My Insights

As you can tell from my previous post, I was planning to experiment how things would go if I chose to let every installer molest my Internet Explorer. I installed 5 toolbars in total - Google Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar, Windows Live Toolbar, eBay Toolbar and Verizon Broadband Toolbar. I couldn’t download the AOL Toolbar from behind my proxy so that one got kicked out of the experiment.

Please click this image for a hi-res view. As you can see, this makes my IE extremely cluttered and displeasing to look at. Here are a couple of comments on these toolbars-

Google Toolbar - Love the search engine. I think the UI of the toolbar has gotten worse from the very first version. I associate google with simplicity and I don’t get the picture of simplicity by looking at this toolbar

Verizon Broadband Toolbar - Why do you have a toolbar and who actually installs this willingly. I think most computers running this toolbar are owned by people who let Verizon technicians install software on their computer. These technicians are trained to let the customer think that the software they are installing is actually needed to connect to their DSL/FIOS service. I would like to get to know at least one person who finds this toolbar useful and has willingly downloaded and installed this

eBay Toolbar - OK, I can see a use for this toolbar for people like me who may want one-click access to “My eBay” and their Paypal accounts. I am however slightly concerned with the immediate prompt for my eBay and Paypal passwords during the install process. I think what this toolbar accomplishes for me can very well be done using Bookmarks. A glorified toolbar is just a luxury.

Yahoo Toolbar - I think the online market is divided primarily between Yahoo and MSN users. That being said, I am on the MSN (Windows Live) side of things and I like it here. This toolbar seems to be the direct competitor of its MSN (Windows Live) equivalent. I like how the toolbar has implemented tabbed functionality in IE 6. Opening each new tab also opens up a new window on your taskbar so I’m not sure exactly what this tabbed functionality accomplishes. All I will say is that I liked what I saw so far but I’m just not yet ready to uproot and switch from Microsoft to Yahoo.

Windows Live Toolbar - Let me start by saying that I am addicted to Microsoft products and can’t get enough of Office 2007 Beta 2. Therefore, I am biased towards this toolbar. That being said, I must say that the last time I tried this toolbar (2 months ago), Windows Live Search’s response time was too slow for me and I convinced myself to stick with Google Search. This time however, it seems like the lag time between user-input and the search results has improved significantly. I will uninstall everything else and give this toolbar another shot. The other thing I like about this toolbar is the tabbed functionality that is implemented using an IE 7 like user interface. I think I forgot to mention that I am using a Windows 2000 machine (at work). Therefore, I believe that the Windows Live Toolbar on IE6 (Windows 2000) provides an experience that is closest to IE7 on Windows XP.

I just recently downloaded and installed J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0 (Update 6). Seems like a normal install that should normally be done in the background. I was however surprised to see that the installation was done using a Windows Installer that required the user to click ‘Next’ like a monkey.

I was further surprised when the installer tried to put Google Toolbar (default option) on my computer. The same screen also offered to install Google Desktop on my computer (Optional option). Since when did Sun and Google collaborate like this. Better yet, what does the Google toolbar have ANYTHING to do with the J2SE Runtime Environment??

It just seems like nowadays, everybody is trying to put everything on your computer. Can you imagine an Internet Explorer window with the Yahoo Toolbar, Google Toolbar, AOL Toolbar, Windows LIVE Toolbar and some other junk Toolbars? It makes me shudder. Perhaps I will try it and post a screenshot later.

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 20 (Reuters) - California sued six of the world’s largest automakers over global warming on Wednesday, charging that greenhouse gases from their vehicles have caused billions of dollars in damages.

Full Article (Reuters)

I recently bought and reviewed an item at ebags.com. They gave me a 20% off coupon via email. I don’t have a need for another bag. So if anybody is planning to purchase from ebags, contact me (ebags [at] pranavsharma [dot] com) and I will forward you the coupon url. I only have one so first come - first served.

I have complained to anyone who has lended me an ear about this. I ordered new RAM chips for my laptop (2 x 512mb). I went to newegg.com and ordered the cheapes chips with the most reviews (~140 reviews). Long story short, after about 6 weeks of sending memory chips back and forth with newegg.com, I finally received my CORSAIR memory chips that work perfectly! All I wanna say is screw gigaram - the manufacturer of memory chips that have a sticker that says 512mb and is actually a 256mb chip. I love you CORSAIR! Also now I love my significantly more responsive laptop - especially with Outlook 2007 B2TR running in the background.

Those who have anything to do with a website know that FTP is an indespensible tool. It is the bread and butter of web development and maintenance.

I have had a problem for a long time with the FTP clients I was using - I couldn’t selectively and recursively upload something. To explain that, let me walk you through my situation. I use a software to create the web album that is on my website. This software creates small .htm files and big .jpg files. Now if I move my folders around, all that needs to be updated are the small .htm files and the software (jAlbum) is smart about this as it only processes the .htm files and gets the job done quickly.

The problem is, how do I only upload only .htm files from my computer to my website? The solution after a long search process turns out to be an FTP client called CoreFTP. This software lets me recursively upload selective files. What that means is that I can say something like ‘upload all .htm files in this folder and subfolders’ in one command to this program and this will take care of the rest. You can check it out here.

Although I’ve had some issues with reliability, I’m not too sure if my network is at fault or the program. In any case, this is the closest I’ve come in my quest for a solution to my problem.

PS: The -recurse switch is not well documented but is an available option to upload/download recursively.