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Mozilla Firefox 3 RC1 is here

by Sujoy on May 18, 2008

Firefox

So it has been a year and a half since the last major release of the favorite browser of many- Firefox. We have gone through the different levels of Beta versions for the last couple of months, and now it has finally arrived. The Release candidate 1. There has already been a lot of buzz going on about the many improvements in this version, and here we are discussing them.

Mozilla’s implementation of JavaScript in the new version is claimed to be twice as faster compared to its predecessor. Now, we all know the magnitude of the usage of JavaScript in web content today. And in a way, that is why it makes Firefox WORK. And yes, they have introduced a Memory Cycle Collector (more on that here), which frees memory which is no more used by any modules. For example, if Firefox is kept open and idle for hours, it would no longer suck unnecessary memory- resulting in more Support from us Fanbois. Yayy!! Oh, and yes, PGO-Profile Guided Optimisations -available only for Windows at the moment, designed for significant upgrading of performance.

The Auto Complete Address Bar is way too cool. And guess what, it ain’t limited to just popular web-addresses, but also to Favorites, History and Tags. And now to the most important addition feature- PLACES.

Places is a Bookmark and History Manager. For people like us, who have cluttered Bookmark Bars and Bookmarks scattered everywhere, this is our Kryptonite. It is powered by SQL Lite, (which is also Open Source, and is a lightweight search engine with robust querying capabilities). It is where you can search your History, Tags and Bookmarks and yes, even search a particular Search as Smart Search. And in case you are wondering what Tag am I talking about for so long, Tagging is a new feature on Firefox 3. Much like what we do with blog posts , or Delicious or StumbleUpon, here we do it on our browser.

And yes, apart from all of the above mentioned points, it has got a new UI suited for your OS, an Addon Manager, a more secure Anti-Forgery Site Blocker.Phew. But yes, it has its share of bugs, and they are here in this link of the release notes. Apart from that, you’d like to read the following posts as well.

Full review of Firefox RC1.

Ostatic: A guided tour of Firefox RC1

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Edit Contacts in GMail Chat

by Sujoy on May 1, 2008

Chat Edit

So what’s new about this. Nothing actually, only it’s faster. GMail Blog has put up the details. But anyway, I am gonna tell you exactly the same. And may be a bit more as well. Remember the old days when a friend added you on Gtalk and his Email ID used to show on the chat panel, and you always ended up in a confusion as to who is this guy. Especially when you have friends like mine with usernames like havoccreatorxx, or headbanger_allnite, et al. And what did you do to avoid this? You went to the contact list, searched for the name, and then edited the information, and then saved it.  And come back to your inbox to what you were doing. Not any more.

All you need to do now, is to just do a mouse-over on the name/email id you want to edit on the chat panel, just click on the name when the info pops up, and you are ready to edit , on the fly. A big time-saver, ain’t it? And, oh just to make sure, it is only for the new version of the GMail (for Firefox, Flock and IE7 ie). So all you IE 6 users, (whom I prefer calling loohoo..saahaars), STAY BEHIND.

Image courtesy: GMail Blog.

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Orkut goes Private

by Sujoy on April 29, 2008

OrkutLike it or not, Orkut is potentially one of the largest social networks around. While people in general, and industry specialists in particular have always termed it as Google’s unsuccessful social network, to be only successful in India, Pakistan and Brazil, but they always ignored the number of users that Orkut has from these three countries. The communities that Orkut brings in have recorded members more than a million. Yes, as huge as that!! Anyway, this post is about how Google is actually revealing more and more new features into the social networking site.

In the latest post on Orkut Blog, Orkut’s Vlad Patryshev talks about the new privacy features that Orkut has brought into the forefront. We aready have been seeing the changes in the add-friends section. The appearance of the check box and manage friends section. The blog says,

In addition to having your privacy settings to be just “friends” or “everyone,” you can now select also “friend of friends.” We feel that this is a good choice for those of you who may wish to share your information with an extended group of friends without making it public to everyone. We hope this additional flexibility helps you manage your experience on orkut better.

What could be next from their sleeve? Guess, we just have to wait and watch. At Techkeyla, we definitely are watching.

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Orkut walks the Facebook Way. Adds the Opensocial Apps

by Sujoy on April 16, 2008

Okay, I will not wrap this up in any form of introductory bullshit. Lemme get this straight and right to the point. The Apps on Orkut are ALIVE..finally. I was buzzed on my GTalk today by my friend Praxy, who told me that he noticed certain changes in Orkut, right as we were speaking. It was a bit hard to digest coz I had just logged out of my Orkut account a few hours back and I had noticed nothing. So, what was next? I logged in to find the first surprise. My account Homepage showed the following pick.

Orkut Home

Just like the introductory Facebook message which invited us to install more and more apps. Well, for me, it was high time. Remember OpenSocial Alliance had been formed and announced way back in the 1800s, I mean in November last year. And now, it’s more than 3 months over of 2008. Still, I hadn’t seen any signs of anything to do with OpenSocial out here on Orkut. (A brief tutorial for all those who do not know about Orkut. It is one of the most visited Social Networking sites by Google, on which the entire online society of India, Pakistan and Brazil resides. And that means, it has a HUGE user base. It’s true that Facebook has invaded a space which was ruled previously by MySpace, and arguably still is. But then, Orkut is HUGE in this part of the world, much like Bebo is still much larger in the UK than any other social network.) The brief ask the question addition was at best an annoying and minuscule addition which didn’t even qualify as an application. But the wait is now over. The apps are here for you , and this is where they are. The page is called the App Directory, and the list looks like the following:

[Continue Reading]

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