office 2007

by Brian on November 17, 2006 — Permlink — microsoft, google, desktop, office

Office 2007 is nice. I appreciate the effort MS put into designing the new ribbon interface and like it.

I’ve only used Outlook so far, just explored the others. Groove is the roughest round the edges and not as in keeping with the rest of the Office. Having said that, the idea behind Groove is good even if the execution is lacking.

Outlook: junk email detection is very good, much better than Entourage which is what I use on the Mac (I know, I should Mail). Nice clean interface. RSS support is passable; won’t be changing from Google Reader anytime soon.

What instantly and immediately bugged me: a yellow bar urging me to install Instant Search aka Windows Desktop Search. I know Microsoft would really love it if people installed Windows Desktop Search but I have no intention switching away from Google Desktop.

To switch off that annoying prompt: Tools -> Options. Click on the “Other” tab, then click the “Advanced Options” button and unmark the “Annoy user into installing Windows Desktop” er… actually its the “Show prompts to enable Instant Search”.

Meditations on AJAX Desktops

by Brian on March 1, 2006 — Permlink — web 2.0, ajax, desktop

I’m reading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and it is a good book. When I compare the honesty, clarity and wisdom of the emperor’s words to the senseless verbiage of modern philosophy - postmodernism in particular, I get all sentimental and mellow and put on some Coldplay.

Ahem.

It seems that the number of AJAX based desktops, all chasing VCs (yes, you Yahoo/Google) like there is no tomorrow, just keeps on growing.

My quicky evaluation: goowy has a nice interface - lots of eyecandy (all Flash) and very Macish. Fold looks more pedestrian - I only have the screenshots to go by as they are in private beta. Protopage is not a bad implementation. Neither is pageflakes - more googlish in style. Also gave Gtalkr a look. Flash-based but they could exploit it much more. Gtalkr don’t aim to take over your desktop, yet. They just repackage gmail, youtube, flickr, blogs, etc. No calendar or sticky notes so far.

Based on what I’ve seen the most impressive so far is… MacOSX ; ) Well, goowy, which is is my favourite, was inspired by it. Might as well go back to my lovely Mac.

Dear reader, before you leave I must warn you of something. I’ve heard that there is another AJAX-based desktop coming.

And its like something you’ve completely seen before …