Sync it up …

The advent of internet has made it all possible.

Microsoft may have been giants of software but somewhere down the isle, there are a few big names who are projecting a new paradigm of software, which is “Service”. Google, are the very first in this list who presented whole lot of services, you may call it Google Docs, spreadsheets, earth or maps, wave and voice, the Android and yes, above all, Chrome OS. It’s all good, better to say, great. However, the question is, where will all the existing stuff will go? How General People are going to adopt this in an instant? Are you ready to give it all up and start using this new paradigm overnight?

Perhaps those are a few reasons for me not being able to switch to Google wave yet. I mean why would I need to have a Google account in order to be able to see any wave anyone has just sent me? or, should I expect everyone to have a Google account with whom I communicate? That’s one point that perhaps no one would consider if communications were invented today.

On the other hand, the Google Docs has made a fine job there. Irrespective of browser or the platform you are using, you can still use the Google Docs. As far as I can see, I think they have written some application to run on the browser, didn’t they? if it is, then I guess it might take a very long time to make any web app as rich and interactive as desktop is now. Instead why not we develop some engine that could ship the very desktop apps to the web. If Google or any other are able to do that, they would no longer need to write an operating system for the browser, they can easily ship the whole Windows to the web.

As far as Microsoft is concerned, I’ve just had an experience to use Windows Live Essentials Beta, and I believe that with the 25 GB SkyDrive and online Microsoft Office Suite Web Apps together with Windows live sync beta,  Windows live mail beta, movie maker and writer, has taken a huge leap ahead here. The point is, this all is basically the same software that I use on my desktop and now I’m using it on the internet. The same experience and the same usability. Just got synced up!

Windows Live Movie Maker

Windows Live Mail Beta

Windows Live Messenger Beta

Bing is Bingo …!!!

Bing on it!

Microsoft Bing! (Formerly code named: Kumo) is perhaps the much anticipated search engine, that finally we can witness a tough competition with Google Search this time. As a matter of fact, Microsoft doesn’t see Bing as the Google killer. However; as I see, Bing has so much more to deliver than classic Google search. Let’s start what I liked when I “Binged on it”.
First of all, let’s don’t get indulge into the technical specs of what Bing has. I’d rather start off with some low level eye catchers. Well, the main screen, the dashboard, the main dock. You may call it anything, but Bing starts its magic right from there. The main screen certainly has the simple textbox with a search button. Just like one of any other dozen search engines we’ve already seen, but the cool thing is, that likewise Live Search, its first page has a cool beautiful background which comes at random and providing a couple of info boxes on it. This is an interesting feature for general knowledge that most of the home users would really appreciate. Then you land on search results page, it’s full of interesting UI features, which surely decrease your search time and effort. This includes on mouse over popup that shows the snippet of target page. And of-course there is the search history on left navigation pane that is always there for quick referencing. Furthermore, what I have witnessed so far using Bing is that, Microsoft has really improved on the content that appears on search result. I searched me for instance, and when Google search return several different ‘Atif’s’, Bing has quite relevant results including, and which is more surprising. All in all, it’s a decent approach that is worth to give a try. For any further information you can “bing on ‘Bing’ as well” ;)
In a couple of articles and blogs, what I came to know that Microsoft believes that Bing is just the starter to the new paradigm of searching. Though Google search may have so many other features to provide but as a matter of fact Bing also have a long way to go as far as software maturity level is concerned. As a final word, next time when you need to ‘Google’ something, you better try to ‘Bing on it’ ;-)
Bingo!