Tamer’s Tech Blog

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…….

I was just checking my Gmail account this AM and I saw the famous Gmail beta logo. I feel like Google is the only company that gets away with having an enormously long beta cycles. For example Gmail launched on April 1 2004, that’s over 3 and half years ago. Come on!!!! How long will Google wait before it take the wraps off the beta. Other examples are Google calendar, Google docs, Google Toolbar, and Google Desktop.

In doing some more research it seems Google has a different definition that the rest of the world on beta. The dictionary definition for “beta” is: “a version of an application that is made available prior to the official release for the purposes of testing.” Google used the term with a more general meaning: an application that it’s almost complete, that may still have bugs, that’s not fully supported and that may be dropped if users don’t like it. Google has a principle: launch early, and “beta” was a term to illustrate that.

Thus the label “labs” comes into play. Google replaced beta with “labs” to show experimental products. I hope this demystifies some of the mysteries of Google.