Desire to compete

Techno Page By Harendra Alwis

Evolution has embedded a competitive streak in our mindset; a quest to be better, faster, and more intelligent. The computer I am typing on right now will be obsolete in another two years. It doesn't necessarily mean that my information processing needs would have changed so much in two years that I need a faster machine, but it will be very expensive to service and maintain my old computer in two years because it will be out of warranty.

Chances are, it will be replaced by a newer, faster, sleeker and more energy efficient model. The point I am trying to drive home is that the reason why Moore's law still holds its relevance with processing throughout doubling every 18 months and why faster and meaner machines constantly lure us is not purely driven by our needs, but something far more powerful – our desire to compete.

The process of evolution has embedded a competitive streak in our mindset; a quest to be better, faster, and more intelligent – overall more capable – than others.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) today, stands at the very edge of a long line of tools stretching back through the pathways of evolution that created a position of advantage for those who used it as opposed to those who didn't.

Nicholas G. Carr argues in ‘Does IT matter?’ published in the Harvard Business Review in 2003 that the use of technology is so affordable and therefore ubiquitous now that it is no longer capable of creating opportunities or giving users a clear advantage over others.

But does that capture the true nature of ICT? On the one hand, ICT and related services are still a long way from being ubiquitous; a three-wheeler driver who has a mobile phone has a competitive advantage over another who does not have a mobile phone.

On the other hand, ICT is not merely a tool in itself, but a set of building blocks to create a wide array of tools. Using or being able to use a computer has little or no relevance to the strategic use of ICT. ICT is an enabler. It enables 'communication' – one of the most fundamental functions of human society – in a scale and efficiency that has never before been possible.

Nicholas G. Carr makes a valid point – that IT is ubiquitous and that it is available to almost all fractions of society that having possession of it or access to it is no longer the defining factor, but how we use it in new ways to innovate and create new pathways to opportunity – and to each other.

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Improve your computer literacy

OpenSocial

Developed by Google Inc., OpenSocial is a set of common APIs for building social applications across multiple web sites, including social networking sites (SNS). OpenSocial applications use Google's gadget architecture but with extensions that provide access to social data within its container environment.

Similar to Google Gadgets, OpenSocial apps are hosted XML documents with HTML and/or JavaScript within their bodies. The OpenSocial API can be accessed on the client-side using the JavaScript API, and on the server-side by using RESTful data APIs.

Some web sites currently using OpenSocial include Friendster, hi5, LinkedIn, MySpace, orkut, Salesforce.com, and others.

Fire out of the hole!

The highly anticipated Mozilla Firefox is finally out on the market. Firefox 3 Release Candidate is known as an intermediate step between the beta version and the final release and it will be used by developers to test their codes against the browser before its official general release.

The new Firefox will be easier, faster and more secure. The aspect changes are very insignificant, but the usability changes definitely make up for it.

The new address bar begins searching the user's bookmarks and web site’s history for matches as soon as an address begins to be typed in. Both the history window and the bookmarks window are displayed together in a Structured Query Language (SQL) database.

Several new options are now available, including dragging a URL from the history column directly into a bookmarks folder. Also, a new Smart Bookmarks offers a complete categorisation of the user's folders, guided by the most frequently visited, recently bookmarked, and recently tagged web sites.

Firefox's memory management and speed have also improved. A number of issues when dealing with web sites such as Gmail or Windows Live Mail still need a fix but all problems will be resolved for the final release. A large number of changes have been made by Mozilla for the user interfaces on Vista, XP, Mac OS X and Linux, based on user requests.