Reviews

How Opera Revolutionized the Internet

Ever since its young ages – way before Firefox was even a speck in someone’s mind – Opera was leading the pack with some of today’s most common features, like tabbed browsing and many more. Today, Opera is probably the leader of browsers in terms of power and sophistication: it includes an integrated mail client, a feed reader, phishing filter, widgets, and many other major and minor features that make your browsing experience better.

Until a short while ago, Opera was ad-laden until you paid for it (although the text ads option produced neater Google-powered ads). Not too long ago, as of version eight-point-something (I don’t remember the exact number right now), released September 20 (see Opera’s Milestones page), Opera became totally free.

Customization is priority number one: Any toolbar and button can be positioned virtually anywhere. For example, I like to have a new tab button directly to the left of the tabs, like Netscape 7.2 had. In Firefox, the only choice I have is on the far left of the toolbar above the tab bar, while in Opera, it can go anywhere I could possibly want. In the later versions, there is a feature called Widgets, which are essentially the same as anybody else’s implementation, except that they are part of Opera, not the OS.

Opera sets new standards for speed – even Firefox comes second to Opera. The page rendering speeds are simply blazing. When I left Netscape for Opera, this was one of my first observations. Pages render in seconds, not days, as in the case of Internet Explorer 6.

The integrated feed reader and  mail client are a bit different, but work pretty well. Upon viewing a feed’s URL, Opera will display the feeds contents all scrambled up, but will ask you in a polite dialog box whether you want to add it to your feeds. Reading feed messages is normal, but the message pane does not display images, like the readers in other apps do (I think).

The only way to really get a feel for Opera is to use it. It’s a bit different than other browsers, but once you get used to it, you will never want to use another browser, except for the times you visit a site nobody ever bothered to code properly. Go grab Opera now – it’s free!

Finally Have All Presents

Today marks the absolute completion of the present stream of the 2006 holiday season. Yesterday I received yet another fifty dollars; this will not be spent on anything immediately. I decided that I should end my spending spree, which took place upon today’s arrival of the Smith Helmet Helper that I had several troubles ordering (one store didn’t like my Amex Gift Card at all, and the one that did take it at first gave me a slight problem, but my order was fully processed the next night) and a keyboard extension cable (which the need for surfaced after the re-do of my room).

The helmet helper was pretty much what the stores say it is. It is a flap of rubber with plastic clips on the ends, and it replaces the buckle on Smith ski goggles while lengthening the strap to allow the goggles to better fit over a helmet. Installing it was a snap, and the pressure against my glasses (oh thank goodness for the OTG goggles I have) that I experienced without the helmet helper was non-existent. I am happy with the product itself, but I feel that the shipping charge ($7.02 for a $4.95 item) was a bit excessive, especially because it took over a week for Brown aka UPS to make it to my house.

The keyboard extension cable is just that - a cable with a PS/2 male and female connector on opposite ends. Not much to say; I just shut down my computer, connected the cable between the original keyboard cable and my computer, and viola, done. Now i don’t have totake my keyboard out of the drawer before closing it – a royal pain.

Who said the holidays ended in December? Not me. Especially when delivery companies take their lazy time.

Windows Media Player 11

For once, Microsoft made a product that [everyone says] is so good that PC World gave it a product rating of 90, which not many products get. The player got a major facelift in just about all aspects, and sports many new and useful features.

The library has new views and layouts, and searching is both fast and easy. Burning discs is also smarter, with a feature that will figure out how many CDs you need to burn your selection. I would have to say that the Sync area got the best enhancements, giving you real, libary-oriented views of your player’s contents (meaning views like Artist, Album, Genre, Songs, and more; unlike the way Windows Media Player 10 just gave you a very basic tree list of your songs).

There is one thing that I’m not used to: Now Playing is not an actual playlist, it’s just a listing of the songs that are, well, ‘now playing’, for lack of a better term. With this new ideology, I find that the only way to easily just play a song now without losing the rest of my current playlist is to add the song to a playlist (in fact, I’m now only using a playlist to manage my now playing list). Also, I am looking forward to easily being able to sync a playlist to a device without transferring the songs contained in it. Someone at MisticRiver said it’s possible, but he wasn’t being too clear in his response.

My overall rating of windows Media Player 11 is 8/10, or Very Good, with a little room for improvment. It’s good to see Microsoft is setting a good trend with windows Media Player, which began with version 9. Let’s hope it continues to version 12 and beyond.

Present Collection Almost Complete

The delivery of my iriver accessory kit today (Saturday; which surprises me, since I haven’t seen UPS deliver on Saturday before) marks yet another item on my present list for this holiday season. So far I have received or bought the following items with money I received:

• iriver Clix / U10 Accessory kit (includes a pretty decent silicon case, belt clip, neck strap that is really difficult to get on the case, arm band which I will never use and screen protectors with a good microfiber cloth)
• Carrera ski helmet (pretty comfortable, not shaped for my head but the insertable pads provides some compensation)
• Black Diamond gloves (not too light and not too heavy, and have good dexterity)
• Lowe Alpine goggle case (kind of tight for big goggles like my Smith Cariboo OTG)
• Smartwool Snow Rider socks (intended for snowboarders but should suffice for skiing too; one really thick pair of socks)
• About $135 in cash

For now I’m pretty happy with what I got. However, there are two more things on my wish list:

• Smith Universal Helmet Helper – lengthens a goggle’s strap by a few inches to fit comfortably over a helmet without stretching the strap or squeezing your eyes out :-P
• A simple USB wall charger that no store in NYC other than some schlock place on Fifth Avenue seems to carry

I’ll post again when my cache has been filled. Somehow it seems like it’s so difficult to get my hands on those little things.

Windows Live Writer

Microsoft has expanded on their Live idea by developing various applications that connect with the Web in some way or another. One of their best ones is, in my opinion, the Windows Live Writer application, which lets you post to your blog from your desktop.

Upon the first launch of the program, you will be asked to configure Writer (which is currently in Beta) for you blog. Just enter you blog’s address, and your username and password, and the wizard will get to work figuring out all the specifics of your blog (type of blogging system, template formatting, and more). The whole process took only a few minutes to complete over my relatively slow (meaning 95 Kbps tops for downloads) DSL line.

Once it’s all set up, you are presented with the post editing screen, where you type the content of your posts. You can also view the post as it would appear on your blog, or edit the raw HTML of the post. In addition, the latest versions allow you to add tags from a variety of blog search and social networking sites (Technorati, del.icio.us, and few others).

I haven’t yet experimented with pictures, maps or third party plugins, but the potential of Writer’s feature set looks positive. Just for your info, I wrote this post in Writer, illustrating it’s usefulness.

More information at Live ideas

Philips SHE9500 in-ear headphones

My wish got answered and my dad gave me a set of Philips In-ear headphones to replace my old ones. My first impression upon opening the gift wrapping was cool. I selected the appropriate size of the three sets of rubber earpieces, and tried them on. The headphones fit pretty well, forming a nice seal, but don’t block out as much noise as my old Koss Sparkplug earphones. The sound quality is pretty good; there is bass, but not too much, and from what I can tell, the treble is pretty clear. The headphones come with a long cord, which you can shorten by simply unplugging the extension from the main cord. It also came with a relatively poorly designed case, and the ‘asymetric cabling system’ (with one earphone cord longer than the other, a common design flaw) is a bit of a pain. But overall, I like these, and hopefully they won’t break before the end of this week.

Windows XP Royale Theme

Hey all you folks, I found this new theme (or skin or whatever you want to call it) for Windows XP called Royale, which I read was pulled out from Windows XP Media Center Edition. I don’t know how or who got it out, but you can download it from Softpedia.

I love Google Talk

We all know Google has some neat tricks up its sleeve. One of the latest, and in my opinion the greatest, is Google Talk, and IM/VoIP service and client. I spoke to one of my friends over it, and after spending about five minutes trying to figure out why he couldn’t hear me (it turned out that my headset’s microphone was muted), I was talking in sound quality comparable to FM. I was so amazed at how technology has advanced over the years. I just wished school would work something like that.