The Browser is your canvas

After this post about my switching loyalties to Chrome, now for some serious stuff. Irrespective of which browser you use for your online activities, one thing looks pretty certain, going by the sign of the times. The browser is going to rule our online lives for a long time to come. The hype about Windows 7 (and OSX and the gazillion of Linux distros out there) not withstanding, it looks like the next wars will be about browsers. Microsoft's Internet Explorer though still the most widely used browser (seriously, does anyone use IE?!), is losing market share consistently, and while Chrome is yet to make a sizeable dent in the browser market, it is catching up - and fast. The browser is quickly becoming synomous with just about anything we do with our desktop or notebook. Besides the usual e-mail and web-surfing, an increasing number of apps and services are moving from a desktop-based mode to a web-top based mode. Google mail introduced integrated chat a long time ago, and Yahoo followed suit. So you no longer need to have a separate chat client to IM with your friends and colleagues. Moving on to document creation as well, Google docs allows you to create documents online, using your browser. You can also share the documents you create with your friends online. As cloud-computing gains ground, we have ever-increasing data, residing not on our desktops, but 'in the cloud', free to be accessed from any place that has a WiFi connection. Some of these services - like the Windows Live Mesh - do require you to install a dedicated software, but others just let you access them through your browser. Just open your browser, and you're good to go! 

Some of the recently - well, not that recently - announced services take this one level further. Now I do not even have to use Adobe Reader to view my pdf files on my desktop. Google mail now supports this feature from right within Gmail. There are quite a few document sharing services - like Scribd, and Docstoc - which allow you to upload pdf (and other filetypes, of course) documents and then view them right in your browser window. You can also create, view and share presentations online, right from the (safe?) confines of your browser - thanks to Google presentations and Slideshare. Coming to multimedia, Flickr, Google Photos are long the de-facto standard in photo viewing and sharing. A site called resizeImage.org even offers basic online photo-editing tools like image resizing and cropping. So you no longer have to download that college re-union photo to crop that pretty face from it! Another very recent launched service allows you to 

create, edit, and save Microsoft Office Documents on the server - without downloading the file or any plugins. -- source: TechCrunch. 

With Flash becoming ubiquitous, and media streaming getting bigger and bigger with sites like YouTube, Hulu, Joost, we are now watching more videos online - again, in our browser - rather than on our desktop. YouTube is already serving 100 million videos every day, and this number will only grow bigger. 

So where does all this lead to? Will we see the browser becoming the next OS - in a manner of speaking? Will everything that we do on our desktops or notebooks be in a browser window? Techcrunch is already building a Tablet prototype, where the browser takes centerstage. The signs are definitely there. Win the browser market and win the world, anyone? 

The Break-Up

Yes, it's true. I finally broke up with her. I never ever thought that this day would come, but it has. (I really wanted to write the cliched '... sadly it has', but come to think of it, I'm not really sad either.) But the signs were there for the last couple of months, especially the last few weeks. We would see less and less of each other. If we did, it was just the cursory glance. A few minutes with each other, and then a courteous good-bye. I never thought that one day I would part with her. After all, we had stuck together through thick and thin for almost four years now. My first acquaintance with her was when I was a grad student in the Institute of Insane Technologists (which other less geeky people know as the haloed IIT-Bombay). I flirted with others during those heady days, but she was head-and-shoulders above them all, quite literally and figuratively. She was pretty, and she was nimble. She evolved over time, else I'd have got bored of her. After a long courtship, she moved in with me. (What, this is the age of live-in relationships! Did you think we would've got married or anything?!) Then through all those years, she got better and better. I once thought that she is someone who's really, really on par with the other thing (oops, sorry, it's too bad to call that great pleasure - wine - a 'thing'). Both get better and better with time, adding flavours as they age. And both are to be tasted to be experienced. A second-hand experience will not do. No, Sir. Well, the years together were like a honeymoon. I scarcely glanced at others. Well, OK, I did steal a glance at one other (that goes by the name... hmm, no.. no names here!). But that was just a flirtatious glance, nothing more, I assure you. Yes, we did have a few times, when she would clam up, and then I'd have no option but to retreat. But otherwise, it was heaven.

And then there waltzed into my life, 'The Other'. She was BEAUTIFUL, right from the word go. I still remember how I stayed up late in the night to catch a glimpse of her, sometime back in September. The geek that I am, I'd relied on technology to be up to date with when she'd be unveiled. And then, it was love at first site (oops, sorry... sight. I'm getting way too geekish, me thinks). But we (the one I just broke up with) were still a couple. It would certainly take more than a young ballerina for me to switch loyalty. But she definitely had the G-factor (or the X-factor, take your pic). And so I discreetly found out more about her, and then, gradually started dating her. The dating phase quickly turned into a courtship, and courtship into a romance. And all this while, I was paying less and less attention to my long-time partner. Heck, I was supposed to feel guilty about ignoring her, but the fact of the matter is that I didn't. My new companion offered me almost all that my partner had offered. And she was pretty and fast. Really, really fast. You just had to drop a hint, and she'd know what it was. And get it done. Pronto. Quickly. It was awesome. And then the young ballerina flowered from a dainty girl, a teenager, into a woman. She added flavours, learnt all the tricks that my old companion could do. Well, there are still a few things she can't manage. But I can live with that. It happened so fast, I did not realize how time had flown in the past few months. That was when the germ of a thought came to my mind. But I wanted to delay the inevitable. More because it was still going to be painful. But finally, today, I mustered the courage and went ahead with it. "Is it the other woman?" my long-time partner asked. "Yes, it is. I do not know what to say," I managed. "It's OK," she said. "You do not have to say anything. I know you'll come back to me. And I'll wait." she said, rather matter-of-factly. Well, I thought about that for a while.  

Well, it may be true. It may be not. One thing is for sure. In politics, and in browsers, there are no permanent friends or enemies. But Firefox was definitely the longest in the race. And I just uninstalled Firefox, and switched to Google Chrome as my default browser. Change is the name of the game. Not just in the White House, mate! 

The sound of Music

First, wish you all a Very Happy New Year. Well, I'm a bit late off the block, but well, this is my first post of 2009! Here's wishing you all a great 2009, one filled with peace - both within and without - and joy and happiness. Here's to the good times in 2009. 

Speaking of good times, I had a great time this morning. The morning was melodious, immersed in tunes and music at once uplifting and calming. I'd been to the Town Hall, here in Bangalore, to a programme "Majhe Jagne Hote Gaane" (The song of my Life, loosely translated), presented by Dr. Salil Kulkarni. And talking to him about his journey in the musical world was Sunil Barve, a well known Marathi stage and television actor. 

Music knows no boundaries, no barriers, and certainly none on the linguistic front. And yet, there is a different pleasure to listen to a musical performance in your mother tongue. It had been a long time since I'd been to a live performance of any sort - let alone Marathi music. And today was a treat, not only to the ears, but something deep within the heart as well. It's difficult to describe it. But the compositions played by Salil were at once uplifting, and yet calming. Some tugged at the heart strings and brought a lump in the throat - his rendition of the track from his album "Ago bai ... Dhago bai" about a kid who's alone at home because his parents are at work was one such - while others made your heart soar with joy. Some renditions touched the lover in you, reminding you of that touch, of the look in the eyes, and of the sweet sorrow of parting with your loved one. Some reached out to the little child and the child-like innocence that we all have within, albeit somewhere deep down where we're no longer aware of it. There were others which were devotional hymns - abhangs as they are called, and some may balk at listening to such music, but the atmosphere that they create is something totally, totally different. Salil's comment in the middle of rendering one such composition was telling. The people who go to discs and party and drink away into the night for a 'kick' would do well to listen to some such compositions once in a while, he said. Well, nothing against discs or partying or drinking, but indeed, some of the bhajans and abhangs really touch a different note somewhere within you, suddenly lifting you above the mundane. Well, that is a 'kick', isn't it? 

Then there was some cool fusion music, which really left one wondering about the skill of the composer. There was a raagmala - a sequence of raags - on the backdrop of western jazz! That was really something. And listening to that you really felt that yes, music is beyond all barriers. It is all pervading, all-encompassing. There were a couple of numbers for which Salil did an encore, on popular demand. Listening to the music, made me feel detached from the world outside. The routine - and not so routine - pressures of our life often make us lose touch with reality, with ourselves once in a while. Listening to music is just the kind of therapy that you need at such times. Of course, we all unwind with music to suit our moods after a tough day at work, or a particularly stressful, harried week. But live music. Aah, that is something different. Where you can really soak in the music. Smell it. Let it envelope you with all its richness. And finally you lose yourself in the melody... That was what it was like today. The Sound of Music...