we have standards for HTML and CSS, we can find them all on W3C pages http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/ and http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/.
And still we hear from users “Why does my website look different on different browsers?” or “I want to kill developers of Internet explorer” from web-developers.

complexity of standards

First problem is the complexity of standards that should take into account many different things. It’s hard for developers to understand and develop products appropriately.
As W3C can’t simplify standards it should put special effort to develop and provide special set of test-cases like famous set of Acid tests but it should provides not just set of randomly picked features but complete cover of specifications – XHTML, CSS, DOM, SVG. There will be standard way to test browsers and someday we will finally have same picture on all browsers.

human nature

The problem not only in the standards but in human nature that incite some people to use evolving versions of HTML/CSS to get fantastic features. But I believe when W3C begins to provide tests it will be evident for anyone that developer is guilty for bugs or using of experimental features.

The key here is to make Ads more attractive using information about users, as people say today make them more social. It’s clear that for Social networks like Facebook it is much easier to collect such data then for search engine that can only remember history of your searches and detect your current location.

the straightforward solution

Ask users to provide data and setup Ads they want to see!

After users click “Select Ads you want to see” they see simple Ads dashboard:

When users can select useful content there are no reasons for them to block it or ignore, Google can reduce amount places for Ads (like recent bottom place in Gmail) and decries distraction even more. Additionally Google can add Google offers here and turn Ads into some kind of fun.

You can check gallery that compares JPEG and WEBP (The WebP images are more than 30% smaller than the JPEG ones): http://code.google.com/speed/webp/gallery.html. The only problem with this method is bad browser support. At this time it’s just Google Chrome 9+ and Opera 11.10 beta.

You can create WebP images in ImageMagick, and XnConvert. You can also use WebP command line utility to convert.

Find more information about WebP: http://code.google.com/speed/webp/

Yes, it’s finally happened, we can call regular phones with Google voice. That Google Voice VoIP functionality based on Gizmo5 technology [http://www.google.com/gizmo5/]. Also good news are: Google agreed to trial free calling booths at an airport and a pair of universities!

Now, all that we need is to compare prices and test quality.

Prices comparison

As you see Google set lower prices for all cases, even if it’s few cents. You can make own comparisons for your local places:
Skype rates [http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/prices/payg-rates/]
Google rates [https://www.google.com/voice/b/0/rates].

Quality testing

We have compared quality of sound in the same places with same computer configuration. For most cases they show almost same results.

Here we need to mention only 2 things:
Gmail Voice has clearer sound in most cases.
Skype provides better noise cancellation.

main screen:

search results screen:

And surely we hope Google will approve it for mass use and tomorrow we will see it on almost any browser in the World.
Comments are welcome!