AJAX stands for Asynchronus Javascript and XML.
It's a web application development technique. Traditional web applications had many limitations because of restrictions of the browser capabilities. Today however browsers like IE5 and FireFox can run Javascript natively and fetch arbitrary data through XMLRPC interface (which is not supported by all browers). This allows a web application to update only certain parts of the web page wihout the need to refresh the whole page again and again when something changes.

What is WebMailCompose? It's a Firefox extension and it can be found here. What does it do?

Tell me how may times you have faced the following situation: You are reading an interesting article and now you want to share it with your friends, so you need to open another browser window (or tab) or go to your already open window (or tab) where you are already logged into your favorite web based mail account. You click on compose, type in the subject, cut-paste the link of the article you were reading and then send it.

Google has created a new 'News Reader', while this is just another web based RSS News Reader, what is different about it is the user interface. Again google has created something really nice to use. Google seems to get the AJAX technology pretty well. Gmail is very good example of that, and now News Reader too.

I found a new tool called w.blogger. It's a desktop blogging client. It lets you write your blog on your PC and then post it to your site. It supports several APIs. This blog is just a first test of this application. I am going to try and include a screenshot of this window at the end of this post to show how it looks. That will also be a good test of this blog client's capabilities.

I got a new thing to play with yesterday. I bought a new cell phone. Audiovox SMT 5600. It has all the bells and whistles that you get on a regular cell phone. But this phone is more than that. It's a smart phone. That means I can use it as a PDA. And it comes with Windows Media Player 10. This phone also has a miniSD card slot. I just checked on the internet that now miniSD cards come in 1GB size too. I just ordered one from zipzoomfly

I bought a new GPS Receiver (NAVMAN 4410) to use with my iPAQ 2215 PDA.

Gmail is really wonderful. The interface is excellent! Gmail has completely changed the way webmail works. It relies heavily on javascript and loads extremely fast. The concept of labels takes a while to understand but once you get used to it, it really simplifies the whole webmail experience.

Yesterday I received my bluetooth wireless headset. This is a cool device. It weighs only 25 grams and fits nicely over the ear. Setup was very simple. I was able to 'pair' this device with my Bluetooth enabled cell phone (Nokia 6820) in less than 2 minutes.

We're in Arlington, VA today. This place is about 7 miles from downtown Washington, DC. [G2:11232 class=left iframe=notebook] Yesterday we saw Washington, DC. It was July 4th celebration time. So many places were closed. But we were able to see all the usual places. Took a photo in front of the White House. Saw Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol Building.
We started in Edison, NJ and rented a car from Newark airport. Then headed straight towards WDC. It took us 3 hours and 10 minutes to reach Downtown, Washington, DC at 12:30pm. Traffic was light. No trouble at all. Then we had a lunch at a nice Spanish restaurant in downtown. Then we went straight to White House. We used public transport. Washington's Metro system is very nice. There were so many different events going on in the national capital area. Lots of people around. The weather was great. 80+ degrees throughout the day. But not too hot.

July 1st, 2005, 10:00pm PST.