Posts tagged Google
Some funny things about Google Suggest
Jun 3rd
According to the post published at LA Times. As we all know computers can’t think to a certain extent because they have to do what they get. Sometime computers can be unintentionally funny. Check out the funny things about Google’s search suggestion feature.
Google suggest was Launched in December 2004 as a beta product. Suggest wasn’t integrated into Google.com or various Web browser toolbars until last year.
The suggest works like this: type a partial search like "Mansoor Ahmed is" or "Charles is" into Google.
Anyway, if those guesses are entertaining enough, snap a picture of the list and submit it to your local social website.
Type "Charles Darwin is" and you’ll find that in addition to suggesting that the British scientist is, yet again, an idiot — the words "wrong," and "satan" may be just as likely to satisfy some online searchers.
For those too lazy to punch the previous two terms into Google, the search engine irreverently suggests that Barack Obama could be an idiot, a Muslim, a socialist, the Antichrist, "hot" or your new bicycle — whatever that means.
Google offers a similarly variegated list of characteristics for Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly, which swings from racist, to idiot and back to the more flattering "nice."
Similarly you can search for “Geek is ”
One of the Digg classic is "how long does …" which shows that search engines may be more likely to be used to skirt a drug test than to learn how long it takes to boil an egg.
Fail Blog, a bulletin board for the world of the tragically funny, caught on to the meme with an example: "I am extremely …"
I am smiling, am laughing rather while referring and writing this post, we will enjoy it too. Keep smiling and always be happy.
A work-around for Google’s “We’re Sorry” error page
Jun 2nd
When using Google, many of you just like me would have sometime come across a situation where Google’s search service behaves strangely and displays a strange “We’re sorry” page, thus restricting your access to Google’s search results page. On a few occasions Google shows a CAPTCHA that intends to confirm you as a human, but that is not the case always. Did you ever wish to discover a way to work around this issue. Well, luckily Alex Chitu has provided a way to go around this undesired problem. The error message goes something like this:
We’re sorry… but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.
We’ll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.
According to Google’s Help Center, this error message appears in a situation when Google detects that a computer on your network is sending automated traffic to Google. There are various reasons as to why your computer is sending automated traffic. These are:
- It is possible that you are using an application that is responsible for monitors the ranking of a site in Google’s search result.
- A different machine that shares your IP is unfortunately a part of the botnet.
- There is a possibility that if you are using Firefox, a Mozilla extension might be sending requests to Google quite frequently.
One way to get rid of this issue might be to go for Bing. However if you still wanna use Google’s search engine, then what you can do is try going for a different Google domain. Instead of using www.google.com, you may consider going for www.google.com.pk, www.google.co.uk and so on. Do that and you can say bye bye to the We’re Sorry Error page.
Bing preview is live now
Jun 1st
We were all waiting for the Bing to be launched on 3rd June, but it seems that Microsoft is in a bit of hurry as the company has launched the beta of their new search engine known as Bing.
Is it Microsoft’s latest effort to beat Google? Google may have thought it still had a couple of days up to work on whatever plans it had to defend itself, but it looks like Microsoft is after Google.
Will Bing make a difference? or Google will still be the searching giant?
According to the ITWire the biggest question is how quickly Google will take some of the elements Bing has brought forward and duplicate them in its own search results?
But the thing is that Bing has really just taken some of the advances that Google has brought forth, and has simply improved them.
So Google making its own search results better should be very easy for it to achieve, thus bringing into question just how much of an impact Bing will ultimately make.
Bing attempts to differentiate itself from what Steve Ballmer would call “the market leader” in search by focusing on helping users with four common action-oriented search tasks: making a purchase, planning a trip, researching a health condition and finding a local business.
Now the foremost question about the Bing is, will it be good? Or it is hard to tell before time?
Full video of Google Wave live at Google IO
May 29th
The initial audience response to Google Wave was huge; there was a standing ovation the likes of which haven’t been seen at any tech event.
According to the Technologizer, Google has published a video of this morning’s demo of Wave–which aims to be what e-mail should be and meld it with IM, allow for real-time document sharing, provide instant photo sharing, revolutionize spell checking, provide on-the-fly translation, and allow developers to either build on top of the service or replace it with their own underpinnings, among other things. It’s an hour and twenty minutes long, and doesn’t get through all the things one might want to know about Wave.
There is a video which is of great interest to me at least:
Watch The Video
After watching this video what you are thinking? Well I was thinking when it will be here..?
Among the many interesting questions about Wave is this: Is it bloatware? It’s not ready for release yet, and it appears to already be bursting at the seams with features.
Other questions were asked as well like:
Another question asked was this does Gmail and Google Docs one better. Will Wave be the evolution of both or a replacement? Vic replied to it as this is an early developer release of our Wave, but we’ll see this over several products/services/sites.
Will it replace email? Lars replied to it as
we think of email as an incredibly successful protocol. Google Wave is our suggestion for how this could work better. You can certainly store your own copy by way of the APIs and with the extensions. The model for ownership — it’s a shared object, so how do you delete the object? Even though it’s a shared object, no one can take it away from you without your consent. There will eventually be reversion to sync up with the cloud or you own servers. We’re not planning on having spam in wave (laughs). Early on in email, spam wasn’t really taken into account, so we benefit from that learning experience. We’re planning on a feature so that you can’t add me to your Wave without being on a white list.
How it will be integrated with the Gmail or other Google services? Lars replied as Again, it’s very early for us. When you sign up for Google Wave, it’s your Google account, you’ll have your Google Contacts, etc.
How interoperable will it be — how open source? Lars replied as: the developers can choose completely. We’re using the most liberal license to open source our code.
More question answer here.
Google Wave – Reinventing email
May 29th
Google Wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web.
Google Wave is a combination of Gmail and Google Docs into an interesting free-form workspace that could be used to write collaborative documents, plan events, play games or discuss a very recent news.
The Google Wave site is now up and running, although access to the application will be restricted.
Google Wave has been designed by the founders of Where 2 Tech, a start-up acquired by Google to create a cutting-edge mapping service, which later became Google Maps.
A “wave” is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
In Google Wave you create a wave and add people. Everyone on your wave can use formatted text, photos, gadgets, and feeds from different sources on the web. They can add a reply or edit the wave directly.
Google Wave is just good for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave to see how it evolved.
If you want to publish a wave to a blog you can do so using tool called “Bloggy” – Bloggy allows you to publish the entire wave, which can itself be updated like a normal wave.
When Google Wave will be launched? Simple answer is NO IDEA.
Chrome Dev Channel gets an update
May 28th
Those of you who are a frequent visitor and reader at Geekword, would surely have understood what the content of this blog post might be. Yes, the development team behind Google Chrome is upto it again. This time around an update has been made and released to the dev channel. This update takes the dev channel to 3.0.182.2. This update contains a couple of added features, fixes issues related to crash. Also this update brings version changes in a few services as well.
The main highlights for this release are:
- From now on, Google Chrome will support and complement the video tag.
- AutoSpell Correct flag will automatically fix common typos within the blink of an eye.
- Also certain portions of UI has been cleaned such as paint issues associated with toolbar and download bar.
- Fixes for various crashes
The issues which were known to the team was:
- There was an issue with the font size, which appeared in a very small font size in most non English languages. The team has made a commitment to resolve this next in the next Dev channel update.
The following versions were changed
- WebKit – 531.0
- V8 – 1.2.5.1
- Gears – 0.5.21.0
Twitter for beginners
May 25th
Twitter is a social networking tool that lets you build a list of contacts you can interact with in real time but it isn’t meant to be used like an instant messenger. People often share new ideas, great web links, their blog posts and much more.
Twitter offer several features that a smart person will use for effective marketing and a few of these are:
-
Your tweets are added to your main Twitter profile page for visitors to see.
-
Your tweets are indexed individually according to the content in each tweet.
-
Your Twitter page has an RSS Feed that can be promoted like any other Web 2.0 property.
-
Twitter is loved by Google because it’s nothing but fresh content.
-
Your indexed tweets and followers help build the PageRank of your Twitter page with their inbound links.
-
The keyword phrases used in each tweet may lead people back to your Twitter profile which has a link to your website.
-
There are widgets and plugins that let you import you tweets into web pages and blogs which means a steady stream of fresh content and relationship building if used correctly.
-
There are WordPress plugins that will automatically take your tweets and publish them as pages or posts on your blog.
-
Tweets a public and searchable by ANYONE so be very aware that you are posting to the entire web and not just a single person.
-
Twitter can help you in business if used correctly BUT you can be in trouble if your tweet isn’t well thought out.
Yahoo thinks of moving towards social networking
May 24th
As Reuters reports, Yahoo Inc is thinking of purchasing companies which would help it become a strong competitor and player in the social networking field. Also, as Ari Balogh who happens to be the Executive Vice President of Products, said that they are hoping that this move will also initiate the revamping process of its family of products. While pointing to the valuations that came down from levels six to nine which happened a few months back, he said
It is a good time to be buying now
Althought the Yahoo Chief Officer was quite reluctant to give out any specific names, Balogh did mention the fact that Yahoo definitely has had conversations with companies and corporations regarding partnerships and promising and eye catching possibilities. He said besides search, Yahoo is thinking of building its own platform and thinking towards basic computing. He said
I can guarantee you there will be some acquisitions, and we will do some stuff in-house
Yahoo is expected to launch new products during this fall which will provide users with a more unified experience throughout its network of websites. Yahoo hopes that these products will also highlight the company’s strategy to grow again, considering the fact that most part of 2007 was affected by the failed deal talks with Microsoft. Yahoo is striving very hard to gain an edge over its competitors which surely include search engine giants Google and the ever famous social network Facebook.
While Balogh admitted that Google has won the search engine battle, he also shared his belief that more can be done with the search. His words were
The thing I will tell you is that, core to great experiences for people online may not necessarily be this version of search. I believe search is going to be far richer … there’s a whole other round or two to go in the search game and that’s where we intend on playing.
In reference to the talks of search partnership going between Microsoft and Yahoo, Balogh said that the decision in this matter is dependent on Yahoo’s board and Carol Bartz who is Chief Executive for Yahoo. He however hinted that Yahoo is keen to invest in its own search capabilities. Balogh said
Search technology is a vital part of the consumer experience that Yahoo delivers, and having leading edge scientists and technologists who understand search technology and where search is going is critical to Yahoo.
So let us see what Yahoo does in terms of new partnership and hope that whatever they do it turns out to be fruitful for them.
Netlog social network integrates with Google Friend Connect
May 23rd
The main and supreme purpose of any social network is to let you connected anywhere and anytime, and people can join any website and interact with the people there in a meaningful way, regardless of where they come from.
Netlog is a youth community where users can keep in touch with and extend their social network.
Google Friend Connect instantly awakens and strengthens the community that visits your site by enriching it with social features.
Google Friend Connect is now integrated
with one of Europe’s fastest growing social networks, Netlog.
Now, Netlog’s more than 45 million users across Europe can:
-
Sign into any of the millions of sites and blogs using Friend Connect with their Netlog credentials
-
Use their Netlog profiles on these sites
-
See if any of their friends are already members of the same sites and invite other Netlog friends to join
-
Share their Friend Connect activities with their friends on Netlog, and
-
Send messages back to their Netlog friends
Sites that are already using Friend Connect, will get the benefit of this standards based model in form of taking advantage of any new service that chooses to join this open ecosystem, like Netlog, without any additional work. The new network option simply appears.
Any social network or service, whether they are large or small, regional or global, niche or general audience, is welcome to take advantage of these open standards to integrate with Friend Connect, and participate in an open social web.
New logo design for various Google sites coming up
May 23rd
It seems that Google is thinking of improving its user experience. Google is planning of rolling out a new logo design. They are taking this move in a hope to change the look of their sites and give it a freshing look. Besides this they are keeping their fingers crossed and have full belief that this act will improve consistency and ease of use across their useful sites. With the new logo design, the product names will be appearing in simple color with lowercase alphabets accompanied by the Google logo.
Since their are countless areas in a webpage where logos can appear, Google has standardized the logo size, so the new logos will all be of the same size and color. This standard will help the users to easily recognize the site they are currently on and assist the navigation process as well. These logo will be consistent across all the international domains owned by Google. This will surely help all those people who are used to right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Herbrew.
The new logos for Google Maps, Google News, Google Docs and other sites are destined be to rolled out during the next few weeks. And when they do, we will be sure to inform you.
