Category: Technology

IE6 doesn’t like Google Maps

I use IE6 on Windows 2000. I mostly use Firefox except in a few cases where I use IE. I went to http://maps.google.com in IE and viola! the browser crashed with the familar “send” , “dont send” links. This is repeatable. Wonder what IE7 has in store! Crash Google video, maybe! 🙂

If you are wondering what this image is about, I was just trying the new add image feature in blogger, way cool stuff!

Google video viewing: A Quick take

Google released a video viewing capability. The results of any search are a bunch of screen shots of the video starting at several points during the actual complete video — i.e., start of 1 minute, 10 minutes etc. You also have the ability to search within that video produced by the original search. Double clicking on the screenshots gives you the video in full screen mode. You can also sign up to upload your own videos for potential inclusion in future versions of Google videos. I am sure there are a lot many more wonderful features that go with this service.

As always, pretty cool, but from the first look of it, appears quite preliminary. The search was very slow and very often results were returned with screen shots but no video! Try searching for “Bachchan on Charlie Rose”. You have to go through a couple of screen before you find the text “Video is currently not available”. (this text can be more “in your face”).

Firefox: Tabbed browsing problems

Everyone is raving about the tabbed browsing feature in Firefox. While I do agree that its a powerful and cool feature, I have noticed a couple of shortcomings. Firefox turns into a memory hog and slows down the machine when you have a number of tabs. Secondly, when you click the dreaded x mark to kill a tab it doesn’t prompt you. Instead it just kills the tab without prompting! On more than one occasion I have lost useful work because of this. I wish they would prompt the user before killing the tab! Firefox is nevertheless a cool browser! (at least until MS IE 7.0 is out!)

Gmail having trouble?

I find Gmail down quite often these days. A couple of weekends back, I was just about to leave my place for lunch to a friend’s place and the directions were on my gmail and it was down! An extra phone call was sufficient to ride over this crisis, but it sure sounds like Gmail is running into some maintenance crisis issues of its own!

Google Custom Home Page

Tried out the new Google custom home page feature. As always, simple, yet cool. The drag and move feature is way cool. Unlike my Yahoo (where there are simply too many options), I like the fact that the options are relatively few to start with (I’m sure they’ll expand over time!). The ability to have Gmail on the home page saves a few extra clicks. It will be really cool if Google adds Blogger and a couple of other common applications (say a spreadsheet, and presentation software) to be run online.

The Google News page customization was a little annoying. I customized it a couple of times (I saved it too!), and yet when I re-started Firefox, the customization was gone! Oh well…the price (not quite, mostly frustration!) you pay for being an early adopter.

Man, All these browsers!

Netscape, IE, Firefox, Safari etc etc. and each of their versions, extensions and what not! Testing websites and applications on each of these has become quite a task. Check out Rediff (a pretty popular site) on Firefox. The home page is pretty messed up. It has been so for quite a few months now. Or maybe its something unique to my PC.

Its about time someone (Microsoft, huh??) came out with a master browsers (Netscape seems to be trying this with its new release) and destroyed all other browsers once and for all. It will make everyone’s life so much easier on the net. There was an article some years back in Time magazine (I think) where the writer suggested that we give all the software business on the planet to Microsoft, then the next time we have trouble we’ll have only one company to blame! (Of course, it could be a hardware issue!).

p.s: Btw, can someone tell me how to prevent pop-ups from this site! I use Firefox for the most part and sometimes IE.

Impressive win for Netflix

Check out this story about Wal-Mart’s deal with Netflix. Truly an impressive victory for Netflix. Its amazing how a small company with an innovative idea is able to hang on to its lead in the market. It will be interesting to see how this whole space shapes up. I suspect that either Netflix might be forced to expand beyond DVD rentals or might eventually get swallowed up by the Amazons of the world.

p.s: Netflix desi collection of late has improved significantly (especially Hindi).

Adobe-Macromedia acquisition

I think this is a smart move on the part of both companies. Macromedia is reaching a point were an imminent threat from Microsoft is inevitable. Adobe on the other hand has always seen Microsoft as a threat. Coming together of these two companies gives Adobe a solid installed base of users and whole bunch of new products. Macromedia on the other hand can develop a more comprehensive strategy to counter the threat from Microsoft by being part of Adobe’s suite of products. Besides, Macromedia has so many products now accumulated from so many acquisitions over the years, that its a good time to evaluate its long list of products. The only downside in my opinion is that historically large mergers have never worked. And of course, some users will suffer because Adobe is sure to end of life some Macromedia products. While Microsoft is all focused on IE and Search, its nice to see parts of the software industry joining forces to beat them in other areas.