Firefox 1.5 released

I've been using Firefox for over 10 months now. I'm quite happy with it as it takes less memory and loads faster than IE. Mozilla officially released version 1.5 yesterday. I hope a whole lot of people will enjoy this.

I automatically got upgraded to 1.5 sometime last week, even without my knowledge. That was superb. I had installed the 1.5 Release candidate 1 sometime last month and everytime they upgraded it, my browser automatically got upgraded.

There are still quite a few sites which don't look as they need to in Firefox. I use IE for them. Some of the banking sites will not allow you to login if you use Firefox - even though, Firefox is supposedly has superior security to IE. But with thosands of people working on it, I'm sure the world will embrace it faster.

There is a rumor that Google is working on a browser. I'm not sure if that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps they may have that launched in April, as they did Gmail last year. Until then IE has no other challenger.

Google Base Beta is live now

Google base beta is live now at http://base.google.com. I'm not sure what Google is trying to achieve through this but I guess it's an attempt to have people with absolutely no expertise in either hosting a website or blogging to have their content online. It allows you to upload just about anything online and make it available by search. And if the content is worthy of mention, it will also be part of the search results of Google.com.

I'm not sure if I will be using it immediately. I guess they will be adding more features to make it much more useful to the web users.

Yahoo Mail Beta

I still haven't got an invite to test the Yahoo Mail Beta. I'm not sure what the criteria to get selected. One of the criteria I know is that one must have .com mail ID and not the .co.in like IDs. I do have a .com ID but they clearly identify that I'm not currently in the US by tracking my IP. I'm dying hard to experience their beta after reading about it and having a glimpse of the screen shots. I hope that they open it up soon.

BTW, if any of you have been invited and have an option to invite others, please let me know.

Google Analytics not accepting new users...for now

As expected, there has been a deluge of sign ups to Google Analytics and they had to stop accepting new users! I realized this when I tried adding a new profile. They are doing something similar to the initial GMail registration where they take your email ID and promise to get back. I hope that this doesn't take too long to accept new users. I'm sure all adwords subscribers will still be accepted. Only those who want to have it free will have to wait. I'm sure it will be worth the wait. I only hope that they also allow free personal websites to enjoy this service.

Google Analytics

Google which bought the web analytics firm Urchin sometime back, as usual, is offering it as a FREE "web service" to everyone. I was so thrilled and tried signing it up for my personal website on Yahoo Geocities. But, it is not accepting the geocities URL. I'm not sure if they don't accept free websites. I have written to them on this and expecting some help from the support group.

It's simple to set up and install Google Analytics. The best part of it is it doesn't add any ads or banners on our pages. All we have to do is add a small javascript to all the pages we want to track and google takes care of the rest.

For more information, visit http://www.google.com/analytics

Got 5 minutes? It Could Save Your Life

WebMD is one of the sites I visit very frequenty. They have great content on almost all aspects of health and it is worth spending a few minutes a day on their site. This article gives some tips on analyzing our health in not more than 5 minutes. Read it...it could save your life.

http://www.webmd.com/content/Article/113/110880.htm

Give others happiness...

You will not be able to give anyone happiness by means of your wealth, so do it by means of a cheerful countenance and good humor.
-The Prophet Muhammad in Qushayri: al-Risalat al-Qushayriyya

Chennai Rains

It rained in Chennai... at last! And it poured! It is by God's grace that Chennai received unprecedented rains in a matter of a few days bringing cheer to the water starved city. It has helped increasing the ground water level and all the lakes that supply drinking water to Chennai are receiving good inflows. Daily piped drinking water supply has been restored.

As always, there is another side to this story. A lot of low lying areas are still inundated with water. The government is trying its best to make them comfortable but it takes time.