I have a e2800+ smart-phone. It runs on a linux distro and has a touchscreen. While I like everything about the phone, typing text on the phone can be annoying at times. More so when you are traveling, an issue which is sure to come up with the Apple's iPhone. Sure it has cool features, but for it to take on the myriad of smart-phone's and PDA's it needs an easy input method too.

Here is Z1 from the inventors of T9 the text input method of choice on more than 2 billion mobile phones. Well, its cool and its easy!

With all the hype on Safari going on, I decided to download Safari and give it a test drive...

The first thing that I noticed immediately after firing up the browser on installation was the rendering. If you have stared at a computer screen running Windows or Linux for ages, chances are you wouldn't like the way things look on Safari. The fonts look fuzzy and funny! No wonder this was debated so hotly.

Using it a little more, I couldn't help but fall in love with Firefox all over again. Firefox has these subtle nuances that I have begun to notice after using Safari. And clearly, Safari is not made for someone who depends less on the mouse. Here are a few annoyances that I picked in half an hour of Safari use...

• The entire URL is not selected when you click the address bar which makes you select the entire text to overwrite or delete.
  
• If multiple tabs are open, Ctrl-Tab to switch between tabs doesn't work.
• The position of the cursor esp in the text box isn't remembered when I switch between windows.
• The browser window rendering is slow when you resize it (see image). Realized the CPU usage is 100% when this is done!
  

• It still crashes intermittently and doesn't restore back the sessions. Mine is version 3.0.2 (522.13.1) and it crashed twice during the course of this entry!!
• Can't resize the text size with Ctrl-mouse scroll wheel.
• Backspace and Shift-Backspace to go back/forward doesn't work.
  
• Ctrl/Shift-Enter to complete the URL's doesn't work.
• No add-ons!

Ok, that's enough for me! Firefox, here I come!!

Here's a bigger list of annoyances with a nice debate at the end. And yes, the folks at Apple seem to be tracking annoyances and more and fixing them in their nightly's.

Its close to 2 weeks now since Apple released Safari browser for Windows and things are getting clearer on Apple's strategy. Clearly, its not money as Apple has no hopes of making any revenues on Safari whatsoever (unless it has an agreement with Google like Firefox foundation for integrating Goolge search into the browser).

Well it's about gaining market share without pissing off Bill Gates. Bob Cringely has two articles on this, wherein he points out the need for having higher customization of AJAX apps for Safari because of its integration into the iPhone (plus there is the agenda of Google!) and also to offer a broader array of web services to its customers on the iPhone.

I see some reason in this strategy but doubt if web developers are going to sit up immediately and write/modify AJAX applications specifically for Safari and hence the iPhone. As these statistics for current usage of browser and PC OS show, this will definitely take some time. Millions of people have to download the Safari browser or alternately millions of iPhones have to be sold for customising of AJAX applications to start.

While all this on, I wonder what would happen if somehow the Internet Explorer or Firefox were to be ported and made available for free for iPhone within months of its release!

Going thru the recent set of Ads that Indian FMCG behemoth HLL has made, one does wonder why they are overusing Kids (not counting ads for their Kids products)? Is it the easy way out to catch attention, engage viewers and make ads appealing?

Watch these recent ads (free publicity for HLL :)...

• Pepsodent
• Surf Excel [1] [2]
• Clinic Plus
• Lifebuoy
• Pears
• Pears Germshield
• Vaseline
• Vaseline Aloefresh
• Hamam
• Annapurna (old)
• Kissan (old)
  
• Brooke Bond
• Rin (old)
  
• Knorr (old)
  
• Ponds white beauty
  

The ridiculous thing is that they come in the ads (as attention hooks) though they don't add anything to the objective. Notice how a girl pops in during the middle of the Vaseline ad to play with the protagonist or the kids run around at the start (whatever the secondage of the edit, this sequence is not cut) of the Pond's ad?

I hope this is a conscious decision for it might be working at the moment. But long term, its going to do them more harm than good!!

Here is a nice story of how the baby business of Johnson and Johnson started. I am obviously kicked to know that the product I handle currently, is the first baby product of the company, worldwide as well as in India!

Following yesterday's tech news was sweet!

First there was the announcement that Apple was releasing Safari browser for Windows claiming 'blazing performance' with 2x speed improvements in page loads and JavaScript executions. Within hours there were a number of bugs[1] [2] [3] reported on this beta release.

Firstly, I do not think '2x faster' is a big claim when the difference is in microseconds. Plus, the fine print says that the test was done on an iMac system running Windows XP. Now, what is the performance of the browser on a PC running Windows where it is most likely to be used? The bigger thing though which comes second, is how did Apple miss these bugs in its tests? It took others just hours to find them using publicly available software (like hamachi).

Among the other interesting things... here is one by Joel Splosky on the font rendering in Safari. He goes on to talk about the preference of people and makes a motherhood statement on the outcome of preference studies - "when you do preference surveys, you'll find that most people don't really know what to choose, and will opt for the one that seems most familiar. This goes for anything from silverware (people pick out the patterns that match the silverware they had growing up) to typefaces to graphic design: unless people are trained to know what to look for, they're going to pick the one that is most familiar". Hmm, I should check on the accuracy of this one.

The other day, I decided to take a walk with a camera in hand to see if I can capture something interesting. And well, this is Mumbai and you have zillions of interesting things happening at once...

One of the most interesting things I observed was this family of five - Husband, Wife with their Mother and two little girls - parked right in the center of the road on the divider next to a street lamp. They were laborers, probably homeless and planning to spend the night right there, with their entire belongings in a small sack next to them.
What was interesting about them was that they were happening to use a branded product. The product in question was Pond's Magic talcum powder (I wish I had a telephoto lens to capture the moment better). It was the violet colored pack and that too the biggest size available that I wouldn't mistake even in my dreams. The woman applied oodles of powder from the pack on the girls first and then on her husband.

Soft n fresh talc with Acacia honey - the pack claims!
"Mann chahi khoobsoorti?" - the advertisement says!

Well, these people were not using it for beauty, confidence or for that 'motivational claim level' honey definitely!!

Their need was much more basic and this communication would have sufficed for them to go and pick the product. Wonder when these people will come into the radar of us marketing folks ?

ps: I suggest you read the advt link - its hilarious.

As a contrast to annoying layout and badly written Google article of NYT, here is well written article complemented by the layout by the Economist on Steve Jobs' attempt to take Apple to new heights with the iPhone).

The article is written keeping in mind the end reader who picks up the Economist, with enough background support and insights. What's more its laid out very well on the page.

My trip on Google continues...

Saw a post on the size of Google and decided to plot the Market Share of various Google Products versus the second leading player (this is work in progress and hopefully I will have the stats up soon) .

The below shares (% of all Google properties) are dated (outdated if you consider internet time!) and of US alone but the overall picture is clear, around 87% of the traffic that Google gets is for search ...

Source: Hitwise


Below is a comparison across categories (more dated) to put the above numbers in perspective. Note: Google Search now has 65%+ market share...

Here is a story on how Google keeps tweaking its search engine on New York Times that I am sure has been picked up by every tech site by now, opined by most tech enthu bloggers by now (or will soon be) and will probably be referred to by most Indian newspapers in their tech sections in days to come.

I am not going to write on what's in there; actually nothing much that you wouldn't didn't already know. Well, I picked up less than half a dozen interesting points for which I could say "Aha! I didn't know that". But, what irritated me most was almost all the 'Aha' moments could be summed from what was written on the last page and I had to endure three mouse clicks, 23 image ads and 17 text ads to reach that page! Besides Seth Godin puts it in 5 elegant paragraphs.

...with the cool looking and functioning Microsoft Surface. Read the article and see the video on Popular Mechanics.

Video Courtesy: Popular Mechanics