Google have been on a big advertising campaign on bill boards and in wrap round front cover adverts in the free ‘Metro’ newspaper of recent times.

They are touting the browser as “made for everyone” – now without being suspicious of “what’s in it for Google” (which I’ll explore below) there is the slight issue of system requirements.

For my sins I still often use a Windows 2000 based system – can I use Chrome? Not chance I need XP or greater – still w2k was superceeded in 2001.

But at least I’ll be able to try it on my Mac right?

Erm no again – I need to be running Mac OS 10.5 a.k.a. Leopard  – the Mac OS variant as of late 2007 – so of no use to me with my trusty iBook with the obviously lesser big cat – Panther (a.k.a 10.3). Not that I’d be able to run Leopard if I wanted – it doesn’t support my older hardware.

Now there’s a good argument that I shouldn’t expect to run the latest greatet toys on my ‘obsolete’ hardware – but – my old windows box would happly upgrade to Win XP, but not chance of upgrading past Mac OS 10.4 on my iBook (assuming I could actualy buy a copy) as Apple dropped support for older hardware such as mine.

Now for what I use it for I don’t need all the latest bells and whistles from my OS – but it is rather disapointing that Google’s browser offer rules out any Mac more than a couple of years old.

Anyway there’s still my question of “what’s in it for Google” – why are they spending mega bucks advertising Chrome. Now I don’t use iGoogle, but am aware that they will be tracking my searches made from the same browser as me (just they probably don’t know exactly who ‘I’ am.) If I get Chrome are they tracking every page I view? After all Firefox knows what sites I visting a lot with their auto complete (I can visit some of my favourite sites by typing little more than the first two letters in the address bar) will google get to know this information if i use Chrome?

First question to ask is what are my aims of running this as a blog site?

One is definitely a technical exercise, slightly inspired by panellist Dr Ron from a tech podcast I regularly listen to. I want to learn more about the Wordpress platform in a non mission critical situation. Unless I suddenly get a unexpected cult following I’m not going to lose sleep at night if I break this site conducting a ’science experiment’ as Dr Ron might describe it.

Second is as a platform to share various things on my mind – things that I’d probably not go to the effort of making a traditional web page about. My Phil.Edmonds.net site suffers from minimal updates, and I want to focus that site more on static information, particularly focusing on some archive materials, as historic information is what is mainly on that site.

What about topics to post about?

A blog I read often is that of the self proclaimed ‘radio futurologist’ James Cridland, mainly because of the prime subject, radio and the internet is of particular interest to me. He also used to post about beer but then decided to move this into another site, as not to dilute the credibility of his main blog.

This moving of the beer posts is a shame. Now I am more than happy to consume a pint of cheap and cheerful Moss Side’s finest Amber Necter*, despite sporting a beard you won’t find me carrying a CAMRA membership card, but given the right time and place I quite enjoy sampling something different. I enjoyed reading James’ beer postings once in a while when they came as an unexpected extra, but I never bother going off and reading his dedicated beer blog.

So focusing on just one topic is not something that I’m worried about, so varied subjects are fine by me.

So what topics will I post on?

Radio and radio technology on a grass roots level is an obvious one. Though I can’t promise the great insights of Mr Cridland and the quality writing and analysis of the likes of Paul Easton.

IT. I’m for ever amassing little tricks and tips as I deal with many and varied computing systems, it’ll be good for myself to keep a note of useful things. For issues where “someone else” hasn’t had exactly the same problem putting it online for the benefit of others can only be a good thing to do.

Finally I am, rather slowly, going through my years of collected recordings and other radio stuff from my “anorak” collection. I’m pondering on how best to publish some of this on-line. There’s certainly pros for publishing this via a blog for the benefit of interested parties who want to follow via an RSS feed. However if this fits in better on a separate site I’m unsure. So jury is out on this one for now.

*This being my standing comment that round these parts “Australia’s Famous Beer” (their slogan not mine) Fosters is actually “brewed in the EU” – most likely at the Scottish & Newcastle brewery in downtown Manchester.

I’ve not got much stuff on here yet – but watch this space.