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Browser in your Pocket: Portable USB Browsers

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.

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Deconstructing Morgan Stanley’s Teen Media Report

by Sujoy on July 26, 2009

Morgan Stanley’s report ” How Teenagers Consume Media ” talks about the impact, reach and relevance of different forms of media on the target section of the population – the teens. The importance of this paper is the very fact that today’s teenagers will be evolving into tomorrow’s workforce and the ones who will be shaping tomorrow’s consumer market. This in itself means that the behaviour of the teenagers and their reaction towards media cannot be overlooked.

However, the report is written by a teenager, 15 year old Matthew Robson. The report reflects how a normal teenager perceives media of the current world spanning across traditional media like TV, radio and print, to new-age media like social networking websites, cellphones, game consoles etc. Although the discussion provided in the report does reflect teenage behaviour in a lot of sections, it has its shortcomings.
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I am not happy with GMail’s new Labels features

by Sujoy on July 3, 2009

Sometimes things can become worse from being good, just in the name of innovation. A current example of such a thing is the newly introduced change of features in the Labels of GMail inbox.[Read: Labels, drag and drop, hiding and more] Innovation is supposed to bring with it, ease of use and user-friendliness. But with this new feature, what we have is completely the opposite.

GMail has pioneered user-freindliness, and I was overjoyed when I was given the facility to use the GMail Lab – Right side Chat. It allowed to manage my inbox space in a much more organised fashion. I did not bother if my hundreds of labels would mean my Chat Window would get buried down in deep underground. Everything was jolly good.

With the new features though, Label is back to a space above its original position – which is just below the default Inbox Tabs, and above chat. Sure, there is a summarizer which wraps up the Labels, which again questions its utility now. For one, I am not used to the Left-sidedness of it. Secondly, if the Labels tab is wrapped up, it only means, that when I drag and drop my messages to the left, it is going to unwrap then. The wrapping up of the Labs to show only the most used Labels is also quite questionable. This is because I have lots of Labels which I use frequently, but GMail Inbox now shows only 4 of them. For sure, I can use the “Move to:” feature still, which completely negates the drag and drop feature introduction.

I know GMail introduced the ‘drag and drop’ feature to replicate the Folder scenario as seen in Yahoo and Hotmail. But to do so here, users have to strategically place the mouse between a space so small that it can only fit a hair. This space is at the extreme beginning of the email, and before the checkbox. Yes, can you SEE it even? Talk about user-friendliness.Pffft!

And yes, Right-Side Label Labs is dead. WHYYYY????? I cannot send my Chat to the Right, because the popped up Chat Windows block the Contact list. So it did mean more sense for Right-Side Label to be enabled. I can only request, along with all the other users to bring Sexyback – Imean Right-Side Labels. Puhhhleeeeeeeezz!!!