Google Two Step Verification and Market problem

Image via Wikipedia

The nice folks at Google, obviously care about your account security and added an extra layer of protection, called Two Step Verification. I will not go into details about how it works, or how you can set it up, you can find all the answers you want here. What it does in short (for those of you lazy enough not to click the link) is that every time you want to sign in to your Google account (be that Gmail, Google Plus, or any other G service for that matter), except from your password, you also have to supply a pin number generated by an application you have installed on your phone. This extra step, minimizes the chance that someone else will gain access to your account. Neat huh?

One little problem I had, after I enabled Two Step Verification, was that I could not access the Android Market from my Phone. It kept asking me to sign into my Google account. Obviously, I was already signed in, since I was using the phone and there was no apparent way to tell the Market app to stop complaining. Turns out all you have to do, is go to Settings–> Applications –> Manage Applications –> All –> Market and then Clear Data. You will get a warning about data loss, but you can safely ignore it. That’s it. Market app will be working again.

Google Chrome won this round.

Image via Wikipedia

I seem to be a creature of habit. At least to some extent, especially with the tools I am used to working with, and I happen to consider a web browser a tool. The Chrome vs Firefox thing has been on my mind for quite a long time and so far I’ve written two posts about it. The first one being almost three years ago, followed by another one last year. Now, a year later, I come back to the subject. The time between these three posts, proves my initial sentence. I don’t really like to switch tools unless I have to, or unless a new tool is much better than the old one.

The story: My Intel Classmate, after many OS installations, now runs on Mint 11. I know that those of you who follow me regularly do not believe that Mint will be staying for long, but I intend to keep it, really! Mint 11 comes with Firefox 5, a really nice version in my opinion. It has all the improvements 4 did plus the app tabs feature (among others) that I found really really useful. One thing however the guys and gals at Mozilla have not been able to control, is memory usage. At work, I use a 4 core machine with 4 GB RAM, so spending a couple of GB on Firefox, is no big deal. My dual core with 4 GB RAM at home, also running Mint 11, does not seem to mind much either. But the poor little Classmate was having a pretty rough time. At any time, I have Gmail, Facebook, Google+ and Twitter open, while browsing other sites and that proved to be too much for little Chiby. But I want my No Script, remember? I don’t think I can use the web without it…

And then came NotScripts. It does basically what No Script for Firefox does. Blocks java script, plug ins and i-frames. It has white and black lists and allows you to temporarily allow scripts too.

My Classmate is happier than ever. And for the record, I also installed Chrome on the eeePC (that runs Mint 10) with NotScripts and the results there were amazing. I am starting to feel I am owned by Google, but hey, that’s not that bad 😛

PS: I’ve said it before and I will say it again here, I know that there are other browsers as well. I had been a Firefox fan for many years and I would not switch now if it weren’t for memory usage and speed.