My ABCs on the Internet

I thought it would be nice to compile my ABCs of regularly visited sites on the net and I'm only going to list one website which i consider most important to me, against each alphabet. Here they are in alphabetical order ofcourse :)

A - apple
B - bing
C - cleartrip
D - Digg
E - Ebay
F - facebook
G - google
H - hotmail
I - in
J - jquery
K - kijiji
L - linkedin
M - motor beam
N - netvibes
O - orkut
P - picasa
Q -
R - rafialikhan
S - smashing magazine
T - twitter
U - ultrasurf
V - vh1
W - wikipedia
X - xbox
Y - youtube
Z - zool

Windows 7 is here - launch party

Well its finally here, and i had mentioned about this a couple of posts back that Windows 7 is arriving in style with everyone I know who has tried it giving it a thumbs up. So the logic is simple, if an OS / application / tool does what its supposed to everyone will love it.


Watch the launch of Windows 7 video - you will need a Silverlight  plugin for this. And that reminds me, I am fascinated with what Silverlight as a technology offers and the potential it has, but havent really gotten down to blogging on it. I must write a review on Silverlight soon (althought its much delayed - by almost 2 yrs ), but till then check out the Windows 7 launch party video.

Now thats an HP I want

Well, I have alway shied away from HP products and stuck to Dell, for no apparent reason actually, just a personal preference. When i saw the first Touch Smart PC from HP a year or so back at the new Reliance Digital (Cunningham Road, Bangalore) I was really really tempted. But then at a hefty price tag and slag on the touch, I was'nt fully convinced. Also the piece seemed hefty and not sleek like a Mac Desktop, also the display didnt impress me that much either.

But now, while I'm weighing an option of buying a plasma or LCD TV for the bedroom, I am tempted to think, why not the new 23" Touch Smart with Windows 7. Now the only deal is - how big does the 23" really look as my viewing distance is about 10 ft, and would it be smart enough on my part to go touch again (since I'm already in love with the iPhone's touch screen and dont think any other phone will do for me)

Google buys reCAPTCHA

Well google is know for its smart acquisitions of smart starup companies and unleashing it to the world for free. Google recently acquired reCaptcha a system originally developed by Carnegie Mellon University and is quite popular as a authentication mechanism on a large number of sites.

Deep rooted is a smart idea as it takes help of users to help decrypt words unrecognizable by even modern day Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technologies. It challenges users to decrypt two words instead of the usual one and one of the word the system actually recognizes itself and the other word it expects people to recognize it and type it in. Based on enough set of matches entered by other users who were challenged, it equates that unrecognized word to a correct popular word. I guess the idea has always been there with Amazon's mechanical turk, google images etc to make use of random users to help decipher hidden data in images and content using intuitive and innovative techniques.

Read the complete new on at google's blog.

Knock Knock - It's Windows 7 on October 22 2009

Well, I'm a big Microsoft fan and anyone who is in the User Experience and UI domain will tell you that no one can beat Microsoft at UI and usability and the experience once you get over all the hang ups and hurdles is one of the best and easiest. (Ok. Mac lovers dont bash me - never had an apple in my life, except of course the iPhone - love it, own it.).

Don't think i work for Microsoft just yet, coz I love Google for the simple and neat application they have rolled out (especially Gmail / Chrome) and for buying out Youtube before Microsoft or even worse News Corp. But when you look at it from a developer's perspective you have to lean towards the tools and toys that Microsoft gives vs all the unintuitive softwares out there except the exception of Adobe.

Anyways,I currently use Windows Vista, and love every bit of the user interface and the cool things they have added but Windows 7 is obviously going to be the XP killer replacer as a lot of my people including my friends shied away from an XP upgrade to Vista. From what I have heard from both friends at Microsoft and OS lovers (who experiment with every OS out there) is that Windows 7 is on a high dose of my favorite energy drink : Red Bull (i.e. its got wings and really flies).

So here you are, the Windows 7 Ad. (this is really cute - for the Indian readers, will remind you of Salman Khan's Maine Pyaar kiya number)



Want more insight into the Ad? Read the review on CNET

You can always Bing me.

Well most of you "I love only Google" guys out there and those who use Bing only because they are worried about Google's evil world domination plans, to them i say "Bing em on". Bing is great for a lot of things and its really fast as well. Its been my default search engine on my default browser (Google Chrome) for a while, so you cant say I'm a Microsoft loyalist or anything. Truth is what do users want, simple answers to their queries and Bing does as brilliant as a job as Google does (even better with Videos) except maybe when it comes to News, where Google does a better job.

Like i said before : "Bings marketing strategy is on the mark calling it a decision engine than a search engine, coz then they would have to explain, Bing formerly Live Search which was formerly Windows Live Search and before that MSN Search powered by Inktomi which earlier was powered by AltaVista. "Bing & Decide" - is a great catch line for bing and the team that came up with the Ad, surely deserves applause."

See the Bing Ads.

At times I do have to shift to Google on some rare occasions coz I am looking for a link I know I visited before and its maybe there in Google's list of search results  or when I want to double check why Bing did'nt get me exactly what i wanted (well Google didnt either)- so its fairly a great alternative to Google and I havnt lost much being on bing for the last few months. Thought i love Bing's image view and the presentation - great features, i just cant get away from the easy image listing on Google and keep going back to it for images - coz i like to randomly check out a couple of images by opening them in new windows which Bing Image view sort of does'nt allow me to open a new window from the image listing page. (Note to Bing Developers -please fix this)

Then there is WolframAlpha the Answer engine according to Wikipedia or  in their own words, its a Computational Knowledge Engine (everything is an engine now a days- well whatever works - coz I'm designing a UI strategy for a Metrics Engine at work) anyways love it too for its simple brilliance in giving you answers you would have to search at 10 different places and put it together. I know a lot of people hate it (same people who said Gmail, facebook, twitter sucked) and its being reported that 1/2 the search on WolframAlpha does'nt bring up results because it cant interpret the linguistic of the query, which WolframAlpha team is reportedly fixing in a hurry.

But the thing thats been at the back of my mind about these two new Decision & Answer engine was, why don't they just collaborate to give the Search Engine (Google) a run for their money. Well some one is reading my mind and its official now, Bing has struck a licensing deal with WolframAlpha. Also given that Microsoft has seen potential in WolframAlpha's technology and the value it can add to their Bing strategy, gives me satisfaction that my excitement with WolframAlpha was well placed. Also the fact that Bing will power search across Yahoo properties is also a big deal. But to ever imagine that Bing from Microsoft would ever stand face to face with Google (preference and im used to Google apart) is really a stunning tale in itself and may some day tell tales of how Bing turned it all around. And i want to be right there saying, hey - I told you so.

Bing Ads :Updated

Bings marketing strategy is on the mark calling it a decision engine than a search engine, coz then they would have to explain, Bing formerly Live Search which was formerly Windows Live Search and before that MSN Search powered by Inktomi which earlier was powered by AltaVista. "Bing & Decide" - is a great catch line for bing and the team that came up with the Ad, surely deserves applause.

Lost in the Links? Bing & Decide



Cure for Search Overload - Bing [Decision Engine]



Pregnant Panda ? - Bing & Decide



Hawaii ? - Search Overload - Bing & Decide




Cellphone - Search Overload - Bing & Decide



Bar - Search Overload - Bing & Decide



Price Predictors - Bing & Decide



Cash Back - from Bing ^Latest