Search inside this book

Maybe I am stupid, but found this useful. Amazon is providing quite some books with a feature of "Search inside this book". I found one book that I was interested in (costs $80) and by default you can view only 6 sample pages in a book. But you can get around it. Search for "10" and you get a link to page 10 (since page numbers are printed on page). Click it and read it. Then hit Back, search for "11" and go for next page. As an alternative, one can also go 2 pages back or forth. It is not possible to search for single characters, so first ten pages could be a problem.

Text quality could be better for eyes, so for serious reading and especially for cheaper books buying makes a lot of sense. I wonder, if they will makes some restrictions soon, like limiting number of pages of a book that can be viewed from one computer in a day.

More: While checking a shorter book Amazon soon told me "That's it". Explanation mentioned that Amazon does not reveal how the limit is calculated, so there we are. But definitely this feature is fairly good if you need to see/read a chapter in a book.

Microsoft is not sleeping

Wanted to spread word about next big thing after Windows XP. This is MSN Toolbar Suite, which is basically providing you search through Windows 2000 or Windows XP local files and e-mail (and of course internet). Even though this software is currently in beta stage and will be released 1st quarter next year, it works perfectly. It provides search through all files, including media, compared to Google Desktop's limited list of Office, Outlook, Outlook Express, Text, AOL IM. If you want to see screenshots and read some more before installing, look here.
I let it index my drive during night and now it works like a dream. My suggestion: install it now!!!

For some background, Microsoft did not move its ass without help of competitors. Google came out with similar product and Apple promised to be ahead of Microsoft in providing local search in its next version of Mac OS X (by the way, for current users upgrades tend to costs $129). Microsoft was faster this time. There has been long talk about Microsoft excluding fancy next generation file system in its next Windows release, but seems like this has not held back possibility to provide fast local search - the main promise of new file system. I suppose (might be wrong) that new file system might have natively allowed search through file system, while current system needs to create and update a separate index database that allows searching. So this indexing must take up some computer resourcees occasionally and it is a downside.

I did it

I fell for a scam. There was an e-mail seemingly from PayPal, requiring to update my information. And as opposed to usual situations, when the mail is from some random e-mail address, this one was seemingly from paypal.com. I got it only after figuring, why they need to verify my social security number and then noticed a numeric domain name in address bar. By that time I had already given up my password, so now I quickly changed my password at PayPal.

Stupid me. Also, I found my phone that I lost 5 days ago. I left it in my classmate's car. This mess has to end.

John Deere Green

I'm back from Durham, North Carolina, where our team participated in Duke Product Strategy Case competition. We are pretty proud to achieve second place there, and especially because of beating Harvard and Cornell teams. The business case was this time about John Deere lawn and garden equipment, mainly their lawn tractors. John Deere itself is a 170-year old tractor maker and if you see green tractors around, they probably are John Deere. Very strong brand indeed. We even found a song named John Deere Green. Nothing runs like a Deere.




But because I am kind of sick and with limited voice, I stayed mostly inside. So for me Durham is about Millennium Hotel, Fuqua Business School and John Deere office. Did not even see anything about Duke's very nice campus. By the way, Durham is even more spread out than Atlanta, so to reach any place, one had to walk at least a mile through forest.