A study in contrasts
Two news stories surfaced today, right next to each other. They're previews of the features that will appear in the next generation of Internet browsers.
For Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft is working on a "stealth mode" that users can activate to make them impossible to track. All data that is saved during a stealth-browsing session is thrown away at the end of the browsing session--cookies, history, browser cache, everything. As Ars Technica puts it:
A variety of implausible usage scenarios are described by Microsoft: looking at banking websites on shared computers or doing Internet shopping to buy gifts without the recipient finding out. The most likely situation, however, is the obvious one. Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more.
Mozilla, on the other hand, is working on something incredibly cool: It's a natural-language command line for your browser, and it's designed to abstract away a lot of the technical details we have to worry about in our everyday Internet lives. (Here's a tutorial for the 0.1 version, which is their current prototype.) For example, if you're browsing somewhere and you find a section of text that's in a foreign language, the current way to translate it is to copy the text to the clipboard, go to Google Translate or somewhere, paste in the text, select the language you're translating from, and click Translate. The new model? Highlight the text, press a hotkey to bring up the command line, and type "translate". Firefox will translate it in-place--the text right on the webpage will change into English. And that's just the first command they came up with.
What they're working towards, obviously, is a Hollywood Computer. Another command they're working on is "email", the syntax for which is "email [message or object] [to person]". Give it a few years; my job will eventually become obsolete because users will just be able to bring up the command line whenever they have a problem and type "fix it". This will eventually stop because computers will begin "fixing it" by summoning Terminators to the residences of people who annoy them; at that point Skynet will take over and it will be the computers giving us commands instead of the other way 'round.
Until then, though, I'm really looking forward to being able to just type "Map all the restaurants in a five-mile radius, put them in order by their user reviews, and send the result to my phone." Or "Download all the music that's linked on this page and make an iTunes playlist out of it." Seriously cool tech. Keep trying, Microsoft!
Update: Fox News has picked up the story and given IE8's new feature a nickname!
For Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft is working on a "stealth mode" that users can activate to make them impossible to track. All data that is saved during a stealth-browsing session is thrown away at the end of the browsing session--cookies, history, browser cache, everything. As Ars Technica puts it:
A variety of implausible usage scenarios are described by Microsoft: looking at banking websites on shared computers or doing Internet shopping to buy gifts without the recipient finding out. The most likely situation, however, is the obvious one. Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more.
Mozilla, on the other hand, is working on something incredibly cool: It's a natural-language command line for your browser, and it's designed to abstract away a lot of the technical details we have to worry about in our everyday Internet lives. (Here's a tutorial for the 0.1 version, which is their current prototype.) For example, if you're browsing somewhere and you find a section of text that's in a foreign language, the current way to translate it is to copy the text to the clipboard, go to Google Translate or somewhere, paste in the text, select the language you're translating from, and click Translate. The new model? Highlight the text, press a hotkey to bring up the command line, and type "translate". Firefox will translate it in-place--the text right on the webpage will change into English. And that's just the first command they came up with.
What they're working towards, obviously, is a Hollywood Computer. Another command they're working on is "email", the syntax for which is "email [message or object] [to person]". Give it a few years; my job will eventually become obsolete because users will just be able to bring up the command line whenever they have a problem and type "fix it". This will eventually stop because computers will begin "fixing it" by summoning Terminators to the residences of people who annoy them; at that point Skynet will take over and it will be the computers giving us commands instead of the other way 'round.
Until then, though, I'm really looking forward to being able to just type "Map all the restaurants in a five-mile radius, put them in order by their user reviews, and send the result to my phone." Or "Download all the music that's linked on this page and make an iTunes playlist out of it." Seriously cool tech. Keep trying, Microsoft!
Update: Fox News has picked up the story and given IE8's new feature a nickname!