What the heck is a RockMelt?

The Rockmelt Browser

Most recently, a friend pointed me to Rockmelt. It tags itself as a Wowser. I don't know how the marketing guys come up with that but technically is just a fork of the Chromium browser which the Google's Chrome browser calls papa. Don't see this as a bad thing, Chromium (and by extension Chrome) are pretty stable and fast browsers. Rockmelt is the same thing its a just as fast. Rockmelt is just customized to do a particular thing - social web surfing. It directly integrates to Facebook, Twitter, 9gag, etc. in this nifty sidebar widget thing on the left. A direct share button is pretty nice feature and a Facebook chat on the right sidebar.

But Rockmelt inherits one of Chrome's bad characteristics. It's memory-hungry.  Each widget spawns its own process, sure it makes the Rockmelt run fast but I would be hard press in recommending it to be installed on a budget notebook with only 1 GB of RAM or less. I come across a lot of these 11-13 inch notebooks in my work.

Installing Rockmelt is no big deal, its free and the installer is like 600kb. The installer is one of those file tractor pullers - you run the installer and it then down loads the rest of the browser. No biggie.

After that, you get to a first-run wizard, it ask for your facebook login, this is where it get hairy for some of us, Rockmelt basically want all the rights. If you're concern about privacy, this page will make think about why you got Rockmelt. I already know of a guy who said no and uninstalled Rockmelt.Then you move to a page where you pick a bunch of "Apps" to be added to your Rockmelt.

The Apps here are more of RSS readers allowing you see if there's anything new on that site. Think of them as direct views into the associated site. You have a lot of choices, from Tumblr, Twitter, Pixable, Mashable!, etc. But some apps have direct interaction to the sites, for example Twitter, you can post tweets directly from the Twitter app inside Rockmelt.

Once done it works like another browser but with a direct connection to Facebook.

Which leads me to "the" question: is it worth it? Nothings seriously wrong with it. It did crash a few times but only the tab causing the crash was lost not the whole browser. Nothing serious. A few people will find the permissions page during installing a bit unnerving. Reminds me of that phrase: "signing your life away."

Overall?

Get Rockmelt if basically your homepage is Facebook or you check your Facebook every chance you get and you're not a privacy rights Nazi. Which I think is an oxymoron if I ever seen one. It's already a pretty fast and stable browser. Who knows, it might make you more "productive" but that's a long shot.

My 15.4" laptop backpack

I've had been searching for a laptop backpack for months now but my city certainly had slim pickings for a 15.4" laptop. As it turns out, a lot of options for a 14" laptop.  I think I've visited at least once all the bag, backpack retailer in every mall, department store in this city. No such luck, so I turn to the internet.

This is where I found http://www.dealextreme.com/. Its's this online shop based out of Hong Kong. The real kicker is that they ship stuff you buy from the site anywhere in the world for FREE. Gravy.

Search the site for a "laptop backpack" and browsed the results. I finally settled on this Waterproof 15.4" Travel backpack. I stupidly thought that the brand is Waterproof. Hehehe. When I got my backpack after 4 weeks, the brand is Swissgear. Just its made in China which probably makes it a knockoff. But don't let that put you off because honestly I can't tell it apart from the original. The backpack seems to be well made.

And it fits all my gear nicely. Just take a look at the image at the right. The bag has this padded compartment for the laptop and extra pockets for the mouse and power brick and cord. In fact, the pads are so nice that you can forget about getting one of those soft carrying sleeves.

I also need to mention this...it has this cool feature where a special small bag designed to load CD/MP3/MP4 players (ie. an iPod) with 3.5mm cable and jack allowing you to enjoy music at anytime. The interface jack is on the harness. But I think you have to get one of those headphones with controllers so you don't have to dig through the pack.
Despite all of that stuff, the pack still has enough space for a couple of books, a shirt or two and a from the looks of it, a netbook. And that's just from the inside compartment. The pack still has space on the front and sides for a water bottle or canteen or camera or overnight kit. Heck, it even has space for your shades.

My best purchase ever!