Nov 7, 2008

Maximum compression.

One of my best interest is file archiving.
I actually spent lots of time thinking and implementing compression algorithm.
Today I encountered a good web page:
Maximum Compression : http://www.maximumcompression.com

It showed me which one is good compression software.
And it stroke me there are two good compression software which I haven't heard at all.
I know "winzip," "gzip," and "bzip2."
But the web page showed me PAQ8 is best in the sense of size.
"What is PAQ8???"
It was newly developed archiving software. And it has GPL license, which is totally free.
It does not seem anybody can use yet. It is still changing fast.

One of interesting point is we can choose how much memory we will use for archiving, from 35MB to 1.7G.
The more memory you use, the smaller file you can get.
I love to see its algorithm when I can afford.

Nov 4, 2008

Google is getting suck.

Once google was famous for simple user interface.
It is still true in some part.
But now most of web pages getting sucks.

One of the big problems is it gets complex.
Since they have many many good programmers, they may want to add many many functions on pages.
But now it harms user interface.

Let's see the Google search first.This main page is still good while other web searching engine has an complex page.
But the searching result page is wasting space at the end of the page.When have they changed that? I though the famous link buttons, "Goooooooooogle" was at the end of the page. But now they added 3 lines with meaningless vertical gaps.

Gmail also get sucks.
Today I was surprised that the top most line becomes double lines in this way:
The problem came by the new red text, "New! A bunch of stuff."
Why is it not a single noun but several words?
I though once I click it, it will disappear, but it didn't.
Actually the other Google services tends to have a longer and complex top most line.
I don't know what is "My notebooks," I don't want to know it, I don't want to use it, and I don't want to keep it there. "Web history" is also same. I have never used it, and I have no interest for "History."
Why do they make user interface worse?

Google Reader is also sucks.
Most of Google services does not use "Frame" style, which is forbidden tag in HTML.
But Google reader has fixed frames.If I scroll down the web page, then the top most links should go out of the screen. But it doesn't.
I hardly use "searching" in RSS reader. Why do I need to keep it there all the time.
Because of them, I cannot use my screen for reading articles.

I believe Google need more competitors.

Faster fox - an add-on for fire fox

I want to introduce a great add-on for fire fox.
It is FasterFox: http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/
It makes your Firefox faster.One of the great functions is "Prefetching."
After you install the add-on, fasterfox will pre-load every possible links while you read the web page.
The meaning of the word, "Prefetching," is ambiguous.
FasterFox explains the meaning in its setting dialog:
Utilizes idle bandwidth to silently download and cache links in the background so they may be ready for immediate display by the time you click them.
Actually it is dangerous in some cases, because the prefetching presses every links in order to get the next pages. Some of links might be "delete something" or "purchase something." Therefore fasterfox has limited policy for the prefetching.
You can find more information here:
http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/faq.html#Can_prefetching_mess_things_up

This add-on increased not only quantitative speed, but also qualitative feeling. I strongly recommend you.