Google Arena ( Anything & Everything abt Google)

A year-and-a-half ago, Navneet Loiwal, a 23-year-old IIT Powai graduate, was chatting up his colleague A C Narendran, 36, at the research & development centre of Google, the world's most visited online search engine, in Bangalore.
Their yak during the "20% work time" - Google allows its scientists and engineers to devote 20% of their work time to invent products and concepts - led to the idea of a portal exclusively dedicated to financial news.

Loiwal and Narendran continued to finetune their concept and began to work on a demo. They presented it to the company and guess what, Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin gave the idea their go-ahead.

In doublequick time, the Loiwal-Narendran team was expanded to include scientists from Google's headquarters in California and also from its New York facility. This week, the company officially launched the website, Google Finance ( http://finance.google.com/finance).

Both wizards didn't have any background in the stock market or corporate-dom, if you may, but their brainchild has indeed led to one fine way of searching for companies. Incidentally, Google News is also an invention by an Indian — Krishna Bharat, principal scientist, who conceived and built the portal as part of yet another "20% work time" project.

Google Finance, which tracks firms in the US, informs a reader on why the stock of a particular firm moved in a particular way and highlights the news that could have triggered the movement.

It integrates with Google News to get news updates on a particular firm, besides giving a link to its website and what discussions are made by blogs on them.

"This is the first product from India that has been made public," Google Bangalore R&D centre head Arvind Jain told DNA Money.

"You can either search using the company name or the ticker symbol," Jain said, adding, a localised edition for India will also be launched over time.

"We have been able to hire smart engineers, many of them who want to work in India in the same environment as they would get in the US," said Jain, who worked at Googleplex in Mountain View, California, before taking over as the Bangalore unit head in September last.

Online, in Finance St

Google Finance is the first product from India that has been made public

It integrates with Google News – another invention by an Indian — to spew updates


http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1019898&CatID=4
 

nick18_in

MP Guru
Google Mars : Red Planet mapped

First there was Google Earth, then Google Moon. On Monday, Google Inc expanded its galactic reach by launching Google Mars, a web browser-based mapping tool that gives users an up-close, interactive view of the Red Planet with the click of a mouse.
The Martian maps were made from images taken by NASA's orbiting Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor.

Google Mars doesn't provide driving directions, but users can see the planet in three different formats: The Martian elevation map is color-coded by altitude; the visible-imagery map shows the surface in black-and-white pictures; the infrared map indicates temperature, with cooler areas dark and warmer areas bright.

Users can also zoom in on any of the three maps to view geographical features such as mountains, canyons, dunes and craters. The maps also pinpoint the locations of unmanned space probes that have landed on Mars.


The up-to-date maps even include the locations of the NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which have been exploring opposite ends of the planet since 2004, said Phil Christensen, an Arizona State University planetary geologist who operates an infrared camera on the Mars Odyssey. Arizona State partnered with Google to create the maps.



While countless Mars images are already available on the Internet - mostly through NASA's Mars mission websites - the developers of Google Mars said this is the first time that members of the public can explore Mars on their own.

"The idea is to look at Mars and not think of it as a mysterious alien place," Christensen said. Christensen said the Martian maps would most likely be updated every few weeks.

Last week, another spacecraft, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, successfully slipped into orbit around the planet, joining the Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor.

Since the Reconnaissance Orbiter is the most powerful spacecraft ever to orbit Mars, Christensen said, scientists may eventually incorporate its data into Google Mars. Last summer, the Internet search engine unveiled Google Earth, a three-dimensional, satellite-based mapping service that allowed browsers to interactively explore their neighborhood or far-flung places.

Google Earth was followed by Google Moon, which showed the locations of all six Apollo moon landings.

Google launched its Martian mapping service on what would have been the 151st birthday of astronomer Percival Lowell, who studied the Red Planet for more than two decades.

"We hope you enjoy your trip to Mars," Chikai Ohazama, a Google Earth team member, wrote in a blog posted on the search engine's Web site.
http://www.ibnlive.com/article.php?id=6761&section_id=11&single=true
 

nick18_in

MP Guru
Google adds two "Mini" business search appliances

Google adds two "Mini" business search appliancesSAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Consumer Internet search leader Google Inc. <GOOG.O> on Thursday said it is introducing two new, higher-capacity systems designed to meet the growing demand to search for documents inside businesses.
The Mountain View, California-based company said it is now offering three Google "Mini" search appliances, used by small to mid-sized companies, including systems that can find up to 200,000 internal documents that sells for $5,995, and a 300,000 document search appliance selling for $8,995.
Search appliances are a combination of hardware and software that can cull through a wide variety of documents by office workers inside an organization, or used externally to allow customers to search through documents on a company's Web site.
The two new devices work like the existing Google Mini search appliance introduced a year ago, which has the capacity to search 100,000 documents and sells for $2,995.
Google has sold thousands of Minis to more than 2,000 organizations, but won't disclose specific figures, Dave Girouard, Google Enterprise general manager, said in a phone interview.
For big businesses and government organizations, the company also offers the Google Search Appliance starting at around $30,000 and running up to $600,000 per appliance for far higher capacity search systems, according to Girouard.
The market for products that search for information inside organizations rather than on the public Internet, the so-called enterprise search market, was around $750 million in 2004, according to data from market research firm IDC.
Search appliances are expected to generate upward of $900 million in sales during 2005, search analyst Sue Feldman of IDC of Framingham, Massachusetts estimated.
In November, the No. 1 supplier of intranet search appliances, Cambridge, England-based Autonomy Corp. <AUTN.L>, agreed to pay around $500 million to acquire Verity, the No. 2 enterprise search company.
Together these companies represent a roughly $200 million search business, compared with Google's roughly $60 million enterprise search products business, which makes it a distant No. 2 to Autonomy-Verity, Feldman estimates.
Norway's Fast Search and Transfer <FAST.OL> are among other competitors in the fragmented market.
Search appliances represent a tiny fraction of Google revenues. Roughly 99 percent of the company's revenue comes from sales of advertising along Web search results.
 

nick18_in

MP Guru
A Google PC

The Google PC
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So, is Google launching a PC of its own?

According to the LA Times they are ... From the article: 'Sources say Google has been in negotiations with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., among other retailers, to sell a Google PC. The machine would run an operating system created by Google, not Microsoft's Windows, which is one reason it would be so cheap -- perhaps as little as a couple of hundred dollars.'"

There's a lot of talk about an alternative to Windows. Having been a Linux user on and off and despite having enjoyed it, I have to admit that there is no credible alternative to Windows. If only because its so easy to get things done on a windows machine. And that's not because Windows is a great software. It's because someone who knows how to get it done is not more than a phone call away. Macs are much (MUCH) nicer ... but they remain far more expensive. Though the move to Intel based machines should help bring Mac costs down some (hopefully).

Which brings us back to the Google PC. Here's why I think it might work. Everybody knows Google. Like everybody knows Microsoft. Brand recall is a powerful thing in the world of technology, especially for newbies. Google has establised itself as being extraordinarily easy to use. It's also established itself as being a lot of fun. That is a pretty potent combination. Especially for someone who doesn't know a lot about computers. And if you throw in the price then we are talking slam dunks and home runs galore all rolled into one. But this isn't why I think it's going to be great.

Let's get into a little bit of speculation. This is also known as la-la land in serious journalism.

It's safe to assume that the Google operating system will be based on what they already have up and running for Google's various offerings. Now the really big deal about this OS is data storage thanks to something called the Google File System (GFS). At the heart of every Google search and all the space that Google gives away at Gmail is the GFS. It supports near instant access to huge amounts of data, spread over diverse geographical locations.

A Google PC could very well be an extension -- a private node -- of this giant Google grid ... You would have access to all of Google's existing services. And some new ones. Like the often talked about but never confirmed Office suite. And the browser, though me thinks they're going to go with Mozilla Firefox, or a version of it.

The big deal about this will be that the computer will have none of the software on it. They will all be like Gmail. You will need to be connected to a Google server.

A lot of people have talked about network PCs -- computers that are whole only when connected to a network. But Google is in a position where this could soon be real.

And that's what could make a Google PC truly revolutionary.
http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/blog_entry.php?id=3232&author_id=150&blog_name=Frontier%20Mail
 

nick18_in

MP Guru
google : story of creative and innovative thinking

Here is the story of Google: how creative and innovative thinking can bring a revolution:


A Phenomenal Success
Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in 1998. A few years ago Forbes estimated Larry's net worth at $550 Million. However, since taking Google public in 2004, the combined net worth of the founders is estimated to be nearly $14 Billion.

Google's annual sales exceeded $4.5 Billion in 2004 and it has reached a net market capitalization of $85 Billion in the current year. Google uses more than 10,000 networked computers to comb through almost 3 billion web pages and powers over 75% of the Web searches in the US.

Relevance
AltaVista and Inktomi, the two popular search engines of the mid-nineties were based on the technique of storing the text of every Web page in a fast searchable index. However, this did not deliver the results in the order of relevance. Also, this led to commercial spammers who flooded their web pages with hidden keywords multiple times over. In keywords based searches they would then appear first in a search listing.

Larry and Sergey devised a method to rank a page based on how frequently it was referenced by other pages. This algorithm, along with larger storage capacity and processing power, enabled them to deliver fast and reliable search results.

Gaining Ground
The founders started out with a little over 1 million in seed capital from friends and family, and in 1999 received another 25 Million from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins. They trademarked their search algorithm under the name PageRank. In 2001, they hired Eric Scmidt as the CEO. The same year they were named as the number one US search engine by MediaMetrix.
Google kept ahead of competition by introducing new features regularly. Over time they added image search, groups, directory services and news features to their portfolio of offerings.

Going Dutch with Public
In late 2004, the IPO markets were again opening up. The investors who had been shying away from the market in the wake of the dotcom bust of 2000, were returning to it. The founders decided to take Google public. They bypassed the traditional IPO process and chose a modified Dutch auction model. The Dutch auction would set the price of the shares at the lowest successful bid. This enticed investors to bid the maximum price they were willing to pay hoping that they will only have to pay the clearing price.

The Way Ahead
Google has established a strong user base and network of affiliates. However, they need to reconsider whether they wish to remain a provider of directory services and search solutions, or they want to evolve into a portal. There is increased competition from MSN and Yahoo. These fierce competitors would retaliate with new products that can give Google a run for its money. The founders have to put on their thinking caps again to develop new defensible avenues of growth

Success Indicators
  • <LI class=textDisplay4>Market Capitalization: $85 Billion <LI class=textDisplay4>Annual Sales (2004) : $4.5 Billion <LI class=textDisplay4>Net Income (2004) : $1 Billion
  • Number of Employees : 4000
Trends Encountered
  • Need for relevance
  • Explosive growth of Internet use
Opportunities Harnessed​
  • <LI class=textDisplay4>PageRank Algorithm <LI class=textDisplay4>Fast and reliable search results
  • Monetization of traffic
Key Decision Makers
Larry Page and Sergey Brin while studying in Stanford, built a unique algorithm to search information within documents. They founded Google in 1998, which soon overtook other search engines in popularity and within eighteen months was named as number one.
Useful Products​
  • Google Search
  • AdWords
  • Contextualized Ads
  • Image Search
  • Gmail
Current Challenges

  • <LI class=textDisplay4>Increased competition from Microsoft and Yahoo <LI class=textDisplay4>Explore new avenues for growth
  • Evolve into a portal or preserve the search engine model
 

nick18_in

MP Guru
Google: Ten Golden Rules

Google: Ten Golden Rules
Getting the most out of knowledge workers will be the key to business
success for the next quarter century. Here's how we do it at Google
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10296177/site/newsweek/>


Issues 2006 - At google, we think business guru Peter Drucker well understood how to manage the new breed of "knowledge workers." After all, Drucker invented the term in 1959. He says knowledge workers believe they are paid to be effective, not to work 9 to 5, and that smart businesses will "strip away everything that gets in their knowledge workers' way." Those that succeed will attract the best performers, securing "the single biggest factor for competitive advantage in the next 25 years."

At Google, we seek that advantage. The ongoing debate about whether big corporations are mismanaging knowledge workers is one we take very seriously, because those who don't get it right will be gone. We've drawn on good ideas we've seen elsewhere and come up with a few of our own. What follows are seven key principles we use to make knowledge workers most effective. As in most technology companies, many of our employees are engineers, so we will focus on that particular group, but many of the policies apply to all sorts of knowledge workers.
  • <LI class=textBodyBlack>Hire by committee. Virtually every person who interviews at Google talks to at least half-a-dozen interviewers, drawn from both management and potential colleagues. Everyone's opinion counts, making the hiring process more fair and pushing standards higher. Yes, it takes longer, but we think it's worth it. If you hire great people and involve them intensively in the hiring process, you'll get more great people. We started building this positive feedback loop when the company was founded, and it has had a huge payoff. <LI class=textBodyBlack>Cater to their every need. As Drucker says, the goal is to "strip away everything that gets in their way." We provide a standard package of fringe benefits, but on top of that are first-class dining facilities, gyms, laundry rooms, massage rooms, haircuts, carwashes, dry cleaning, commuting buses—just about anything a hardworking engineer might want. Let's face it: programmers want to program, they don't want to do their laundry. So we make it easy for them to do both. <LI class=textBodyBlack>Pack them in. Almost every project at Google is a team project, and teams have to communicate. The best way to make communication easy is to put team members within a few feet of each other. The result is that virtually everyone at Google shares an office. This way, when a programmer needs to confer with a colleague, there is immediate access: no telephone tag, no e-mail delay, no waiting for a reply. Of course, there are many conference rooms that people can use for detailed discussion so that they don't disturb their office mates. Even the CEO shared an office at Google for several months after he arrived. Sitting next to a knowledgeable employee was an incredibly effective educational experience. <LI class=textBodyBlack>Make coordination easy. Because all members of a team are within a few feet of one another, it is relatively easy to coordinate projects. In addition to physical proximity, each Googler e-mails a snippet once a week to his work group describing what he has done in the last week. This gives everyone an easy way to track what everyone else is up to, making it much easier to monitor progress and synchronize work flow. <LI class=textBodyBlack>Eat your own dog food. Google workers use the company's tools intensively. The most obvious tool is the Web, with an internal Web page for virtually every project and every task. They are all indexed and available to project participants on an as-needed basis. We also make extensive use of other information-management tools, some of which are eventually rolled out as products. For example, one of the reasons for Gmail's success is that it was beta tested within the company for many months. The use of e-mail is critical within the organization, so Gmail had to be tuned to satisfy the needs of some of our most demanding customers—our knowledge workers. <LI class=textBodyBlack>Encourage creativity. Google engineers can spend up to 20 percent of their time on a project of their choice. There is, of course, an approval process and some oversight, but basically we want to allow creative people to be creative. One of our not-so-secret weapons is our ideas mailing list: a companywide suggestion box where people can post ideas ranging from parking procedures to the next killer app. The software allows for everyone to comment on and rate ideas, permitting the best ideas to percolate to the top. <LI class=textBodyBlack>Strive to reach consensus. Modern corporate mythology has the unique decision maker as hero. We adhere to the view that the "many are smarter than the few," and solicit a broad base of views before reaching any decision. At Google, the role of the manager is that of an aggregator of viewpoints, not the dictator of decisions. Building a consensus sometimes takes longer, but always produces a more committed team and better decisions <LI class=textBodyBlack>Don't be evil. Much has been written about Google's slogan, but we really try to live by it, particularly in the ranks of management. As in every organization, people are passionate about their views. But nobody throws chairs at Google, unlike management practices used at some other well-known technology companies. We foster to create an atmosphere of tolerance and respect, not a company full of yes men. <LI class=textBodyBlack>Data drive decisions. At Google, almost every decision is based on quantitative analysis. We've built systems to manage information, not only on the Internet at large, but also internally. We have dozens of analysts who plow through the data, analyze performance metrics and plot trends to keep us as up to date as possible. We have a raft of online "dashboards" for every business we work in that provide up-to-the-minute snapshots of where we are.
  • Communicate effectively. Every Friday we have an all-hands assembly with announcements, introductions and questions and answers. (Oh, yes, and some food and drink.) This allows management to stay in touch with what our knowledge workers are thinking and vice versa. Google has remarkably broad dissemination of information within the organization and remarkably few serious leaks. Contrary to what some might think, we believe it is the first fact that causes the second: a trusted work force is a loyal work force.
Of course, we're not the only company that follows these practices. Many of them are common around Silicon Valley. And we recognize that our management techniques have to evolve as the company grows. There are several problems that we (and other companies like us) face.

One is "techno arrogance." Engineers are competitive by nature and they have low tolerance for those who aren't as driven or as knowledgeable as they are. But almost all engineering projects are team projects; having a smart but inflexible person on a team can be deadly. If we see a recommendation that says "smartest person I've ever known" combined with "I wouldn't ever want to work with them again," we decline to make them an offer. One reason for extensive peer interviews is to make sure that teams are enthused about the new team member. Many of our best people are terrific role models in terms of team building, and we want to keep it that way.

A related problem is the not-invented-here syndrome. A good engineer is always convinced that he can build a better system than the existing ones, leading to the refrain "Don't buy it, build it." Well, they may be right, but we have to focus on those projects with the biggest payoff. Sometimes this means going outside the company for products and services.

Another issue that we will face in the coming years is the maturation of the company, the industry and our work force. We, along with other firms in this industry, are in a rapid growth stage now, but that won't go on forever. Some of our new workers are fresh out of college; others have families and extensive job experience. Their interests and needs are different. We need to provide benefits and a work environment that will be attractive to all ages.

A final issue is making sure that as Google grows, communication procedures keep pace with our increasing scale. The Friday meetings are great for the Mountain View team, but Google is now a global organization.

We have focused on managing creativity and innovation, but that's not the only thing that matters at Google. We also have to manage day-to-day operations, and it's not an easy task. We are building technology infrastructure that is dramatically larger, more complex and more demanding than anything that has been built in history. Those who plan, implement and maintain these systems, which are growing to meet a constantly rising set of demands, have to have strong incentives, too. At Google, operations are not just an afterthought: they are critical to the company's success, and we want to have just as much effort and creativity in this domain as in new product development.

Schmidt is CEO of Google. Varian is a Berkeley professor and consultant with Google.
 

nick18_in

MP Guru
Google Tools Cater to Info Tastes

REVIEW: Google Tools Cater to Info Tastes

Sep 1, 9:01 PM (ET)
By ANICK JESDANUN

(AP) This screenshot shows Google's Sidebar,at right, which is included with the new Desktop Search...
Full Image
#message p {margin:12px 0px 0px 0px;}
NEW YORK (AP) - Google Inc. (GOOG)'s fortunes have risen on its ability to entice digital consumers, gauging their desires based on their online travels.

Its latest products - Google Desktop and Google Talk - continue in that vein by attempting, with minimal user input required, to satisfy Internet user cravings for information and personal contact.

Desktop wants to become our conduit for information, from e-mail to Web pages to news and weather - even reminder notes we write to ourselves. Talk is Google's first foray into Internet messaging and telephony.

Both programs are in a "beta" test phase, the software industry's way of telling the public that better things are coming but here's our first shot, flaws and all. Both are a good start in making computing conform to our needs.

And both are free, though only available for Windows 2000 or XP computers.

Google, the first of the major search engines to release a product that searches inside computer files, continues to distinguish itself as a cut above rivals Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) with version 2 of Desktop (renamed from Desktop Search).

Most impressive in Desktop is its Sidebar feature, a 2-inch-wide tower of info-rich "panels" that sits on the side of your screen.

The e-mail panel, atop the tower, alerts you to messages as they come in and lets you read them right there on the screen. The tool supports any accounts you can configure with Outlook, Thunderbird or Netscape Mail as well as Google's own Web-based e-mail service, Gmail.

Sidebar also has a scratch pad - think digital Post-it Notes - to jot down reminders and other important tidbits. Another panel is devoted to your stock portfolio, yet another to the weather. Others feature news updates and Web journal entries.

You can rearrange or delete panels and download new ones, including a "to do list" manager.

You might be asking, "So what?"

Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN and America Online Inc. all have personalized pages that display news, stocks, sports and weather. But they require you to visit a Web site and spend time customizing them.

Google's Sidebar, by contrast, is browser-free and did much of the customizing for me.

When I first ran it, Sidebar already knew that I live in New York by taking a peek at my recent visits to such sites as AccuWeather. It also incorporated my e-mail accounts once I opened Outlook, and it took just a few more clicks to add Gmail.

Best of all, the "Web Clips" panel automatically incorporates feeds using Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, a technology that notifies users of new entries on their favorite news sites and blogs.

Other RSS tools I've used, including FeedDemon and NewsGator, require you to choose sites for feed notification. Sidebar figures all that out by watching what sites you visit, though advanced users can add or remove individual feeds manually.

This is the start of the kind of automation that will truly bring RSS to the masses. (A November study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project found RSS usage by only 5 percent of Internet users.)

I only wish the sidebar allowed me to do more, such as sort feeds by subject so I could keep items on technology or movies separate from current events, for instance. That's standard with most RSS tools I've used.

Sidebar quickly made itself popular with me, however.

I've been reading plenty about Hurricane Katrina lately so it added those feeds to my list. I'm not sure yet whether I'll face information overload, though Google says individual feeds will get dropped when I pay less attention to them.

I also wish the windows that slide out from the Sidebar would close by themselves once I move my cursor elsewhere or switch to a different application. They tend to block whatever else I'm doing.

The new version of Desktop, meanwhile, addresses many of my past concerns about privacy as it scours my hard drive, monitors my Web travels and keeps track of my e-mailing and instant-messaging.

But a key concern remains: Items deleted from your computer stay in the index. So you must remember to remove both copies. Yahoo and MSN do that automatically. It's not that Google is getting the information, but I fear that someone getting unauthorized access to my computer could easily pull data I'd wanted gone for a reason.

For now, the benefits of Sidebar outweigh that concern in my mind. I'll be keeping Desktop on my computer.

I am, on the other hand, less thrilled about Google Talk, a bare-bones instant-messaging program that permits Internet-based phone conversations for anyone with a Gmail account.

True, with just a click, it automatically populates your list of buddies based on the people you frequently communicate with via Gmail. And it integrates text and voice chats better than other IM programs I've used, all without annoying pop-up clutter and ads common elsewhere. Phone calls came through loud and clear once a colleague and I properly set up our microphones.

But the most popular IM systems - AOL, Yahoo and MSN - remain closed networks and are incompatible with Talk.

And Internet-based calls are limited to other Talk users - not to regular phone numbers.
With relatively few people on Talk for now, it gets quite lonely.
 

nick18_in

MP Guru
GOOGLE TIPS.... while searching......

GOOGLE TIPS.... while searching......

Phrase your question in the form of an answer. So instead of typing, "What is the average rainfall in the Amazon basin?", you might get better results by typing "The average rainfall in the Amazon basin is."

§ This is an old one, but very important: Put quotes around phrases that must be searched together. If you put quotes around "electric curtains," Google won't waste your time finding one set of Web pages containing the word "electric" and another set containing the word "curtains."

§ Similarly, put a hyphen right before any word you want screened out. If you're looking up dolphins, for example, you'll have to wade through a million Miami Dolphins pages unless you search for "dolphins -Miami."

§ Google is a global White Pages and Yellow Pages. Search for "phonebook:home depot norwalk, ct," Google instantly produces the address and phone number of the Norwalk Home Depot. This works with names ("phonebook:robert jones las vegas, NV") as well as businesses.

§ Don't put any space after "phonebook." And in all of the following examples, don't type the quotes I'm showing you here.

§ Google is a package tracker. Type a FedEx or UPS package number (just the digits); when you click Search, Google offers a link to its tracking information.

§ Google is a calculator. Type in an equation ("32+2345*3-234=").

§ Google is a units-of-measurement converter. Type "teaspoons in a gallon," for example, or "centimeters in a foot."

§ Google is a stock ticker. Type in AAPL or MSFT, for example, to see a link to the current Apple or Microsoft stock price, graphs, financial news and so on.

§ Google is an atlas. Type in an area code, like 212, to see a Mapquest map of the area.

§ Google is Wal-Mart's computer. Type in a UPC bar code number, such as "036000250015," to see the description of the product you've just "scanned in."

§ Google is an aviation buff. Type in a flight number like "United 22" for a link to a map of that flight's progress in the air. Or type in the tail number you see on an airplane for the full registration form for that plane.

§ Google is the Department of Motor Vehicles. Type in a VIN (vehicle identification number, which is etched onto a plate, usually on the door frame, of every car), like "JH4NA1157MT001832," to find out the car's year, make and model.
 

nick18_in

MP Guru
8 predictions for tech, including why Yahoo's expansion of search will hurt Google (

1I knew that would get your attention. Anything and everything Google is at the height of fashion right now. With a market capitalization of $127 billion, every move that the company makes--like the advertising deal an obsessed press says it will announce with Time Warner's ( Research) AOL unit tomorrow--gets a lot of attention in the press.

But what goes up must come down--especially in technology, the most volatile industry the world has ever seen. Yes, I love Google, but my first prediction is that a year from now we won't think that the search company is the invincible behemoth that we do now.

One reason for this a new concept known as "community-powered search." Yahoo is forging an early lead over Google in this fast-evolving technology with its acquisition last week of del.icio.us for a rumored $35 million (the actual amount was undisclosed). Del.icio.us operates on principles similar to the popular MySpace. But whereas that social network site helps members find dates, form groups, and share music picks, del.icio.us helps members find hot information--websites that others have found useful. ( News Corp. (Research ) recently bought MySpace, for $580 million.)

Soon we will see a new form of results, like "What Others Liked," on all search engines. It's how Amazon tells its customers what others have bought, except that these search results involve information. In many cases, community-powered searches will let members find what they're looking for more quickly than they would on a purely computerized type of web search, which Google does so superbly. Yahoo was already introducing community-based searches with My Web 2.0. Of course, Google is surely working on its own alternatives.

Amazon's next ambitionMy second prediction is that Amazon ( Research) will re-emerge as one of the web's most powerful properties, and provide increased competition for Google ( Research) in 2006. Amazon has done a nice job grabbing more and more commerce dollars, but it has bigger ambitions, and a savvy tech strategy.

For instance, this week it opened up the entire database of its Alexa search engine. Basically that means that any ace programmer can create his or her own search engine without having to own thousands of servers. Amazon will charge programmers for the use of its processors or storage, at reasonable rates, and all they have to bring is their own search software. Web pundit John Battelle has a good and effusive take on this development. Like I said in a recent column, "Google, Yahoo, and eBay: Next-Generation Conglomerates?", I see six companies all vying for the same big multi-industry opportunity. I call them GEMAYA--Google, eBay ( Research), MSN, Amazon, Yahoo (Research), and AOL.

Telcos ramp up Internet accessMy third prediction is that telcos will become more powerful Internet service providers. Mark Anderson, who writes the Strategic News Service newsletter and has a keen sense of communication trends, says cable companies, telcos, cell phone companies, and other ISPs are becoming generic "bit providers" that will compete solely on how cheaply they can deliver digital content--from phone calls to TV shows.


But telcos may have some advantages over the other players. Wolfgang Ziebart, CEO of Infineon (Research), recently told me that the German chipmaker will ramp up production of its so-called VDSL2 chip in early 2006. This chip can send data at the Holy Grail rate of 100 megabits per second over ordinary copper phone wire for distances of
more than 600 feet.

That may not seem very far, but it represents a much greater capacity to transmit data than has previously been available on copper wires. This will enable phone companies to avoid stringing expensive optical fiber all the way to consumers' home computers. Instead, telcos can install optical fiber cables to hubs and then use traditional pre-existing copper phone lines to connect them to nearby households. Texas Instruments ( Research) and other chipmakers are working on similar technology.

Apple to ring up cell phonesMy fourth prediction is that Apple is likely to introduce a cell phone next year. I say this only because one of the consumer technology problems that most begs to be solved is the MP3/cell phone combination. The Motorola ( Research) ROKR iPod phone that came out this year, using some of Apple's technology, hasn't captured consumers' imagination. We all hate it when the phone rings while we're listening to music. We need both capabilities in the same device so the music stops as soon as the phone rings, like it does on the ROKR. The genius of Steve Jobs and his ace designer Jonathan Ive can make this combination work in an Apple branded device.

Here are the rest of my tech predictions for 2006:

• TV viewing on cell phones will become routine--everywhere, that is, but in the U.S. It won't become possible here for most users until 2007.

• AMD ( Research) keeps kicking Intel's (Research) butt. AMD CEO Hector Ruiz told me this week that the company will announce its next big fabrication plant by next summer, earlier than most had expected. Another giant state-of-the art factory (it only has one now) could help AMD better compete with Intel.

• Microsoft's big software launches next year—the Vista operating system and the next version of Office--won't generate much excitement. Remember a decade ago how people queued up at stores to get Windows 95? Those days are over. Even Microsoft ( Research) acknowledges that software is shifting away from desktop applications towards web-based ones.

• Cisco ( Research) may be the big-company investment of the year. This company's stock has flat-lined for 18 months, but every single trend that matters involves more bits flowing through more Internet-protocol pipes. As video online—the most data-intensive web application of all—becomes more pervasive, bit traffic will grow. Cisco remains so dominant in the business of building Internet-protocol infrastructure that its earnings growth could wow investors in 2006. Juniper ( Research), another network equipment manufacturer, won't do badly either.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/12/19/technology/google_fortune/index.htm?cnn=yes
 

nick18_in

MP Guru
Google Gets Social

Google Gets Social


Joy
Originally uploaded by
dreadfuldan.
The big news from Google's Press Day today (Om is liveblogging it) so far is the announcement of Google Co-op. With Co-op, Google is finally dipping its toes into social search. It will let you tag Web pages and specify sites that you want to rank highly in your searches. Then other people can subcribe to your customized Google searches. According to the press release:
Google Co-op beta is a community where users can contribute their knowledge and expertise to improve Google search for everyone. Organizations, businesses, or individuals can label web pages relevant to their areas of expertise or create specialized links to which users can subscribe.

Once a user has subscribed to a provider's content, all of that provider's labels and subscribed links are added to the user's search results for relevant queries. These contributions serve as meta information that helps Google's search algorithms connect users to the most relevant information for their specific query.

In other words, it's very much like Yahoo's MyWeb 2.0. Or, as Om just e-mailed me from his Crackberry:

Interesting because admission that google search doesn't work.
I wouldn't go that far, but tapping into the smarts of other searchers and creating social networks around search is something I think we are going to be seeing a lot more of. This is not so much an admission that Google search does not work, but it is an admission that humans can help filter the Web. The more filters there are, the better the experience. So why not tap into the intelligence of all the millions of people who use Google on a daily basis? I'm glad to see that Google is not being to religious about its preference for algorithmic solutions to everything.
The previously leaked Google Health, by the way, is one of the search verticals created under the Google Co-op umbrella. There also seems to be one around city guides, and Google is hoping the users will build out the rest. (Here's the link to Google Co-op, but it was showing an error last time I tried it. Update: It's working now, and here is Health, Desitination Guides, Autos, Computers & Video Games, Photo & Video Equipment, Stereo & Home Theater—the vertical search wars are on and Google is getting its customers to help it compete).
Other Google product announcements include Google Trends (analytics and graphs for advertisers), Google Notebook (cut and paste links while surfing the Web), and the latest version of Google Desktop.
 

sanjaydahar

New member
Google Search tips

The Google calculator is awesome. Here are a few techniques i have learnt the hard way and have really helped in getting the best relevant result in the fastest possible time. Try them.

1. In case you are researching on a very general topic like “Political structure in India”, then try searching with the string “PDF Political structure in India”, prefixing PDF will only search for PDF files and such files are really helpful, as far as my experience goes.

2. In case you already have seen the file and want to download it, say you know a ppt file that contains a particular set of words, say “Air conditioners and their usage”, try prefixing PPT in the search string. This will also pop on many presentations made on Air conditioners which will be helpful too. It was a lot to me.

3. When you are searching for a very specific topic like “COMPAQ Presario V3100 Btyui12587Q”, Google will pop on many results that maybe irrelevant to you at the first place, try putting the search string in inverted commas, then Google will search for the web pages or documents that contain exactly all these words, so you don’t go to web pages that talk about COMPAQ only, instead you could be guided to the exact page that has information about that topic. This increases the relevance to your search.

4. For the topic in news currently, try searching it on Google news, with the same tricks and the same could be used for blogging to know current scenario et al.

5. IF you always want to get your results opened in a new page or get more results on a single page, upto 100, go to preferences and make the changes.

6. Google also lets you have a customized Google web page for you. On the top right corner of your webpage, you have an option to sign in, use your Google account id, sign in and select the “personalized Home” tab and choose your options and you could get the preview of your mails, jokes, articles from TIME, TIMES OF INDIA, ECONOMIC TIMES, etc…..sign in to see what more is there in store for you.

7. While browsing through Google news, you can add an alert to the kind of news you desire, say you are doing a 2-month long project on psychology, so search for it on Google news and at the bottom, there is a link to subscribe to this particular kind of alert, get the links about these topics when they arise directly in your mailbox. This really helps.

8. While searching for information, you many a time have a paragraph on the depths of the webpage about the information you are searching for, to locate the information directly on the web page, press CTRL+F, the find box appears at the bottom of the web page, put in your subject or search string and locate it on the web page. This speeds up the search as it saves time and there’s no need to browse through the whole page to search for it.

9. Google offers Desktop Search too. Quite often we forget the location of the file we saves or a particular file that contains the subject we are searching for. Download Google Desktop Search. The application indexes all your files and searches them in a microsecond. Once the indexing is complete, It will tell you the file that contains the characters as and when you type just like a phonebook in any nokia phone. Say, you want to search the document that contains the name Nokia, you start typing N, all the documents containing letter N, will be in the results and as you type o, all documents containing O. This is a really fast and a must-have application. Remember, it also searches the whole data inside the documents.


Sanjay
([email protected])
 

gaurav200x

Gaurav Mittal
Download Google Desktop Search. The application indexes all your files and searches them in a microsecond. Once the indexing is complete, It will tell you the file that contains the characters as and when you type just like a phonebook in any nokia phone.

I think google desktop slows down ur PC a lot, since it takes up a lot of system resources. Moreover, if it is indexing the content of the files too, then in case i am searching for a particular filename, it would also display the files which have that name as their content.

So lots of unnecessary results would pop up... Don't u think ?
 

andrewjones

New member
Yeah enable your Safe search ON ( otherwise same one or two ugly pictures all the time ) . Also I've noticed that a lot of the questions can be resolved by simply googling them.Does anybody else agree?
 
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