Over the summer I spent time test-driving a bunch of laptop computers in an attempt to discover which was best. Not as easy to compare and contrast as I would have liked, but the results of my survey are the subject of this week’s “Techno Logic” column in the Georgia Straight.

Ever since I’ve been able to run Windows on my Apple computers, I’ve wanted to compare the performance of a Mac laptop to a host of other portable computers. What a good way, I reasoned, to determine whether Apple computers really are—as any Mac geek will claim—better than the alternatives.

The interwebs are abuzz with news of Google’s new Web brower, Chrome, which is being launched today at some point (it’s not yet available as of 11:45 a.m. PT).

The browser’s existence came to light a bit early when the Google mail room hit ‘send’ a bit early on a comic book written by comic artist Scott McCloud.

The browser, which is technically in a beta state, will be made available for Windows users later today. Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management for Google, and Linus Upson, engineering director, write that Mac and Linux versions are on the way.

As for the comic book, it is composed in the same informative style as McCloud’s Understanding Comics books. It does a great job of explaining why Google engineers felt a new browser was needed, and how they went about building Chrome.

So if anyone’s looking for me this afternoon, I’ll be in the queue.

UPDATE: The download page is now live.

Despite the fact that universal remote controls have been around for some time, there are many people who still play the juggling game with two or more remotes every evening.

Typically, that’s because universal remotes have tended to be clunky, hard to program, and counter-intuitive to use.

Logitech’s latest, the Harmony One, comes pretty close to really being a really useful universal remote. If only it incorporated Bluetooth.

The topic is all part of my “Techno Logic” column that’s published in today’s edition of the Georgia Straight.

There’s a remote for everything these days. Denizens of the cold wastelands of Canada have remotes to start their cars and trucks on dark winter mornings. There are remotes for radios and TVs, lights and fans, stereos and video players, computers, coffeemakers, washers and driers, and air conditioners.

In this week’s edition of FFWD Weekly is my “Joystuck” column, which this time around is my summary view of last month’s Electronic Entertainment Expo.

The first two days of press briefings by the major players — Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony — were a bit underwhelming, but some very interesting video games brought the event back from the brink.

Forget band camp. If there was a summer camp that taught me how to make video games when I was in high school, my life may have progressed a bit differently.

The Tomorrow’s Masters program is the focus of my “Trigger Happy” column in this week’s Georgia Straight.

Read it over here, and make sure and take in the sidebar, So you want to be a project manager.