iYahoo!

A story of the journey from "iYahoo" to I Yahoo!

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Microsoft Office 365: A brief preview reaction

Being 21 years in the production of Office suite, Microsoft certainly has a better benefit with handling documents of its own supported types in different software platforms. Microsoft Office is now hosted on Cloud and proves to be a great platform of collaborative business tool mainly for working with document resources. It still has some glitches and not a very strong interface on web browser framework but does its work pretty well and has support for many number of document types. You will get a real time joint collaboration with team members who can act as co-authors of a document at the same time, mostly like Google Docs (with Google Wave experience).

If you don't want to go through the hassle of starting a demo and just want a to see how a web browser can be used to create or edit Office documents with other users, you can ask for an account for my sharepoint server at  http://pramit.sharepoint.com. Otherwise you can always start a trial usage of Office 365 at http://office365.microsoft.com/.

Mozilla Firefox 5 vs Google Chrome 12

Firefox has proven to be one of the most successful open source application since its launch. Its faster, lighter and comes with more features. Though it has not faced any tough competition until now. Recently with the launch of Firefox 5 it has some features revamped for better performance, like CSS animation, better HTML5 support, including support to MathML, SMIL, XHR etc. I have never been a fan of Chrome as a browser though I liked the concepts of bending the features of an OS towards it by trying to make it a client sided platform for running web applications. That's the part of a bigger plan named Chrome OS which in turn a part of a bigger plan to own most of the online users by Google. Now Chrome since its launching proved it can load sites fast, at least fastest in Windows, at that time mainly due to its V8 Javascript engine.  Though today by the launch of Firefox 5 the equations seem to vary a little bit. We are here to discuss a few comparison points for Firefox 5.0 and Chrome 12.0.742.100 and very few results out of it.
All tests are done on the same machine (average performance with Core 2 Duo, 3GB DDR2, Nvidia 8600 GT) and same internet connection (average speed 1 Mbps).

The page loading

Tests are done with the loading of 4 sites, Facebook, Apple, Miniclip and Youtube home pages. Here are the average results (the browser cache are cleared each time before loading, so don't worry)

                                                                            FF                                      Chrome

Facebook		3.8s		8.9s
Apple		9.5s		11.3s
Miniclip		17.7s		19.2s
Youtube		8.8s		7.3s

At the end of this round, Firefox wins!

Javascript benchmarking

I have used Webkit Sunspider v0.9.1 benchmarking tool, here are the links of the results:

Firefox - Chrome

I have given the actual links here so that you can compare by pasting it to the 2nd address box in the webkit result page.

At the end of this round Chrome wins!

Bubblemark Balls Animation Test

This is done from the site http://bubblemark.com/, you can test it yourself. I have checked the animation speed for DHTML, Silverlight 1.1 (using javascript), Silverlight 3.0 (using CLR), Flash (written in Flex) and Java (using Swing). You can install the Adobe AIR SDK and addons to test AIR Flash apps from the browser.


                                                                             FF                                    Chrome

DHTML		240 fps		249 fps
Silverlight 1.1 (javascript)		130 fps		98 fps
Silverlight 3.0 (CLR)		590 fps		549 fps
Flash (Flex)		60 fps		60 fps
Java (Swing)		200 fps		200 fps

At the end of this round Firefox wins!

CSS Animation and HTML5 Media Support Test

Well Im not pointing this comparison to Gecko vs Webkit for HTML5 support. I am just testing FF5 and Chrome as browser products with performance differences. For others who don't know what I am talking about check this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_(HTML5_Media).
Well Firefox disappointingly lacks some CSS animation features that Webkit browsers support. Check this at http://www.webkit.org/blog/138/css-animation/ You will see that Chrome handles many of those nicely while Firefox fails to appreciate that much.
Though FF supports some standard CSS animation like in http://www.the-art-of-web.com/css/css-animation/ but not as cool as these ones http://girliemac.com/iphone/anim.html.

Again FF fails to respond to the HTML5 media shown here http://www.webkit.org/blog/140/html5-media-support/
 but FF supports standard HTML5 media APIs, check here http://www.w3.org/2010/05/video/mediaevents.html

So at the end of this round to my opinion Chrome wins marginally with a better variety of HTML5 feature support.

Thus with 2 wins and 2 loses the FINAL RESULT IS A TIE!!

Quick survey of 3G network in Kolkata

Kolkata is flooded with 3G (UMTS, WCDMA) services from BSNL, Reliance, Vodafone and Aircel.
BSNL:
BSNL provides UMTS based technology with 900 MHz (yea unusual!) band, provides theoretical maximum speed of 3.1 Mbps. In practice you will experience a speed from 120 to 200 KBps. But this has the cheapest tariff of all other 3G data services. BSNL sites are not updated in regular, you have to rely on customer care for tariff. In worst case you may have to consider more than one of them as even they may confuse you with wrong information. Still for your information you can check http://www.bsnl.co.in/service/3G/3GHomepage.htm (URL may be outdated or may expire in future).
Vodafone:
Vodafone is HSPA (HSDPA+HSUPA) based technology, which should provide a theoretical maximum speed of 21.1 Mbps, though with a 7.2 Mbps HSDPA
device I have experienced a maximum of 300 KBps. The infrastructure seems yet to be developed to ensure the speed with full capacity and full coverage in outer areas of Kolkata. It is moderately costly. Check http://www.vodafone.in/3gworld/pages/3g_serivces.aspx for tariff.
Reliance:
Reliance 3G is also an HSPA technology. With a 7.2 Mbps HSDPA device this provides an average speed 500 KBps and the maximum possible speed
even rises further to 600 to 700 KBps. With a 21.1 Mbps device the speed should rise even higher. It is a little costlier than Vodafone 3G for higher bandwidth plans. But this is quite fair regarding their wide coverage and best data rate handling infrastructure.
http://www.rcom.co.in/Rcom/personal/3G/HTML/index.html
Others:
No survey is done on Aircel 3G but it seems to provide a comparable speed.
http://www.aircel.com/AircelWar/appmanager/aircel/kolkata?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=B1800786561300341649097

Services like Idea 3G, Tata Docomo 3G, Airtel 3G are not available in Kolkata yet for commercial reasons. But Docomo and Airtel are expected to come in near future by tying up with existing networks.

Other telecom network technologies:
There are certain other technologies commercially available in Kolkata such as EV-DO (BSNL), HSIA (Tata Photon+). In general the tariff for those network services are cheaper than WCDMA and the speed is theoretically 3.1 Mbps, i.e., comparable to UMTS.

Google Voice.. weird

It is more than a few (five I guess) months since I got an invitation to Google Voice for one of my Google accounts. But after the first day it became a little weird.

I got access to Google Voice via web through the account. Got a Google Voice number and even got call option in Gmail chat. Don't know how but I was even credited by $0.40  with which I made a test call to my Indian mobile phone number. It really had a nice call quality with clear voice and no interruption. I installed Google Voice application in my Android phone. But the next day the call option is gone from Gmail chat and whenever I try to login to Voice via web I get error which says Google Voice is not available in my country. Uh oh! Then how did I get the number, the credits, voicemails etc.? Strange!!

OK, that was still kind of OK for me. Then again I got Voice calling option in Gmail chat for another Google account. I can get access to Google Voice web application through that account but not through the first one which says about country issue. But the later account is from the same country!  Strange again! Moreover I cannot setup a Google Voice number for that account. There is no such option in the web application, and Android application says I dont have a Voice account for that Google account either, but I can access via web!! Confusing enough? Yes, for me too!

So I guess there is a loose end in distributing Google Voice. Looking forward for its official opening in India.

N.B. (for HTC Desire users):
Gingerbread gingerbread ginger all the way
Desire getting sense update and gingerbread in May!