Welcome to first blog of 'Hip or Hype.' In an industry awash with speculation and fanfare over the latest 'In' technologies and trends, deciphering what may actually make an impact that lasts beyond the blare of marketing hype machines is no easy task.

Some of these apps/techs/trends/ideas and terms may have a profound impact on your daily personal and work lives, but, more often than not, such highly touted revelations in technological development only leave us wondering a few months later what all the hype was about. (Can we say Segway anyone? Too soon? How about DAT? Yes, I’m one of those people who held off for years on getting CD player because I though DAT was it. Remember Web TV? Ugh, I went to the launch party for that, MS is still plugging away on that one.) Computer World has a nice story on hyped technologies from last year. Check it out here.

First, my own personal definition of what is hip vs. what is hype. Hip in my book is something that not only looks and feels 'cool,' but also serves a great utility towards whatever objective it may be trying to achieve. Something that is hip has real potential for growth and widespread adoption. Hip may be popular, but the hip has utility. It means something. It does something.

Hype is easier to define I think. Hype is hype. Marketing hoopla. Ribbons...banners...waving flags...happy children...smiling families. Fifteen-second TV spots with industry luminaries touting their latest and greatest invention. Hype usually disappears, typically once the funding for the expensive and elaborate marketing campaigns go south. Put simply, hype is corporate  propaganda with attendant media coverage, with little substance or truth behind the claims beyond shameless pitches aimed at the less than independent minds of the technological consumer. From my perspective, it is our jobs as writers and editors to filter the hype, and give users the lowdown on what is really hip and useful, at least from our quite geeky perspectives.

Google Chrome – Is it Hip or Hype?

Chrome is definitely hip. Yes it’s in beta, yes the jury is out about its memory footprint, yes there is no Mac or Linux version, but does all this matter to the desperate PC user who would love to use anything but the pre-installed IE on their machine?

Check out our Chrome FAQ for more details.

On first load I loved it. I have never, with IE or Firefox, ever seen pages pop so fast. As a web editor who spends a lot of his time on Omniture, Chrome loaded Omniture noticeably faster than IE or Firefox. CIO.com popped like I had never seen it before. All my bookmarked pages loaded quickly and without errors. The interface is sleek and stripped down, like all such apps such as this in my honest opinion should be. The pleasure of simple tools without frills and fanfare are all I’m looking for in an Internet experience.

All this feedback granted is from a very limited user experience over a few days of casual use, so this is by no means an exhaustive and in-depth analysis of the Chrome browser. No, I’m not using it as my main browser yet, I switch hit between IE and Firefox mostly for work purposes. I will

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