My First Ever Blog Post

Trying out new things

Now is the time to try out new things. Being a student, I get so many services for free or at a reduced cost.

Google search vs Kagi

  • maybe should have used Orion
  • The searches used anxiety is real. It also doesn’t say anywhere when that amount gets reset (is it on the 1st of every month or on the date I first signed up for Kagi) For searches where I thought that Kagi’s ranking system won’t be that useful, I opened up google.com and used Google search. This made me slower not only because I had to think whether the search would be well suited for Kagi or Google, but I also had to type google.com and only then could I type the query I wanted.
  • I enjoyed having the Google Maps integration in Google search. For example, I could search Hair cut in X Mall and I would get a list of salons, their ratings and I can also quickly see how far they are. Kagi completely lacks this feature.

Arc vs Google Chrome

  • Used it for a week

  • Loved how immersive it made webpages feel. I felt like I was having a cinematic experience for every webpage. Increasing the available vertical space (by shrinking the address bar, moving the tabs form the top to the left side, and even shrinking the title bar) makes a huge difference in the user experience. That improvement is multiplied if you have a 16:10 display; you can just read so much stuff!

  • Liked how they adopted Chromium instead of building their own browser engine. It allows me to move everything (extensions, passwords, etc.) from Chrome to Arc. This probably reduces the barrier/friction for most users (since Chrome has 92% market share)

  • Also the fact that when you quickly move your cursor to the top right corner, it doesn’t hover over the Close button, instead, the cursor changes to a resize cursor. Fitts’ law

  • Although I found out a Reddit thread which solved this issue, the fact that Arc remapped Ctrl+Shift+A from launching tab search locally to launching Arc globally left a bad taste in my mouth.

  • I heard that Arc on macOS is much better. So, either should have tried it on macOS or waited until they shipped all the important features to Windows

Microsoft Whiteboard vs tldraw

Maybe it is my fault that I didn’t give them the best shot/chance at impressing me, but at the same time I feel like I shouldn’t have to change my ways. Rather, they have to convince me regardless of how I use them.