The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
As the year draws to a close, Microsoft executives must be spending a lot of time reflecting on the year they have had. While still the most powerful technology company in the world, and with an operating system and an office suite of software that are the world's undisputed leaders, much of this year's technology news has been spent taking a lot of the shine off of this company. Ongoing patches, viruses, the release of the huge service pack 2 for Windows XP, and a constant torrent of news stories about their security failures have been giving this company fits. Meanwhile, the star of Google has continued to rise throughout the year as this once private company released stocks for sale and blazed the way with a continually growing list of services. Most people fire up their Windows computers, log on to Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to get on to the Internet, and then head to Google to search for information. But times are changing. Since its release only a month ago, some estimates state that Mozilla's Firefox browser has taken over an unbelievable 30% of the market, with some websites reporting an even split traffic between IE and Firefox. Now Google is on the hunt. Some rumour sites are reporting that Google is soon to release a web browser of their own. Why use IE to head to Google, when you can use a Google designed browser to get there? Already they have a small downloadable utility called desktop search which will combine information from your local computer with information from the Internet of any searches you enter. Documents, PowerPoint shows, Outlook addresses and email can be searched just like documents online. This last week Google also announced that it will begin a project to scan and place online the books of the New York Public Library, Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, and the University of Michigan. While still a long way from becoming reality, Google continually shows that it is serious about information management and availability, online and off. This led me to search through the Google website in more depth to see what else they have up their sleeve and I found a few interesting things. First of all of course are the tabs at Google.ca. Separate search engines exist for web documents, images, groups, and Froogle, Google's online shopping component; which now includes product reviews. Http://scholar.google.com is a niche search engine currently in beta, testing form, which searches scholarly papers and books. Interesting and powerful. Head to http://labs.google.com, to see what else is up and coming for this company. This is their website where they test out their new goodies. From here, things graduate to become full Google services. A few more interesting things about the main Google search engine itself are the capabilities it has. Want to convert pounds to kilograms, Celsius to Fahrenheit, or fortnights to months? Simply type the search into the main Google search box (how many fortnights in a year?) and the Google calculator will figure it out for you. Try to stump Google. The engine can conerting an amazing array of different units. Enter the UPC code from any product and Google displays a wide array of information. The same for stock quotes and tracking numbers from many courier companies. Google is also able to define words like a common dictionary. Simply type in define:? and it will hunt it up for you. So while a sterling company has seen a firm layer of tarnish collect on it over the year, the technology world rolls on with a new star continuing to rise.
