Official Google Blog: Find more while you browse with Google Related

Find all the related stuff with Google Related

Official Google Blog: Find more while you browse with Google Related

Inside Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 - Integration and Web Services

http://www.microsoft.com/erp: Video 2 in our 12 week series entitled "Inside Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012" explores the theme of Integration and Web Services. This video features C. Venkatesh, Principal Program Manager Lead, Microsoft Dynamics AX R&D. To learn more about Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 visit http://bit.ly/pisiH9

Things I hate about the App I love: Internet Explorer 9

Software Applications (Apps) are everywhere, from phones, to watches, and from desktops to laptops. Every computing device is running with apps. However, in the race of new updates, software vendors often mistake the very common user fact, and that fact is:

“You don’t need to change the look and feel of app every time to prove you guys are still working!”

With the release of new Windows Live Platform, Microsoft unveils another new version of its great app Internet Explorer 9 Beta. Claiming this to be the reinvention of web browser (along with Microsoft Silverlight), Microsoft adds great new features including my favorite, hardware-acceleration, non-interruptive notifications, separate download manager, along with pin a website to taskbar etc. 

However, while introducing ultimate new features and achieving the reinvention of web browsing experience, IE9 have made some terrible things which I personally don’t like, and as a matter of fact, such things might also help me step using IE for good.

Hate Point 1: Where is the title bar?

Since ever, title bar have been used to put a quick information for what page you are viewing, and in some website (like www.cricinfo.com) where title bar kept on updating with the ongoing information helps user see the activity right from the taskbar when the browser itself is minimized. Putting title text on the tab is not a good idea to me, as it’s a really short space to put that kind of information. That was one of the key reason I don’t like Google Chrome.

Hate Point 2: Too short address bar.

With increasing number of tabs, it keep on getting reduced, until a time comes where you can hardly see the query string. I agree that this won’t be any point of concern for a lot of internet user, but for web developers it’s a mess. This could possibly be the foremost reason for me not using IE9.

Hate Point 3: Removal of Status Bar.

Now where is it? The one plus I see in IE8 is that almost everything that has been relocated in this new UX appears to be at a place where it should be, so where is the status bar. The classic IE status bar that use to show me (apart from just the link on mouse-over that pops up on a tooltip in the lower section of the window) all the great stuff like, how much page is loaded, quick links for phishing, network status, popup blocked etc.

Hate Point 4: UX (Firefox + Chrome = IE9)

I am a very strong advocate of the point that if every car has a steering wheel, that does not mean they are stealing it. However, making the Back button bigger than forward does make me think I’m using Firefox. Similarly, why thumbnails of my most viewed websites on a newly opened blank tab reminds me its Google Chrome?

To put in a nut shell, Microsoft have made a great work with the new IE9 when it comes to clean UI, performance and usability. However they have left a few holes that classic IE lover would still love to see them back. IE9 is still in Beta and I’m sure by the time of its final release, Microsoft and the IE team won’t disappoint their fan-club.

Techie Blog Posts by: Atif Ahmed Siddiqui atifahmedsiddiqui@hotmail.com

Xmarks shutting down?

Perhaps the most important thing in your webworld is Bookmarks. If you are an avid internet user, with a bunch of computing devices to operate everyday, then you must be knowing Xmarks. To me, it is by far the most important Web browser extension. However, soon its going to be legacy, and fade out in the pages of web history.

What Xmarks does? it is a synchronization servcie, all FREE of cost that synchronizes your passwords and bookmarks across every computer you have. As Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols wrote, it could be just a little idea though, to a person like me, it’s a life-saver.

Xmarks simply works with all the major Web browsers like Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer, as well as all the major desktop operating systems like Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows. No matter where you are, what computing device you are using, and how many, you could keep a common set of bookmarks and passwords everywhere.

Xmarks released a couple of FAQs on its blog about shutting down this service.

<from Xmarks and the website>

Why are you shutting down Xmarks?

We weren’t able to find a sustainable business model for Xmarks. The advertising you may have seen on Xmarks.com generates only a small fraction of the revenue we need to cover our operational costs; we had been working hard to create search and discovery products that could take the company to profitability and beyond, but we didn’t generate enough consumer adoption or advertiser adoption of these new products.

The short answer is, time and money have run out, so we’ve made the difficult decision to shut our doors.

As Todd Agulnick, co-founder of Xmarks and CTO, said in a blog posting, “For four years we have offered the synchronization service for no charge, predicated on the hypothesis that a business model would emerge to support the free service. With that investment thesis thwarted, there is no way to pay expenses, primarily salary and hosting costs.”

Why not charge for it, or say, charge just for password synchronization or other high-end features? Agulnick wrote, “The prospects there are grim too: With the emergence of competent sync features built into Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, it’s hard to see users paying for a service that they can now get for free.”

Agulnick have also tried to sell Xmarks, but “Over the past three months, we have been remarkably close to striking a deal, only to have the potential buyer get cold feet.” Then, the money clock ran out” “Without the resources to keep the service going, we must shut it down. Our plan is to keep the service running for another 90+ days, after which the plug will be pulled.”

It’s a sobering moment. Here we have a great program that provides an extraordinarily popular service, Xmarks has over 22-million downloads for Firefox alone from a single Firefox site, and its developers can’t pay the bills for lack of a successful business plan.

As a conclusion, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols wrote a somewhat significant theme:

“Twitter, and other popular services and programs that don’t have a business plan, should take note. Popular success doesn’t mean money in the bank. Sometimes it doesn’t even mean being able to keep a roof over your head.

I can only hope that someone will come along and invest in Xmarks and work out a real business plan for it. It would be a shame for this wonderful program and service to disappear.”

</from website>

How could a website be called Google?

After reading this article, are you still amazed? Its basically a search engine. What else could it be?

Microsoft + WordPress

As Mary Jo Foley writes, its official now, Microsoft Live is no longer a blogging platform. The news pops around when Dharmesh Mehta announced on Windows team blog about the partnering of Windows Live Platform with WordPress.com.

This surely brings new dimensions in Microsoft’s underlying strategy of every computing can be done the Microsoft way. While they don’t need to reinvent the wheel, still they can get the lions share of the web world.

Playing with Google Search

 

You won’t mind if I say Google Search is a mystery. Well, most of you would, but does anyone precisely knows how Google indexes the content published on the internet?

Most recently, I published a blog post regarding Why my drive shows less space than expected?. That post was more about describing binary numbers for different file systems and how manufacturers use it for case of simplicity. Interestingly, that post, became the top result in this query on Google, “Why my drive shows less space than expected?”.

This gave me some idea to play more with Google Search. Since I’ve always been a fan of how Google keeps its search index it was really enjoying identifying these facts too.

Sooner when I searched if Google can tell me the binary number of my name, the query “what is a binary number of atif” returned this post on the 3rd top result.

Now this leads how Google might be doing behind the curtains. Is it true that Google is indexing each and every word of whatever you post on the internet? Or is it based on the influence of any post on the internet in recent given time?

Raising more riddles for the technology geeks out there :) whatever, its just lovely how the way Google fetches your search queries.

Facebook Bugs !

We live in a world of internet. A life that is lived on clouds. Clouds are everywhere. No matter you is a PC or a MAC. No wonder you use internet from home or from office or maybe you are one of those approximately 13% of the world's population who are reachable 24/7.

We being so much indulged with internet that this world has now become a global village. And off course a part of global social community. And whenever it comes to communicate socially over this cloud, several names pop up into our minds. Such as... Hi5, My Space, Orkut ... and more interestingly... Facebook!

As a matter of fact, Facebook has now become one of the most highly addictive and interactive social community web sites, where people communicate, collaborate and interact to the people who share common interest. With over 300 million active users, facebook stands the "The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older".

However, as a matter of fact, good and bad are two sides of a same coin. And hence, facebook does have a couple of bugs that annoy every user of its. If not every user is annoyed, then I must say most of them certainly are. Facebook is also blessed with lots of bugs and breaches that users would like to fix. Facebook itself knows the importance of it and they keep an eye on it via bug tracking system for facebook developers and also public groups for users to suggest bugs that annoy each time. 

Ever since I read an article from Andrew Mager about the 5 most annoying facebook bugs I was wondering if facebook would start providing an "official feedback" link at the bottom of every home page. Instead, facebook seems quite satisfied with the user interface and features they provide irrespective of audience opinion.

Let’s start by discussing some of the facebook bugs.

First and the foremost... facebook seems to have lost the original idea behind it. Whenever I log on, and I see my home page with lots and lots of shared videos. What is it? A video sharing portal? Then why is you tube there?

Moreover, when I log in, the first thing I am supposed to see is my Wall for posts of what people have written in and what is being happening around. However, unfortunately wall is on your profile page not on your home page. So if you are not visiting your own profile, there are obvious chances you can miss some of important messages.

Every profile on facebook has an average of 130 friends. Therefore, it comes to manage them through Friends lists. This is a great feature of facebook. You can easily categorize your friends in your friend list and easily add or modify permissions or access and view control to various links of your profile. However, this management doesn't seem that much easy and handy. There are times when you have added thousands of friends just to get a handsome amount for any specific game or so (remember, you cannot add friends more than 5001 :)). You would then require deleting them as well. For that you may want to delete the whole list, or maybe a few from that list. But unfortunately when you come to any specific list, there is no "remove" button next to every friend in that list. The remove button is only available if you see "All connections" or "Friends" list. Since "All connections" shows every of your friend than how can you supposed to delete the list at once. Or multiple at a single click?

And one more thing, you can never see list of people who are actually your friends. Because whenever you visit your friend list, it will show all your friends plus the pending friend requests. Therefore you will always get trouble accessing your friend list.

Furthermore, the worst bug so far is with the messaging feature. If you have mistakenly sent a message to a group of people then there is no way you can remove any specific people from that thread or simply stop the thread. This is absolutely terrible! And certainly, there is no BCC feature available in facebook inbox.

Facebook is an outstanding web app, though. There are always bugs in any software application. But as far as I know, bugs are fixable. So have your say and comment on if you have also come across any Facebook Bug!!!

Microsoft Volta

The Volta technology preview is a developer toolset that enables you to build multi-tier web applications by applying familiar techniques and patterns. First, design and build your application as a .NET client application, then assign the portions of the application to run on the server and the client tiers late in the development process. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together.

Developers can target either web browsers or the CLR as clients and Volta handles the complexities of tier-splitting for you. Volta comprises tools such as end-to-end profiling to make architectural refactoring and optimization simple and quick. In effect, Volta offers a best-effort experience in multiple environments without any changes to the application.