Tamer’s Tech Blog

I read this great post on Mozilla Links on how to add the new Facebook app to your Firefox sidebar. Check it out, it is cool.

SO, I have been playing with the FB chat for number of days now. I have not yet decided if I like it or not. It is simple, lets meet connect with friends, however do I really need another chat product?

Here are a few of my favorite free apps.

• Chatting: AIM, www.aim.com
• Browser: Firefox www.mozilla.com
• Audio Player: WinAmp, www.winamp.com
• Anti-virus (not free, thought) CA’s Anti-virus, http://home3.ca.com/Microsoft/
• Documents: Google Docs, docs.google.com
• Webmail: Gmail, www.Gmail.com
• Online Calender: Google Calender, calendar.google.com
• Online Backup: Mozy, www.mozy.com
• Sync files between drives: Microsoft SyncToy 2.0, www.microsoft.com/downloads
• FTP: FileZila, www.filezilla-project.org
• Virtual Machine: Microsoft Virtual Machine, http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc
• Blogging: WordPress, www.wordpress.com
• Photo Manager: Picasa, www.getpaint.net
• Maps: Google Maps, maps.google.com

I will expand on each in the future as to why I love each one. Stay tuned…….

SO today I read on one of my favorites blogs (download squad) that Opera Mobile 9.5 (another web browser like IE) is coming soon. Now I have used Opera mobile in the past on BB (blackberry) and I found it to be slow at times. I have also used the safari web browser on the iPhone, and I want to tell you it rocks. Safari was fast, allowed me to zoom in and out and I felt like i was using my mac, with just a little real estate screen as opposed to the 15″ screen I am used to. my online gripe about safari is that it does not work on my blackberry.

Now back to Opera Mini, I am excited to see some of the new features such as:

• Zoom in and out on the web page
• view full screen versions of web pages
• tabbed browsing
• fast page rendering
• convenient bookmark, transfer, and history managers.
• include a mobile version of Opera’s widget engine which allows you to access some web content like Flickr images without opening a web browser.
• It also packs Flash Lite 3 integration for accessing Flash-heavy web pages like MySpace or YouTube.

I hope the new version of opera mobile will put up a good fight against safari. Only time will tell.