by Sujoy on November 29, 2009
So we do have our own daily visited websites. I can’t live without my daily dose of Techcrunch and Lifehacker. And then, there are the usual ones – Facebook, Twitter, GMail etc. Now, although browsers like Chrome, Opera and Firefox with addons do allow users to have a start up Fast-Dial page which has links to those highly visited links, there is still a big link missing in the amount of stuff we want. Of course, that void has been filled to some extent by the father of all start-up pages – iGoogle. iGoogle is highly customisable, with gadgets, widgets and feeds. You can add a lot of stuff to keep your iGoolge engaging, but again, adding too much stuff makes it cluttered and takes ages to load. And not to forget, you have Themes on iGoogle.
Enter a new alternative to iGoogle – 44tips.com, a website run by some awesome developers at picturesque Amsterdam [ I am imagining that they have an awesome view in their office 
] The first thing you notice about the UI [user interface] on 44tips is that the site design is simplistic, clutter-free and quite minimal – yet, pretty. The colours are basic dark grey and Orange with a twang. Both remind me of Firefox somehow, which means-it works for me. Let’s explore the usability and the features on this website, and if it is worth making it your homepage. Shall we? [Continue Reading]
by Sujoy on October 7, 2009
Stan Schroeder from Mashable raised an interesting question of the frequency of visitors now to the main homepage of Google, i.e. Google.com ( etc. depending upon your geographical location). It is true that with browsers which have in-built search functionality in the address bars viz. Chrome and Opera, the middle layer of the Google homepage has been largely eliminated. Add to that, other browsers like Firefox, IE and Safari include a search bar. It’s pretty safe to state that the entire spectrum has been covered. So, is anyone really using Google homepage and why?
One of the major reasons for people still using the Google homepage is that fossilised browser that it still breathing. Yes, IE6. There are no search bars, and the only option to search is Google. Of course, users here would be able to install Google Toolbars and stuff. According to W3counter statistics, as of Sep 2009, IE6 still maintains the fourth position in browser usage share with 13.28%, behind IE7, Firefox and IE8. It is difficult to segment the share of people out of this percentage who use search solely through Google’s homepage. There were no Google toolbar statistics to help us out.
[Continue Reading]
by Sujoy on September 2, 2009
Initially, when I heard about the idea of a browser on a USB portable pen-drive, I started questioning about its applicability. I mean, why would someone not install an actual browser on the machine itself, and rather have it on a USB pen drive. The answer is simple: Portability. Not only of your favorite browser experience, but also of all that comes with it – bookmarks, addins etc etc. The applicability does not actually matter much if you access internet only at home, through your own machine [ in case of which, its better to just install it]. Or if work does not allow access to USB ports and installing of any new browsers, you are indeed forced to use whatever is available. But, if you do have access to USB ports at work, and you do not want to install your browser [ or are not allowed so by corpo firewall] , and also share your history data, bookmarks etc on your work machine – Portable browsers are the way to go.
Good news is – all your favorite flavours are available in their portable avatars. And here’s the list.
1. Firefox 3.0 on USB:
Portable Apps bring the Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition. So, now you can take your bookmarks, passwords, history, extension with you. Visit the PortableApps website - Mozilla page to download the browser. It is just 9 MB in size, and after installation it expands to 27 -77 MB. I really don’t know what that * sign, beside the 77MB figure, means on the Download button.
Works fine on Win XP SP2 onwards, Win Vista SP1 and Win 7.
[Continue Reading]
The announcement of a new operating System from Google called the Google ChromeOS came as no surprise to me as an OS from Google had been long expected. The rumors had been doing the rounds – remember the gOS which was mistaken for the Google OS. Well, it never really took off. Wonder if any single PC right now is running the gOS. And then, Google launched the mobile OS – Android. And for a long time, people believed that it was the Google OS which people expected. And now, in the recent announcement [ Read: Introducing the Google Chrome OS ], GOOG has made it official, that come next year[ a vague dateline of second half, next year] Google’s new OS – Chrome will be released for users. And yes, it will be opensource, free, lightweight and is initially going to be targeted at netbooks.
So what does this mean to me and you? What does it mean to Microsoft/Windows XP-Vista-7 users, Apple/MacOSX users and Linux users? Is all the buzz and hoopla worth it? Let’s deal with them one by one.
a) Google Chrome OS is Chrome extended :
It has worked for the browser- which is clean, clutter free, simple, fast, instant start-up, reliable and lightweight. Going by the name, ChromeOS is aimed at replicating all of these features. From what we get from Google’s release post, it is indicated that the user interface will be kept extremely simple, and most of the user experience will take place on the web.Now that raises certain eyebrows and questions about the user experience in an offline environment. We have yet to see any demos and exact feel of how the OS is going to look like, so its a bit early to comment further on this.
[Continue Reading]
