Covers everything Applish and Googlish
Awesome Bar – Does it enhance the Google experience or develop Google Fatigue?
Mar 13th
Mozilla Firefox is one of the most popular browsers in today’s era. It is highly customizable, secure, stable, fast and Mozilla claims it to be “The World’s Best Browser”. Awesome Bar is one of its most popular and unique features yet. Firefox gets you around your favorite sites in minutes. It is a sort of ” I’m Feeling Lucky” feeling. It searches up Google and takes you to the site without even putting Google in front of you. It just skips Google. Though this isn’t how it works , but to an end user it would appear to do the same thing.
Recently I made a switch from Chrome to Firefox to just give it a try and it turned out to be terrific. I played around with its features and tweaked some to improve performance. It was good.
I am not trying to promote Firefox here, but instead want to talk more about the Awesome bar feature . So, Awesome Bar usually keeps you out of Google. This in turn does affect revenue generation for Google. For example – If you search for a term in Firefox say “Good Directions YouTube” , it would redirect you to the YouTube page and play the video. But if you searched for the same term in Google Chrome’s address box, it would return search results on Google, which would enhance Google’s revenue generation.
Though you have a separate Google bar beside the Awesome Bar but people usually type in their query into the address bar itself. Mozilla still tries to maintain its terms with Google, by making Google its default search engine and using a customized Google page for its startup. Sometimes it even does not render the page which we were wanting to go to. But it tracks user details and customizes it according to your needs.
What do you feel? Are you developing a Google fatigue ? Seems that Mozilla has.
Apple’s Tim Cook awarded
Mar 13th
Apple has awarded Tim Cook a whooping 22 Million Dollars as bonus. Tim Cook took care of Apple and managed day to day operations when CEO Steve Jobs was away for 6 months due to ill-health. This was Steve Jobs personal recommendation that he be awarded . Jobs feels that Cook was the right man for the job, and he didn’t let Apple feel his absence.
“The bonus is a reward and is also to stay competitive,” said Kaufman Bros analyst Shaw Wu.
“Cook has been targeted by other companies, and he’s proven to be very adept and capable at leading Apple. I think they need to keep the conversation competitive to keep him from getting lured away,” he said.
Cook could succeed Jobs for Chief Executive position at Apple. Earlier he worked for Compaq until Jobs hired him for Apple. On January 2007, he was promoted COO. Till date he remains COO but is seen as a very capable person who could succeed Jobs.
Apple Site Updated
Mar 12th
Well, this was for sure. Apple has updated its website and put a new tab for the iPad. It even has disintegrated iPod and iTunes and now iTunes has a separate tab.
Click here to redirect to apple.com
Pre-order an iPad
Mar 12th
iPad is going to be released and shipped on April 3 but if you can’t wait that long or wanna reserve an iPad ( in-case they run out of stock) then you could pre order it.
The pre orders for the iPad start at 8:30am EST Friday.( 5.30 am , Pacific).
UPDATE – Apple now accepts pre-orders. You could go to apple.com/ipad and pre-order one right away. The WiFi only version will be delivered at your doorstep on April 3, but the WiFi + 3G versions would be available late April. Or you could reserve an iPad – select a store near you and Apple will reserve one for you. Then you could visit that store on April 3 and get your hands on it.
Google Reader Play – A new feature to play with
Mar 11th
Google announced a new feature to their Reader application. Google Reader now boasts a great new look and a magazine like start-up page where all your feeds are properly divided and it enriches the looks of that boring and dull feed reader. It is called ” Google Reader Play” .
It is kind of buggy and slow when you first launch it, but then you’ll get a hang of it. It was even frustrating as it kept on saying ” Oops, something went wrong …retrying”. Finally it launched and was pretty neat . There are many other applications and extensions which do a similar kind of thing – that is, bring Reader to life. Feedly is one such extension which does the job perfectly.
According to Garrett Wu, a software engineer at Google, Play is designed to make reader more accessible and easier to use and try. One item is presented at a time and you have the ability to choose whether to display all feeds, read feeds, unread feeds or starred items. YouTube videos could even be played on Play.
At the end of the day, a good try by Google but has a long way to go.
Google Maps adds Bicycling as Mode of Transportation
Mar 10th
Almost everyone uses Google Maps to get directions. There is an option to choose whether you are traveling by car, public transit or walking to the destination. By choosing a particular mode of transportation it would then give you the directions and the estimated time. Now even Bicycle has been added to the list.
Thus for all bike lovers, now Google Maps is Bike Friendly. Though it doesn’t seem to work everywhere, but mostly does in and around San Francisco. I wanted to head from Golden Gate Bridge to the Golden Gate Park, so I selected Bicycling and it gave me the directions and even an estimated time.
It is currently in BETA and Google is asking user feedback on the directions listed and any unmapped bike routes that is not suited for cycling.
UPDATE : Google posted a video of how bicycle directions work.
Google Ads before video on YouTube
Mar 8th
There is a popular saying about ads and Google that if ads are a bubble then so is Google. Google’s maximum revenue comes from advertisements . Infact 90% of their income is due to ads. Google has tasted success when dealing with ads and this time they placed ads on YouTube.
You might think that YouTube already hosts quite a few ads on the top right corner of the browser, which is quite true. But now in some videos , a Google Ad will play before the actual video. After the ad , the video will be played as normal.
Though Google claims to keep ads and content separate but this time the concept went haywire.The better part being that it does not play third party ads. For example : While watching an ad related to the Oscars, a Google Chrome ad was played before the video and then came in the video ( Sandra Bullock Interview ) .
Guess this was just an experiment by Google and not a permanent feature.
Steve Jobs at the Academy Awards
Mar 7th
iPad Oscars Commercial :
MacRumors has posted a picture of Steve Jobs at the Oscars. This time Steve is not in his usual jeans and black turtleneck.
Top 10 iPhone Apps
Mar 6th
Apps for iPhone have really changed the way we interact with the device. Without Apps the iPhone is like a Lemonade without Lemon.
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Vulnerability in Google Picasa
Mar 5th
The folks at Secunia discovered a vulnerability in Picasa which can be exploited by malicious people to potentially compromise a user’s system.
According to them , the vulnerability is caused due to an integer overflow error in PicasaPhotoViewer.exe when processing JPEG files. This can be exploited to cause a heap-based buffer overflow by tricking a user into opening a specially crafted JPEG file and e.g. zooming in.
Successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary code.The vulnerability is confirmed in PicasaPhotoViewer.exe version 3.6.95.25, included in Google Picasa 3.6 build 95.25. Prior versions may also be affected.
To be on the safer side, update your Picasa version to 3.6 build 105.41.
