Category: Web

Is Google making the same mistakes that Microsoft made with IE?

Posted on by Renie Ravin

For years now, users have been griping about Microsoft bundling their web browser with Windows. By doing so, users were never compelled to install a browser – why go about selecting the best one when my pc came with one installed? Microsoft was blamed for monopolizing the market, using the popularity of Windows to make Internet Explorer the dominant force.

Google does not have a product like Windows (yet!) but they do have their web properties which are used by millions of people. I was just surfing youtube, on the latest version of Opera and I saw this:

Google Monopoly

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t they doing the same thing by nagging me when I surf one of their websites? Also, “new web browser”? Does that mean my browser is outdated?

The same message shows up in Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox.

Permalinks for wordpress on IIS

Posted on by Renie Ravin

It’s taken me months to get this sorted, but I finally found a way to get nice, pretty permalinks for my wordpress installation in Microsoft’s web server IIS. Permalinks are natively supported by the Apache web server with a little help from the Mod_Rewrite module.  Unfortunately there isn’t any equivalent module built into windows.

I downloaded the  WordPress URL rewrite plugin and it worked without any installation hassles whatsoever. Be warned though – you will need root access to your web server as the .dll needs to added to the ISAPI filters on IIS.

Hopefully the plugin works for WordPress Mu – going to try that next.

Get online videos onto your iPod

Posted on by Renie Ravin

Check out Flvix, a new online service that lets you convert any video from Google Video or YouTube into the .MP4 format – so you can watch it on your iPod.

[ Update: Jan 2nd, 2009 ] – Google video and YouTube are the same now, and flvix has become a porno site. Things change.

To convert videos as described above, try out Vixy.net. If it’s turned adult by the time you click on this link, good luck!

Yahoo hates Google

Posted on by Renie Ravin

Do a search for the term Google using Yahoo! Search and you’ll see a special search box on top of the results labelled “Search the Web with Yahoo!”. They’re singling out Google for this treatment, as a search for MSN or Altavista will show you.

Google hasn’t returned the favor, which I’m sure they won’t.

[ Edit – The special search box has been removed. Guess they’re friends now. ]