Google Serves Notice... Upgrade Your Browser

In order to push the agenda on HTML5 and cloud computing, Google has decided that it will no longer support older versions of your favourite browser, what ever that may be. In a statement on The Official gmail blog Venkat Panchapakesan, Vice President of Engineering at Google, said yesterday that "...Google Apps will only support modern browsers. Beginning August 1st, we’ll support the current and prior major release of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a rolling basis."

This, in my opinion, is a good thing. Hopefully it will encourage internet users to stay up to date with their software updates and provide developers with a stable road map upon which to plan the development and support of their applications. Of course it also pushes the Google agenda but I've seen far to many users out there still running IE 6!

Google Helps Plan Your Flights

Google's Inside Search blog has revealed a new search feature that can help make your travel plans a whole lot easier. With Google's new flight schedule feature you need only enter your query into Google search and, if your airport is covered, will be rewarded with the available flights covering your departure and arrival locations. For example, enter "flights from Halifax to Boston" in the Google search field and you'll be presented with the following:

Expand the results and you'll see:

It works very well for major regional airports but less so for smaller local centers where there are fewer direct flights. I think the key here is that it is selecting nonstop flights and not considering connecting flights, at least at the moment. Even so, a quick search can provide you with a lot of visibility into what is available and a few queries strung together will likely give you what you need for planning purposes. Of course seat availability and pricing information is not provided but I'd suggest googling before you hit your favorite travel site so you'll at least know your options of times and carriers.