Google ignites browser war with Chrome

Written by J Shamsul, Tuesday, September 2, 2008 | 0

Google is about to ignite a World Browser War II with the introduction of Google Chrome. Everybody on the Interweb is talking about the soon to be released Google based browser called Google Chrome.

No this in not just a skinned Firefox with integrations to Google’s API. It’s a brand new browser.

So what does Chrome has under its hood?

Tiny Ghosts

Written by J Shamsul, Friday, July 25, 2008 | 1

Can you construct an entire story in just two sentences? That is what the author of Tiny Ghost tries to do on the website. With the help of images, mostly photographs, a whole story could be told in just two sentences.

Tiny Ghost is not your ordinary web comic, it do not even claim to be one. In fact it does not sees itself as a comic at all. I think itelf is having a hard time figuring out what it really is.

Each entry shows two pictures side by side and each picture has a one sentence caption. With just that, a whole story is been created. Each story so compelling that, I’ve lost a whole day of productivity in the office, I was going through each story on Tiny Ghosts.

Knol, Google’s take on Wikipedia

Written by J Shamsul, Thursday, July 24, 2008 | 0

Earlier to day, Google launches Knol, a unit of knowledge. In one sentence, a knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic. Conceptually it is very similar to Wikipedia, as it is yet another platform for sharing articles about specific topics.

Unlike Wikipedia, Knol holds authors accountable for the articles they write. Each articles are known as a ‘knol’. Knol authors take credit for their writing by providing their credentials to identify him or herself. This is done by disclosing credit card number, phone number or anything that can be use to validate real names.

Each articles are either created by a single author or a team of author collaborating. Other users can submit changes, but they have to be approved by the article’s original authors, before any changes available to the public. It’s a more moderated Wikipedia.

Twitter a love and hate relationship

Written by J Shamsul, Friday, July 4, 2008 | 1

I love Twitter as it makes it possible for me to send messages to a bunch of strangers, on the net, and sometime those strangers replies back to me. I hate Twitter as it often goes down, forcing me to be a little bit productive at work. Thank god for RSS and blogs keeping be busy procrastinating. I’m a professional procrastinator. Read more...

Yahoo! to use Google’s Ads

Written by J Shamsul, Friday, June 13, 2008 | 0

Yahoogoogle 1 The Microsoft and Yahoo! deal is off. It’s water under the bridge living Microsoft with a disappointing note and Yahoo’s stocks plunging down. Top Yahoo executives leaving the company.

All that aside Yahoo and Google had announced a non-exclusive advertising service agreement where Yahoo could use Google’s advertising services in Yahoo’s web assets in U.S. and Canada. This gives Yahoo access to use Google’s Adsense / Adwords services throughout their site. Aspect to see Google Adsense in Yahoo’s search result pages some time soon.

In addition to that, both Yahoo and Google will work on enable interoperability between instant messaging service of both companies. This will result on a better broader online communication services. GTalk isn’t doing that well so this is a good thing for Google. You might be able to chat on your YM buddies on your GMail account in the future.

New Gmail features with Gmail Labs

Written by J Shamsul, Sunday, June 8, 2008 | 2

Google likes to keep their project in ‘Beta’, forever is possible. Gmail is one of those forever ‘Beta’ products. If you notice, there is still the ‘Beta’ tag under the Gmail logo.

Up until recently nothing much had change with Gmail ever since the open it to public. It was an invite only deal in the early days, but most people got the invite.

The Gmail team takes good care of the look and feel of the whole app. Even adding a ‘delete’ button is a big deal for them. So to rollout new features they are taking a different approach.

Goosh, the unofficial Google shell

Written by J Shamsul, Wednesday, June 4, 2008 | 0

There are two camps when it comes to modern computer users. Some prefer to interact with their machines with a graphical user interface, while there are others who still prefer the more old school way of interaction with computers, using a command line interface.

GUI (Graphical User Interface) and CLI (Command Line Interface) both have their pro and cons. GUI makes the learning curve for users easier but a GUI based operation might take up computing resources. CLI on the other hand consume less resources but has a steeper learning curve than a GUI.

Muxtape, mixtape 2.0

Written by J Shamsul, Thursday, May 22, 2008 | 3

If you have an okey internet connection. You like music. You enjoy finding new, rare music. You like to share music. Then you better bookmark muxtape.com on your browser.

Muxtape, a web based service that brings the art of creating mixtape into the digital age. Muxtape is mixtape 2.0. This pretty neat little site has been serving user-generated playlist, streaming free to the masses since its launch in March.

Buzzword, Adobe’s online word processor

Written by J Shamsul, Tuesday, May 13, 2008 | 0

Remember Writely? The little online web based word processor, one of Web2.0 darlings. Google had acquired Writely, incorporating it into their line of web based office suite, Google Docs.

Web based apps are the future. Few software based companies had notice this trend and are experimenting with web technologies and the possibilities. Adobe is one of such companies.

Adobe have been experimenting with the web space for sometime. They first had released Kuler, a web based application for generating color themes. Then they come out with a web based application, Photoshop Express that was hyped as the ‘web based Photoshop’. It’s not much of a Photoshop replacement just a basic image editing application. Nevertheless, it’s pretty impressive the fact that it’s web based.

Adobe’s new web app Buzzword is pretty impressive too.

Follow me on Twitter

Written by J Shamsul, Wednesday, May 7, 2008 | 0

“So what are you doing?”

That is often the question asked by our friends and family. Although it might seem annoying to some, when asked that all the time but when we know what our friends are doing we feel more connected.

The little things you do, like what you have for lunch, what book you currently reading or what shows you are watching might be interesting to someone you know.

These days we have blogs that one could use to update their friends and family, but real life happens in between blog posts. This is where a micro-blogging platform such as Twitter comes in handy. Twitter takes the mundane ‘what I’m having for lunch’ posting off away from blogs.

Flickr does video now

Written by J Shamsul, Saturday, April 12, 2008 | 0

The rumors are spot on. Flickr no longer just a photo sharing site, it does videos to. If Google manage to snag up YouTube and have the online video market covered for a couple of years, this Flickr move to make video sharing available might just be Yahoo!’s ticket to enter the online video sharing market. Yes, Yahoo bought Flickr a few years back.

Yahoo!’s Digg clone buzz

Written by J Shamsul, Sunday, March 2, 2008 | 0

Things are very democratic lately. With the elections proceedings (U.S elections and the upcoming Malaysia Parliamentary elections) everybody feels the need to vote.

Yahoo! recently launches Yahoo Buzz, a Digg.com like website. Yahoo’s approaches to this is a little bit different from Digg.com’s concept. Users vote on stories from pre-approved news publishers to push them up. If on Digg.com you ‘digg’ a story up and ‘bury’ a story down on Yahoo Buzz you ‘buzz up’ a story and ‘buzz down’.