Well, without hardly any effort at all, you can tell your browser to stop being automatically redirected to your local Google site:

1. Open your browser
2. Clear your cookies in your browser
3. Allow your browser to accept cookies
4. Navigate to: www.google.com/ncr
5. You should now be able to use any Google site you please

Meet Moe

One of the reasons could be that on large scale enterprise networks it takes a lot of effort, skill and funds to update the contents of a Managed Operating Environment (MOE). For me, this would be a prime reason to drop IE altogether in favour of a browser that does not tie into the heart of the OS the way Internet Explorer does. I dare say potential security issues would be much easier to deal with if users are not exposing the core of their OS by surfing with a browser that is entirely integrated. It certainly would facilitate updating the browser more frequently.

So, while I understand that MOE updates are difficult to roll out, system administrators (and especially the CEOs who manage the sys admins) should understand that keeping IE6 alive makes web development more cumbersome and therefore, more expensive. I am still working on intranet/extranet/public sites that are designed for IE6. It is a costly process which also holds back web development in general.

Dinosaur

And let’s face it, IE6 is a dinosaur these days: it was initially released on August 27, 2001. Which makes it, at the time of this post, nearly 8 years old. I shall repeat that: nearly 8 years old. To put that into perspective: while early history of the web can be traced back to the 1980s, initial mainstream adoption of the web (outside of university labs) did not take place until around 1993. That is 16 years ago. By that calculation, IE6 is as old as half the age of the WWW. Methinks it is time to drop IE6. What says you sys admins?

IE7 was released on October 18, 2006 (after Microsoft reluctantly continued development of IE after it saw its market share quickly lose ground to Firefox). And we’ve just seen the release of IE8 on March 19, 2009.

Further Reading

• History of the Web (Wikipedia)
• History of IE (Wikipedia)
• IE6 Death March
• Put IE6 out of its misery – A list of Anti IE6 Websites.

Sorry sir, our roads are simply not compatible with that nice and shiny vehicle of yours.

Hmmm. Let me see. Don’t support a browser that has been released mere days ago. But if I take the 10-yr old bug ridden IE v6 for a spin around these parts I would have no issues? Of course I can use the site just fine with Opera—so the message is completely useless and a mere nuisance at best. And here I was, thinking that we were starting to come to terms with web standards.

But then again, such a dubious site as the RipOff Report surely is only a mere outpost on the World Wild Web. The further you remove yourself from the buzzing hive in the centre, the harder it gets to properly maintain an infrastructure…

All purpose site with handy tools:

• network-tools.com

For some serious DNS troubleshooting:

• intodns.com
• dnsqueries.com
• unifiedemail.net
• dnssy.com

Please remember, for troubleshooting more crucial DNS applications it is advisable to always perform your lookups from more than one source…

• once more, Opera is the fastest browser on the planet
• you can now synchronize browser data on different platforms and computers
• increased stability and compatibility
• email support; connections to IMAP servers no longer hang

I also appreciate the new default look of the browser—I am using that skin on my Mac (my Windows machine is still using the most minimalistic and plain skin available).

Not all good

On the downside, this new version no longer allows me to minimise/maximise the sidebar by clicking the little strip all the way on the side. That was incredibly useful, and I have no idea why the devs have changed that. Perhaps its just a matter of a bit of tinkering (like resetting my default buttons).

Also, support for NTLM based proxy servers is still flawed. This makes it nearly impossible for many system administrators to take up the browser for use on their Windows based networks.

Furthermore I would have liked to see included:

• open plug-in standard like Firefox (dare I say: essential for Opera’s survival)
• inline spell checker for textarea form elements
• improved contact list functionality and support for 3rd party integration

Further Reading

• Opera for your desktop
• Opera for your mobile device

Some of the issues we encountered:

• data may or may not be present in Exif headers
• data may be present at different locations
• data may be present in different formats
• data may be present in different formats at different locations with different values

Terminology

For those among us who are new to image tagging, I’ll quickly explain some of the terminology used in this article.

• Exif: an outdated format mainly used for technical image data (aperture, date of capture, etc). This format has served us well up until this point, but it’s time for a replacement.
• IPTC: an outdated format used mainly for user description of the image (where was it taken? what keywords belong to the image? what copyright info?).
• XMP: a relatively new format developed by Adobe. This format could incorporate both Exif and IPTC data. XMP, being XML based, can be extended. For instance, unlike IPTC, it can deal with different character sets.

XMP & Industry Standards

I would really like to see speedy universal adoption of the XMP format. Standards are here for a reason: they generally make our lives more efficient, productive & enjoyable. XMP has the potential to become the imaging industry’s meta data standard. No more “Waiter, there’s a tag in my soup.“

It would be great if Apple would use XMP for tagging in their Aperture suite. As far as I know Adobe has released the XMP toolkit under a standard BSD license, so it allows other manufacturers to integrate it into their own proprietary applications.

Camera manufacturers for some time now have been adding their own “standards.” Enough already with the “Exif MakerFiles.” This is confusing and counter-productive for independent software developers. I venture to suggest it will be equally confusing for the developers employed by the camera manufacturers: “Which standards are we working with today boss?“

The Added Value Of Meta Data

In a time where meta data is becoming increasingly important, we really should pull together and set up & follow industry standards.

For instance, over 3,000 images were added to Flickr in the time it took me to write this sentence. Suppose that a mere 1 percent of these images were properly tagged (keywords/location/etc). That still equates to around 45,000 tagged images per day. This number is likely to increase when people become more aware of the benefits of tagging content and geo-tagging is more widely adopted (wireless meta data transfer between your camera and GPS enabled mobile phone?).

Tagged content has added value for its consumers and ensures it can be found in the first place. Tags could very well be the single most important reason behind the success of Flickr and YouTube. Enough said.

Further Reading

• XMP on Wikipedia
• Adobe on XMP
• ExifTool by Phil Harvey

• speed dial
• developer tools

Initially I was rather reserved when I learned of Opera’s speed dial feature. After all, I had bookmarks didn’t I?

Having now used it for some time I have come around to the idea that it is a real timesaver. There are indeed a few sites that I visit nearly every day, and it is great to be able to bring them up with only a mouse gesture and a single click. For those of you unfamiliar with Opera’s speed dial feauture: when you bring up a new tab presented with

My speed dial now includes links to mostly admin pages, and subscription based sites.

Anything that can save me time by speeding up my workflow is a real bonus, and gets me interested right away.

Developer Tools are great. FireFox already had something similar, and I am very pleased to see Opera having implemented the same, although I would have liked to see them implement an offline version. Right now, an internet connection is needed to load the scripts that power the developer tools. Or is this “offline/online stuff” purely old skool thinking?

Microsoft does not easily allow multiple versions of Internet Explorer to run simultaneously on Windows, but it is possible with Manfred Staudinger’s work around. I have been using that solution for years now, but recently came across a resource that makes running them side by side a little easier.

My first impression is that the installation process is smooth and quick, even though some of the older versions do not run as well as they should. But that is fine because these days there’s little point in supporting IE3 still (other than to check whether it degrades gracefully).

For instructions on manual installation, and some background information, check out Manfred Staudinger’s article on Postiton is Everything.

While it’s a shame to see the site take this route, I wish them a prosperous future—they deserve it. It now leaves room for other sites to fill the spot. A couple of good contenders:

• Netsys Tools
• IP Tools

Of course I could just join DNS Stuff and become a registered member. But that would require login before using their tools. And that does not fit into my workflow: Opera’s customizable address bar shortcuts enable me to retrieve whois/DNS data for any domain/IP near instantly. Login would slow that process down.

[Edit]
View my new list of alternatives here.

• web standards (I design/create/test a website on Opera first, and only then “fix” IE oddities)
• tabs (like other browsers these days–but Opera has had them for years)
• speed (it renders pages fast)
• security (it’s not IE — need I say more?)
• customisable (configure just about anything)
• content blocking (ads? what ads?)
• lightweight/small memory footprint (the usual 40+ open tabs seemingly do not affect my computer’s performance)
• if Opera (or Windows) crashes, it’ll start up with all my tabs in place
• M2 email client
• personalised search engine shortcuts (accessible from the address bar)
• mouse gestures
• trash can (deleted a tab that you still need? no problem, just look in the trash can)
• Opera’s innovative crew — frequently miles ahead of other browser manufacturers
• great UI sets made by dedicated people (thanks Moose!)

Get your own… Visit Opera to download the (free) browser.