How to test Internet Explorer 7 without installing it

This is what I love things in Windows environment, when I can try something without really installing and making it integrated part of my Operating System. I have installed IE7 Beta 2 on my main computer after asking my friends who have been using IE 7 beta for a while. But I would love to try something new without really installing it and making it a integrated part of my operating system. Google Operating System posts a trick on how to try IE 7 without installing it get some feel of the new browser. Although the author makes it clear that not all the functionality would be working in using his stated method without installing IE 7 completely. Of course another way to try IE 7 without installing it on your production system would be to use Virtual machine by using VMWare or Microsoft Virtual PC or other similar products.

Favorites in your Messenger

It is a neat idea to have favorites in the web messenger itself. Dare Obasanjo posts a picture of the upcoming Windows Live Messenger where we will have favorites as a part of Windows Live Messenger itself. It will be even more better when we will be able to share our favorites from within the messenger itself or forward it to them. There is so much more that can be done with this feature as well. If they have a feature where other people are allowed to search the favorites of other people with their permission and a good search functionality in the messenger itself. That sounds like a good feature to me. I hope they do something extra ordinary with Windows Live Favorites, because as it is now, I don't think the advance users are even going to try the service (me included)!

Microsoft to bring on "Live Drive"

So far we have heard about Google's GDrive now Microsoft is joining the band wagon as well. Microsoft might soon be coming out with Live Drive where people will be able to upload their documents so that they can access them from anywhere. That's a good news for users as now having this competition we will be able to see so more feature rich service. The main thing I want is an application which sync. with my desktop computer straight away and where when I search the email it should be able to search through the online files as well.

Microsoft to bring on "Live Drive"

So far we have heard about Google's GDrive now Microsoft is joining the band wagon as well. Microsoft might soon be coming out with Live Drive where people will be able to upload their documents so that they can access them from anywhere. That's a good news for users as now having this competition we will be able to see so more feature rich service. The main thing I want is an application which sync. with my desktop computer straight away and where when I search the email it should be able to search through the online files as well.

AirSet should have done better before

Talking of Calendars I don't think as many people know and talk about AirSet as they talk about 30Boxes or Google Calendar. I have been using Airset for a while now and still use to manage my contacts (Google does not do a good job at it). Should we just say that AirSet did not do a good job getting a word about their fantastic services they are providing. Lately I have noticed that AirSet has made many improvement specially with their UI. It now looks and feel more dynamic. The speed is good too and it nearly offers all the main feature that Google Calendar is offering (ofcourse without the feature of creating events straight from Gmail ). It already has the feature of Group Calendars, inviting others to the events, sharing calendar with people etc. fetures in it. Above all it does a good job of Syncing with Outlook and sync. both contacts and calendar. As people have been asking to add a feature of "To_Do" list in Google Calendar, they have it there too. Calendar can be shared via an RSS feed etc. etc. One can email contacts straight from AirSet itself. Overall the point is they have made a great tool but only if they could have done a better job with marketing about AirSet and it's capabilities. 30Boxes might be light in the UI but does not come anywhere near AirSet in terms of feature richness. Reading the support thread on AirSet they are excellent too. It will be interesting to see if there are any statistics about usage os Calendars such as AirSet after the launch of Google Calendars. I think AirSet is a great product but will loose a lot of base because of Google Calendar and it never reached to millions of others as they never marketed themselves better. A lesson to learn, don't assume people will start using your service just because you are a great service! But Goodluck to AirSet and hope to see them at the top.

Google Calendar Review

So in my last post I wrote about Google Calendar after few minutes of it's open availability. I have got to using Google Calendar a bit since then (although not as much as I would like, more to 'WHY'of that later in the post). To start with this review, I think it is way better in terms of some functionlities then I expected.User Interface rocks.
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Google Calendar is a searhable calendar service where you can track of events of your life and happenings in other people's life. You can share the events of the life with others. With Google Calendar service one can share the calendar with other, create multiple calendars, subsribe to other people's calendar and depending on permissions interact with the calendar, invite others to events using Google Calendar system, track invitations (RSVP), Publish events etc. etc. Google Calendar is very swiftly integrated within Gmail Service and can be accessed via Mobile Services.
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When one signs up for Google Calendar on Google, the default Calendar one gets will be with his name which is private by default, meaning only the owner of the account has access to it. With Google Calendar one has the ability to add more then one Calendar in his account. More then one calendar might be needed when we need personal calendar, management of common family events, Business/job related calendaring, sharing events with friends/family/bloggers etc. etc. Adding new calendars is simple allowing with some level of security permissions if we are sharing the same calendar with other people who can view, add or edit events in the calendar.
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The interface is Ajax based and is thus quite fast for the requirements most of the times. The UI is appealing as with most of the Google Products. Oh, almost forgot to add that the Calendar is free above everything else!! Adding new events is one click away.
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Whereas editing events is two clicks away! There are few different views that we get to select from. The views at the top include 'Today','Week','Month','Next x Days' & Agenda.
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The Google Calendar Control Panel (Settings Window) gives quite a few important options at this stage.
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Among important others the one that I like is the feature of notifications for different things. I really like the feature of SMS to mobile, but it's sad sad that they only have support for it in US at this stage and not other countries. The option other countries have at this stage is of email which is still good I think. One can import calendar events from other tools like Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo, iCal and from XML based files. Now there are many many Calendaring web services on the Internet that does quite a few of the features as discussed above. But the ease and speed at which we can do in Google is what attracts me. The fact that I can invite others straight from within Gmail or Calendar system itself for an event is just great. I can track who is coming and who is not. To the events if I have shared it with others or myself alone, I can put comments for the event, meaning that this is a really helpful tool. I think for me this will really come handy, if I have an event which occurs over an extended period of time, I can do something towards that appointment, write notes as comments and then refer to those events later on. I hope these comments are searcable as well although I have not tried it yet. Now to the things I desperately seek in Google Calendar are two main things at this stage: 1. Sync. tool with Microsoft Outlook which in turn will sync. the Calendar and contacts with my Mobile phone and this is very important as I do not have the facility of accessing Google Calendar over the Internet as of yet 2. A contact management tool like Plaxo or Airset contact list. I did hear somebody else say this on his blog as well. The problem I have for now is I use Airset for Contact Management which sync. just fine with Outlook which in turns sync. with my mobile and Plaxo. Gmail's Contact system is not at all to the expectations, although we can import the contacts, but it not what is really a great sub product. So for this I use Airset (great product by the way) and I use to use Airset for Calendaring things as well. Now I don't see myself still keep using Airset Calendar for a long time (many obvious reasons), but I will still extensively rely on Airset for my online Contact Management Service (way too fast then Plaxo I think and more better as well). So now what we need is a good contact management system at Google (it never ends, does it?) For more help on Google Calendar, check out it's help pages. I think it is good to start with. I am looking forward to some more features that Google will keep on adding as the time goes by, but a good sync. tool with Outlook is what we need for now. Also am looking forward to all the new services and tools that will revolve around Google Calendar ;).

Portable Playlist

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Portable Playlist is online player where you can add podcasts and online music and create a playlist and play it from anywhere. One can also search online music using inbuilt Music Search function from Blogdigger. Much can be tool with this tool and much more can be improved as in terms of the feature. The important features I will like to see for now as follows: - 1. Ability to share playlist with other users 2. A personalised page where I can list my playlists and which shows as to what I am currently playing 3. The RSS feed can be better structured 4. If I can share my playlist with users of other desktop players or online players that would be awesome. 5. Feature of adding tags to playlists 6. Searchable playlists Goodluck to the developers. I loved the speed and the Ajax based effects.