Review : Windows Live Writer

Microsoft recently announced the final release of Windows Live Wave 3 at CES 2009. The Windows Live Wave contains a suite of applications like Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Mail, Silverlight etc. It also contains a slightly lesser known application called “Windows Live Writer” which allows you to post articles to your blogs which may be hosted on any of the popular hosting platforms such as Blogger, Wordpress or Windows Live Spaces

I recently downloaded the Beta version of Windows Live Writer after reading some good things being written about it. I am really glad I installed this application because it is a much more efficient and user friendly way of writing, publishing and managing your posts as compared to doing it from Blogger. Setting up Live Writer is pretty straightforward. You just need to select the blogging platform and give the url of your blog along with the credentials which will be used to connect to the blog. Once that is done, Live Writer connects to the blog and downloads all sorts of information such as your blog template, list of tags defined by you etc.As a last (optional) step, it will also publish a dummy post so that you can verify that the posts appear as expected. Once this is done, you can start writing posts in Live Writer and publishing them.

Here are some of the features of Live Writer that I really like :

1. It works OFFLINE!!!!!!!!!!! Since it is a Windows application, you can run it without Internet connectivity and write all your posts, saving them as drafts. Once you get the connectivity, you can just publish them.
2. There are a number of options to insert items in your post including Images, Video, Map, Tables etc.

   

3. There is an “Add a plug in” option which takes you to a website from where you can install plug ins for added functionality. One of the first plug ins I installed was one to format code snippets that you would like to put into your posts.

4. Another useful option is one which lets you control what happen when a user selects the “Blog This” option from the browser. This setting can be accessed from Tools > Options > Blog This

5. You can also see a list of the “Drafts” and “Recently posted articles” on the right hand sidebar and work with them by simply clicking the relevant article once.

6. In addition, it has all the normal features you would expect such as Spell check, ability to publish posts in the future, updating previously published posts etc.

There is 1 feature though that is still missing and I am hoping the Live Writer team incorporates this soon. I am talking about the AutoCorrect feature which comes handy ever so often in editing software like MS Word. It is really tedious to capitalize the words yourself and to insert appropriate apostrophes instead of the software taking care of it.

All in all, it is a very good blog writing software and I am loving it. I will definitely be using it from now onwards, Good bye Blogger editor. Given the overwhelming good things to rave about, I would like to give kudos to the Windows Live Writer team for creating a great app.

Review : Dropbox

I recently came across a new file sharing service called Dropbox. The service is currently in beta and comes with an optional client side software which makes working with the service really simple.

The service comes with a 2GB space limit for free usage, with plans for providing more storage at different pricing options. The site is really easy to use and pretty fast (they have made good use of AJAX to make as few page refreshes as possible). The single, most prominent, differentiating factor between dropbox and the other tons of file sharing services out there is the desktop app that comes with the service. A folder is created as part of the local file system and works just like any other local folder : you can seamlessly drag and drop files and folders into the dropbox folder and the changes will be synced to their servers and eventually to other users connected to the shared folders. If you have the system tray icon running, you will also get notifications anytime your dropbox folder contents are changed by other users.

This desktop app makes it really easy to work with the service and cuts down on the learning curve. This folder contains 2 sub folders by default : Public and Photos. The public folder is supposed to contain the files and folders that you want anyone to be able to access. For each file in this folder, dropbox generates a link which can be sent out to anyone (Even non-dropbox users) and they would be able to access the files. The Photos folder represents a photo gallery. Each sub folder in here will become an album on the web interface and you can drop any photos within these folders. The service has been built on top of the incredibly useful Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3).

Here are the pros and cons of the service in my view :

Pros :

1. The web interface is really fast and easy to use, complimented nicely by the desktop app, making the service extremely user friendly
2. The site uses SSL for transferring any content over the Internet, making the process safe and secure
3. Dropbox supports all 3 major OSes : Windows, Mac and Linux
4. It uses the "Delta sync" technique to sync the files and folders. What this means is that the entire file isn't uploaded every time it has been changed. Only the parts that have been changed are uploaded thereby saving precious bandwidth and reducing syncing times

Cons :

1. The storage limit of 2GB is pretty limiting, specially if you are planning to store images and audio/video content
2. It doesn't handle conflicting changes really well currently, taking only the first change and requiring users to manually resolve conflicts

Overall, I found the service really useful and simple to use. Instead of trying to implement too many features, the dropbox team has given importance to simplicity and they have come up with a service which does minimal things, but does them really well. I would definitely recommend people to at least give it a try, at least I am going to keep it installed and will use it whenever I need to share stuff with my friends. It is much easier than going to a website and uploading files from there and sending the resultant links through email.

Let me know your experience with the service and what you liked/disliked about it

Review : Viewzi

In today's day and age, search is becoming more and more critical to Internet users. As the amount of data on the Internet is growing exponentially, it's becoming very difficult to find exactly what you need since there are so many variations of everything on the net. Add to this the potential revenue to be earned via ads and you have one very lucrative field (Online ad revenues are estimated to be around $80 billion by 2010).

The success of Google and the above mentioned factors have all led to a proliferation of search engines : each one promoting itself as the next potential Google killer. However, it is not very easy to create a scalable search engine which is also good at returning relevant results. One needs a very good indexing algorithm, just having enough infrastructure is not enough. I have seen and tried a number of search engines including (and the now infamous) Cuil which went down on the very first day even after generating a lot of hype before its launch. Another one, which is pretty useful but whose usefulness is currently just limited to Wikipedia, is the semantic search engine Powerset. Semantic means that the search engine is able to "understand" the contents of the web pages and hence, allows users to query in natural language rather than the user having to frame his query in a way that the search engine can understand. Powerset has shown potential and Microsoft's acquisition of the company is a testament to this.

However, the one search engine I've liked the most (amongst the latest ones of course :) ) is Viewzi. It has an extremely appealing visual interface which certainly impressed me the first time I tried it. Instead of the normal hyperlink (famously called the "ten blue link") design, it has a number of different "views" (actually it has the "ten blue link" design as one of the views, for the traditional people I suppose). Each of the views has a number of sources, for example, for the "Simple text view" the sources used are Yahoo and Google. The site has about 15 different views (talk about spoiling the customer for choice). Some of my favourite views are :

1. Video view : Sources are youtube (has to be), blinkx and veoh. The results appear as 3 horizontal bars across the page and are very intuitive to use
2. MP3 view : This view uses seeqpod and mp3 realm as its sources. The best thing about this view is that you can play songs directly from the search page. Here is an example search for Shaan
3. Timeline view : This is a very informative and at the same time attractive way of looking at results. The results are laid out from left to right along a timeline and scrolling at the ends will move the timeline accordingly. One can also look at a glimpse of the article by clicking on one of the results. Just check out this view for Sachin Tendulkar, its amazing

Here are the pros and cons of this tool, in my opinion :

Pros :

1. The visual attractiveness has to be the USP for this site. I have not seen any other search engine come anywhere close to its ease of use and interactiveness
2. The results are fairly good for common queries
3. There are no ads (at least not yet)

Cons :

1. To be a real threat to Google and be a major contender in the search engine industry, the site needs to add more sources for getting better results
2. One major limitation of the service currently (and something which they will hopefully fix soon) is an absence of a toolbar. all the other major search engines have one, even new ones like Scour. Toolbars make it really easy for the user to perform searches without disrupting his current page. I think it would be even more useful for viewzi given its multiple views options.

I think that there has to be something disruptive like viewzi or the vertical search engines which can break the near monopoly of Google in the search business and make search a level playing field again. The only concern for me is that Google can just as easily buy such engines for a huge amount and increase its monopoly. Let's hope Microsoft or Yahoo gets to viewzi first and maybe that will narrow the gap in the search market share.

Review : Photosynth

Microsoft recently released its much awaited technology called Photosynth. This is a very cool technology developed by Microsoft Research in association with University of Washington. The name is derived from "photo" which means picture and "synth" which is a short form for a "musical synthesizer" i.e. an instrument used to create music. Photosynth allows users to create a 3D model from a collection of "related" 2D photos. The users can then zoom in and out of the 3D picture as well as move in all directions.

The tool works by identifying a set of common areas between images and then stitching together those areas to form a 3D model of the scene. All that one needs is a decent camera and some ingenuity to be able to shoot a series of photos that resemble each other. In addition, one needs a decent Internet connection to be able to upload all those pics onto the site. Microsoft has used this technology to create another similar application which also creates a 3D model of a structure but has additional powerful features such as balance out the lighting effects between different photos to create a smoother model. Photosynth has already been featured on CSI:Miami where it was used by detectives to solve a case and talks are on between Microsoft and NASA to use this technology at the International Space Station for finding out defects in the ISS body. The service has proven really popular, so popular in fact that the servers were overwhelmed on the first day itself and service went down for a few hours.

Here is how to use this service :

1. Navigate to Photosynth
2. Log in with your live id and create a profile which basically requires you to specify a name and description for the synth (yes that is what they call the 3D model :) ) you are trying to create
3. Once logged in, browse your desktop and upload the photos from which you want the synth to be created and wait till the images are uploaded and processed.
4. Once done, the synth will be displayed. You can check mine although evidently, it's not too synthy (only 20%)

Here are the pros and cons of the service, in my opinion :

Pros :

1. It is a really cool tool to play with and use to share photos with your friends and family
2. It has very little client footprint ( only a plugin needs to be installed). Much of the processing happens on the cloud.
3. It's decent in terms of speed, much of it depends on your Internet connection speed but the processing seems pretty fast
4. You can tag the synths which makes searching easier

Cons :

1. The fact that it has a very little client footprint is also a disadvantage since one needs to be connected to the Internet to be able to use it
2. There is no option to save your creations onto the desktop ( Hopefully this will change once the product matures )
3. All creations are public which means anyone can see any one's synths
4. It works only on PCs right now (Support for the Mac is expected soon)

However, the product is still in its infancy and we can expect Microsoft to add more features (most importantly : Saving synths and authorization ) in the near future. All in call, I found it a lot of fun to work with and a nice way to share your experiences with your family and friends and help them relive it in 3D