Google Instant Previews, now on Opera

With Instant Previews, Google has added one more feature, albeit one that seems to have been copied from Bing, to its search engine. While you may argue the usefulness of this feature, not being able to check it out at all can be frustrating. If you, like me, are an avid Opera user, this is most likely your case. However, a quick solution is at hand.

Point your browser to http://www.google.com/landing/instantpreviews, and click on the 'Try it now' button. Now, search for any term as you normally would. When the search results page loads up, right-click on an empty part of the page (or press F12 if you're a keyboard junkie) and click 'Edit site preferences'. Jump to the 'Network' tab and change the 'Browser identification' option to 'Identify as Firefox'. OK all the dialogs and refresh the page.

Voila!

NDE: Near-Death Experience

It's quite clear on hindsight that my phone was not very happy with me. I, however, didn't know about it until this morning when matters had reached a head, and it had decided that enough was enough. Without any warning (as if these things happen with one!), it promptly jumped out of my pocket, where I had put it as usual during my morning ride. I thought I heard something bounce off the road, braked my bike, and hardly had I turned back to glance at it than I saw some black pieces flying off the tarmac. My heart skipped many beats beat before I realised that what had been shattered was the (rather cheap) protector that I'd bought from Amazon (UK) not more than a fortnight ago.

Suppressing my mounting anxiety about its welfare (see, phone? I do care!), I set my bicycle against a light post and quickly hurried back, but not before a truck ran over the protector that had already been separated from its subject, thus putting terminating its life permanently. And prematurely. I quickened my pace, and my heart quickened its beat even more when I saw fresh disaster in the form of an approaching car, its wheels maliciously aimed right at the phone. I'm sure the phone was laughing quietly at me in what it perceived to be its last few moments. Only not quite. I couldn't quite bring myself to rush into the oncoming traffic in an all-out effort to save my phone - for, much as I valued my phone, I valued my life more - but fate intervened. On my behalf, for once. The wheels delivered only a glancing blow.

My heart resumed its normal pace and, after picking up the phone, so did my feet. I examined the phone, looking at it steadily, and realised that I should have bought the services of the protector much earlier: before its first fall last winter, when its back cover had been ripped apart painfully from its body, and which I put back together quite casually; before what should have been understood as an accident was misconstrued as sadism; before my phone felt it was being pushed to the brink, though not quite literally.

I'd wanted to get to work earlier than usual, so I hurriedly put the phone back, into my pant pocket this time, and continued on. It was only after I reached the shower room did I realise that everything was not hunky-dory. My phone refused to talk to the network, and stubbornly gave me a 'No signal' message. Even after I'd gone through the usual routine: switched it off, pulled the battery out, re-inserted the SIM, put the battery and back-cover back on. I let it go then, but noticed after my shower, with much relief, that it had decided to accept that its destiny and mine were inextricably entwined, and that the least it could do in that case was to resume its dialogue with my carrier's network.

It had bruises to remind me of the morning's incident, but other than that, it seemed none the worse for the experience. I, on the other hand, was much chastised, but I smiled. These things tend to work out eventually. Especially if there's a near-death experience involved.

Kindle: First Impressions

The first thing that struck me with the Kindle was its display. The welcome text was, as many other people have also mentioned, not on the transparent sheet covering the display, it was the display! Outstanding, and very paper-like (which means that you need some light to read the Kindle in).

Buying books from Amazon is easy and over the air as expected. What's a tad difficult is finding free, contemporary ebooks ;-) Project Gutenberg and its various off-shoots are nice, but they don't quite cut it if you're looking for Freakonomics or Blink! or ... catch my point?

Kindle plays nice with many popular formats, but sadly, that doesn't include PDFs. I'm told that PDF handling has improved significantly since the first generation of Kindles, but there's certainly a long way to go before it gets as easy and natural to read PDFs on the Kindle as it is to read MOBI or HTML files. Fortunately, thanks to a heads-up from a friend, I now use the free ebook library management program Calibre which helps me overcome difficulties with Kindle-unfriendly formats. Calibre converts ebooks into a great variety of formats specific to your favourite ebook reader. I'm happy now!

Transferring books to your Kindle is as easy as copying stuff over the supplied USB cable. If you prefer Wifi, then all you'll need to do is send the ebooks over to your Kindle's email address and the Kindle will download them when you're connected to a Wifi network. Alternatively, if you're flush with money and don't know how to spend it, you could give it away, £0.10 at a time per MB, to Amazon's Whispernet service which will deliver it over their excellent 3G network.

A feature that I find very handy is the built in dictionary. Using it is quite intuitive: you move the cursor over to the desired word, and a small hint / tool-tip pops up at the top or bottom with the meaning of the word. If you'd like to read the full entry, just press the 'Return' key on the keypad.

No review of the Kindle can be complete without the superb feature called synchronisation. In one stroke, Amazon ensures that you can read your ebooks - from wherever you last left them - on any supported device, and even on your PC. How? Use the Kindle application for your favourite device. There's a catch however: it seems as if books that you transfer through USB don't get synchronised (well, they didn't get synchronised on my Android). I'll update this post later if I'm proved wrong.

Ideas for a browser

I was reading this page by Paul Graham, and it inspired me to think of an idea for the second of his "types of ideas". About how people interact with web browsers in particular, and the Web itself, in general.

When I open up my browser, it usually opens up a bunch of tabs, left-overs from my previous browsing session. At any given point in time, I find myself having to choose between a dozen tabs. But that's just me - I constantly consume news from the world of technology and science, not to mention sports. And of course, that foremost of all Internet applications, email. Your mileage will most probably vary.

The way people use browsers varies according to the individual. While I go about opening tabs using keyboard shortcuts (and customising them to my fingers' content), some may steadfastly stick to using their mice; still others will use mouse gestures. And then there are folks who may have just woken up since the time of Jack the Ripper - uh, I actually meant after competing with Rip van Winkle - who may be wondering what this thingummy called a browser is, or what it has got to do with a tab; in their time, people used the word 'tab' in phrases like 'pick up the tab'. What they may not know also is that most browsers are free these days, so there's no need to pick up any tab on account of browser software. Unless you are using a touch screen, in which case you may pick up a tab and move it somewhere. Anyway, the long and short of it all is that people are different, and that is reflected in the way they use software too. But then, you knew that already, right?

So, as I was saying (or going to say, if you've noticed my cheeky digression), one could think of a browser that behaves and appears differently depending on who's using it; dons different hats, so to speak (or incarnates in a different avatar, if you're into Indian mysticism and that sort of thing). If a power user uses it, the browser skins itself in a certain way, does exactly what the user asks of it, and then gets out of the way. When the grandparents of the said user use it, it turns itself into a hyper-user-friendly form, and guides them at every (mis)step, gently eases them into surfing the Net with lesser and lesser effort. When their children - parents of the original power user - use it, it adopts an neutral viewpoint and vacillates - like a woman who can't make up, among other things, her mind - between being a know-it-all and an ignoramus. In other words, it morphs itself yet again.

Would that not be a wonderful thing? Software that adapts its behaviour to a user's capability and / or knowledge levels. It would make the software appear to be intelligent, just like people appear to be intelligent these days - until you hear them talk, when such illusions are hastily shattered; some say it's only because sound travels slower than light that such illusions are caused in the first place. Well, it's not my place to comment on other people, being humble as you know me to be. What I will say, in conclusion, and in an assertive manner (not to be confused with pride) is that this is an idea worth pursuing, and if you're interested, I'd be happy to collaborate with you in this.

The End has begun

One of the greatest streaks in sport has been broken. The man who has stridden the tennis world like a Goliath - with the 'lesser' Goliath occasionally bringing him down - has fallen by the wayside in a Grand Slam. The last time this happened was nearly six years ago. That is an incredible, mind-boggling 260-odd weeks! His records speak for themselves.

The slide which led to the eventual fall today - if you can call a failure to reach the semi-finals stage of a Grand Slam for the 24th successive time that - began late last year, when the Federer Express was jolted to a halt at the US Open in the finals. It was the very first Grand Slam final that Federer had lost to a man not named Nadal. Quite uncharacteristically, he was smiling broadly after that loss, downplaying it, and pointing out that he had had a fantastic year, having won the French Open for the first (and perhaps, only) time in his career, and capping his year by regaining his beloved Wimbledon crown. Gone was the sour mood that one would be able to detect during the mandatory press conference (after yet another Grand Slam loss to Nadal) and, arguably, the burning desire to win. Though his next Grand Slam success, at this year's Australian Open, was definitely not a fluke, I couldn't shake off the feeling that the man had lost his intensity, the hunger that fuels the greatest of champions to keep going long after the good and very good players have stopped trying.

What a fanciful mistress fate can be. Nobody who had seen Federer weep after losing the 2009 Australian Open to Nadal would have dared imagine that the year would be what it turned out to be for him. When Nadal was beaten by Soderling at the French Open, the tennis fraternity collectively held its breath wondering if this would be the year that Federer would finally break through at the only Grand Slam to be noticeably absent in his masterful collection. Not only did he win it, he went on to win Wimbledon - to some players, the only Grand Slam that matters - probably aided by a serious knee problem that afflicted Nadal. (It will probably go down as the only time in history that two different players have won the French-Wimbledon double in successive years: Nadal did it the previous year, ironically at Federer's expense.)

With the Wimbledon title back in his hands, he also overtook Pete Sampras as the all-time leader of Grand Slam singles title winners, 15 in all. And then, surprisingly for many - including myself - he lost the US Open final to del Potro who, it turned out, was playing an inspired game. However, with no disrespect to the Argentinian, Federer simply wouldn't have lost a final on the hard courts of Flushing Meadows - perhaps not even to Nadal - had it been any other year. But then again, 2009 was not any other year. It was the year he won the career Slam; the year he regained his throne at The Championships; and perhaps most importantly for him as a person, the year he became a father.

There's nothing left for Federer to prove as far as tennis records go. He has already won more Grand Slam singles titles than any man, dead or alive; he holds the record of appearing in 10 consecutive Grand Slam singles finals, and 23 Grand Slam semi-finals; he has been ranked the ATP world No.1 for a record 237 consecutive weeks (the next best is Jimmy Connors, at a 'mere' 160); and he has the best year-end win-loss record next only to John McEnroe's. One could argue that unless he improves his win-loss record with Nadal, or win a calendar Grand Slam, he cannot be called the greatest ever, but if you ask me, those will be mere footnotes in tennis history.

To be sure, I'm not suggesting that Federer's days as a Grand Slam winner are behind him; he may still win a handful, especially when challenged by players who lack self-belief (Andy Murray comes to mind). But against players like del Potro and Soderling - he's more likely to lose than he has in the past, not only because they're exceptionally strong players, but also because the stakes are not as high for him as they were until last year. The King is not exactly dead, but his days as the best currently active player are definitely coming to an end.

For a few pounds more

Some of my friends know me as an open Mac admirer. I just love the Macintosh computer, from the way it looks to the way it operates. Not just beautiful to look at, but well thought out too (the latter is more important to me). But I've never owned a Mac all my life. Not an iMac / eMac, not a MacBook. Heck, I have never even purchased the omnipresent iPod, opting for a more feature-rich, but relatively obscure, iRiver instead. Why do I love products that I'll not buy? Or, to put it another way, why do I not buy products that I appear to admire so much? My reason is pretty simple: I'm not convinced that the premium I pay for an Apple product is worth the difference in quality and features. Call me a feature-junkie or a cheapskate, but I'll perhaps never buy an electronic gadget that's overpriced simply because it's cuter than all its competitors.

Case in point: a MacBook Pro. At a quick glance, a MacBook Pro (MBP for short) has more or less the same features as a MacBook, but is priced about £150 more. When you look closer to see why, you'll realise that it boils down to the following differences:

1. 2 GB RAM
2. FireWire 800
3. SD card reader

(see the Related Article link at the bottom of this post for more details). The first of these - the extra 2 GB RAM is easily got for about £46 pounds from Crucial. I honestly don't care much about a FireWire port (though you may), and a portable, reliable USB SD card reader costs just a few £s. Oh, and the MBP also weighs a few grams less. About 90, to be precise.

There! Notice how Apple indulges in obscene profiteering? What's really surprising is the number of people who see enough value in its products to plonk down 50% or more (than a comparable PC) to buy them. Is it then any wonder that Apple's profits are increasing every year? I mean, every quarter?

This is why I'll never, ever, buy an Apple product! Not while I can't afford to throw away money, anyway ;-)

UPDATE: A few friends have questioned my sanity after reading this post. Well, not quite; let's say they have questioned my rationale <g> To them, I say: an iMac (the "basic" 21.5" version @ GBP 969) makes more sense to me

Annoying Ubuntu Problem Solved

As is usually turning out to be the case with these things, I have found a solution to a problem that I had been facing on Ubuntu (Karmic Koala) in the excellent Ubuntu forums. The problem was this: the quick search bar on Synaptic was greyed out and unusable. Thanks to forum members, it's now resolved. Head on over to the link below to see the solution.

In brief, it's the case of a missing package, though why it stopped working one fine day is beyond me. Oh well, software will never be perfect I guess. Nor will human beings!

New iPad idea

Note to book and magazine publishers: this is an idea that's worth listening to, and if you go ahead and implement it, all I ask you is for a few free ebooks a year. Deal?

I've been thinking about app ideas for the newly launched, but somewhat embarrassingly named, Apple iPad. One of this device's personal let-downs for me was the rather underwhelming iBooks app. Nothing wrong with the app itself: it's stylish, and has the classic Apple touch. However, I was expecting something ground-breaking; something revolutionary for ebooks, something akin to what iTunes did for music. Alas, that was not to be! But the beauty of the iPhones and their bigger-sized cousins is not in the device itself; rather, it's in the fantastic applications (more than 140,000, Apple tells us) that have made them the stars of the smartphone market. And so it is that my idea is not about any tweaks to the device itself. Intrigued? Read on.

The trouble with ebook readers in their present form is, again, not their form factor, or their display, or any of their hardware characteristic. Rather, it's the ebook delivery model that's flawed. No one in their right mind seriously thinks that ebooks should be priced at $10 (or their global currency equivalent). So, while it's admirable that Amazon steps up to the publishers and challenges them, it's not going to resolve anything until the publishers choose to not commit the same folly as their counterparts in the movie and music business: miss the forest for the trees. You see, while the global market for books may not be as big as that for music and movies, it's still huge. Empirically, however, one of the barriers to an even higher readership is the price and availability of books, and that is something book publishers cannot afford to lose sight of. In India, for example, in many major cities, unauthorised copies of books are sold on pavements for a fraction of the price of the original, and people - even the ones who can afford the originals - buy them. The reason in the case of most such books is that the perceived value of those books is far less than what the publishers had in mind. Enter book rentals.

Book rentals are not, strictly speaking, a new idea. The concept of lending libraries is at least a hundred years old, and in western countries, public libraries lend books free of charge. However, this is where the delivery mechanism comes in. Imagine a device like the iPad - or even the Kindle or Nook for that matter - being able to offer book rentals, for an amount as small as a few cents a book. After all, the cost of creating copies of ebooks is infinitesimal, especially as compared to the cost of printing a physical book. Thus, while the publisher doesn't really incur any cost in making an e-copy, he would incur a small profit for each subscriber that 'borrows' the book. And, unlike with physical copies of books, the customer could be allowed to keep the book for as long as he / she wants. This only makes sense when you remember that while there may only be limited copies of a book in a library, the number of e-copies of a book can be virtually infinite. Thus, more people than ever before can read the latest bestseller, and (electronic) book stands need never put up 'Out of stock' notices on their store fronts.

To me, the notion that this is a win-win situation for everyone concerned is a no-brainer. The subscriber gets to read all the books he wants, when he wants, where he wants (on his iPad, iPhone, computer, Kindle),and publishers get a good profit for each electronic copy that cost them nothing to produce. As an added benefit, there are no vendors, middle-men, retail channels, distribution headaches, etc. to worry about.

Is anything not to like? Is anyone listening?

Opera 10.50 developer preview blows away the competition!

My favourite browser has just helped me overcome the Javascript envy that I was secretly nursing for a long time now (after the Javascript browser wars began): it was lagging behind in the speed benchmarks that mattered, viz., Sunspider (and more recently, Google's V8 Benchmark suite). No longer is this the case as this brand new version beats even the venerable Chrome on my machine (and presumably on other computers as well). See for yourself:

• Sunspider results for Opera 10.50
• V8 results for Opera 10.50 (screenshot)
• Sunspider results for Google Chrome 4.0.266 (developer stream)
• V8 results for Google Chrome 4.0.266 (developer stream) (screenshot)

Of course, this is just a pre-alpha version, but the results are impressive, even in the V8 tests devised by Google (Chrome comes out on top, but I won't be surprised to see it eating the dust soon!)

The headphone problem with Android 1.5 phones

Weird problem to have with a phone, and is yet another eye-opener for me. Plugging a headphone into your phone doesn't somehow automatically make it aware of the headphone; you need software to make it aware, and that software for Android 1.5 phones is now here. Okay, let me now describe the problem a bit more in detail.

I'd got a HTC Hero phone (yes, shamelessly lured by the Android promise) about a couple of months ago. I had been a happy user with lots of applications installed, uninstalled, regularly used, etc. Happy, that is, until my headphones stopped working about a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure when exactly it stopped working, nor am I sure whether it was after installing the last.fm application from Android Market, but stop it did. Until yesterday, I was confident that it was something to do with hardware. (Had my brain worked, though, I shouldn't have been so confident.) In fact, I remained confident even after a friend casually mentioned that it might be something do with some setting on my phone (this was justified as there isn't any such setting of course).

However, after calling T-Mobile customer care yesterday and agreeing to send my phone off to repair at a nearby T-Mobile store, I woke up early this morning, unable to sleep further (since I'd hit the sack last night at an unusual hour for me - 8 pm! (Or was it 9? Can't quite remember!)). Anyway, as I was surfing, I stumbled on to this thread and realised, again, that I - or rather, my phone - was not afflicted with a unique problem (tangentially, here's a thought: can phones be afflicted with problems, even if they happen to be called Android?). Two things are immediately clear:

1. This is a widespread-enough problem that a fix should to be included in the Android 2.0 update
2. There's a fix available today!

What should also be clear to developers is the extent to which software controls nearly every aspect of the phones that we use, even down to recognising if a headphone has been plugged into those tiny devices that we've come to love.

HP leads the list of most troublesome laptops

I knew this way back in 2004 when I bought my first laptop, a used Compaq 2500. By then, HP had acquired and assimilated Compaq and its products, enough to tarnish the once-reputable Compaq brand (with its Armada brand of tough road-warrior laptops. My knowledge was further reinforced when I foolishly decided to give HP the benefit of doubt and purchase my second laptop a couple of years later, this time an AMD-powered one.

Different processor, same result: trouble with the hardware components. While my first laptop's display conked out twice, yes TWICE in two years, my newer laptop's Wi-fi card decided to vanish one fine day from Windows' device list. A visit to an HP service centre (that is a tale for another day!) revealed that there was some hardware/software problem which was sorted out, thankfully, without my having to pay them anything. Anyway, the link below will give you a statistical reason why you should never, ever, go in for an HP laptop if you can help it.

My current laptop? A Dell Inspiron 1525.

The Ubuntu Journey

Remember I mentioned that I was going to try and switch over to using Linux - and Ubuntu in particular - full-time? Well, that effort is into the second week and going strong. Stronger, I should have said, since I've switched over to Ubuntu at the workplace as well. And I'm enjoying every minute of it. What with eye candy like Wobbly Windows, built-in support for Last.fm in Rhythmbox, why wouldn't I? (And yes, the icon of the clouds that you see on the top panel in this screenshot is that of a weather widget. There are weather widgets that sit on your desktop on Windows (built-in in Vista and Win7), Mac and every other OS, but I like this one for its unobtrusiveness.)

Using a computer is so much fun again. The only instance when I had to boot into Windows was when a DVD misbehaved, and wouldn't play on Rhythmbox. I'm positive it would have played on VLC, but I hate that program, and so didn't install it. Haven't done yet, and never will probably.

Bugs Bunny, yes, but bug funny?

Yes indeed! I mirthfully submit, ladies and gentlemen, Bug Funny!

Karmic Koala

That's the name of the Operating System that I'm running. It's the latest version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution that has taken the pride of place on my laptop. It's a long story, but here it is in a nutshell: I got tired of paying for every bit of software on my machine when I could get the same, similar or better quality software for free.

And thus it is that I'm into my second day of using Linux as my primary operating system. I've attempted this in the past, but my resolve then wasn't up to much - I'd always switch back to Windows, because that's what I was most comfortable with. No, I'm not a Linux newbie, and have played with Linux right from the day when the Indian computer magazine PC Quest used to promote Linux as a toy for geeks. I've had my share of long nights out installing, configuring and troubleshooting various distros, but never have my attempts at replacing Windows been successful. So, how is it different this time?

Firstly, the quality and number of programs that are now available on Linux have increased tremendously since those days. In fact, over the last few years, there has been a tremendous amount of momentum behind this Debian-based Linux distribution called Ubuntu. I got sucked into the Ubuntu wave about four years ago (when Hoary Hedgehog and Breezy Badger were the latest versions), but it hasn't been mature enough for me until now. Secondly, my reasons for using a computer these days are primarily to surf the Net, check email, chat using Instant Messengers and occasionally, program. For the last mentioned last, I've started using Eclipse, after much reluctance (yeah, there's no love lost between me and Java). Lastly, I like alliterations :-)

So, how long will this latest attempt of mine last? Forever, I hope. At any rate, I'll keep you posted. In the meanwhile, here is a screenshot of my desktop:

P.S. Does this mean the end of Windows on my computer? No, Windows will always live forever. Er, I mean, I'll have it around, just in case I run into a situation where I don't have a replacement for / equivalent of a Windows program. But for the time being though, my Karmic endeavour begins.

Strange Google logo

I saw this

on the Google search results page today. Notice what’s unusual?

No? There are two l’s instead of just one. What was even more weird was this:

Again, did you notice the options on the left? I’ve seen this in the list of features introduced through Google Experimental, but on the main search results page? Something’s definitely cooking!

What’s up Google?

Update: This is what was up. Thanks to a well-informed reader for the heads up.