I was impressed by the startup speed.Also the new version has tracemonkey a JIT for Javascript and it is quite fast.If you want to try it out and at the same time don't want to wipe up your existing firefox install you can run the latest version without installing it by downloading a portable version from http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable/test
Most of my extensions stopped working so had to use the Nightly Tester Tools 2.0.2 . With this extension you can make all your extensions compatible, though you might run into issues as these extensions have not been certified to work.Anyways you can always disable it if you run into issues.

If you have an extension called Prism for Firefox 0.2.1 from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6665 then you will need to disable it otherwise everytime you download something it will crash your firefox.
Till now all my extensions except the Prism extensions are working fine.

posted at: 21:50 | category: /firefox | permanent link to this entry

Traditional wisdom and wall street marketing machine wants us to believe in the mythical 10% of  growth if you buy and hold stocks.
Check out this article which debunks that myth.Here is the punchline from the article
"Taking inflation and dividends into account, an investor who put money into the market any time after the end of 1996, and held on, now has less value than when he or she started."
Read the full article @  http://nytimes.com/2009/02/07/business/07charts.html?_r=1

posted at: 04:10 | category: /personalfinance | permanent link to this entry

For my health coverage I finally took the plunge into the new medical plan called Health Savings Account.Unlike FSA , you don't lose money if you have balance at the end of the year.You carry forward your money just like a 401k.The contributions are tax deductible, the growth in it is not taxed and future withdrawals are also tax-free as long as they are for qualified medical expenses(defined by IRS).
You can also invest the money in mutual funds etc, though not every HSA accounts allow you to do it.
The other advantage is for individual  who are in the high income bracket can continue to contribute tax-free and not use the money during the current year, instead they can use the money from their regular accounts etc so that they can get the benefit of taxes in the current year and at the same time let their money grow tax-free and withdraw it in the future tax-free.
You can read more about HSA accounts @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_savings_account
Updated
I recently found out that for California HSA contributions are not tax deductible for state taxes.Read more @ http://www.aapsonline.org/msas/hsas.pdf

posted at: 15:02 | category: /personalfinance | permanent link to this entry

Have you felt the need to leave comments on someones blog or felt that one login should work on many sites.At the same time have  you worried that if you lock yourself with one login and password at some centralized authority like Microsoft passport.
There is a very elegant solution to this and most likely if you are are Yahoo or AIM user you already have what you need to start using OpenId.
In simple terms OpenId allows you to login into any site that supports OpenId and at the same time it does not lock you with a particular certifying authority so that you are free to move to other certifying authority as you please.
If you are a yahoo user you can sign up for using openId by going to the website http://openid.yahoo.com and then just login with your regular Yahoo userid and password.
Once you have done that now when you see any site with the logo as then it will ask you about "OpenId Url:" , in the text box just type in yahoo.com and you will be taken to the Yahoos website to authenticate yourself and then brought back to your original page and you will not need to sign in.

For a video of how to use Open Id you can go to the following screencast @ http://simonwillison.net/2006/openid-screencast/

posted at: 23:46 | category: /cuttingedge | permanent link to this entry

I bought this K'nex set  a couple of months ago for my 5 yr old son.He loves playing with it.
Also on the box they mention that you can mix and match the blocks with other popular brands , however I disagree because the blocks in K'nex are a little rounded and those of Legos are very sharp and pointed and  I personally don't agree that you can mix-n-match.
One of the connector broke in a couple of months.
The box contains only a few instructions for making models.In order to build all the 20 you need to download the instructions from K'nex website of  instructions @ http://www.knex.com/Multi-Model-Sets/   and using the download code 12055.

posted at: 16:30 | category: /kids | permanent link to this entry