Google Chrome Review
I am going to keep this short and sweet.
– Minimal interface giving more real estate on desktop screen
– Individual tabs run in their process, so if one fails it does not affect another
(But try this and see what comes up 🙂
Type this into a Chrome tab’s address bar :%
– On startup it shows you your “most visited sites”
– Tabs can be droped onto desktop (each act as the browser)
– Tabs are grouped together, so if you open a tab from another one, it opens next to it and not at the end
– Omnibox = Search box + Address bar
– supposed to work beter with javascript sites (futuristic???)
Cons
– All tabs shown, not hidden like in Firefox
– It is definitiely slower that FirefoFirefox and Safari
Background Info
The tech lead was hired from Mozilla Foundation 4 years ago with condition that he would continue to work with them halftime. He stopped working on that project in 2006.
Google Chrome’s Full List of Special about: Pages
http://lifehacker.com/5045164/google-chromes-full-list-of-special-about-pages
At thte time of this article going to press google had chenged their “evil” EULA
Buck up Firefox!!! You are still number 1.
Book Review :Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround
Louis V. Gerstner Jr. ex-head of IBM corporation tells the story of the biggest turnaround in the corporate history. And while does that, he blows the wonderful opportunity to tell an insightful story. Well, he does warn you in the beginning, detailing his reluctance to write a book (very professional isn;t it 🙂 ).
Let us face it, Louis V. Gerstner Jr. is one of the most successful executives in the history of corporate America. He would always jump through the right hoops all his life. And the fact that success and most successful people are boring, reflects very much in the book. Rather than writing an interesting book, Lou has prepared a drab report of IBM successes over years. Thus, a large part of book is devoted to financial performance figures!!!
He has also included various emails sent to him by employees. He does do a great job in elaborating IBM culture from an outsider’s point of view. I wonder if his long years as a management consultant had any influence in turning IBM into the biggest consulting company on this globe.
Gerstner also could have delineated the business processes that was the foundation of this turnaround, but he does not bother to do so. He never mentions various personalities that played any significant role in IBM during his tenure. If you really want to understand the crux of Lou’s and IBMs achievements from 1995 to 2001, simply read chapter on IBM from Reengineering book by Hammer and Champy (2001 Edition).
If you are a technophiles and looking for interesting tidbits, read “Dealers of lightning” (based on Xerox’s PARC Research Centre).
Kudos to Lou for being such a great leader. I wish I could say the same thing about his writing skills. For someone like me who has been in IT industry for 15 long years, it turned out to be a big let-down. If found myself jumping form chapter to chapter looking for some interesting bit of information.
Movie Review : Corporate – Hindi, Bollywood film
This is a very good example of how movie directors fall in trap of the successes of their own formula. Madhur Bhandarkar uses senior actors from Marathi theatre, sprinkling of sex, a couple of side-line characters who keep audiences entertained by giving “gyan” on corporate life. This movie clearly falls to create the punch that Page 3 did. The script isvery very weak. In fact, in the second-half, the host-shot award-winning business executive Nishi (Bipasha Basu) coolly signs all the papers going to enquiry commission, without even glancng at them once!!!
To cut a long story short….. Nishi steals secrets of new project from Parvez(CEO of Marwa Industries – a competing Business group) To achieve this she uses an age-old art of seduction, followed by a direct attack on Parvez’s masculinityby an ultra-hot model. Then she proceeds to copy all the project details using a USB drive, while Parvez continues his deep slumber caused by sexual excesses with this model. This is known as “Social Engineering” in parlance of hackers. It is possibly a first in Hindi movies!!!
Funny, each and every one of these corporate biggies takes to drinks, if things don’t go their way. Madhur Bhandarkar has mixed up hischaracters. He should know by now business success and drinking habitsdon;t go hand-in-hand. If he continued to be a detailed oriented guy as he used to be, he would have shown Pan Parag Pan Masala somewhere 🙂 (No kidding . Believe me when I say it is the most used corporatetranquilizer used.).
Thee nd is so flat …. the loyal corporate executive (Bipasa Basu) goes to jail to cover her employers and delivers a kid there. She loses her lover (Kay Kay) who is killed by his own brother-in-law and industrialist Vinay Sehgal (Rajat Kapoor) so that he does not spill the beans about the real culprit is in pesticides contamination case to media.
More on performances – It is a good move for Bipasa Basu, who seems to have acted well (under direction of Madhur). Vinay Apte pulls of a convincing politician. Kay Kay should stop smoking, or else he is going to look like a TB patient in future.Even usual solitary Asha Bhosle song cannot save the movie. After high expectations and a couple of recommendations, the movie turned out to be a damp squib.
Mumbai Mayhem – Bombay Blasts 11th July 2006
A possible first has been achieved by blood-thirsty Indian media today!!! I have never seen so many dead bodies shown on TV,not even in New York right after 9/11
A corrupt machinery chugs along at its own speed ignoring norms of every kind…………….. environmental, that of safety and security. PM, CM and home ministry, please rise and dig out all terrorist dens in all parts of India. For years, towns like Mumbra, Malegaon are known hotbeds of these activities. You indolent morons, you owe it to this nation.
We reap what we sow. Since the days of Indira Gandhi, infiltration across border has been encouraged by Congress. During 60’s, in Assam Fakruddin Ali Ahmed (later President and “titular head” of India) had openly said “Alis (farm workers) and Koolies” form our vote bank. Little surprise then, that most of them were allowed to cross the border from Bangladesh.
Just as coincidence, both big blasts have taken place in Bombay when Congress has ruling the centre and Maharashtra government. I remember March 12, 1992, clearly as I was a salesman walking the streets of Mumbai. No self-respecting nation should and would tolerate such attacks. If we had any guts at all we would have brought Dawood Ibrahim to book by now. Manmohan, Vilas – go watch “Munich” the movie. I shall bear the expenses.
An unknown face of Satan hovers on this city that feed millions. For these millions of Mumbaikars, an age old invention has become a necessity – GOD. I wonder even if GOD existed it could save this city.
Weird Ways of Pune Police
Last night at 1:30 AM I was stopped by the police, while I was asking some address to a watchman on the Koregaon Park Road. Yours truly, had decided to do "Haroon-al-Rashid" on town of Pune. To the best of one's knowledge, this is an absolutely legal activity. The problem though, in this great democratic country, is a law by name of "special police act" which gives them right ot stop any citizen and question him/her, which an erring office-holder misuses once in a while.
The inefficient and corrupt policeman in this case, wanted to know why I was there at that hour. Upon being explained that I was there to enjoy the weather, he wanted to know why I could not do it for all of three years of my residence in Pune. And if I was going to be posted outside Pune next month, why I could not check the same Pune weather on the internet!! (At this point in time, yours truly was truly ipressed thinknig this man was aware of rssweather.com, Yahoo! Widgets or Forcastfox plug-in for Firefox browser 🙂 )
He also had problems with the fact the the rickshawalla was Dhankavdi based and had taken a fare from Kothrud to Karve Road!!! Finally, the defeated cad had his enquiry about my education. Yours truly, a proud engineer promptly dished out the name of premium Indian institute that he had attended years ago. The uneducated rogue loudly wondered if all this education was worth it!!!
I really think this stupidity should be stopped. The same police duo was hassling a lot of men and women who were returning home after a party at ABC farms, possibly. (This was the checkpoint, your truly and his rickshawalla had missed and therefore enquired their whereabouts with a watchman on the road).
I am sure the same rougue would have tolerated rudeness no part of a drunken son of a government official. It is a shame that law-abiding citizens like yours truly are hassled at the hands of nincompoops described above even after 60 years of independence (give or take a year) It was clear to me, this guy simply wanted some money out of me.
When I bade the two government rogues "good night" the uneducated thug snapped "what good night? we have to work all night"
On the way back, The rickshawwalla was fairly upset and said we could have beaten the police. Yours truly impressed upon the driver that it wasn't the most sensible thing to do 🙂
Interestingly, I have been out on Mumbai streets late night and have never been stopped by special police who are smart enough to differentiate between, "the educated fun-loving people" of this country and the miscreants.
Shame on you Pune Police for hassling the educated. Keep your frustrations in check or there will be a legal backlash.
Addictions Acquired in 2005
On this auspicious day, when wordpress 2.0 is being released, I start my brand new blog (in a hope that it would be as popular as Scobleizer. Another wonderful year comes to an end. So everyone starts making their “Favourites” list. So here is mine, a “me-too” list of websites I have liked and use
Some of the fantabulous sites I discovered are flickr and del.icio.us (pronounced delicious) – both have been bought by my savvy employer :-). Both, as I have discovered, are very very addictive. I was also amazed to see some old articles that I liked gaining prominence because of social bookmarking phenomenon. In this space you can try simpy and blinklist, shadows , clipmarks (the last one needs a download). Another interesting application, which falls in to category of mash-up is diggdotus. In peer news category, you can try gabbr and . I like reddit better than others. I recently came across stumble upon this of course need a plug-in for your browser.
And just when wikipedia became a leading site for reference, it became mired in controversy thanks ot a practical joke about kennedy’s assassination.
Among these new crop of sites, my personal favourite is 180n a news aggregator with numerous categories. I also liked upcoming and RSS based events manager (again another takeover by Yahoo! 🙂 ), but I cannot use it well as the most events listed on upcoming are US-centric.
In travel segment, a twiki travel experience site will fly high if it attracts more users. Also in the segment is travelbuddy where you can write your own travelogue (and ofcourse make friends across the world. Travelbuddy really reminded me of my personal favourite mouthshut which offers a facility to publish product reviews on movies, restaurants, gadgets etc. and create a trusted circle of friends.
As a web 2.0 start page, you can configure netvibes as your home page. Don’t be surprised if it looks amazingly similar to personalized google . For RSS readers, I highly recommend Bloglines , my.yahoo (my personal homepage, for a number of years now) or Google Reader . It is apt to talk of blog related sites here 🙂 so here we go………… 1) Technorati and 2) Memeorandum Its other section also tracks popular political blogs.
An off-beat example of web 2.0 is 43things. This site simply lets you publish 43 things that you would like to achieve. It also send you reminders if you are serious about quitting smoking (any takes there? 🙂 ) . The last but not the least Yahoo! answers – an absolute must for nerds.
Well I already like WordPress for its user-friendly features (which is another befitting example of web 2.0application.
After all this, if you still want to know what web 2.0″ really is, here is Tom O’rielly’s article explaining the same.
I am yet to try a lot of “web 2.0” websites, so would let you know my experiences. Once in a while I also write reviews on movies, restaurants that I have liked. So keep reading, because I am going to be back with more 🙂
TheTechno-toddler totters through tid-bits 