Google has finally reacted to the FB acquisition of Friendfeed, by launching Google Buzz, it’s version of Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed all in one. Just like with the launch of the iPad, the world went crazy, for a little while, I did too.

People like Jason Calacanis are way too excited and if you follow me on twitter, you should already know that I do not agree with his view.

Not everyone is on Gmail, even if they are, not everyone uses all its features. Case in point, …

Amazon has spread its wings to include groceries.
Recently they introduced Amazon Groceries Beta as a part of their selection.

Why is this important ?
-Amazon is one of the few online vendors that I (and for that matter a large chunk of the population) trust.
-Their shipping and handling is spot on.
-It beats the hell outta standing in line at Costco or Sams.
-And you do not have to pay a membership fee.
Besides, I will not have a chance fight over flavoured coffee and break up, which I assume is a good thing.

Yesterday I noticed that my shoutbox entry fields were invisible. I figured that it was because of the autofill function from my google toolbar. Given that I was the only one having trouble, I did not bother.
Today Karthik from Stochastica pointed out that I had the same trouble with my comments box. Since the text color was white and google changes the background color of the text boxes to yellow, the text becomes invisible.
I have manged to fix the comment box with the script I found from the comments …

About a week ago, cingular phones stopped working in NYC. Then in southern California, then in Forth Worth, Texas and yesterday in Florida.
Initially when a few people told me that they tried calling me and they got a busy tone, I thought they were kidding. When I tried to call my own phone from work, thats when I realized that something was happening.
I got on the phone with cingular and the lady suggested that I power cycle my phone every hour. And of course, when I got agitated, the lady …

Are you still using Google Earth ? Well Microsoft is previewing its new ideas using Virtual Earth and honestly, this is a whole bunch better than Google Earth.
You can acctually walk the streets (or drive in a regular car or a race car).
I can think of a zillion uses off the top of my head and also a zillion privacy concerns, but someone has to start somewhere.
Below is a pic from my browser. And here is where you can try it.

Click to open a bigger picture.

Every geek would have by now read on the details of the Origami project by Microsoft and would have seen the branding video.

Microsoft’s new portable device.
A similar thought has been on my mind for the past few months and if I ever got a chance to talk to someone at Microsoft, I would have spoken, but things would have been slightly different.
It all started with me getting a Dell PDA which ran Windows Mobile 2003. To make it simple, a stripped down version of Windows running on an 850 Mhz …

If you are still using dialup, you might wanna read this.If you are not using dialup, this article is a good advertising campaign for your DSL/Cable company.
However, many consumers are surprised to find they’ve been charged for calls to destinations that aren’t remotely local, simply remote. The calls were made through their modems without their knowledge or approval.
How does it happen? According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the nation’s consumer protection agency, it’s a scheme some Web sites use to trick consumers into paying to access “free” Internet …

Browsing through google news I came across this article
“If you actually print out a white page you would get a whole page with yellow tracking dots that you can’t see with the naked eye,” Schoen said.
The marking technology in printers was developed at the request of governments to deter counterfeiting activities using the machines, PC World reported in December. The Dutch government, for example, has used it to track counterfeiters of railway tickets, WebWereld, a Dutch technology news site, reported in late 2004.
Schoen isn’t hopeful that the Secret …