Naveen's Journal

Yahoo and Microsoft to Merge Instant Messengers: “Primotech writes ‘Betanews has word that Microsoft and Yahoo plan to link their respective IM clients again so that users of both can communicate with each other on one, shared network. Facing threats from third-party applications, like Trillian and Skype, the two tech giants will claim 44% of the instant messaging market, analysts predict. They will also go head to head together with the biggest competitor, AOL.’”

G O O G L E …. these are the 6 letters that flashed through your mind after reading the title of this post. HAHAHA. But it isn’t what i’m talking about. So claims Preview Seek , the newest kid on the search engine block, giving a full page description Here , about how it manages to make a claim that will pass on with most netizens as just another stab at Google and justifying scientifically that how it is better than google. Anyways, the frontpage of the site is catchy enough with minimum fuss and but for the colors, it resembles to that of google to a great extent. But the unique and quite useful features that Preview Seek has incorporated, definitely gives a reason to stand up and take notice of it. Specially the categorised search results and the real time search viewer link at the right most corner of the green bar ( It shows the search strings being submitted to the engine from all over the world in real time) are mentionworthy. The company seems to have collaborated with Wikipedia to provide information about the searched items (unless it does not want to get involved in some serious legal battles!) as the results are identical to those provided by the latter. All in all, a good package to start with, and if marketed aggresively, who knows we might have google to do some serious thinking after starting to get some competition …(Did you say “Microsoft and Yahoo are already there!”.. huh, i’m talking about competition, not copy-etition) . What say??

Don’t I love this …. the wars that seem to be going on for ages, and getting fierce by the day, between the self proclaimed saviours of the web & the computing fraternity ( You know i’m referring to the *nix community) and the guys who started it all ( Dear old MS that is), doesn’t seem to be in any mood for a break. Although its been for a long time that these two snap at each other at every possible opportunity and try to demean each other’s achievements, its not often that we, the users have something to really laugh about. Its been around for quite sometime now, but for ignorant souls, here it goes – Firefox was launched by all the anti MS guys and widely campaigned to be the annihilator of IE. So much so, that the official FF site is http://www.getfirefox.com . All affairs being open source and in the public interest, these guys also put up a customary Donate link at the bottom of the page. Now MS waiting for its turn fought back with its own version, http://www.getinternetexplorer.com, a replica of the former, though publicising IE instead of FF. The humour comes now with MS imitating 100% of FF’s site with all the layout and even the links. Just hover your mouse over that donate link and watch the link that it points to in the status bar below! Enjoy for yourself. A screenshot is below.

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W.R.T this post wonder how quick i’ll run into double digit version numbers if MS keeps on emulating Google! The latest on the block is MS’s own Virtual Earth — needless to say, a take on Google Earth. God knows what on earth is making MS lift ideas one after another from Google and shamelessly incorporate in their system, but its for sure that Bill and Co. makes hell of a copier, putting even XEROX to shame! What’s left only i guess is the rechristening of Google Labs into something like …. MSN Labs !

Originals — >> Google IG Google Earth
Copies — >> MSN Start MSN Virtual Earth

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Wow……It can’t get better than this! Now we have two IT titans pitted directly against each other…One which till a few years ago was arguably the undisputed powerhouse of the Software world, and the other, which according to most has dethroned the former and is on course to become the best ever. The two Cos. in question are Microsoft Inc. and Google. Google with its never-even-dreamt-of kinda stuffs like Google Maps and Personalised Homepage (visit Google Labs for more) has become synonymous with cutting-edge technology, and now MS has developed its very own version of Google IG — Start (Preview), quite impressive i must say. Slashdot says, as is evident from a first hand preview – “It looks like Microsoft has quietly put up their version of Google’s start page. It’s interesting in several ways. First, the layout and use of javascript is strikingly similar to Google’s. Second, one of the few major differences is that there is no MS equivalent banner or other flashing indication that it is an MS site.”

Go Here to preview MS START

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Quite amazingly, about 10 mins. ago while i was coding away to glory, a network failure was followed by a sudden reboot of my workstation. Only for that dreaded black screen to be shown at restart laughing at my apathy Network guys diagnosed it as a crash.. and me left with no machine for the time being. Thanks to satty (he’s absent again), i’m sitting on his comp waiting for my machine to be fixed ( hoping to regain all my data too). Dunno what i’ll be working on tomorrow if it isn’t.