Chrome : Color my world!

I downloaded Google's Chrome web-browser yesterday after reading David Pogue's review on nytimes. I like it. I am not an advanced Mozilla user, so I don't know all the best plug-ins to install, but I definitely like how Chrome works by default. Given that most of us spend most of our time on computers browsing the web, it is a great idea to design the best possible browser.



Some of the pluses:
- Uses a much larger percentage of the screen than most browsers. A status bar that appears temporarily, no Google toolbar needed... you can type your query in the URL address field itself.
- Highlights the boxes you are filling out online.
- Seems more polite with handling passwords. Asks you whether you want to remember the password, after you have cleared the challenge and without a pop-up.
- Uses a lot of history and statistics on your usage. Type less to get to the web-pages you need to. Chrome remembers how you surfed yesterday.
- Doesn't keep asking you if you want to restore the last session.
- Doesn't create pop-ups even on Times of India. Wow! That used to be a real challenge for all the browsers I've worked with in the past.
- In line search like Mozilla.

And then there are some downsides:
- It hangs on some Flash plugins. It's not the most stable browser I know. It stops responding after you watch videos on YouTube sometimes.
- Rajas points out that Mozilla supplies an ad-blocker add-on too. Well Google may not supply us with one of those, given that they make their money on ads.

But for most parts it is a great browser. If they work around the stability issues, it would definitely be my favorite browser to date.

I didn't expect this quite so soon, but then again it might not be very soon. Poo Na Gadgil Jewellers are setting up shop in our very own Sunnyvale. Clearly they must have realized there are way too many Puneris in the Bay Area. Parents keep visiting anyways. So now many of you could shop for your upcoming weddings in Sunnyvale itself.

Time for Chitale to open a store in the Bay Area now! High time I say! :)

A childhood dream comes true : US Open 2008

I grew up watching Grand Slam tennis with my father on TV every year. My father is pretty big on tennis and I've not known too many people who could wake up at 6 am everyday to go play a couple of sets of tennis on the other side of town. So I was delighted when some of our friends got us tickets to watch the US Open, a women's quarter final game and a men's 4th round game. We made our way from Stamford to Flushing on the train last evening. After 2 hours we were blessed with this sight.



We got there just in time for the evening session which starts at 7 pm. Unfortunately for us the the Arthur Ashe stadium was not open yet, because the matches from the afternoon session had still not ended. Roger Federer was fighting a 5-set battle against Igor Andreev of Russia. Everyone was eagerly watching the scores for this match on the huge screens around the courts, for signs on when the wait would be over. Eventually Federer triumphed against his opponent and entered the quarter-finals.



Luckily they let moved the women's quarter final game between Jelena Jankovic of Serbia and Sybille Bammer of Austria to the Louis Armstrong stadium and we got decent seats close to the action.



It was a fairly challenging environment to play tennis in. Apart from touch and taste, the athletes were assaulted on all senses. (Three out of five is still a lot, trust me! :)) Planes taking off from La Guardia airport kept breaking the silence. Smoke filled the court probably from some hot-dog stands outside the stadium. And because this was a rescheduled game, people kept drifting into the stadium much to the chagrin of the players. Jankovic had little trouble besting her opponent. She won the game in straight sets, 6-1 6-4, although the second set was more closely contested.



Then we made our way through a sea of humanity into the Arthur Ashe stadium. The game started pretty soon, although it ended up being fairly one-sided. The game was between American Andy Roddick and Fernando Gonzalez of Chile`. The organizers probably gave the prime-time slot to an American, although the game was really not very entertaining itself. For most parts, Andy Roddick shot his 140 mile per hour serves and with seats in row Y, the second-last row in the house, the action wasn't very engrossing. There were no major rallies in the game. Roddick won 6-2, 6-4, 6-1 in 83 minutes.



The best part about the whole experience were the songs they played between games. The cameras caught people's antics and projected them on the huge video-screens inside the stadium. I also got to meet a bunch of people from my alma mater. The weirdest incident of the night was accidently meeting an alumnus of COEP, 1984 batch, when he overheard us talking about COEP.

Maybe next time I'll get to watch more interesting games.