Remember The Milk

The Service

Remember The Milk is a service that make you no longer have to write your to-do lists on sticky notes, whiteboards, random scraps of paper, or the back of your hand. It makes managing tasks an enjoyable experience.

Feautres

1. It’s an Australian company….
2. It is the best way to manage your tasks online.
3. Free to use
4. There is a mobile version of Remember The Milk
5. Allows you to synchronize your Remember The Milk tasks with other software and devices. It’s currently available for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile, with support for more software and devices coming in the future.
6. You can add Remember The Milk to Google Calendar, which makes it possible to add, edit, complete, and postpone your tasks from within Google Calendar.
7. Accessible via a PC, Linux, or Macintosh (Mac) computer with one of the following fully supported browsers:

• Firefox 1.0+
• IE 6.0+
• Mozilla 1.7+
• Opera 8.x+
• Safari 2.0.4+

TripIt

TripIt is a personal travel assistant that automatically organizes all your travel plans. TripIt is free and makes it easy to…

• Quickly organize all your travel plans — flights, hotels, cars, trains, cruises and more
• Automatically get itineraries with all your plans, weather, maps, restaurants and more
• Easily access your itineraries via paper, email, personal calendar or mobile device
• Organize trip details into one master online itinerary — even if arrangements are booked at multiple travel sites
• Have the option to book restaurants, theatre tickets, activities and more right from within the online itinerary
• Safely access travel plans online, share them, check-in for flights, or print an itinerary
• Share your trips and see where you overlap with friends and colleagues

Wesabe

Wesabe is part financial software, part community. With Wesabe, you can see all your bank accounts and credit cards in one place, categorize your transactions how you want, see spending and earning summaries, discuss things with other interested people, and receive tips for saving money based on your spending.

Using Wesabe is just as secure, or in some cases more secure, than using your bank’s or credit card’s web site. And…..it’s FREE…..

Using little more than book knowledge, experience from previous projects, and a healthy shot of elbow grease, a Kenyan kid has constructed a nifty (and perhaps just a little scary) box that attaches to your car to provide a number of unique remote-control features that you’re not going to find on your average OnStar setup.

The flagship function seems to be the real-time lockout, which can call you as the car is being started; only if you confirm that it’s not some baddie trying to jack your ride will the ignition request be granted.

That’s not all, though — it’ll also let you dial into the car and listen in on any conversations going on within. The young man says he’s seeking additional funding to take his project to the next level, but in the meantime, don’t even think about making off with a white Mitsubishi the next time you’re in Mombasa. (source: engadgetmobile)

I almost pissed my pants seeing this picture , this is definitely the ugliest Facebook profile I have ever seen.

Google DOCS:

Documents

• Each document can be up to 500K, plus up to 2MB per embedded image.
• You can upload documents from any of the following file formats:
  • HTML
  • Plain text (.txt)
  • Microsoft Word
  • .rtf
  • Open Office (.odt)
• You have a combined limit of 5000 documents and presentations and 5000 images.

Spreadsheets

• Each spreadsheet can be up to 256 columns, or up to 200,000 cells, or up to 40 sheets — whichever limit is reached first. There’s no limit on number of rows.
• Each spreadsheet can have up to 20,000 cells with formulas.
• You have a limit of 1000 spreadsheets.
• The limit on spreadsheets open at one time is 11.
• You can import spreadsheets up to approximately 1 Mb in xls, csv, or ods, txt, tsv, tsb format.

Presentations

• Presentations in both .ppt and .pps file formats from your local computer can be up to 10MB in size.
• By entering the URL of a file on the Web, you can upload presentations up to 2MB.
• By emailing in your files, you can upload presentations up to 500K.
• You have a combined limit of 5000 documents and presentations and 5000 images.

Upload/Download Feature:

Can only upload certain file types:

• For spreadsheets: .xls, .ods, .csv, .tsv, .txt, .tsb
• For documents: .html, plain text (.txt), Microsoft Word, .rtf
• For presentations: .ppt, .pps
• .pdf files

Supported online document creation and editing.

Support only one level of folder tree under “All Folders”.

Office LIVE:

File Types:

Integration capability with Microsoft Office. It also allows you to upload all kinds of files, not only Office document file types. So, in addition, you can upload .PDFs, pictures, or seemingly any kind of file except those on the blocked list, which are blocked to protect users as they are file types Windows sees as executable files.

Sharing

Based on “Workspace” rather than “Folders”.Office Live Workspace allows you to share documents or workspaces with others and mark them as “editors” or “viewers”. You can add a note along with the message. You can also check a box to allow “everyone to view this without signing in,” and/or a box to “send me a copy of the sharing invitation.” Below, a read-only preview of the file is displayed. Files or workspaces can be shared with up to 100 people.

File Sizes

Its allows for individual files as large as 25 MB, no matter what file type it is.

Collaboration

Although its allows for collaboration, but it’s not real-time, online collaboration. Instead, if one user is editing a file, another will be informed the file is “checked out.” When they finish editing and save their changes the document is checked back in for other users to access.

Conclusion

I suggest people who use Microsoft Office suite in their computer using Office Live, since it has the capability to integrate with it, which I think will make things easier. But, it doesn’t mean that I won’t recommend Google Docs to others, since many people not using Microsoft Office suite. I recommend people who do not use MS Office suite to use Google Docs rather than Office Live.

IT staff jobs are at increasing risk — both for contractors and in-house workers — according to a survey of top CIOs by Goldman Sachs & Co. released last week. Global services companies will also feel the pinch because of the slowing economy.

A second survey showed that basic PC and network hardware, as well as professional services providers, would bear the largest proportion of spending cuts. It also showed that CIOs planned to emphasize economizing measures over investments in new technologies, with cloud computing emerging as the last item on their priority lists, despite the hype around it.

IT contractors to bear the brunt of cuts

“Demand for discretionary IT projects dropped to its lowest point” in the 41-study history of the Goldman Sachs staffing survey, which asked 100 managers with strategic decision-making authority (mainly CIOs at multinational Fortune 1,000 companies) about their IT staffing plans for 2009.

Consultants, hardware targets of spending cuts

The second survey by Goldman Sachs looked at 2009 spending plans based on type of IT projects. This survey also showed cuts are in the offing.

The spending survey indicated CIOs see the “greatest potential for cost reduction in IT in the area of networking equipment.” A full 47% of the respondents said the most likely area where spending would be slowed would be on purchases of personal computer systems, servers and storage.

Spending cuts won’t be limited to equipment: 42% of the CIOs indicated that “they are reluctant to spend money on third-party professional services.” This is in keeping with the decline in interest for discretionary IT projects and could indicate more of a reliance on in-house IT employees.

Cloud computing may get buzz, but it won’t get spend

The CIOs indicated that server virtualization and server consolidation are their No. 1 and No. 2 priorities. Following these two are cost-cutting, application integration, and data center consolidation. At the bottom of the list of IT priorities are grid computing, open-source software, content management and cloud computing (called on-demand/utility computing in the survey) — less than 2% of the respondents said cloud computing was a priority.

One reason for the low priorities of grid computing, open-source software and cloud computing may be that CIOs and business executives don’t understand their value. “They require a technical understanding to get to their importance. I don’t think C-level executives and managers have that understanding,” King said. (source: computer world)

SysAdmin in Action

OMG. There is such a thing.

Today is SysAdmin Day, otherwise known System Administrator Appreciation Day. This “holiday” was first celebrated in 2000 and takes place annually on the last Friday in July. The goal, according to the SysAdmin Day website, it to give the guys and gals who maintain your computer network some love… and perhaps some nifty gifties!

Let’s face it, System Administrators get no respect 364 days a year. This is the day that all fellow System Administrators across the globe, will be showered with expensive sports cars and large piles of cash in appreciation of their diligent work. But seriously, we are asking for a nice token gift and some public acknowledgement. It’s the least you could do. (Source: Wired Blog)

Friends,

Want to know the downside of Google Earth if going real time…?

Marge Simpson had the experience.

I don’t use special utility to create all of the images below. I just use the “PrtScn” button in my keyboard, then paste it in MS Paintbrush. After that, I crop the area that I want to upload, paste them in a new file and save them in different files.

WordPress

All the login page below provide form autocomplete. So if you type your first letter of your name it will automatically suggest list of name that might use the same first later login name. If it’s only you who has that letter name, so it only provide your login name.

WordPress login

Below is the loginpage of wordpress after you login. The picture you see means that you already validated and login successfully.

Inside WordPress

Below is gmail login page. The yellow box appear because I am using an autocomplete form from Google toolbar.

Gmail login

After you successfully log in, it will load your current mailbox, with ads on the right side (i’m not showing it). In this mailbox you can perform search for your email and it will also display related ads that match your keyword.

Inside Gmail

I got del.icio.us log in page after I log out first. If you don’t have any account before, I don’t think this is the first page you will see.

del.icio.us login

Almost the same like gmail page, it will show your name on the right side if you successfully login. Inside you can perform search towards your inserted tags, keywords, or name of the web page.

Inside del.icio.us

A Japanese software company is stepping up international promotion of its Web browser in the hope of carving out a 5 percent share over the next few years of a market dominated by Internet Explorer and Firefox.

The Sleipnir browser is well-known among Japanese geeks, many of whom value the high level of customization that the browser allows. At the center of this customization is the ability to select either the Trident or Gecko layout engines for each Web site visited. Trident was developed by Microsoft and is used in Internet Explorer while Gecko is used in Mozilla’s Firefox.

As any user who has changed Web browsers knows, some sites look different or offer different functionality depending on the browser in use. By clicking a small button in the bottom left of the browser and switching between Trident and Gecko users can choose the best one for the particular site.

Fenrir, which is based in Osaka, began development of the browser in 2005 and has been offering an English version alongside its main Japanese version for sometime but decided to step-up promotion overseas after noticing demand rising for the browser from international users, said Yasuhiro Miki, director of the overseas marketing division, at Fenrir.

In the next couple of years, Fenrir hopes to dramatically grow it’s user base from the current roughly 100,000 users to around 17 million, said Miki. That corresponds to about 5 percent of the English-speaking Web user base, he said.

In Japan the browser has a 9 percent market share, according to Fenrir. No independent data to verify that claim is available but a recent survey of 3,003 computer programmers published by Nikkei ITpro put Sleipnir’s share at 6 percent among that group.

Initially the focus is on the English-speaking market but Fenrir has plans to look at other language versions including Spanish and French. (Source: PC World)

At the moment, Google’s performance is in excellent condition. They control 78.35% of search engine market share worldwide ( Net Applications 2008 ) and their revenue increase $1.5 billion as ended on 31 March 2008. But these do not guarantee Google’s future success since the competition in this market is intense.

I found some interesting issues that could affect Google’s future. They are:

1. Explosive growth makes them lack of focus by creating too many products which create very little revenue.
2. How to sustain current dominant leadership position by adding value to customer?
3. The rise of vertical search. Vertical search is a search service which is focused on a particular field, a particular type of information, or a particular information format. With vertical search, advertisers are able to reach potential customers who are much closer to making a purchase decision rather than the average user using Google search engine. Google has so far stayed focused on horizontal, generic search with a simple, one-bar user interface ( Mitra 2008 ) while players like Kayak, Trulia, TheFind, Indeed, AutoTrader, etc. have gone ahead and developed vertical search engines to offer consumers far more refined results.
4. Click fraud and invalid clicks. Growing incidence of click fraud would increase refunds Google has to make to its advertisers. This would negatively affect the company’s profitability. These invalid clicks could also negatively impact the Google brand. At the same time, invalid clicks could result in reduced return on investment for Google’s advertisers because the invalid clicks will not lead to potential revenue.
5. Fierce competition from Microsoft with their plan to buy Yahoo! in order to compete with Google main SBU which is search engine.

After undertaking an extensive research and considerations, I choose the “How to sustain current dominant leadership position by adding value to customer” issue as our main concern for this assignment. The reasons I choose this issue is because Google leadership depends on a strong brand, and failing to maintain and enhance the brand would hurt Google ability to expand their base of users, advertisers, Google network members and finally it will adversely affected their operating results and financial condition.

The expected outcome of this report is that Google brand will become more influential and ubiquitous among internet brands in the world especially in Australia.

I will discuss what strategies that Google can take especially in Australia to improve their brand awareness towards maintaining their position in the search engine market and how Google can provide value to their customer.