There's probably no god

This is a very creative and provocative atheist campaign in London that is starting to gain popularity. Even Richard Dawkins donated money.

Chrome: Just a new browser?

Howdy! I’m back to some frequent updates again!

Initially, as my first post to inaugurate the return, I planned to translate a post I wrote in Portuguese about the launch of Chrome, Google’s browser. Since in English there are some much more rich information about the topic available, I decided to rather just point them out instead.

In the post I wrote in Portuguese, I start by talking about how in the current short-term scenario the release of Chrome wouldn’t matter that much. It would be much like the loss Netscape suffered in the mid-1990s against Microsoft due to the absence of network externalities and to low switching costs between browsers. You can read Shapiro and Varian's “Information Rules” book for detailed information on this or go straight to the page where the spoiler is in there. You can also check for yourself that Google’s browser so far has reached only 1% usage.

The point then is that this release has a vision attached to it. It’s not a simple release of another browser. Instead, it’s one more step towards a paradigm shift. We are probably witnessing the transition from a world dominated by PCs requiring an operating system to function to one where PCs or even operating systems won’t be required anymore. It is in that new world Google is betting.

So, for more details, I recommend:

• Nicholas Carr’s post on the topic;
• The Economist’s overview of Chrome’s launch; and
• The 5 reasons why Chrome could take over the world.

Britannica freely available for web publishers

I read in the TechCrunch and in the Standblog (in french) that Britannica was offering one-year free subscription for "web publishers" (which happens to include bloggers) that were frequently updating their content.

I subscribed yesterday and today, in less than 24 hours, I got the confirmation. Easy as a piece of cake! Good job Britannica! It is a small but important step in consolidating a strategy that may actually help the company catch up with Wikipedia.

In the news: Obama and Saraswati Puja

This is a cut picture of today's newspaper Times of India. First of all, try to look for the price in the red box: It's 3 rupees or 4.50 along with the Economic Times. 3 rupees is less then US$ 0.08 for a colored newspaper with 40 pages!!

About the headlines, Obama is in it, of course, after winning three states in a row (plus Maine now which was still going on when the journal came out).

More interesting, however, is the small mention to the Saraswati Puja in the green box. According to Wikipedia, "Saraswati has been regarded as a river goddess and in recent times a goddess of knowledge, music and the arts. She is the daughter of Brahma, the Hindu god of creation." Puja is a religious ritual performed by Hindus for all kinds of reasons and for all kinds of gods. The purpose, as I understood it, is usually to offer something (fruits, mostly) or an acknowledgment in exchange for the god's blessings.