There’s been a lot of talk and hype about the Chrome browser on the internet. I gave it a spin too and felt that its really fast. It beats Firefox hands-down in start-up times. Javascript heavy sites like Gmail work pretty fast too, though I didn’t think there was too much difference as compared to Firefox.

What I really miss in Chrome, though, is the ability to extend it using plugins. I especially miss the Greasemonkey which makes some sites like Gmail and Flickr much better.

In all the hype about Chrome, Picasa’s new features seem to have been overlooked. I personally found the face-recognition feature really great. I uploaded a ton of party pics from ISB days onto Picasa Web to test it out. And I was blown away…

It automatically detects all faces in the uploaded pictures and asks you to tag them with names. After you’ve tagged a few it gets better at recognising who’s who and gives you appropriate suggestions. It doesn’t automatically tag photos though. There were a small number of false suggestions and non-faces, but not so many that you get frustrated. In about an hour I was able to tag about 700 faces in my photos. Once you’ve tagged photos, Picasa can display the names of the people in your photos on a sidebar and clicking on them takes you to a gallery of all photos of that person.

The privacy features here are cool too and you can select whether you want to show these name tags to the world or not.

I like this feature so much that I’m probably going to upload all my people pictures to Picasa instead of Flickr when I need to share them with others…

Picasa’s desktop software has also been upgraded to version 3 and one of the best new features is the ability to sync folders between your desktop and Picasa Web. Apparently, any changes you make on your computer will automatically be synced with the web galleries.

A replacement to Window’s default picture viewer is also included with Picasa 3. I tried it and am still not too sure whether I like it better or not.

I’m going to test both these softwares more over the weekend so stay tuned for updates…

I’ve been using it for some time now and it’s great to see some old pics I had forgotten all about

Here’s the link - Photojojo’s PhotoTimeCapsule

It shows the photos in a nice sphere where you can click to see a bigger version.

Its worth visiting - Tag Galaxy

Here’s two of my favourite:

Vodafone - “Happy to help”

Now I just hope they really improve their customer service! Its pretty crappy here in Hyderabad.

Vodafone - “Elevator”

The Financial Times has ranked ISB 20th in their global MBA rankings.

Not bad for a young school and its the only one from India….

In true ISB tradition there’s some cool parties planned for the weekend! Looking forward to that.

Having lived in Delhi for 25 years, and probably crossing roads independently for 15 of them, I think that extremely few motorists (or for that matter pedestrians) understand the concept of pedestrian crossings. Inching forward at a red light to get to the front of the traffic is like second nature for everyone, especially bikes and scooters (which will then promptly stall the moment the light turns green!!) Most of the time they can’t even see the traffic light, its only the honking behind them that lets them know that its green (whatever happened to the ban on honking at the red light???). All of which hardly leaves any space for pedestrians, who then have to weave their way through bumper-to-bumper traffic to cross the roads.

And its not to say that pedestrians aren’t to be blamed. I think subways in Delhi are only for stray dogs and the homeless. At every place where there is a subway, people will always cross the road despite zooming traffic. (Doesn’t it always seem that the stupid pedestrian wants to cross just when my car has picked up speed???)

Anyways, back to the fine…. its a paltry Rs. 20 but the enforcement that’s going on these days seems to have pedestrians queuing up on both sides of the roads!!! (What I wouldn’t give for a picture of this!) I just hope the police also “educate” motorists on the need to leave pedestrian crossings clear, and save some broken bones and lives…

Any bets on what the next ban is going to be about???

But if we see today Google seems to have one of the best known brands on the Internet. And I think there are some really clever marketing ppl behind this. I’m really coming around to the view that Google’s slow roll-outs of Gmail and its newer versions and invitation-only betas to new products are all smart marketing tactics to create buzz around these things. Further, I refuse to believe that Google has no hand to play in all the speculation that happens around their upcoming launches.

Take for example the two most recent releases - OpenSocial and the Android/OHA mobile phone OS. I must have read hundreds of blog posts (on what else but Google Reader ) about these 2 over the last couple of months. Should I really believe that this is all speculation and is not being fuelled by Google? I find it a little too hard to believe that.

Gmail was the first “big” launch that I remember from Google. I can still remember searching all across the Net for an invite to Gmail till I finally got one. The amount of buzz that was generated then was awesome and I think Google has successfully re-created that around OpenSocial and Android/OHA.

But whatever you say I like the things these guys are building. And if you missed the update that is being rolled out across Gmail accounts now, look out for my next post. My wife’s Gmail has been updated to the new version and as a result I spend more time in her mailbox than mine

“I eked a meagre living, exploiting a fundamental structural discrepancy in the price of Goats.” He looked me in the eye.

“So crucial to the economy were goats now, and so fatal to our people any collapse in the goat market, that the UN appointed a Unicef Official with Special Responsibility For Goats. Around him swiftly sprung up a bureaucracy. A well-meaning man, his attempts to stabilise the goat market were well-intentioned. However, this intervention by the authorities was, as ever, late and ineffectual, indeed, counterproductive. Reassured that the UN wouldn’t let the market collapse, prices soared higher. It had become a one-way bet.

Takeoffs were being delayed while the bodies were removed from the runways, which lowered the number of flights and thus the potential revenues generated for all. This was solved by bringing in an electronic Goat Accident and Compensatory System to replace the cumbersome physical system. Now, instead of herding your one, then two, then four, then eight, then 16 goats on to the runway each afternoon, each of which then needed to go through the labourious process of being hit by a landing aircraft’s undercarriage, wingtip or propeller, you simply input your goat numbers into the GACS.

A must read: The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble

Setting up the account and storing the passwords takes a little while and isn’t very intuitive, but definitely not confusing. Once you’re all set up its a breeze to log on to your accounts.

Check it out at PassPack.com