"Ten days ago we put Google’s +1 Button on TechCrunch — because why not? We try basically all these new buttons/counters/commenting systems much to the dismay of our precious page load speed (we know, we know, it sucks — fix coming). Some of these buttons are great and make a lot of sense. The Tweet Button, the Like Button, even Facebook’s new Send button. But I just don’t get the +1 Button. At all.

"There’s a lot of hoopla right now that Google’s Chrome OS has been delayed and will miss the stated release date of “this year”. Much of this is based off of the comment that Google CEO Eric Schmidt made last week at Web 2.0 Summit, in which he said that Chrome OS would be available sometime in “the next few months”. So I asked Google today if they were still sticking with the “later this year” availability of Chrome OS — the answer I got? An enthusiastic “yep!”"

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Quora is a great place to find answers about products from prominent people involved with them. It’s also a great place for those prominent people to disagree, publicly. That’s what’s happening right now in a thread about the future of Firefox.

Someone posted the following question to Quora recently: Will Firefox have double-digit market share in 3 to 5 years? Straightforward enough. Yes, says (outgoing) Mozilla CEO John Lilly. No, says Firefox co-founder Blake Ross. So far, Ross is winning the argument, according to the votes from Quora users.

SSDs haven’t found their way into the mass market yet, but a team of Japanese researchers is already trying to make them more worthwhile. The team claims it has developed a technology that helps to shrink the size of SSDs by no less than 90%, makes them cheaper and boosts energy efficiency by 70%.

The research group is comprised of people from a handful of different institutions, i. e. Toshiba or Keio University in Tokyo (where Professor Tadahiro Kuroda is the main person responsible).

The new technology makes it possible to produce 1TB SSDs that are as small as a postage stamp.

Any one who commutes in major cities knows the value of back roads when it comes to avoiding traffic on the highways during peak rush hour times. Google Maps just added a nifty feature that will show you live traffic conditions on arterial roads (non-highway roads) in selected cities. Google Maps will also show traffic patterns on main highways as well, helping you see what the least-trafficked route is for your commute.