Windows Live Favorites – Your Centralized, Synchronized favorites database.

I have two desktops at work and a laptop. Add another desktop at home. I am having a real hard time to move my favorites around four different computers. Sometimes, I mail the URLs to myself and try to open it later. Bookmarking is supposed to make life easier, but with more and more people working on multiple computers every day – keeping track of Favorites is a real pain. (With blogs however, there are web based RSS Readers to make things easy)

I was looking for a way to synchronize my bookmarks around all my computers. I can use web-based bookmarking apps like the one from Google. But again, this is not easy to access as you have to open Google website to access them – compared to Browser Favorites which is just a click away.

Enter – Windows Live Favorites – things are much easier for me now.

Install “Windows Live Toolbar” in all the machines.
Enable “Live Favorites Synchronization” (You need a passport ID to do this)
Stay Happy and use your time more efficiently
Live toolbar will automatically synchronize your browser Favorites with the Live Favorites and the other way round. So each time you start a Browser window – Live toolbar will make sure your IE Favorites are in ’sync’ with the centralized Live Favorites.

No matter which PC you are on; you can use your Browser favorites which is already synchronized across all the machines via the Live Favorites database.

This certainly saves a lot of time for me and ensures I don’t spend time searching for the same content again using a search engine.

Microsoft Zune Demo Video : Social Networking Zune, Landscape Views Zune, FM Radio Zune… Cool Zune

Be Altruistic, Be Gandhian … or Be Happy

I strongly take sides with the Philosophers who support egoism. I would like to argue that altruism is a degree of lack of self-respect in individuals. Any individual or group or a society with a certain degree of self-respect will not believe that they are obligated to serve others more than themselves.

Religious philosophers in Hinduism will counter argue that altruism is directly linked to karma. Their arguments will be based on the fact that acts that you perform today add up to your karma calculations and will take effect either in the next cycle of when those karma takes effect, usually assumed to be in the next birth although “kaliyug” theories argue otherwise.

But I feel the foundation of altruism itself is stupid. It is like asking someone to shed and sacrifice the respect he has got for his life, for his soul, for himself and then go on and serve the other in respect to the supposed obligations he/she has towards everything else other than himself/herself.

If such fictitious obligations do exist then how could they supersede the commitments that one has to his/her own life.

Forget Buddha, forget Gandhi – the torch bearers of selflessness. Selflessness is not cool. To me, its not even a word. Better call it, “lack of self-respect”.

Be selfish, justify your existence.

The Zune has 802.11 networking built in and you can send a song to your friend for three days or three plays, which ever comes first. The goal, obviously, is to sell music. However, we could also conceivably see this as a MySpace-like network of users who pop music to each other with giddy abandon and infect others with their musical stylings on the train (perhaps a sandwich board that says “I’ll Send My New HARDCORE RAP Single to Your Zune. Talk to me. Please?”) Once you get back home you can connect to the Zune Marketplace – and presumably an artists home page – where you can learn more and buy music.

More about the Microsoft Zune here

Today Yahoo is releasing the new Ajax-powered version of Yahoo Mail to all users in the US and across 18 international markets. Previously Yahoo Mail Beta (as it is known) was only available to a relatively small group of people.

Yahoo! Mail is the No. 1 Web mail service in the world – it has 255 million users according to comScore’s July 2006 figures. By comparision, MSN Hotmail has 234 million, AOL Mail 56 million and Google’s Gmail 49 million

this release of Ajax functionality in Y! Mail Beta to 255M-odd users represents the largest scale use of Ajax in the world – together with the release earlier this year of Yahoo’s re-designed homepage.

The new Yahoo Mail Beta is touted as being as functional as a desktop email client (such as Outlook). Other new features include an integrated calendar timeline (including mashups with Yahoo Maps), drag and drop e-mail organization, message preview, tabs for messages, plus an integrated RSS reader. There are also plenty of links to other Yahoo properties, such as this one just above the inbox: “Start your own blog here” (which leads to Yahoo360).

Question:
Where will Steve Jobs take Apple Computer in the 21st Century?
– asks Mercury News here

Jobs says

“Your den, your living room, your car, your pocket”

…in front of a a select audience of technologists and journalists who had been summoned to San Francisco for a secret announcement on Tuesday

Now, if you think that’s cool. Then think again, Cos Techcrunch says here that Microsoft has called the press to discuss about Zune – supposedly the iPod killer machine.

Microsoft Zune – iPOD killer? Sony PSP compete? fight Apple iTunes? and more

Yet even as Microsoft gets ready to release Zune in time for the holiday season, Apple is grabbing attention with reports that it is about to offer downloadable movies that can be played on a new version of iPod with a bigger screen. Microsoft says that Zune will be compatible with video formatted for an iPod or any other media player. But the company is focusing on music, which it believes makes more sense for a device that people use while jogging or riding their bikes. Still, even in the music space, Microsoft has its work cut out.

Also, watch the cool “Coming Zune” videos here. www.comingzune.com