Mu's Thoughts

Friday, March 31, 2006

Radiation Jeans

In light of the recent craze with protection from mobile phone radiation. I'm surprised there hasn't been more products from major brands targeting this craze. I'm sure many paranoid people would buy Levis jeans with pockets that have built in radiation protection. After all, that is where a mobile phone sits most of the time.

April Fools Day Tomorrow

I eagerly await tomorrow's Google and maybe Apple product announcements. :)

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Google = Flea Market?

The way Google does e-commerce seems very ad-hoc. Google's services such as Google Base and Google Video can be compared to a large flea market. While, Amazon, iTunes Music Store and even eBay retain some resemblance to a regular store.

Some points common to the Google offerings
  • Anyone can upload items
  • Little moderation
  • Plain sterile interface
  • Little information regarding sellers
Compared to other online stores
  • Items sold are tightly controlled
  • Diverse interface (especially iTunes)
  • Much information regarding sellers
Considering these points it is clear that buying from Google is like buying from Market City, Sydney. While iTunes may be compared to David Jones.

Online shopping is still in its infancy. I am undecided which method will be more successful in the future. However, Google stores aren't very appealing currently as there the same trust in the seller found in other stores.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Evolution Groupware

Evolution groupware is probably Windows' most needed software. There is simply a lack of good Personal Information Managers (PIM) in Windows. Sure, Outlook is great. But it is also lacking in several key areas.
  • It doesn't support IMAP folders well.
  • It doesn't thread IMAP requests (results in everything freezing while it looks for new mail).
  • It is slow and bulky.
But, apart from that, it does the job quite well.

Thunderbird is a great mail client. However, it doesn't have a calendar. There are projects building a calendar for Thunderbird. But, they are far from complete.

I have discovered people who are porting Evolution to Windows. However, they are also in very early stages. If only they could hurry up before I go crazy and switch to Linux.

Setting goals

We are often told to set goals or our life. But who actually does this? It frequently seems like you are wasting more time than you save from setting goals.

After much thought, I have come to realize that like any successful project, planning in life is important. Doing tasks as you remember them will result in not much being done.

One simple method is to think for 5 minutes when you get up in the morning (I hope it is morning) about what you have to do for the day. When the day is over, think again. Did you do those tasks? If not, think about why. This may seem normal to me as I do a lot of thinking (day dreaming). However, I'm sure some of you may also agree with me.

Monday, March 27, 2006

Gmail Groups?

Gmail and Google Talk are great, but they both seem unfinished. I'm hoping this is due to the "beta" labels.

A missing feature from both are the ability to converse with multiple people simutaneously. However, recent developments lead me to think there may be a change occurring soon. The recent acquisition of Writely has been publicized as Google entering the office software market. However, Writely is also big on collaboration features. Could collaboration be the next big step Google takes? I think so.

Imagine the seamless integration of Google groups, GMail, GTalk, Google Calendar(?) and Google Local into one package. It would make online and offline collaboration much easier. Online meetings can be by any medium voice, email or IM. Offline meetings can be scheduled and planed seamlessly with Calendar and Local. This enhances the usefulness of the current Google services greatly.

The April 1st Google announcement may not be so big. But who know what may happen next year.

Thoughts

From now on this blog will be a posting of my day to day thoughts .