AJAX

AJAX
Originally uploaded by baybay12.

This is not technology - Asynchronous Javascript And XML - I am using, but the detergent.

Do I really need Google?

Updated on (11/2/05)
Abandon one more service from Google - Google map. Tried the Yahoo! Map beta last night. It is so great! All my favorite services: Drag to move map, saved addresses, smooth zoom-in zoom-out, LIVE TRAFFIC and nearby business, etc. If you are not using Yahoo! Map, try out the new beta!

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Original (8/4/05)
Yesterday (it was 7/20 when I wrot the draft), Google launched google moon which adds some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface in honor of the first manned Moon landing. It hits news again. Toady GOOG stock price hits $317.08, an extremely overvalued and unbelievable number.

Google is a great company. Best of all, it is COOL. Every of their products or betas is COOL. Maybe it should change name to Coogle -:) But do I really need google? I don't remember when I convert to yahoo search because of some personal emotions. But I checked my search history for July :

1) Google search (web, image, group): 6 out of 21 days. Total search number is less than 10
2) Yahoo search: 17 out 21 days. total search number is over 50.

The google service I heavily used is Gmail. A great product with excellent UI. The google service I prefer to use it Google map and Google group. Google map has the cool drag moving feature and google group has the excellent search capabitilty for the technical discussions. when I do the shopping, I like to use froogle. When I edit the photo, I use Picasa. When I blog, I use blogger. To my surprise, I still very heavily rely on the google service although not their critical search service. I thought that I can dump google, but it seems that I couldn't. Why?

1) Technology: google map, gmail and Picasa. Google wins on their excellent user-friendly UI.
2) Marketing: they are good at creating buzz words. Blogger's technology is fair. But it is famous, so I choose it. After using it, I realize that it has lots of function limitations. But I am too lazy to move my blog. Furthermore, google has a new beta service almost every month. Maybe not lots of people using these beta services, but they attact the media and brings Google highest exposure to the public. So their brand name and stock price rockets.
3) Diversified: if they are still a search-only company, I am out. But Google aquired lots of diversified companies, blogger, pisaca, keyhole, dodgeball, etc. So it lures the unloyal customer like me :)

Yes, I like Google which has lots of cool features. But I won't die without it. There are lots of Google rivals out there. Google's future is not that promising ......

Microsoft Live.com vs. Netvibes.com

Briefly tried out the microsoft live.com which is supposed to be the microsoft's big move to the web 2.0. But a little bit dissappointed because there are no surprising features + the no surprising message "Firefox Users - Firefox support is coming soon. Please be patient :-)" .

About one or two month ago, netvibes.com has brought user the same or better service.

Chookies are confusing

But software engineers can conquer them :)

Codename: Chookie

Developers: Chookie programmer & Chookie Specialist (or Consultant) Contractor
QAs: All programmer's friends and chookie's friends

Timeframe:
Development: 1 year
Testing: 3 - 6 months ( including 1 month stress testing)

Important builds:
QA drop: tell chookie that I love her
Milestone 1: chookie kisses programmer
Milestone 2: chookie's parent goes banana
RC1: chookie accepts programmer's huge dimand ring
RC2: Wedding invitations are sent

RTM: get married

Future releases: get more and more children