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My Two Cents!

This was one change that I have been contemplating for a while. Finally, took the plunge today. My two cents is now on Wordpress. While Blogger is a great tool for newbies, Wordpress offers more powerful features and tools for the experienced blogger. It is also relatively easy to use. All of the blog postings and comments from here are migrated to my Wordpress host.

So see you at My two cents on Wordpress! Do visit me there!

PS: I will leave this blog as such for a few more months and then set an auto-redirect to the new blog.

Google Spreadsheet on the anvil

Coming soon: Google Spreadsheet. @SUM(trouble) for Microsoft's bottom line?

For Google fans, some exciting news is always on the cards. This time it is their web based spreadsheet application. (You may recall that Google acquired Writely, a web based word processor sometime back). While not claiming to be a full-fledged spreadsheet application like the MS Excel, this simple application can help one in creating home budget, IT returns etc., and then probably share it with family members later through web.


One interesting aspect of these web based applications is the revenue that Google can earn by selling boxes. Today, they have "search boxes" which are sold to corporates for deploying as enterprise-wide search engines. In the same fashion, Google can chose to sell "Office Suite Boxes", which when deployed, will allow employees to log-in 'to and create spreadsheets, documents etc., and share with others. It may turn out pretty cheap and cost-effective for many small companies. (No more "Oops. Forgot the attachment!" mails!!). I can see where all this is leading to.

On the internet, such free applications like Calendar, Spreadsheet etc., are good for users who do not want to buy an Office Suite (Don't forget the vastly improved OpenOffice 2.0 suite) - what is a big cause of concern is the amount of personal information one stores on Google's database! Google now knows what you search, how is your day like, who and what you mail and in the future, what documents you create! This may have vast implications once new applications are made available, creating a virtual monopoly in the Web 2.0 arena.

A sneak preview of the Google Spreadsheet is available on the Google website here.

Posting to Blogs from Microsoft Word 2007

Most people who tried Office 2007 are surprised by the new features and changes to the suite. It is now a common opinion on the internet that while Vista is a heavily bloated OS, Office 2007 brings in a refreshing and welcome change (I am yet to test Vista Beta 2, so my opinion may be different. I am waiting for that one mail from Microsoft). One of the new features in Word 2007 is posting to the blog service providers directly from within Word. The following service providers are supported in the beta - MSN Spaces, Blogger, SharePoint and any other blog which supports Atom or MetaWebLog api. So all you do is select New -> New Blog Entry. The first time when you do this, you are asked a few questions on your account details like user id, password

and URL to upload your images. For blogger, image upload is not supported. Click on publish once you are done with editing! The advantages of using Word for posting to blogs are obvious: Built-in spell check, ability to post to multiple blogs easily, variety of formatting options, ability to work off-line for large posts etc., I wish I had this tool when I wrote the largest post in this blog: My Krome iQ 700 review.

Beta quirks: This seems to be a late-breaking feature in the beta. It is almost unusable if you try to upload images. Several times I enountered a mysterious dialog box asking for my user-id and password for the blog. Even if you give details, it strangely reappears, leaving you with the only option of killing Word through task manager.

PS: The default font in Office 2007 seems to be Calibri. Looks gorgeous.

iPod killer gang formed

Bloomberg.com: Japan

Here comes the battalion of good samaritans to take on the evil Apple and its iPod empire..

So funny to read such news. Anyway, good luck guys.

Geek.com PDA/cellphone Review: Motorola Q

Geek.com PDA/cellphone Review: Motorola Q

Nice and cool review of the Motorola Q. While the author is happy with most of the features of the phone, he sorely misses the Wi-Fi. We knew that, didn't we?

Will iPhone bite the dust?

MobileCrunch: Why the I-Phone Will Be Apple'’s Huge Blunder

Atleast that's what this article claims. While the author provides a very different perspective of the upcoming (?) iPhone, I beg to differ with him on many of his opinions. The success of iPod (as well as Mac OS and the associated hardware) is because of the simplicity of the UI design and the elegance of the aesthetically pleasing hardware. Though I agree with the author on the quirks of designing an user interface for mobile devices, Apple may still pull a few leaves out of Palm's and Microsoft's books (for a change!) to come up with an UI that is simple as well as functional. But the real challenge would be the battery life - the Achilles heel of modern PDA phone devices. If Apple can pull this off (OLEDs, anyone?), then there wont be anything that could stop them from achieving leadership in this segment too.

One more important strategy that Apple should adopt is the release cycle and the number of devices that they are going to release. Unlike the regular mobile device companies which release a new model every other day, Apple should stick to its core business of providing services (like iTunes, location based services etc.,) around the device and not overwhelm the customers with a flurry of iPhones.

Ok. So lets continue keeping our fingers crossed.

Are you a computer geek?

NerdTests.com Fun Tests - Computer Geek / Nerd Quiz

Oh well, I love quizzes, especially like the one above. I scored 89 percentile and got a "Computer Geek" title. Try your geekiness too!

RSS Feed Reading with Microsoft Outlook 2007

For people like me, who spend 70% of their time in the Outlook inbox and calendar, here is some good news. With 2007, Outlook is now a full featured RSS reader (Another catchup game from Microsoft in the recent times). RSS readers with an outlook-like interface are a great way to fool your boss - while he may think you are busy reading emails and acting upon them, you are in fact browsing through your favorite blogs.

So what do you need to do to read your favorite blogs on Outlook? First, get the RSS/atom feed link. If you are using IE7, it is as simple as clicking on the RSS icon which launches outlook. Otherwise, if you know the link, just copy it to clipboard and click on Tools -> Account Settings -> RSS Feeds. Click on the new button which launches a small address dialog box. Paste the address here, and you get an "RSS Feed Options" dialog which gives you several customizations for your feed.

Once added, you can click on RSS feeds in your Outlook personal folders to view the recent articles. Unfortunately, Outlook does not allow you to search for RSS feeds as most Newsreaders do. It may appear in the final version, though.

So what is the advantage of using a mail client as an RSS reader? Well,the first reason os that you can forward interesting articles to your friends/colleagues. You can download them fully and sort it into different folders for later reference. In short, much of what you do with an email can be done on the articles you receive as feeds.

For open source fans who do not use Outlook, Thunderbird can be a similar great RSS reader. Though you can do RSS reading with firefox too, with its built-in bookmarks toolbar - it only gives you the headlines, which many times may not be very helpful. There are several RSS news reader extensions available for firefox though.

PS: After using it for a few days, I really started liking the new interface of Office 2007. While initially it looked baffling (Since the interface wasn't changed in decades), the new toolbar layout is just brilliant and highly usable. Sure M$ has put in lot of research into the new UI. I am planning to write a complete review, if time permits. I am using it only in my Home laptop, the office IT guys won't allow me to install it. Let all the IT guys go to hell.