Google Chrome

Google has always been near and dear for many. Most of us spend half or more time of our web browsing/surfing with google and its product be it gtalk, gmail, orkut, google search, youtube, google maps, blog and the list goes on. While it is so inspiring to learn about how a search engine: google, which was started by 2 young college students Page and Brin, became the most popular search engine purely with the help of word of mouth or in management terms Viral Marketing to its founders one of the youngest billionairs - it is also equally interesting to see how google constantly innovates and strives in the market to maintain its lead.



Google clearly broke the first mover advantage myth by entering a market filled with experience and competition - Web browser. For years Microsoft and Firefox has fought each other constantly striving and improving to succeed better in this market making it a huge entry barrier for new comers. How many time browsers have any of you heard in the past other than IE, Firefox, safari. Almost none and even if any they perished soon.



Google has change it all by showing the world that a mere fresh thought, a new look, a clear young mind can be the biggest strength to overcome the entry barrier build over years.

From Olympics to Countries

Today, with no major work to be done and no pending work, I decide to do some research to gain some general knowledge. I will take you through my transition from IE8 to Olympics to Countries as I mention the facts I learnt.

As Internet explorer 8 was fresh in my mind I decided to start off with it. After a few "googling" I came across a selection based search result application called "Kallout" - sounds cool right! This application claims to be the first in market to help browser experience easier and faster by providing similar services of accelerator in IE8 i had talked about.
I checked out the website http://kallout.com/ and found the feature pretty interesting. I was thrilled when I saw that this can be intergrated with other application in your computer like excel, powerpoint, outlook and guess what you can have the same feature of accelerator in IE8. Pretty cool stuff right. Fed up with the IE8 beta, which requires me to press the compatibility button ever time I need to use internal page links in Wikipedia, I decide to uninstall it.
Control Panel->select IE8->Remove->Restart.
With IE8 out of my computer I downloaded the Kallout but din't want to install in my company computer for security reason, I started checking out the Microsoft's Live Map. I was seeing United states and as I zoomed out I saw the US label disappear and North and South America Label appear. I was shocked. Slowly I came to know that it displays the diffenrent continents as you zoom out unlike google maps.
Thus I happened to see the different continents in Wikipedia (though I had known it before). I discovered that there are different types of continent classification in the world. Most claim 7 continents and others 6,5,4 all by clubbing one or the other continent. As I read through I found this sentence
The six-continent combined-America model is taught in Latin America, Iran and some parts of Europe including Iberian Peninsula and Greece. This model may be taught to include only the five inhabited continents (excluding Antarctica)[20][21] — as depicted in the Olympic logo.
Whats this... did it say Olympic Logo? Cool, So

FACT 1: The five olympic logo represent 5 continents viz. America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia.
So there I started to research on Olympics. As I read through I discovered the founder's name, where and how the Olympic torch is lit, and wats special about Sydney Olympics

FACT 2: Pierre de Coubertine is the founder of Olympics

FACT 3: The olympic torch is lit with the Sun's ray and parabolic mirror beforw it is taken around the world.

FACT 4: In Olympics 2000 (Sydney) Torch was taken underwater

Having read the different continents I got reminded of a country which is surrounded in all four sides with another country - Yes, a country inside a country.

Most might have guessed one such country - Vatican City inside Italy, but I knew another country

FACT 5: Lesotho is a country inside South Africa.

Thus I started searching about such countries and I found out that such countries are called enclave. If country A lies inside country B, then A is B's enclave.

FACT 6: The only countries which are landlocked and enclave of another country are

Vatican City - Italy's enclave, Lesotho - South Africa's enclave and San Marino - Italy's enclave.

FACT 7: That means Italy has two countries inside it. A really good information right

I got to know about these countries through wikipedia and you might want to do the same.

Did you know Vatican City is the smallest country with area of .44 km2

Internet Explorer 8:

Internet Explorer 8(Beta):
I became curious to install the IE8 and experience the new features. So I installed and started using these features.

After a short experience I found many advantages and disadvantages in Internet explorer 8
Some of the good features I like were
1. The address bar Highlights only the web site name in the web address making it very easy to identify which website you are in.
For example: www.blogger.com/blog-this.G?t=internet+explorer+.................(so on) is the actual address but IE8 highlights BLOGGER.COM only
2. Colored tabs for easy classification
3. Accelerator: one of the key feature of this version - If many are wondering what it could be - then try this: it is nothing but a quick finder
This is similar to finding synonyms of a word in MS Word- In MS Word we highlight the text and right click and select synonyms to get a list of synonyms
Similarly you can highlight the word in the IE8 and the accelerator button will appear with list of services you had selected. This will help you to find definitions, locate address on maps, blog on the topic, translate a word to other languages etc.

For eg: I highlighted services and scrolled to Define when I got its meaning in a small extended window. This can be used to find places on MAPS, translation of words etc. A wonderful feature which reduces the copy paste and search if we need any further details on a word/topic.

Nothing comes without pitfalls
1. Microsoft has used Accelerator strategy to increase its service popularity over Google.
In IE8 the accelerators get quick views only for Microsoft's services like Live Maps, MSN search, Define, Microsoft translator etc.
Now who will search for a meaning in Google which has to be opened in a new window rather than just using the MSN Encarta? Below is an example of the accelerator feature. Observe the same word if selected with "define with Encarta" shows the definition immediately while "Define with Google" doesn't. This will have some impact on Google search.
Hope this gets changed in IE8 original version.

2. Lastly I dint like the IE8 looks when compared to IE7. I changed to IE8(beta) and found the looks duller than IE7

3. I found a new bug in Internet Explorer 8 - The table of contents/Internal links/bookmark links don't work in the normal mode - one has to change it to compatable mode by pressing the button near the address bar.

For eg: try going to a Wikipedia page with IE8 and click on any of the table of contents of a topic. It won't take you to the topic in the same page. Once the compatibility view button is pressed then the page reloads and then the links to topics within the page works.

Do post your comments n experience. Any other drawbacks you observed?