OnlyGizmos

Google India is facing a defamation case filed by Gremach Infrastructure Equipments & Projects on a series of articles published on Blogger. The articles were about the companies mines in Mozambique. The high court has asked Google to provide details about the blogger.

While the first incident in India pertaining a blogger (yeah, for some Orkut was the only known platform), this comes at a time when increasing number of bloggers are being tamed by the authorities across the world (mainly in oppressive regimes).

In a second case Google India, Yahoo and Microsoft have been submitted a notice by the supreme court based on a petition seeking a ban on popular online search engines promoting sex selection techniques (displaying ads). While the petetioner claims that the sites were brought to the notice of the concerned authorities, no action was taken.

Currently Google only allows ‘Family Safe’ Ads in India, and it has previously assured the supreme court on strict implementation of the ‘Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PNDT) Act’.

Android rumors are a daily affair now, and again this time the rumored device is HTC Dream. The big touchscreen device with a sliding QWERTY (yes the same one we just saw in a leaked video). So what is it this time?

According to fresh reports, T-Mobile is all set to start a Pre-Sale of the Android powered HTC Dream from September 17th. The device will be priced anywhere between $150 and $399, and the presale might be limited to exisitng Tmobile customers only. Also adding to the rumored features is a 3Mp camera & three colour options (brown, black and white).

Not sure if these persistent rumors are enough to keep up with the hype iPhone created before its launch, but Android sure looks promising!

When Google announced the open source Android, they kicked off a developers challenge to create apps for the Android platform. And they promised a whooping $10 million to be distributed for the best apps. So why does Google care so much for the apps? Why such a big amount? Its not that 10mln is too big for Google, but it is a significant amount.

My questions were answered by Apple’s Appstore for the iPhone! Apple recently launched the iPhone v2.0 with Appstore enabling 3rd party apps. And accorging to a WSJ report, Apple has already sold apps worth $30 million in the first month. If this trend continues, Apple takes home atleast $360 in revenues (offcourse a good part of that will go to the developers). But still, with the impending release of iPhone in many other countries, the figure will only rise.

iPhone is a close platform. Everything that comes in goes through a firm check, and anything that displeases Apple, won’t make it there. Still we see such good figures. This only makes me wonder, what is the real potential of Android?

Full coverage of the Android product launch!

image source

Beijing Olympics 2008 has kicked off and the next few weeks is going to be exciting. With millions of worldwide audience and thousands of athletes in China, this event is sure to make history. The opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games is something not to be missed. A small video slideshow downstairs

An important factor in Google Search success was the PageRank (PR). PageRank gives importance to the pages depending on the number and quality of incoming links they have. Microsoft’s new technology BrowseRank intends to capitalize on PR’s shotcomings. Apparently Google PR is somewhat easy to Game with a technique called Link Farms and  it doesn’t take into consideration the amount of time a user spends on a given webpage.

“Experimental results show that BrowseRank can achieve better performance than existing methods, including PageRank…in important page finding, spam page fighting, and relevance ranking…”

But one thing is for sure, a single innovation won’t help Microsoft. Being the market leader takes constant innovation. PageRank isn’t the only thing that Goolge has innovated it. Their search results are influenced by over 200 factors. Google has tools like Google Trends, Google Analytics and Adsense, the data from all these together would provide better quality of results IMO.

So Browse Rank is just another new technology that Microsoft is playing with to compete on the web. And TechCrunch adds some spice to it. A recent post at TechCrunch suggested that Google’s claim of having  ‘the most comprehensive index of any search engine’ might not stand true next week! Some big announcement coming up? Wait and watch! Ok it seems to be a new search engine Cuil.

Via Cnet

The essence of Google is not just their good products or good policies for their employees. Its actually the mindset that they follow, the way they do things. Here I was recently reading about a Firefox App developer’s experience with Google. Apparently his application was causing some problems with Google. So instead of taking down his Firefox Extension the Google lawyers instead called him and connected him to a Google engineer. Thus convincing him to take down the application until the necessary changes are made.

Not only that the techie received some Google Goodies soon after, appreciating his efforts. Here we can see that Google has a polite and generous approach to everything. It would have been really easy for them to go legal and take the trouble making App down very conveniently. But this positive attitude and acts will ensure that Long Lives Google!

Recently a friend of mine started to receive weird calls on his office number for Call Girls. At first we thought that someone is playing a prank, but as the number of calls started to increase we decided to investigate. So we held up a caller and inquired where he got the number from. Based on what the callers told us they got the phone number while searching GOOGLE! By this time we were sure that someone has played mischief. So while tracing the keywords given by one of the caller we managed to get the source.

This person had actually placed an Ad on a classifieds site “Required: Girl candidate As office assistant …”, the listing also mentioned his office phone no for contact. Now it so happened that Google picked up a page from this classifieds site for the keywords “call girl mumbai”, and unfortunately the snippet on the Goolge search page showed his numbers (see screenshots). Though the page on the classifieds site is unavailable, anyone who searched for call girl mumbai got his number from the google search page snippet itself!

Weird for sure, but then it happends on the internet. Carefull everyone!

When Jimmy Wales announced his entry into the search engine market with Wikia Search, little did he knew that Google would come out with a Wikipedia competitor - KNOL. KNOL is a Google project announced in December 2007. Its functioning is similar to Wikipedia with users generating the content themselves, but here is a twist. KNOL is not a non-commercial project like Wikipedia, infact it shows Ads, and also shares revenue with content generators. So people can expect to make money out of their contributions to KNOL.

When announced initiatlly in December 08, Knol had limited access only by invitation. Google has now opened KNOL to general public now, so anyone with a Goolge ID (say gmail id) can singin at knol.google.com and start contributing. One can integrate his Google Adsense account with KNOL to start making money out of the Ads shown along with their content.

The biggest advantage of KNOL over wiki is the revenue sharing with the content generators. This would encourage much more writers for KNOL. But conspiracy theories suggest that Wikipedia’s Goolge search rankings might be compromised to make space for KNOL. However leaving aside rumors it is believed that KNOL would attrach more commercial oriented articles, rather than the natural encyclopedia type content.

I have just configured my KNOL account, would let out the results once I start contributing there.

Also Read:
Wikipedia Founder, Jimmy Wales (Video: Interview) and Jon Hall

It’s been four years since I am using GMail, and still I love it as a brand new toy. No doubt, the service from Google means GMail scores amazingly on search. Even they say “Search, don’t sort” but searching and filter based sorting is what makes it competition killer. Even power users are not fully aware of all the search operators. Here are some tips I use to get most out of my emailing.

Searching with Boolean in Google Mail

• OR : capitalization matters, ‘OR’ term is used to specify to search for either of terms separated by the ‘OR’ word. Like for example I submit search as  ‘Coffee OR Tea’ then I would get all the mails which contains word Coffee or Tea (Or both). We can use | as a replacement  or even placed ‘OR’ terms in curly brackets ‘{}’ and the result would be same (though not documented) that means ‘Tea OR Coffee’, Tea | Coffee’ and ‘{Tea Coffee}’ will produce the same effect

• AND: is the default behavior for GMail, so wouldn’t necessary to put it search (but sometimes necessary to construct complex searches) again just putting SPACE yields the same result. For example, Putting “Mango AND Apple” (or “Mango Apple” or “Mango+Apple”) will search for mails, containing both Mango and Apple

• NOT: Ever need to exclude certain terms from results? Then ‘NOT’ is useful. It searches only mails in which given term is ‘NOT’ present. Example ‘NOT’ chat would search all the mails which does Not contain the word chat. We can use – (hyphen) for this or even ! (exclamation symbol, but again not documented)

e.g. ‘NOT party’, ‘-Party’ and ‘!Party’ will give us same results.

For further searching GMail also provided with lots of keywords, and
syntax for using them is <Keyword>:<Search Term> (Remember: No space in between)

• FROM: is used to search sender. Like if I put ‘from:abc@xyz.com’ then gmail will search all the mails which are form abc@xyz.com

• TO: is used to search based on recipient of the mail. Example searching ‘TO:dumbo@gmail.com’ will give the mails which are sent to Dumbo J. Like wise GMail also have ‘CC’ and ‘BCC’ keywords for searching CC and BCC fields respectively. Use them in the same way for CC and BCC - ‘CC:xyz@xyz.com’ & ‘BCC:xyz@xyz.com’

• SUBJECT: will only search given terms in subject field in mail. Like searching ‘Subject:Quotation’ will search all mails in which subject contains the word quotation.

• IN: for restraining our search into specific folders, IN operator is used, like ‘IN:sent’ will search only sent mails, likewise ‘IN:inbox’, ‘IN:anywhere’ (when you want to search all the mails, including trash and spam which is excluded by default.

• IS: is word is used along with certain keywords to search mails, like ‘IS:READ’, ‘IS:STARRED’, ‘IS:SPAM’ etc

• LABEL: as you must have created many labels for filtering mails, you can use this operator for searching only specific labels, like ‘LABEL:forwards’ will search only mails which have forwards as label

• FILENAME: will search for mail with specified filename or extension as a attachment, like querying for ‘filename:ZIP’ will give all mails which contains zip-file in attachment

• AFTER and BEFORE: are only available for time line search, we can construct mails which are sent/received during specified time duration. Example searching for ‘AFTER:2008/06/30  BEFORE:2008/07/07′ will give all mails which are sent received on first week of this July

So these are all major search Booleans and keyword using which we can construct complex searches and yes all search can be saved as filter

• Backup: setting certain words in subject and sending to own mail with good filter and our online backup drive is ready. Like I mail myself with subject: Storage and filter like

From:me subject:StoreThis then Archive and label it as Storage

From:(*@spam1.com|*@spam1.com|*@spam1.com) then delete it

‘Is:spam’ then delete it - If you fear losing genuine mails avoid this

Subject:(FWD | FW) then archive and apply label forwads

Filename:MP3       apply label Music

• Feeds: You can also set filters on RSS feeds and collect all the updates in one place.

Tired of using Meebo and Fring for chatting on Gtalk, well we have some good news. Google has released a new specially optimized version of Gtalk for the Apple iPhone (and iPod touch). We also read about Google customizing its ‘Google Reader’ for the iPhone, and now the ‘Google Talk’ IM. Google has realised the power of the iPhone Safari, which makes internet surfing on mobile better than ever before.

Having a full Flash based website is a taboo for most webmasters, It would mean a SEO disaster. For years WWW consultants have been advising corporates to avoid a full Flash based website. But things are about to change!

Techspot is reporting that Adobe is assisting google and yahoo search engines to crawl and index flash content (SWF) on the web. Apparently Adobe has provided Google and Yahoo an optimized version of the Flash Player that scans the content inside the SWF files. Google already has this system live and Yahoo plans to integrate it soon.

The word from Google is that they are currently able to scan “textual content in Flash files” but not Video and other animation (images etc).

UPDATE: The Gphone Aka Android has launched, here is all you need to know abou the First Android Phone HTC G1

Since almost a year we are speaking about the Google Phone aka Android platform. Google realizes that the handheld’s market will offer tremendous growth in the coming years, and Android will ensure that it holds a good share of the mobile market. Data usage on mobile devices is on a rise and most telecom companies estimate that in coming years the Data revenue would be much more than what it is today.

Google recently demoed the HTC Dream at a conference which highlighted the potential of Android platform. The HTC dream is a big device with a 5″x3″ touch screen, a slider keyboard and a accelerometer like the iPhone which lets your tilt the device for navigation or scrolling. But that shouldn’t give you the impression that all Android devices are going to be high-end touchscreen. In a previous demo we have already seen (Video Downstairs) that the Android would come in different types ranging from QWERTY, normal number pad with trackball or a touch like iPhone. Many manufacturers are developing devices for the Android and by 2008 end we would start to see the announcements. The heart of a Android device is its Open Source nature. The hardware is merely a facilitator of what is being developed, the software offers the real GOLD. We also hear rumors that Google would offer a app store for Android users to get their hands on the latest applications and innovations.

The potential offered by a open source venture like Android is tremendous, imagine a game where in you and four of your friends playing counter strike using GPS+Camera powered Android devices which makes your own neighborhood a virtual battle ground. GPS location along with Google Maps offer your the terrain and details of the nearby enemy, you shoot the enemy with your Android’s camera, server images would confirm the identity of the enemy. Yes there are exactly the kind of crazy ideas we are hearing. See more

Integrate: existing Google code’s like the Google Maps with the browser and get the maximum utility.

Expand: the functionality of existing Google codes, like using the Maps to locate a taxi cab near you.

Replace: Android will offer handheld devices to be customized by the users to the core. So don’t be surprised if you see two Android devices which appear the same but offer completely different interface and OS features. Eg: In case you don’t like the default contact manager, you can easily replace the same with a third part contact manager (not just adding a new contact manager, but to completely replace the existing one!)

The original Android demo video by Google:

The Android Demo at Google I/O (using HTC DREAM):

As you would see in the video above, locking your mobile device using numeric and alpha-numeric passwords is a thing of the past, Now you can lock your device using customized patterns and combinations. Expect much more innovation…