Yahoo! Search has transitioned to Bing in the US and will be rolling out elsewhere as part of the agreement between Microsoft and Yahoo! where Bing will be the search engine powering Yahoo! and Yahoo! managing the ad sales for searches originating from its search site as well as from Bing’s own site.

This is part of the efforts from Yahoo! to focus more on it’s key areas as well as a joint effort by the companies to take on Google which is the reigning search engine.

Just when I thought I loved the Firefox 4 Beta that I have been using since the past 2 months now, Bam! Mozilla outs beta number 4. The latest has made me await the final release ever more anxiously!

A look at the key features in Beta 4:

• Firefox Sync plugin is now integrated with the browser itself. For the uninitiated, FF Sync allows you to sync your browser data between two computers or even between your smartphones. A great tool if you ask me. You can either setup sync with FF server or your own (Custom) server.
• Another Hot Feature is the Tab Groups or Firefox Panorama (previously called Tab Candy). I discovered this only today, I must admit. You can manage tab groups either by right-clicking on the tab and clicking on “Move This Tab To > Create New Group” or if you have menus enabled (visible) by default, then simply go to the “View Menu > Group Your Tabs” and voila! you arrange your tabs as per your liking. You can also use Ctrl+Space for quick access to Panorama. Watch this video showing off great features of Panorama.

Other than these, I feel performance has indeed improved over the previous Beta release. For more info, check out the full release notes.

iPod touch 3G

Well, its been quite a while since I mentioned my adventures with my iPod touch 3G. It has been an experience through which I realized that I was better off without an iPhone.

Imagine an environment where you follow what one man has to say. You see what this man visualizes. And, you do what this man follows! Totally undemocratic, right? That’s exactly what I feel when I am using my iPod. Yes, there are goodies on it. And, there maybe some good stuff you can do with it. But, you still are stuck with diktats! There’s nothing that will change that. You cannot do things as you like with the device that you have paid for!

I’m happy that Saurik jailbroke this device with his little Cydia App. A jailbroken iPod is indeed a geek’s productivity center. Other than that, you get many good apps from Cydia itself.

While I have described quite some experience of mine, I would like to mention here that my iPod 3G is already jailbroken! I used the Spirit Jail Break to free my phone and ever since then I haven’t looked back.

Yes, I’m still using OS 3.1.3 as i didn’t feel like upgrading to the new version yet. Not having a jailbreak available for the iPod touch 3G on iOS4 didn’t help the cause either.

Other than all this, there’s a peculiar limitation from iTunes that prevents you from syncing the iPod on more than 3 authorised computers. This, even when I own the iPod, the apps, the computers and the music library. What could be the justification offered for this? Nothing.

But anyway, the discoveries go on as I march forward into the nether-realms of  Apple’s iPod. Before I sign off, I must say that some of the games are really good. I loved Angry Birds a lot. So, there it is. So, I sign off for now. Until the next entry on this, Ciao!!!!

Well just when you thought I was not really around, I write an article! This one is indeed special. It denotes about 6 years of my unrelenting support of the browser I really love.

It is totally impartial. Let me tell you that even though I haven’t been able to write an article on the blog, but I have been up to many things lately. One of them being usage of Firefox 4 Beta 1. Well, just yesterday I got a prompt to upgrade to Beta 2 of FF4. I did. And, voila! App Tabs dawn on me. This is indeed a great feature. I am just loving it.

Not to talk about the other great features that are available in FF4 B2 like:

• Tabs are on top (yep, above the awesome bar)
• App Tabs (Small persistent tabs used for mail, twitter, facebook and other essential stuff that’s always open with us and that stay safely in the leftmost corner giving you more real estate for other activities. Find out more.
• Better HTML5 Support
• Search for open tabs right from the address bar
• Plus much more

Find out about more exciting features in the release notes for Firefox 4 beta 2.

Ok. Well, technically this is day 4 but practically it is day 2 as I spent two days without being able to use the iPod (as I was busy with office work).

So, with that behind us, I would like to mention a couple of things I noticed in my iPod touch as compared to my N97 mini. Please note that the comparison that I am making between the two devices is limited solely to the UI and other app stuff.

This doesn’t consider the phone, GPS, and other such stuff not present on the iPod touch.

Well, moving on, I must say that most of the apps I use on my N97 mini are available for the iPhone OS also (and which I mentioned on my first post). Having said that, I must mention that I was impressed by the following on my iPod touch:

• Good internet experience when compared to the slow built-in browser of the N97 mini.
• Great touch response (again an area where Nokia does not deliver as expected in a high end device like the N97 mini)
• Good email client (Nokia’s email client is ok but compared to the iPod’s, it still needs to smoothen out some things). Not to mention that I could access my corporate email on the iPod (you see, my corporate email is not on exchange but third-party managed). Nokia’s Email service doesn’t support my work email as of now. (boo -hooo!!)
• Wi-Fi configuration is really great and also supports most of the diverse authentication protocols I have come across when I visit my project sites (Nokia are you listening on this one?). Even though my Nokia N97 mini has configuration options for a proxy but the authentication given to the phone doesn’t work well, it seems. I am still verifying many more options on the iPod and therefore more on this as days pass by.
• Good processor on the iPod makes it quite responsive (Nokia could have done a lot better if they had used a 600Mhz+ processor on the N97 mini themselves).
• Pinch zooming and other features are good.

Following is what I found quite bad and annoying and made me grateful to not have purchased an iPhone and instead proved my decision to stick to my N97 mini a worthy one. So, here’s a list of things that are bad with the iPod/iPhone:

• The first and the worst: Connect to iTunes to make your device functional and notify Apple of the activation. Not really acceptable, but do we have a choice? Nokia, you are superb…
• Landscape mode is only selectively available in selected apps. This means that there ain’t no landscape mode usage except for some areas like: Safari, Mail, Photos and Video Playback. Other than this, portrait mode is locked in! And they had been blaming Nokia for putting the N900 in a sort of landscape mode lock! Hypocrisy at play here, I guess.
• No good accessories support. I bought a dock which was advertised as “iPod touch compatible” but the stupid thing rejects is as “This accessory is not supported by this iPod”. Damn!
• No multi-tasking (should be solved when I get OS 4)
• No camera (Very very disappointing)
• No GPS (iPod uses the “known” Wi-Fi connection to know your current location) which means that the presence of maps is useless!
• No out of the box full featured apps or games (as opposed to what Nokia offers and has spoilt us with, over the years!)
• No good support (Everything’s covered under a “very limited” warranty as per Apple’s claim). When I asked the retailer at the time of purchase about support, he said I had to go to him and he would then ask for an email approval from the actual Apple service provider (in Riyadh) and then send my device to them by courier (after they approve!). Lousy, you say? Yep, very lousy. Compared to this, Nokia has got us covered (literally!).

Well, that’s a huge list of things I found in 2 days. More to come at a later date. See you then.

Finally, I managed to get myself a brand new iPod Touch 3G, 32GB version! Great thing. But the moment I purchased it, I have been thinking of installing all kinds of stuff on it. Already my music library has been transferred to it. Over 5 Gigs of Indian & English Songs. Plus, apps for Y! Messenger, Skype, Fring, Twitter and Facebook!

My iPod checklist for the days to come:

• Jailbreak
• Install more and more apps
• Configure Mail accounts
• Load my contacts
• More social apps
• Lot’s of games!
• Plus much more exploring to be done

Looks like my path’s cut out. iPod touch was something I had been looking forward to adding to my list of gadgets! Finally, iGot iPod. iPhone can wait until the time I can test all the functionalities of the iPhone OS and compare the same with Nokia’s Symbian OS s60 v5 which is running great on my Nokia N97 Mini.

Comparisons are inevitable. But all that can wait until later. I would be posting comparisons as soon as I am aware of the differences between the two softwares. And, see what all the fuss is about.

In the meatime, I need people to help me jailbreak my iPod touch with OS 3.1.3 installed (yea, I have been googling all day). Any suggestions guys?

Looks like finally we Nokia/Yahoo! users are in for some treat. As per the official blog post, Nokia and Yahoo! are partnering once again (they had previously partnered to offer Yahoo! Go on N series Handsets most notably the likes of N70, N95 and so on).

So, you must be wondering, what’s in it for us: the users? Here’s a brief from the post I would like to reproduce for you:

As part of the alliance Nokia will be the exclusive provider of Yahoo!’s maps and navigation services, branded as “powered by Ovi.” Nokia brings its ample experience in top-drawer, location-based products and maps to Yahoo!’s users. In turn, Yahoo! will become the exclusive global provider of Nokia’s Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services, branded as “powered by Yahoo!.” Yahoo! brings its expertise in world-class internet offerings to the table for Ovi users.

From what I see, this pact is a kind of “switching of services” pact between the two giants. Nokia’s Maps services would power Yahoo! Maps as “powered by Ovi Maps” and Ovi Mail/Chat would be run by Yahoo! in return (also to be credited as “Powered By Yahoo!”).

For us Nokia and Yahoo! users, we would definitely gain. Especially, the crowd which owns Nokia phones and use Yahoo! services.

I can’t wait to see the difference that this pact would bring to the overall user experience.

Both the companies are at a difficult juncture in their remarkable success paths. Nokia is facing an onslaught from the various wannabes and they are well equipped indeed (And, you thought being an industry leader was easy! Nokia should learn lessons in industry dominance from Intel), while Yahoo! has been struggling to expand its profits by focussing on areas where it holds expertise. (Fact: Yahoo! is still the most visited homepage on the internet today).

Let’s see what comes out of this exciting collaboration.

Links of Use:

• Yahoo! Yodel Anecdotal (Official Yahoo! Corporate blog)
• Nokia Conversations (Official Nokia Blog)

Firefox 3.6.4 is set for a June 01, 2010 release date as per schedule of Mozilla and as speculated by this article on Softpedia.
It also says that this release from Mozilla could be more than expected and could possibly bring upfront many features which were originally scheduled for 3.7:

Essentially, Firefox 3.6.4 has swallowed Firefox 3.7, with the browser maker motivating the move with the necessity to boost the stability of its product through the introduction of a new feature designed to cut off plug-ins from Firefox. According to Mozilla’s current plans, Firefox 3.6.4 is scheduled for release on June 1st, 2010, almost two months after the previous release, v3.6.3

Well, I say: June 01 ain’t that far away so we can wait and see what exactly release 4 of 3.6 has really to offer!

Looks like Yahoo! has released an update to Yahoo! Messenger. The current release is v10.0.0.1267. So, if you are having a version lower than this, update your messenger now by downloading the current version from here.

Also, check out Softpedia’s page on Yahoo! Messenger for a log of what’s changed.

In the recent open letter about flash written by Steve Jobs, he has mentioned several reasons highlighting “deficiencies” in Flash that has kept them from supporting the technology on their iPhone, iPod or iPad or whatever “i-products” they have.

One of the reasons sighted by Jobs to keep it out of iPhone is the battery hungry nature of Flash, which ironically runs on my Nokia 97 mini without using much juice! (as claimed by Jobs)

Another reason sighted by the so called openness loving leader of Apple is that Flash is 100% proprietary and is a closed system, incidentally Apple itself practices questionable policies with regards to the total control on it’s own products. (cases where developers were barred access to the App Store highlight this).

Talk about openness! Talk about hypocrisy! Steve Jobs, sir, you have achieved dizzy heights in both.

The real reason behind barring Flash from iPhone OS based devices could be that Apple itself would loose a lot of the revenue currently being generated from the App Store (Apple gets a 30% cut from all sales) as it’s a lot easier to develop games and run videos based on it. Plus, there’s a whole bunch of things you could do with Flash.

Be brave, Mr. Jobs, and accept your product’s closed nature. Accept that you fear loosing out on that extra cash that you are extracting from the hapless developers!

Even Microsoft has a few things to learn from you I guess. Nokia has a few thing of it’s own to learn from your so called practices.

I hope the consumers take notice of this and get smart. Think before you choose products from such a company.