The Fox Blog

Ever since it was launched in 1996, Google has been going global. The expansion includes everything from Afghanistan to Zambia including large countries as well as lost islands of the pacific.
What is the difference between the different Google falvors you ask?
I tried several searches on Google UK and Google Saudi Arabia, the results are very similar. You could actually get the results of Saudi Arabia by personalizing search options on Google UK. The way I see it, a Google flavor is just a specific configuration of the real Google (the .com Google).

Let’s take a closer look to the arab world where Google is relatively new. Current Google Arabia flavors include:
Bahrein: www.google.com.bh
Egypt: www.google.com.eg
Jordan: www.google.jo
Oman: www.google.com.om
Saudi Arabia: www.google.com.sa
United Arab Emirates: www.google.ae

No sign of Google Lebanon yet but for what it’s worth, I don’t really think it might do any difference if it was launched or not. It’s just another paperwrap for another Google can.

I’ve heard about it a couple of weeks ago. Some guy, a hotmail addict probably, received an invitation to try the BETA version of Windows Live. Today it’s still a BETA version but accessible to anyone. How it describes itself:

Windows Live is a new set of Internet software and services designed to put you in control of the information, relationships and interests you care about. Windows Live will make it easier for you to connect with people, and to quickly find the information you need, more safely and securely, whether you’re on your PC or on the go.

In other words, it’s a new concept for surfing the net, having the information you want when you want it and wherever you are. It might become the homepage of millions of users worldwide in some time (unless it already is).

Features of Windows Live:
- Live.com - The equivalent of MyYahoo or Google personalized: you can have your own homepage so that each time you log in, you’ll check the news feed you want to read, the weather in the cities you may visit, the sport news which interest you and so on. Nothing new at his point… This feature is already available on several portals.
- Favorites: have a list of web sites Favorites on your homepage. That way you can access them anywhere, not only from your home computer. This feature is something like having your browser preferences on each computer you’re on. Note that Internet Explorer might come in handy at this point: when you log in your browser preferences could be directly set to your preferences. You’ll have a real interaction between the platform you’re on and your cached preferences.
- Windows Live Mail: a mail platform where you’ll be able to check your MSN email. The new thing is that it’s Outlook-like, it has a lot of useful features. It’s becoming a totally independent web application not just a page where you click links (that’s how email systems where at their very early stage).
- Windows Live Messenger: a new MSN messenger style application. A nice thing I’d like to see is that Messenger is directly set online the minute I log in, that way I don’t need to use a stand alone application to chat with people, I just use the Online Messenger - I want something fast, not a slow system like the current Web Messenger.
- Windows Live Safety Center and Windows OneCare Live: some security applications that’ll help you keep your PC clean of viruses and maintain your PC up-to-date against any failure that might be discovered on your system. It runs in the background.
- Missile launching system and F16 administrator terminal access… Just kidding

Some positive issues I noticed:
- All the tools you usually need when accessing the internet are on this portal including a Search Engine, a Mail box, a news feed reader and now this browser preferences issue.
- It does take care of operations you usually spend time doing such as updating your anti-virus or keeping your computer drivers up-to-date.
- I can’t affirm it at this point, but it seems fast. The loading speed is reduced and it really looks like an application not a web page although you still access it from a browser.

Windows Live BETA can be accessed at Live.com
Damn, just some time ago I wondered… who the hell owns one word top level domains (worth probably hundred of thousands of dollars today). Today I know that Live.com is Microsoft’s.

Before we even start, OOS stands for Out Of Service.
ProjectW.org is a huge forum where people share software, movies, music, anything you can think about. Well not any kind of software: illegal software aka Warez – nothing is perfect. The good thing about it is that it’s regularly updated and dead links are often removed. At first look, its chaos, but you can still find piece of software you won’t find anywhere else, you can even request applications, games and someone could share it.
The site is restructuring the databases, a process that takes a couple of hours usually in “normal” forums. The process has been going on for almost a week now on ProjectW.org, it just reached 75 %, and they must have something like 100,000 users and probably as much posts.

Note: downloading Warez is very bad; proceed with caution – Duh

Update 24 Oct 2005
ProjectW.org has been online for a couple of days after database restructuring was over (that was a week ago). It’s been down again ever since without any notice from the administrators of the forum.
In the mean time, you could try visiting one of the following similar ProjectW.org sites:
Warez-bb.Org
Puzo.Org

Read my lame excuse (if you have free waste time):
I only heard of these sites, with one ear not even both LoL
I haven’t visited them, my browser (I.E.) is equipped with anti-warez technology
I didn’t download anything: my ISP doesn’t provide a download option
I am innocent of any charge you might accuse me of!!!

What the sites l@@k like at night! - hehe

Update 26 Oct 2005
Good news! ProjectW.org is back on track.
It’s online once again and working properly.

Update 16 Nov 2005
The site is currently OOS. It’s been in that situation for the last couple of days.
The admins are probably facing more problems related to the server stability.

Update 21 Nov 2005
ProjectW.Org is back once again.
ForumW.Org seems to be a good alternative; but for the time being, let’s stick to ProjectW.Org.

Update 17 Apr 2006
ProjectW.Org is OOS. Downtime started yesterday.
I have no information on whether they’ll be back soon or not. They probably will at some point, they always do come back.

Update 20 Apr 2006
Back on duty (once again)!

Update 24 Jun 2007
After a couple of weeks of uncertainty, it really seems ProjectW is dead.
Use Torrents!

Tried a couple of days (rather weeks) ago Google Earth. I must say it’s the best free piece of software available today on the internet. If you didn’t have the opportunity or the time to try it yet and have no clue about what Google Earth is here’s a little extract from their web site:

The idea is simple. It’s a globe that sits inside your PC. You point and zoom to anyplace on the planet that you want to explore. Satellite images and local facts zoom into view. Tap into Google search to show local points of interest and facts. Zoom to a specific address to check out an apartment or hotel. View driving directions and even fly along your route. We invite you to try it now.

Using it was lot of fun, seeing the entire planet on my PC screen, zooming in and out on familiar locations… The resolution on some locations in amazing (using the Free version!!). The features of Google Earth seemed unlimited since there’s so much to see on old planet earth.
Two upgrades are available: Google Earth Plus (20$ / year) which offers a greater resolution and some other special options, Google Earth Pro (400$ / year) which is probably an enterprise version of the software.

Seeing the world from your computer screen is awesome, but when you think about it twice, it’s kind of scary. ANYONE in the world can use Google Earth, ANYONE can see all those amazing locations and let’s be obvious some people might use it to plan tactical missions and stuff (let’s not talk more about that, shall we?).
Another think I though about is the ability of governmental agency to spy on you wherever you are, they probably use a similar technology (or even more developed) that can zoom up to the millimeter maybe more (who knows?!).

Google Earth Web Site

I’ve been reading lately a lot of complaints related to “Firefox Sucks” on the net. I’m taking a look closer at that issue to see if Firefox really does sucks or not.

In order to have an idea of the position of Firefox among the browsers that suck, I ran simple searches on Google (which I must admit is extremely objective search engine, just try “google sucks” on it and you’ll find stuff that doesn’t seem to bother at all the Google people). The browser-related results come as follow:

“firefox sucks” 845 pages
“opera sucks” 2370 pages
“netscape sucks” 5300 pages
“internet explorer sucks” 9610 pages

At this point, there’s no big surprise since Internet Explorer seems to annoy quite a few (being bundled with Windows and more specifically developed by Microsoft, the big brother as some would say). Firefox ranks last but still, some people really believe that Firefox sucks.

The system administrator of an academic network mentions on his “Remove Firefox Re-Rediscover the web” page that as soon as he installed Firefox on his network, he started receiving complaints from tons of users. People (especially non-techies) found the interface difficult to handle. He also states several problems such as the browser displaying defaced or empty pages, the browser freezing when PDF files are opened so on… An interesting point mentioned is that although Firefox is perfect when browsing validated pages (with perfect XHTML or HTML syntax), it becomes useless once browsing any other page on the net. According to the administrator, 90 % of the internet pages are not validated. I must admit he has a point.

Elsewhere, some Firefox haters state that the distribution sucks but once you get the grip at it and add some useful extensions (KGet for managing downloads…) it becomes a great browser. Others mentioned that with Firefox you can’t edit hidden browser preferences.

Let’s be clear about it, Firefox is not perfect in every way. Any frequent user has already experienced a page loading failure, a defaced page (that would appear correctly in Internet Explorer) or even the browser freezing completely. When I face a similar problem, I just switch to Internet Explorer, get the job done and come back to Firefox. The general performance of the browser is worth switching every now and then. Now that more and more people are using Firefox, webmasters will think twice before publishing their content; they’ll make sure that the page displays correctly in Firefox. On the long term, Firefox is contributing in making web pages abide by specific standards readable on any platform and by any browser.

Firefox was not written by a holy programmer but by a bunch of Open-Source people who had the guts to compete with Internet Explorer, the giant among browsers for more than a decade (I still have a copy of Internet Explorer 3.01 for Windows 3.11).

The success behind Firefox’s is related to two facts:
- It has included in its first release helpful features that people usually have to download as extra components: popup blocker, cookies controller… It also introduced before any other browser the extensions and the themes which allowed people to create their own component and totally customize their browser.

- It was released by Mozilla which already had an important market share with its Mozilla browser used by techies worldwide mainly on Linux distribution. Firefox just made the browser more accessible to just anyone.