Gadgets comes to Google Docs

Google on Wednesday unveiled Gadgets for Spreadsheets in Google Docs, allowing people to create graphical representations of data in spreadsheets and publish them on Web sites.  For consumers, this means they have a dozen or so new ways to look at data in their spreadsheets. Google has put up a gallery of specialty gadgets to choose from. They include gadgets to display data on a pie chart, map, time chart, funnel chart, Gantt chart, pivot table, and on a heat map if it's geographical data. You can even create interactive charts like those used by Google Finance and for motion charts.  These visuals can also be pushed out to appear on an iGoogle home page or any other site and they will be dynamically updated as changes are made to the spreadsheet. Gadgets will soon be coming to other apps in Google Docs and eventually search, to help people find relevant content and links, says Jonathan Rochelle, senior product manager for Google Docs.

Google has also added new features that make using Spreadsheets easier. For one, there is a notification system that will e-mail you when somebody has made a change to a spreadsheet that is being collaborated on. You can set it to alert you once a day or after each new change is made. The changes are highlighted so you can easily detect what is new. There is also a column-based auto-complete function that looks for cues from adjacent cells to try to guess what you are typing, an updated color palette and function editing capability that uses the arrow keys, as well as an auto-complete function for typing long formulas. In addition, spreadsheet creators now have access to historical stock market data through a Google Finance function and new functions to automatically sort and filter data. Google is doing something interesting with its Gadgets platform, making gadgets a data source for spreadsheets as well as a data distribution method for developers. "If I'm collecting census data and putting it into a spreadsheet, I can also make that data available to statisticians," through the Visualization API, says Rochelle. "It doesn't have to be in a spreadsheet form" to distribute.

Spreadsheets is just the first data source that can be handled this way. "We're making the spreadsheet almost a platform for simple development and delivery," he says. With the enhancements, Google is ratcheting up the competition its free Web-hosted apps are giving Microsoft's desktop productivity suite, which companies pay for.

Ref: http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9898520-7.html?tag=nefd.top

Safari 3.1 adds speed and HTML 5 features

 Apple released Safari 3.1 on March 18 with an updated rendering engine that makes the fastest Internet browser even faster.

On top of that, Apple's new browser includes some features that reflect the future of the HTML 5 specification: offline storage, media support, and CSS animations and Web fonts. It also adds some needed compatibility and bug fixes, as well as some other new features that really make it a great everyday browser. For the uninitiated, Apple provides a great PDF overview of Safari. You can get the upgrade/installer from apple.com/safari/download/ (it's about a 16MB download for both Mac and PC) or simply update from Software Update. The installation is easy but strangely requires a restart on Macs but not on Windows. By the way, Safari 3.1 is the first Windows version not to carry the "beta" tag. The interface and the user experience are largely unchanged from those in Safari 3.0. Under the hood, however, Apple has made some significant changes that it has pulled from the latest builds of the open-source WebKit engine. WebKit is the framework version of the engine that's used by Safari. It is also the basis of the Web browsing engine in iPhone's Mobile Safari, Symbian's browser, the Google Android platform and Adobe's new AIR platform.

Testing

To check out how well Safari 3.1 handles Web sites, I ran it through some popular standards testing -- and found that it leads the pack. In the Acid3 Tests, which were created by the Web Standards Project to test dynamic browser capabilities, Safari 3.1 scored 75 out of 100, significantly higher than the previous version of Safari and other shipping browsers (Firefox 3 Beta 4 scored 68, while the most recent WebKit scored 92). However, the big news is how fast the new version of Safari is. How fast? I tested Safari 3.1 on my first-generation 2-GHz MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM. In MooTools' SlickSpeed speed/validity test, Safari came out on top in almost every category on both Mac and PC.

It also did significantly better than any shipping browser on the SunSpider JavaScript speed tests (although since these tests are hosted at WebKit.org, they are perhaps biased). For example, on the Mac, Safari scored 4430ms, compared with 5048ms for Firefox 3 Beta 4. While I spend 90% of my time on a Macintosh, I also installed Safari on my Windows XP box to see how it stacked up against Internet Explorer, Opera and Firefox. In short, it worked extremely well for everyday browsing, offering speed and efficiency, especially on a four- or five-year-old machine. It also performed really well with lots of tabs open.

Although Safari 3.1 does perform much better than the shipping version of Firefox, the speed improvements in Firefox 3 Beta 4 are catching up with Safari 3.1 -- though Firefox 3 did consume more CPU cycles during my tests. One of the drawbacks of Safari has been the perceived "over-smoothing" or softening of fonts on the PC. While this hasn't been completely fixed, Apple's Safari 3.1 allows Web sites to specify fonts outside the seven Web-safe font families; these new fonts can be downloaded by the browser as needed. Unfortunately, there are still prominent features that are part of rival browsers that Safari simply can't match. For example, Safari doesn't have all of the add-ons that Firefox enjoys, such as the Google toolbar. Furthermore, if you need to use a site that employs Microsoft's proprietary DirectX technology -- like Microsoft Exchange's Outlook Web Access, for example -- you'll find that the experience on Safari leaves much to be desired. In this case, you're better off using Internet Explorer. Finally, Opera offers features, such as direct BitTorrent downloads, that aren't offered in Safari.

With the 3.1 release, Safari has become the fastest browser you can use. If that isn't enough reason to make a switch, its strong adherence to Web standards and rapid adoption of new technologies might make you think again.

SlickSpeed Test

	Dojo 1.0.2	JQuery 1.2.3	MooTools 1.2 Beta 2	Prototype 1.6.0.2
Mac OS
Safari 3.1	91	138	209	272
Firefox 3 Beta 2	142	235	151	282
Opera 9.25	225	431	426	562
Windows
Safari 3.1	171	171	250	236
Firefox 2.0.12	286	439	267	398
IE7	335	468	869	1987

* All measurements are in milliseconds. Lower numbers are better.

Ref: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=macintosh_os&articleId=9069838&taxonomyId=123&intsrc=kc_feat

The world's safest supercar - Caparo T1

The new Caparo T1, dubbed as one of world's safest ultra-performance cars, will go on display at the week-long Auto Expo in New Delhi on Thursday, prior to release to customers in April. Manufactured by Caparo Group -- the global technology company founded by NRI businessman Lord Swraj Paul -- and designed by senior engineers -- Ben Scott-Geddes and Graham Halstead -- from the team that developed the legendary McLaren F1, the T1 uses a blend of race-car and road-car technologies to deliver astonishing performance that surpasses even today's fastest and most expensive super-cars.

With more than 1,000bhp per tonne, around twice the power-to-weight ratio of a Bugatti Veyron, the Caparo T1, costing around ?235,000 ($480,000) or Rs 2 crore, slashes acceleration and braking times to levels previously only experienced by the most extreme racing cars.

Zero to 60 mph is dispatched in just 2.5 seconds and zero to 100mph in less than five seconds. Top speed exceeds 200mph and the vehicle's Caparo AP braking technology can deliver more than 3g of retardation, allowing it to stop from 100mph in less than three seconds.

Ref:http://specials.rediff.com/money/2008/jan/09sld01.htm

The world's cheapest car! - Tara Tiny @ Rs 99K

The Tata Nano is no longer the world's cheapest car! Jostling along with Tata Nano, this July, will be Tara Tiny and Tara Titu. These are zero emission, electric cars and cost only Rs 99,000! And they come from the Tara International stable.  Tara S Ganguly, the company's chairman and chief executive officer, had a big dream. And he set about realising it 'in a small way.' Tara International has teamed up with China's Aucma, a leading player in the electrical vehicles and appliances segment, to manufacture these cars.

At the moment, four variants of electric cars are ready at the Tara International factory at Palta, a few kilometers from Kolkata. These are Tara Tiny, Tara Titu (two-seater and four-seater, respectively), Tara Shuttle, and Tara Carrier. While Tara Tiny and Tara Titu are priced at Rs 99,000 (approximately), Tara Shuttle and Tara Carrier are priced at Rs 500,000 (approximately). The company will also launch electric bikes priced between Rs 12,000 and Rs 35,000.

The Tara series cars are available in electric red, black and white. Bikes comes in varied hues -- green, blue, red, etc.

Ref: http://specials.rediff.com/money/2008/mar/17tara1.htm