Microsoft Says IE 7's Tabs Just "Catch-up"

So Microsoft's IE 7 is just "catch-up" to Firefox in terms of tabbed browsing acording to the company's blog. Interesting, but I already knew that.
And Microsoft said that Netscape 8 breaks IE, it has to do with the screwup of XML rendering to Internet Explorer. To restore IE back, go here.

Haha, now Microsoft feels what happens when other people's software renders their own not workable! I've tried Netscape 8 and tested it, but I somehow still go back to Firefox.

Pope makes first trip, supports Christian unity

It looks like Pope Benedict XVI is doing well, he made his first trip today in Italy to support Christian unity. He seems to be following and continuing where Pope John Paul II left off. They say of course, he won't be travelling as often as Pope John Paul II because of his age.

Beautiful Sudbury

Just testing the photo attachment feature in Blogger. Here's some pictures of Sudbury, beautiful city, lots of beautiful lakes and very picturesque compared to Toronto!

Wow upsets this week at the French Open!

First Andre Agassi, then Tim Henman, now Andy Roddick and James Blake are gone. There are no more American men in the French Open. The Americans don't seem to do too well on clay courts.

My research group's blog

Here is a link to my research group's blog so you can see what kind of work we are doing with blogs.

PalmOne buys rights to Palm brand from PalmSource

From Yahoo News, PalmOne will buy the rights to use the Palm brand from PalmSource and will change its name to Palm Inc. later this year. Apparently, David Nagel, the CEO of PalmSource has resigned and left the company.

Funny Firefox Videos

Here are some funny Firefox videos. If you haven't used Mozilla Firefox as your web browser, try it, it's great! Better than IE!

French Open this week!

Ah, the second tennis grand slam of the year starts this week, it's the Roland Garros - The 2005 French Open. It looks like the defending champion for the women's Anastasia Myskina lost and is the first defending champion in the history of the Open era to lose her first round match. If you can't watch the tennis on TV, thank goodness for IBM's Real-time Scoreboard, you can watch on the Internet while you're "working"! Hey, that's what I do while I am doing my research!

Federer won today, he's amazing this year, he hasn't won a French Open title yet. Apparently, Lleyton Hewitt will not be at the French Open, he has an injury. Henman won too. Andre Agassi will be playing tomorrow, as well as Andy Roddick and Marat Safin.

On the women's side, Venus Williams and Lindsay Davenport won. Justine Henin-Hardenne plays tomorrow, Amelie Mauresmo, and Maria Sharpova. Sharapova is being compared to Anna Kournikova except that she can actually play tennis besides her good looks!

Star Wars - Episode III Revenge of the Sith

Everybody knows about Star Wars - Episode III, apparently in its first day it racked up $50 million dollars, the highest ever for any movie on its first day. I can't believe so many people lined up to watch the movie on its first day at 12:01 am! I plan to watch it next week, I don't see the hurry to have to watch it on the first day. I've heard it's pretty good, better than Episode I and II.

What do people think about the movie? (don't spoil the details, I still want to see back Episode I and II, cause I forgot about what happened there)

Google personal homepage

Just found out today that Google has just launched a
My Google personalized home page. I've just tried it out you basically click on what you want to see and the zip code for localized search of weather or movies. It's very basic and sucks compared to My Yahoo. So far, My Yahoo and My MSN seem much better portals than My Google. I personally use My Yahoo and read all my news feeds there. Any comments on this?

Microsoft to debut new Office program in 2006

There's a new Office 12 to come up next year. See
Microsoft to debut new Office program in 2006 - Yahoo! News. The present Office suite as it is is already more than enough. Users only use maybe less than 30% of the actual features. How much more can Microsoft add? I just thought of something, instead of the Microsoft slogan "Where do you want to go today?", perhaps it should be changed to "Where do you want to bloat today?"

PalmOne release LifeDrive Mobile Manager

Finally, Palm has a built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth handheld and can compete with Windows-powered handhelds like the HP iPAQ. It's called the LifeDrive Mobile Manager. It has a 4GB hard drive! And it costs $700 Canadian, wow that's actually not that bad considering it's a 4GB hard drive. Handhelds are now getting so powerful, they're almost equivalent to old PCs a couple of years ago. But the question is, do you really need 4GB of data stored on your handheld? Your handheld is meant to be an extension of the PC, not a replacement. I guess the 4GB is there if you want to play music and video, so you get an integrated device and don't need the Apple iPod. Personally, I am happy with my Zire 71 which I got almost 2 years ago, after I upgraded from my Palm IIIxe black and white handheld of about 4 years.

Oh no ads for feeds

Just read this about
Google's AdSense for feeds. Apparently, this is a way of promoting targeted advertising. It seems everything that is published has to be bloated with ads now. Geez, more polution to our information!

How Linux Could Overthrow Microsoft

Interesting article on How Linux Could Overthrow Microsoft. You see that Microsoft is starting to change it's model, they are now opening some parts of their API to developers and vendors, but not all. Will Microsoft be completely overthrown? I don't think so, Microsoft is too smart to go away. But I bet deep down Microsoft knows that if it doesn't do something, it's competitors will beat them up. You can see that with Google for searching. I don't think Microsoft will completely open source Windows, that's giving away their bread and butter which they've worked for more than 20 years.

Slashdot | Free Pascal 2.0 Released

Wow is Pascal still being used? I remember Pascal when I was in high school, it was quite a popular language as well as Basic. Apparently, there is
Free Pascal 2.0.

Basic is still being used, Microsoft has VB.Net. What's next, Open Cobol? I guess the old languages still keep going. But there's just so many programming languages, where does this stop?

palmOne Board Names Ed Colligan CEO

Ed Colligan is now CEO of PalmOne.
palmOne Board Names Ed Colligan CEO

Ed has been with Palm since the beginnings of Palm Computing in 1993. I think this is a great choice for Palm. I hope that Palm can innovate and beat Microsoft in the PDA arena! I for one would like to see PalmOne have an integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth handheld in the same form factor as the HP iPAQ.

Series finale of Everybody Loves Raymond tonight!

Oh I can't believe that the series of Everybody Loves Raymond will be over tonight. Has it been 9 years already? I love that show, watching it every Monday nights at 9 pm. There will be a 1 hour tribute to the cast at 8 pm, then the final episode is at 9 pm. Farewell, Everybody Loves Raymond, it's been a great 9 years, you've brought lots of laughter and family fun. We'll miss you!

The website for Everybody Loves Raymond is here.

My MSN Space

I have set up an MSN Space at http://spaces.msn.com/members/ubiquitousdude. There is just so many personal portals now, I can't keep track anymore. It's not much, just trying it out.

Canada vs. Czech Republic in world hockey final

I thought Canada would easily win against the Czech Republic, I started seeing the first period and saw the Czechs with the 1-0 goal lead. Now, I just checked the score and the final was Czech Republic 3, and Canada 0. Canada 0! How could Canada not have scored? What happened Canada? Canada was going for their 3rd championship in a row, but the Czechs spoiled our celebration.

I guess the Czechs played really well, the Czechs apparently also won 3 in a row as well sometime in the '90s I believe. It's kind of disappointing, to settle for 2nd place silver, but oh well, we just came up short I guess.

Semantic Web

All this research and discussion on Tim Berners-Lee second version of the web called the Semantic Web is very interesting. Adding semantics so that you can have web sites be able to "talk" to other web sites. I can see this definitely for automation of tedious tasks like for example in the research space, automating registration to a conference. You have to register for the hotel, the conference itself, find the cheapest airfare from airline or travel agent, check your schedule to see if it can fit, etc. If this was all automated together, it would be one click and you're done. This is kind of like "task computing" which Fujitsu Labs and University of Maryland College Park are doing

What do people think are the research issues in making the Semantic Web happen and how could mobile devices be integrated and used in this vision? I'd be interested in chatting with anyone about by making comments in my blog.

Pope puts John Paul on fast track to sainthood - Yahoo! News

Wow, it looks like Pope Benedict XVI is fast tracking John Paul II to
sainthood.

Many Catholics have called for John Paul II to be a saint. He was truly the people's pope and he exhibited qualities that Catholics and Christians should follow.

Tagging Is It

Just tried out social tagging web site del.icio.us, it's pretty neat, you can tag URLs and create a social bookmarks for yourself and see what other people are bookmarking. It also is quite powerful for searching, because then you can see others who already have searched for something that you are looking for, based on the same tag. It really leverages social networking. I just created my own bookmarks on del.icio.us. Another web site that does social networking search is Eurekster which apparently is also used for searching for similar people in the social networking web site Friendster.

This is in reference to the article I just read on tagging from Technology Review.

Neat stuff.

Store Wars

For all you Star Wars fans, this is funny. Store Wars!

http://www.storewars.org/flash/index.html

Enjoy!

Alvin

Add RSS feeds to My Yahoo!

I just realized you can now add RSS feeds to My Yahoo, so you can grab your feeds anywhere you go with a web browser. That's what I've been looking for, instead of manually loading up feeds using Sage in Firefox.

You can go to here to add RSS feeds. This is cool!

Windows Mobile 5.0 is out!

Apparently, now Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 is out which includes integration with Office applications, stability (so they say), multimedia with Windows Media Mobile Player 10, persistent data storage so you don't lose data when the battery is weak, and support for wireless networking such as GSM, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Bill Gates did a
keynote about this at the Microsoft Mobile and Embedded Developers Conference in Las Vegas.

Microsoft is really trouncing on Palm now, before Palm had the greatest market share for PDAs. Not any more. Microsoft has all the integrated tools and development put together. Palm still needs that integration, and where is that integrated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Palm? I am still a Palm guy, because what Palm still has for them is the battery life, and the applications are so much easier to use. Face it, with any Windows device, you know it will crash and you will need lots of memory. Look at standard Windows mobile PDAs, they come with at least 64MB of built-in memory. With Palm, you may have to reset your device, but I betcha not as often as with a Windows mobile device.