Office 2010 rocks!
I am not a Microsoft guy, ask any friend of mine, they will tell you I am apple freak. Office 2010 beta is available for download on the Official site and Technet, Half an hour of using the apps convinced me to write this post. It’s been a day since the Beta version is available for download so better hurry. Trust me when I say its worth the effort.
I just tried the Outlook beta. It feels so thin, like a breeze while using it. There is lot of screen space left for me to play around with. Its pretty fluid with a flow. The Ribbon menu view feels better, now that I kinda got used to the other Office 07 apps. One feature that immediately caught my eye was the file menu where you get to modify your account settings, etc i never liked the popup window in the older versions. Its very stable and robust
The Inbox:
The File Menu in Outlook
Never have I seen any Office product start like the beta Excel this time. I Liked their splash screen too. All the other apps have become lighter as well and the usability is even better. Well I always have this interest to search for the “not so resource savvy” apps ( That is why I even ditched Itunes ). Probably for Office 2010 I won’t have that urge. I haven’t had the time to explore all the features yet. I am looking forward to the online synchronization and collaboration features that i am still to explore and probably the web Office.
Except for the upgrade everything worked well. Upgrade failed badly. So I had to uninstall the previous version of Office and then reinstall the beta. I would have been happier if the upgrade had worked, but still this was the fresh installation was a no brainer and hassle free. For some reason the icons seem pretty odd in the start menu with all those alphabet symbols. I kinda liked the 2007 icons in the start menu. In spite of all the hitch at the start, I liked it better than any windows product. After all Scoble was not wrong when he mentioned office 2010 is very cool in these videos. I seriously never thought it would be so cool. Overall it seems a good quarter for Microsoft, with windows 7 earlier and now Office 2010. What do you think? I ‘d love to here from you.
Bookmark Sync-Now on chrome too
Bookmark sync has been an advanced web user feature for a very long time now. It started probably with Firefox’s Xmarks. To briefly sum it up for those who didn’t know about bookmark sync, its a way of sharing the same set of bookmarks across various computers. This might not seem that important for a newbie, but for those advanced geeks, its pretty much something which they cant live without. The good news is that the chrome team has officially implemented bookmark sync on the dev channel. Getting it to work is all the more easier than getting extensions to work on chrome. Just grab a copy of the latest chrome from the dev channel and launch it with “–enable-sync” command-line flag.
If you are interested to explore using the extensions on chrome, check out my post on enabling and using extensions from here.
That’s a cool feature to have on your browser, but what i am waiting for is a sync like Weave for firefox. What other features would you wish for on chrome?
Chrome-3.0 & Extensions
On 8th July Google announced officially on its blog that a chrome OS is under development and will be available in the market from mid next year, though you can still get the source code’s starting this year end. The news is all over the blogosphere and twitter. Well few days back, Google silently launched the 3.0 version of the chrome browser on the chrome dev. channel. This did not have the hype as what Chrome Os has even before its release has, but it didn’t miss my attention as well.
So what’s hot in this 3.0 version of the release? The latest builds support extensions, has a customizable new tab page and a lot of other bug fixes under the hood. Extensions is really an awesome feature that everybody has been longing for on Chrome. I have posted some screenshots of the latest build with some extensions, so that you could have a sneak preview.
The New tab page, with the customizable UI, to pin your most visited websites in the thumbnail view. Still waiting for that tips & suggestions to populate.
A screen shot of the new tab page in list view.
My installed extensions (chritter and gmail checker)are visible on the status bar( they call it the tool strip)
My chrome extension screen shows the extensions that i am using currently. (Don’t be scared by the error, its just that i deleted something i was trying)
Now that you have an idea as to what it looks like, try it out your self. It would be unfair if I wouldn’t post links to the site where i got to read through and try the extensions. So here they go..
Firstly head over to the HOW TO page. Once you are done the the basics you can try these suggested extension samples from here. Do make sure you have the latest build from here or you are on the dev channel subscribing to the latest builds.
The extensions that i use on chrome are listed below. I have linked the original site incase you wanna try
- Adsweep – removes adds. This one gets a 5 star from me.
- Cleeki an interesting and a MUST try extension its very much like IE 8 Accelerators, in fact you can use all the IE 8 accelerators with chrome from here.
- Chritter – the twitter extension that shows the last tweet of all the folks you are following.
- Gmail Checker- displays unread mail count.
- Rss subscription- finally you can see the feed icon on the URL bar.
If you are interested in Google page rank you can try this extension here.
Well there’s lot more to be done on the extensions development and their periodic updates etc, so far I am enjoying all the extensions i tried. Incase you know something i haven’t tried, do let me know i would be excited to try them.
Chrome hasn’t dropped me, and am already getting addicted to chrome. With such rapid development on chrome, Firefox has a lot of challenges coming ahead. Well that’s really healthy for the web..What do you think?
Opera Unite- Not convincing Yet.
This morning’s news paper took me to this article by Chris. Chris Shared his views elaborately on Unite services. There’s a good amount of conversation on his site, i would recommend you to head over to his post to get more on the discussions.
I am writing a post here in detail as i could not share all my thoughts on his site due to lack of time.
Opera Unite is a set of services that are integrated into the browser using which one can share files, photos, chat with people, and better make it your web server.
These are quite interesting features you can expect to run from a browser. I tried them yesterday, and i was really excited to see the review by Chris. I have to tell you Chris, opera deserves an appreciation for such an attempt given the fact unite is still in its alpha stages and has to go a long way. Its true that all the services are implemented pretty neatly. I felt all the services offered are really not necessary for the layman at least for majority of them. The following are reasons why i think.
1. Hosting a server on my laptop is good, but it has a long list of limitations and that is why we prefer web hosts.
2. As for as file sharing goes, there are a variety of options which i use already, why would i need to use this.
3. With respect to other services, If i am already using a lot of social sites (facebook, flickr, etc. where i am happy with what i am) then why would i be interested to move everything into opera’s services. I am sure most of my friends are not on opera’s communities.
But there are a few things i really would like to appreciate. Opera is slowly getting that polish as browser which lacked in the previous versions. It really did not seem like an alpha experience, at least not to me trying out the browser and the service. The browser still rocks when you compare it with Chrome or Firefox or Safari or Flock, etc.
Self discipline and Success
Since the day i stumbled upon the TED site, I have been a fan of TED. People who talk at TED are really exceptional and they have made it on TED because of their intellect and ideas. I really appreciate every one of them who have presented there for sharing their knowledge and making everybody wiser.
I recently got to watch Mr. Joachim on this nice interesting video. What he speaks about is really very simple, something we know about. Not all of us realize it often and capitalise with it.Well he speaks about self discipline. I would say self discipline is all about yourself and you fail at it you loose in life and the best part is you can’t blame anyone else for it but your self. I feel self control and self discipline are not two different things. The more you have control over your self the more you can groom your self. The take from the video is “the more disciplined you are the better are the chances for success”. I really enjoyed the video hope you will too. Head over to Ted Talks and keep checking them for more thought provoking Talks. BTW a big hats off to team TED!
You can download the video from here.
Feel like bashing me for this post, you can leave a line below 
. I would love to hear your thoughts.
Four Reasons y Chrome will be your default browser.
I have never found time till today to express my thoughts on the browser wars. I follow the browser wars very frequently. I not only follow the browser developments and i dare to take the risk of downloading the latest build of one and test it out. Just to tell you i have played around with Firefox, Opera, Safari, IE8, Chrome, K-meleon, Kninja, Deepnet, Flock, Amaya, Maxthon, Netscape for couple of months. I am always amused to see what browsers will be capable of in the future. I recently realized that somehow chrome has become my default browser instead of Firefox which was my default for almost 3 years prior losing out to chrome.
Rendering Engine:-
Webkit is the best (I mean it) ever rendering engine, that i have seen so far and used. Two companies(Google, apple) trust it, makes it worth looking into. Web kit is known for its speed and cold start. gecko is till on the heels of Webkit to be precise. Google was supporting Mozilla for a very long time and in spite of it they chose to go with webkit and Gecko, proves worthy.
Memory Management:-
The browser has been redesigned in such a fashion, that each tab is managed as a separate process makes it really simple to manage multiple tabs, i.e if a tab crashes due to a plug-in problem or memory problem or something, your browser will be still up and you will loose only the tab that crashed. There is not better browser than opera on memory management, i feel chrome will be there soon.
UI simplicity:-
The UI is designed to be minimal and uncluttered, which helps people view more of the web than the browser. Before Chrome, Safari had the simplest of UI, after chrome safari changed it to the chrome style, shows simple the UI really is.
Community:-
A browser gets really complete when it has an open community working on it to improve it in all possible directions, Google has created that environment for webkit, with the initiative of chromium. A lot of add-ons, new features etc will be available as the development progresses. Moving ahead chrome will have a major market share.
Chrome still is in its very early stages of development and has to travel a long way to be the best browser, but am confident its on the right track. It is rough, it crashes etc.. so it might not be your favorite for now, but you can’t stay away.
I have been and am still a fan of Firefox and i extensively try a variety of the stuff the Mozilla labs innovates. I will miss the Weave, Ubiquity and a long list of add-ons that i use, But considering the general user on the web, what matters most is speed, memory and the UI and chrome will win everyone in no time on these aspects. If you are really interested in what changes browsers will bring in tomorrow have a peek here… i seriously wish chrome also gets a similar community.
IPL BUSINESS- Larger than what U think.
It has been an year since i wrote this post. The post has attracted a lot of traffic especially the last quarter considering the hype about IPL season 2. Considering the traffic stats from search terms, I thought i should write a followup post with a better analysis of the revenue figures.
The basic Numbers of IPL are as follows. 
Television rights
Joint bid by India’s Sony TV network and Singapore-based World Sports Group secured the global broadcasting rights for 1.026 billion dollars for a 10-year period.
The deal was re-negotiated this year after the IPL cancelled the Sony-WSG deal citing poor production quality. Sony-WSG won back the rights after agreeing to pay 1.63 billion dollars for the next nine years till 2017 in an out-of-court settlement.
Dollars paid by individuals and groups at an auction in January 2008 to buy the eight teams
- 111.9 million by industrialist Mukesh Ambani for Mumbai Indians.
- 111.6 million by liquor and airline tycoon Vijay Mallya for Bangalore Royal Challengers.
- 107 million by newspaper group Deccan Chronicle for the Hyderabad-based Deccan Chargers.
- 91 million by BCCI secretary and businessman N. Srinivasan for Chennai Super Kings.
- 84 million by business group GMR Holdings to buy Delhi Daredevils.
- 76 million by Bollywood star Preity Zinta and her friends for Kings XI Punjab.
- 75 million by Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan for Kolkata Knight Riders.
- 67 million by Emerging Media group, partly owned by Lachlan Murdoch, for Rajasthan Royals.
Top IPL earners (per season, in dollars) :
- 1.55 million – Kevin Pietersen – Bangalore Royal Challengers
- 1.55 million – Andrew Flintoff – Chennai Super Kings
- 1.50 million – Mahendra Singh Dhoni – Chennai Super Kings
- 1.35 million – Andrew Symonds – Deccan Chargers
- 975,000 – Sanath Jayasuriya – Mumbai Indians
- 950,000 – Ishant Sharma – Kolkata Knight Riders
- 950,000 – Jean-Paul Duminy – Mumbai Indians
- 925,000 – Irfan Pathan – King’s XI Punjab
- 900,000 – Jacques Kallis – Bangalore Royal Challengers
- 900,000 – Brett Lee – King’s XI Punjab
- 850,000 – Harbhajan Singh – Mumbai Indians
Note: Players not available for the entire tournament are paid on a pro-rata basis per match.
India’s ‘icon’ players
Five Indian stars were given ‘icon’ status and were not put up for auction last year, thereby ensuring they played for their ‘home’ teams. They earned 15 percent more than the highest-paid player in their respective teams
- Sachin Tendulkar (Mumbai Indians) – 1.12 million dollars
- Sourav Ganguly (Kolkata Knight Riders) – 1.09 million dollars
- Yuvraj Singh (Kings XI Punjab) – 1.06 million dollars
- Rahul Dravid (Bangalore Royal Challengers) – 1.03 million dollars
- Virender Sehwag (Delhi Daredevils) – 833,750 dollars
Prize money
- Winner: 960,000 dollars
- Runners-up: 480,000 dollars
- Losing semi-finalists: 240,000 dollars
- Fifth-placed team: 160,000 dollars
- Sixth–placed team: 140,000 dollars
- Seventh-placed team: 100,000 dollars
- Eighth-placed team: 80,000 dollars
A little bit of googling lets me understand that the revenues will be shared in the following manner which i confirmed from here.
“World over, any league has three main sources of income namely media receipts, gate receipts and sponsorships. Under IPL, these three streams are categorized under central and local. Central revenues are through IPL.
A Central
1. Media rights – To be shared equally amongst franchises after removing IPL’s share. 2. 2. Sponsorship rights (IPL sponsors) – 60% of the amount collected to be distributed equally amongst the franchises.
B Local
1. Sponsorships – Team sponsorship revenues are the most variable and are dependent on the marketing skills. For example, teams like India Cements have marketed their teams based on the format of IPL – where sponsorships are sold on categories. ICL’s main sponsor is Aircel. In contrast, the other team of Deccan Chronicle will have team partners. These partners will have ownership of the team. For example, in case of an entertainment partner, anything to do with entertainment from cheerleaders to fours and sixes will be seen by that party.
2. Gate receipts – Are anticipated to be a major source of revenues. 20% of tickets are to be allocated to IPL.”
So far the predictions are that IPL Season 2 ’s Revenue will be around 10,790 cr which according to Modi is 1725 cr more than last season’s revenue.
That’s it with the facts and figures which I can share. 10,790 cr is really a huge amount of money to rake in from the common man’s interest in cricket. Now I know what my interest in cricket is worth(atleast approximately). Last year I had made a mention in my post that some part of the IPL’s revenues be spent for a social cause. I am not sure if they heard me, this year they have the HEAT programme which is aimed at spending about Rs 40 miIllion for education of the youth in South Africa. I definitely appreciate their start. Hope their spending increases drastically over the years.
Have an idea? Wanna share ur thoughts. Go ahead, leave a comment… I would love to talk to you.
Wishes!
Three days past new year and i still feel i can Wish you all a prosperous 2009! This is indeed a brief post to wish you all and to thank Guy and his team for sending the Gift. I am delighted today because i have got my hands on to Guy’s Reality Check. Its a gift, that i never expected to receive. It really is interesting, i just managed to glance it a bit.(I am yet to begin reading it).Thanks Guy, I am looking forward to getting some tips from it this year.
So far a good start and hope its betters out coz it seems like a rough year ahead for the world, am charged up to face it.. Are U?
