Deepfish from Microsoft

Today Microsoft announced a new web browser for mobile devices called Deepfish. It aims at bringing the same experience you have on your desktop to your mobile phone. What it does is, it downloads just the thumbnail of a webpage, which is very compressed. Then it allows users to move to any part of the web page and zoom in/out for detail. The main difference this will make is reduced scrolling thro the page.

The background seems to be the launch of Apple's iPhone. This is Microsoft saying 'Hey, we want to give you what the iPhone promises, on your own phone - a great browsing experience'. Only the trial version is out at this time, and the response thus far sounds great.

Store Your Files Online - Free

Have you ever run out of space on your PC, or Laptop, and knew it's going to take some time before you upgraded to a bigger hard drive? Ever wished you could access your files from anywhere? Ever tried sending a file via email and found out it's too big? If you answered yes to one of these, you should try box.net.

I found it while Googling today, and was very impressed with the simplicity, ease of use, and how intuitive it is. I tried uploading a file as a trial, and was very impressed with the navigation, and speed. Once you upload your files, you can send links to your friends to download them, or you can embed them on your blog, or you can log into your account from anywhere and download your files.

My only wish is for box.net to take off the size limit for individual files (it's currently at 500MB). Otherwise, I totally recommend this site to anyone looking for easy, and quick file sharing. You'll have 1 GB alloted for your files, and it's free!

Unlimited Storage for Yahoo! Mail

From it's 1GB limit, Yahoo! Mail has just announced that it will now offer users unlimited storage starting May, '07. According to Yahoo!, the spike in picture sharing via email in recent times is one of the reasons for this upgrade. The transition will take a month to reach all users, and is not effective in China, and Japan.

This comes almost a month after Rediffmail offered unlimited storage to their users. Are we going to see GMail, and Hotmail follow trend? I guess so, and welcome the lifting of limits. Currently, Hotmail has a limit of 2GB, and the GMail counter is at 2833.418816MB (2.7GB) as I write this.

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Adobe Creative Suite 3 - Out Now

Today Adobe launches its Creative Suite 3 software. It's the most complete application for designing yet, and is considered the biggest launch that Adobe has ever made. You can watch the launch live at the Adobe website at 3.30pm EDT.

With the explosion of video content on the Net, the Adobe flash player has been the most used in it's segment. The launch of CS 3 comes at just the right time for Adobe. It allows developers and designers to create content for every form of media (web, mobile, print, film, etc.,)

The software is priced at a steep $1599 to start with. From the first reviews, it seems the improvements in CS 3 are worth the money.

"Our customer is not typically price sensitive. The cost of the tool isn't what's critical -- it's the productivity and what their output can be." - Bruce Chizen, CEO, Adobe

IBM's 1 Second Chip

IBM plans to show off their newest chip at the Optical Fiber Conference. It'll be a giant leap for average users if it can reach down to everyone. Imagine downloading your movies in a second instead of 30 minutes.

This chip is said to have a transfer speed of (hold on to your seats) 160 Gigabits per second! And all that with an optical tube 1/5th the thickness of a 10 cent coin. It promises wide usage because of its low cost.

"The explosion in the amount of data being transferred, when downloading movies, TV shows, music or photos, is creating demand for greater bandwidth and higher speeds in connectivity"
- Dr. T.C. Chen, vice president, Science & Technology, IBM Research.

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Next on Screen - Caterpillar from News Corp and NBC

Major media companies, and technology companies are teaming up to share the revenue in the online video sector. News Corp, and NBC are starting out an unnamed project code-named 'Caterpillar' that will show the companies' TV shows for free on sites like AOL, Yahoo, MSN, and of course MySpace.

5 Outcomes from This Deal:
1. For Internet Users - More great quality videos to watch
2. For Copyright Owners - An opportunity to make money online
3. For the Host Websites - An opportunity to catch up with YouTube
4. For the Host Websites - Users spend more time on their websites
5. For Advertisers - The next big thing after pay-per-click advertising

More from The New York Times

Apple TV - Not a TV

Don't be mistaken by the name Apple TV, it's not a television, instead it's an advanced set-top box. The silvery 7" gadget can store video, audio, and images from a computer (or network), and play them on your TV. The cool part of it is that it gets data from your computer wirelessly, and can work over long distances. The 40GB hard drive can store videos for up to 50 hours of viewing.

The connectivity is the most impressive feature of the Apple TV. As the iTunes software is updated, you can set what data you want to transfer and store on your Apple TV wirelessly. On the downside, would you want to pay $300 to watch videos on a bigger screen (even that doesn't hold good if you can get a big monitor for your comp).

We can only appreciate the simplicity, style, and class that all Apple products have. And the Apple TV is nothing short of that.

Google Eye Candy

Google announced recently that it has acquired Trendalyzer, a tool used to convert numerical data to graphics. It seems that Google's intention in this acquision is to improve user experience. This tool was developed by a company called Gapminder. I suspect it will be incorprated with Google Spreadsheets, and maybe Google Trends.

Numbers are not for the average person, and systems make best use of numbers. Giving the same numbers form will make them more useful and presentable to users. The image on the left side is an example of how the data looks after being converted.

Read more from the Google Blog

Skype Business Directory

SkypeFind is an attempt by Skype to organize business listings. It allows users of Skype to add, and edit information about local businesses. You can add the information only after downloading the Skype software, not online.

While this may not be a ground breaking launch, it's nice to see more attempts to organize the world's information, and bring it online.

Search Wikipedia Better

Wikiseek is a new search engine for Wikipedia from SearchMe, and is an improved search for Wikipedia information. I took a look at it and really liked the categories at the top of the page. For example, if I search for 'Ipod' I get suggestions like Apple Computer, consumer electronics, audio codecs, and a variety of other options.

This is close to a normal search engine showing snippets of each article. This is an improvement from the narrow Wikipedia that we are used to, but if your query is something unique, you may want to try one of the web search engines instead.

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Search Engine Supremacy - Another Attempt

Recently we've heard of so many search engines trying new things to make information more organized, vast, and available. One attempt is Wikia Search a couple of months ago, which aimed at using users to develop their search engine. And now, we have Freebase (Free+Database) with a somewhat similar approach.

The search engine is not available for use yet, it will be launched tomorrow. Its technology is something similar to Wikipedia, or Web 2.0, in which users control, add, and edit data. It would recognize how systems interact and find meaning in the data (Semantic web).

If this works, and gains momentum, it'll be a huge phenomenon in the search engine world, but the challenge lies in getting users to add to the information. Can it repeat Wikipedia's success? Let's wait for the launch tomorrow...

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Google TV Ads

It appears Google is not happy with just the desk, they want the couch too! In an article by WSJ today, it was reported that Google has begun a small experiment with TV ads in Concord, CA. This is part of Google's effort to have a broad variety of advertising.

TV ads have always been delivered to the mass, with no way of tracking the ROI. It'll be interesting to see if Google can bring some sort of reporting to TV ads, and maybe a way to target your audience more effectively. So far, the most targeted a TV commercial can get is to guess the rough age range of the viewers of a program, and show ads that they'd be interested in.

Google has shown it's innovative edge in online advertising, but will they be able to spread this success to radio, and TV too.. only time will tell. Stay tuned for more developments.

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The YouTube Rollercoaster

Due to video wars between Turk and Greek users of YouTube, the Turkish court has blocked YouTube from being accessible in the country. The videos were targeted at political heads in both countries, and though they were taken off YouTube servers, it was too late.

Earlier this week, YouTube and BBC made a deal to show content from 3 of BBCs television channels - BBC, BBC Worldwide, and BBC News. The first two are entertainment channels, and the third is obvious. BBC's intention is to cash in on the huge, and fanatical online audience. For YouTube it's a big win after our next point..

Last week, Viacom demanded that YouTube remove 100,000 videos from it's website due to copyright violation. Among the videos that were taken down are the thousands of clips of Southpark. CEO Eric Schmidt, of Google, appeals to media companies to view this situation as an opportunity for them to monetize their online media.

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No Holds Barred

Rediffmail now offers unlimited storage! But is the user experience in Rediffmail good enough?

The way the competition is going, it seems like the winner will be the one who can add the most features with the simplest interface to their email product. Huge storage has become a basic feature with the launch of Gmail 3 years ago. After my switch to Gmail from Yahoo Mail, I've never been at ease with the latter. The speed, search features, simiplicity, and organization of Gmail is on another level compared to other email products.

Auction Ads Launched

This advertising alternative is another one that shows auctions on Ebay, and pays publishers for an action that's completed on Ebay. There have been other such programs such as BooBox, and more recently, EcomAdNet.

The cost-per-action model on Ebay seems like it may not be that paying for a publisher. But that also depends on the kind of products that appear for auction. I took a look at a sample ad and thought it was pretty neat. It had a picture of the article that was on auction, 1 line stating the current bid, and 1 lines of description of the product. The picture especially will draw users' attention.

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Nokia into Advertising

If you've been surfing online advertising sites, you're sure to have heard that the future of online advertising is in mobile phones. Nokia seems to have found that out, and has made its move into the advertising business with Nokia Ad Service, and Nokia Advertising Connector. This is a major shift for them, as it's their first step out of the hardware business, but a wise one IMO.

Nokia has a huge market share in mobile devices, and will be able to ride off that platform at least initially. The ads will be delivered to users while they're reading a newspaper, watching TV, or listening to music according to sources. I wonder how broad, and opportunistic these channels could be for online advertising.

Nokia doesn't have web properties on which to show ads to users as do Google, and Yahoo through their search engines. It'll take a lot of momentum to be able to make their ads visible to users while they surf the net, because only a small percentage of users would watch videos, or read newspapers. For now, it seems they're more focussed on delivering ads from applications such as media players, and readers and from browser windows. Let's wait and watch..

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Google, Apple Mash up?

We've already heard rumours of Google working with Orange to bring out a cost-effective phone made exclusively to bring the power of the internet to the cell phone. In an interview, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google hinted that Google is working with Apple on some projects: “I will tell you that Google and Apple are doing more and more things together through the normal course of communications ... We have similar goals and similar competitors.”

With Apple's IPhone scheduled to launch in May this year, I wonder if we'll see some unexpected integration of Google software on the phone. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with.

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Photoshop to Follow the Trend

Software has been going through a phase of being moved from the traditional desktop to the internet. Some common examples include web-based email providers like yahoo, gmail, and hotmail, and online word documents and spreadsheets like Windows Office Live, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets.

Adobe is planning to go online with their highly successful photo editing software, Photoshop. Adobe's CEO Bruce Chizen informed CNET of this in an interview. It is speculated that Photoshop's competition will come from Picasa (from Google). However, Picasa does not have the option of editing pictures online, you'll need to edit them in the Picasa software and then upload them. That's where Photoshop could have an advantage.

Adobe plans to support this product by advertising revenue, and keep it free for use. I think it will gain traction initially because of the brand, but sustaining that initial pace will be important for this product to be a success. We'll wait and see what it looks like once the launch is announced.