Golden future for AJAX / Web 2.0

AJAX - or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML has quite a future.

Just a few years ago, any changes on the page would result in the whole page being reloaded again. Now, more and more sites are using AJAX -making it possible for application like behaviour from within your browser.

Here are some useful AJAX powered sites:

Mail
Gmail - (Google Mail in the UK)

Maps
Google Maps
Microsoft's Virtual Earth

Calendar/Tasks/Contacts/Social Organizer
Airset
CalendarHub (updated!)
Kiko

Word Processor
Writely (tip!)

Spreadsheet
Numsum

Portals
Google's Personlized Page
Netvibes
Microsoft Live

Many, many more... see here via Google's cache. Deleted from Wikipedia.

Firefox 1.5 Final

Firefox 1.5 Final will be released on tuesday the 29th of November (almost certain!). Version 2.0 should be released sometime next year, important releases are scheduled once every 6-9 months. Still on the increase...

Here's your mission for this week: Get at least 3 late adopters to use Firefox.

Quote of the Week

Small minds are much distressed by little things. Great minds see them all but are not upset by them.

- François de La Rochefoucauld

Google Base: All your base are belong to us

My favourite search giant just launched their long awaited Google Base. Some already call this an eBay-killer. I still expect eBay to sell off Skype and hope that Google will buy it from them. Maybe just wishful thinking, but insiders say that Google was rather pissed about eBay snatching it first. With backing from Google, Skype's future will be secured for eons. But then again, without it, Skype still has a bright future. Albeit that we'll need to wait for interoperability between all the new VoIP protocols - but that's another story.

There isn't a week that goes by without this index-crazed behemoth launching some other kick-ass service. They reinvent the way business is being done, having also just launched Google Analytics - no costs at all unless your site has 5+ million visits per week. This all at the expense of similar based companies, who charge their customers for these services.

Other services I expect sometime soon:

Google Calendar (sharable with other gmail account users)
Google Real Estate Finder (in conjunction with Google Maps)
Google Contacts (More in depth version of what Gmail has)
Google Universal Translator (Able to translate any language)
Google Office (Why install propriatory software when it can all be done on a site? - Like here)

Can you think of an others?

Firefox 1.5 Final Out! / Not entirely... YET

My Firefox 1.5 RC 1 gave me a message that an update was available. I downloaded it and now I've got Firefox 1.5 Final. I'm checking various websites but nobody has mentioned the news yet... this must be fresh from the press since www.mozilla.org doesn't even mention it. Am I the first blogger to notice it???

I sure hope so!!!

Enjoy the best browser in the world... and whilest you're at it.. use the best VoIP client in the world.

UPDATE: Someone was before me...

UPDATE: Yep, it's just another RC. This is RC2, hopefully the last one. In case you don't know what RC stands for, it means "Release Candidate". So this might be the final build yet, we'll see.