How much would you pay for an application that can do:
* file-manager inspired by Norton Commander, but with a modern Windows interface
* has two panes for easy file management
* every pane can have as many tabs as you want
* advanced file search with regular expressions
* rename multiple files
* split files (useful if you want to send a large file by email)
* pack/unpack files in ZIP format
* compare directories
* synchronize directories
* FTP client with support for SFTP
* document viewer that supports: text files, source code files (Assembler, C++, CSS, Delphi, FoxPro, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, SQL, XML), HTML, RTF, Word documents, Excel sheets, OpenOffice documents, executable files, DLL, INI files, registry files, image files (PNG, JPG, GIF, Paint Shop Pro, BMP, PSD, ICO, CUR, ANI, MAC, WMF, EMF, PIC), Flash, media files (MP3, WMA, OGG, AVI), database files (FoxPro, dBase, Paradox, Access, MySQL, CSV), archives (RAR, ZIP, TAR, GZ, 7zip, bzip2), disk image files (ISO, BIN, IMG, NRG)
* AES encryptor (encrypt/decrypt files with 128bit key using password or keyfile)
* decompilation of 32-bit PE executables (EXE SCR) and libraries (DLL OCX CPL BPL), resource files (RES DCR)
* create a list file with all selected files and directories
* count the size of all files in a directory
* shows informations about solar and moon dates, celebrations and calendars
* synchronize your local computer with atomic time via Internet
* browse NT events and services faster
* view/edit/kill processes that are running currently on the system
* RSS Reader
* CD/DVD burning
* view and edit files on ext2 partitions (useful to manage files on Linux partitions from Windows)
* mount disk images as additional virtual drives in system
* much more...
You can pay $34 or you can use it for free, if you don't mind clicking on a button everytime the application starts. Total Commander PowerPack is the most powerful Windows utility you can get for free. And the setup has less than 15MB.
Just compare this list of characteristics with the features of any other application and you will get the most feature-rich and the most powerful Windows application.
AdSense: Text Referrals, Personalized Search
The new site-flavored search option available in AdSense personalizes web results according to your site's theme. If you have a gardening site and your users search for [apple], the first results will be about the fruit, not about Apple Computers.
Google AdSense also launched text referrals. You can promote using text referrals Google AdWords (you get $20 for the first $100 spent on ads), Google AdSense (you get $100 for the first $100 earned in the first six months) and Firefox (you earn at most $1 for every first Firefox installation on a Windows system). For every product, you have four alternatives of text, generated with JavaScript. It would be nice to embed the text referral in an article like a normal link. I wonder why Google doesn't provide a link you can use to refer the products, for example: http://adwords.google.com/referral?clientid=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. It's really that important to control the text of the referral and its formatting?
Google AdSense also launched text referrals. You can promote using text referrals Google AdWords (you get $20 for the first $100 spent on ads), Google AdSense (you get $100 for the first $100 earned in the first six months) and Firefox (you earn at most $1 for every first Firefox installation on a Windows system). For every product, you have four alternatives of text, generated with JavaScript. It would be nice to embed the text referral in an article like a normal link. I wonder why Google doesn't provide a link you can use to refer the products, for example: http://adwords.google.com/referral?clientid=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. It's really that important to control the text of the referral and its formatting?
eBay Creates Anti-Google Union With Yahoo and Microsoft
eBay held talks with Yahoo and Microsoft about a partnership with Yahoo! and Microsoft to counter-attack Google. "The reality is we work closely with all these companies. We're always talking to them," a spokesman for eBay said to Times.
eBay doesn't like Google Base, an online classified advertising site, that could compete with eBay's core business and Google Talk, a minimalist VOIP client that has the potential to become a threat to Skype, the market leader in VOIP telephony, owned by eBay. But probably the biggest threat for eBay is GBuy, Google's Internet payment service, that will launch soon and will compete with PayPal. "For the last nine months, Google has recruited online retailers to test GBuy, according to one person briefed on the service. GBuy will feature an icon posted alongside the paid-search ads of merchants, which Google hopes will tempt consumers to click on the ads, says this person. GBuy will also let consumers store their credit-card information on Google." an article from wall Street Journal informed three months ago.
eBay doesn't like Google Base, an online classified advertising site, that could compete with eBay's core business and Google Talk, a minimalist VOIP client that has the potential to become a threat to Skype, the market leader in VOIP telephony, owned by eBay. But probably the biggest threat for eBay is GBuy, Google's Internet payment service, that will launch soon and will compete with PayPal. "For the last nine months, Google has recruited online retailers to test GBuy, according to one person briefed on the service. GBuy will feature an icon posted alongside the paid-search ads of merchants, which Google hopes will tempt consumers to click on the ads, says this person. GBuy will also let consumers store their credit-card information on Google." an article from wall Street Journal informed three months ago.
Google Q1 2006 Revenue = 160% * Google Q1 2005 Revenue
Google reported a profit of $592.3 million on revenue of $2.25 billion on the first-quarter of 2006, an increase of 60% from profit of $369.2 million on revenue of $1.26 billion in the corresponding period last year. Google's ad-sales network had the biggest increase: it generated $928 million, or 59 percent more than the prior year.
Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, said the market share increase might also be related to the use of some of the company's new products, like Google Video, Google Earth and Google Maps, as well as the introduction of Google News in several countries.
These services attract people to Google's site, where they may also conduct searches, he said in an interview. "All of a sudden Google is top of mind again, over and over again."
"We are driving this growth through investments in our infrastructure and our people, product innovations that attract new users, and relationships with advertisers and partners around the world. The strength of our business model gives us the opportunity to invest in our business, allowing us to maintain and grow our market leadership." said Eric Schmidt in the press release.
More: PDF file with Google's financial results.
Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, said the market share increase might also be related to the use of some of the company's new products, like Google Video, Google Earth and Google Maps, as well as the introduction of Google News in several countries.
These services attract people to Google's site, where they may also conduct searches, he said in an interview. "All of a sudden Google is top of mind again, over and over again."
"We are driving this growth through investments in our infrastructure and our people, product innovations that attract new users, and relationships with advertisers and partners around the world. The strength of our business model gives us the opportunity to invest in our business, allowing us to maintain and grow our market leadership." said Eric Schmidt in the press release.
More: PDF file with Google's financial results.
Google Removes Joan Miró Doodle
Google celebrated 113 years from Joan Miró's birth with a doodle that incorporated themes from artist's famous paintings, including "The Escape Ladder", "Nocture", "The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers". Joan Miró's family didn't appreciate that and asked Google to remove the image."There are underlying copyrights to the works of Miró, and they are putting it up without having the rights," said Theodore Feder, president of Artists Rights Society. "It's a distortion of the original works and in that respect it violates the moral rights of the artist".
I think they just didn't like the logo and didn't want to let people think Joan Miró had anything to do with it. After all, Dennis Hwang, the creator of Google doodles, is not quite a surrealist painter, isn't he?
More: Mercury News.
Google Real Estate
Update: Google Real Estate is now a part of Google Maps. Google says that "it collects listings in two ways: by crawling the web, and by receiving uploads through Google Base".
Maybe you want an apartment, a commercial building, a residential condo, a residential home or just a vacant land. Maybe you want to buy a house, or just to rent it. Maybe you want to buy a real estate in Las Vegas, in Seattle, in Palm Beach or within 30 miles of your city. You can choose the number of bedrooms, the number of bathrooms, the price interval, the square footage.
Google Base can help you. Here's how a typical listing looks like:
House United States
Price: $799,900 Listing type: for sale Bedrooms: 3 Bathrooms: 3 Property type: house
Charming Hacienda - This magnificent home is built in the Spanish Mission design with the finest quality and architectural details.
http://properties.iht.com - posted on Apr 19
Maybe you want an apartment, a commercial building, a residential condo, a residential home or just a vacant land. Maybe you want to buy a house, or just to rent it. Maybe you want to buy a real estate in Las Vegas, in Seattle, in Palm Beach or within 30 miles of your city. You can choose the number of bedrooms, the number of bathrooms, the price interval, the square footage.
Google Base can help you. Here's how a typical listing looks like:
House United States
Price: $799,900 Listing type: for sale Bedrooms: 3 Bathrooms: 3 Property type: house
Charming Hacienda - This magnificent home is built in the Spanish Mission design with the finest quality and architectural details.
http://properties.iht.com - posted on Apr 19
Google Scholar PageRank
Google Scholar launched a new feature: ranking the recent papers by their importance. The importance of a paper is established by looking at the previous papers of the author, by counting the citations and their importance. So now you can find recent papers about artificial intelligence ordered by relevance.
Google tried to implement a version of the PageRank algorithm from their web search. In fact, the idea of PageRank came from the way researchers rank the papers and the authors. Instead of citations, web pages have backlinks.
"Google Scholar aims to sort articles the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each article, the author, the publication in which the article appears, and how often the piece has been cited in other scholarly literature. The most relevant results will always appear on the first page."
Google tried to implement a version of the PageRank algorithm from their web search. In fact, the idea of PageRank came from the way researchers rank the papers and the authors. Instead of citations, web pages have backlinks.
"Google Scholar aims to sort articles the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each article, the author, the publication in which the article appears, and how often the piece has been cited in other scholarly literature. The most relevant results will always appear on the first page."
Digg Club Story
Chapter one - in which we find out the rules of Digg Club.
Digg Club is a Club 2.0, where anyone can submit his opinions to the bartender. If you speak loud enough and your story is voted by the others, everyone will hear it. But Digg Club has some tough rules.
First of rule of Digg Club: Don't say anything bad about Digg Club.
Second of rule of Digg Club: If you say something bad about Digg and you submit your article at Digg Club, your submission will never appear on the front page.
Third rule of Digg Club: If you submit another negative story about Digg, your account will be disabled, your IP will be banned and your username will be put on the Indignation Hall of Infamy.
Chapter two - in which a geek discovered some coincidences
Forever Geek found on the Digg Club homepage two stories submitted by the same person that were voted by almost the same persons in almost the same order.
Chapter three - in which someone shares the discovery
Splasho saw the article and submitted it to the Digg Club, but it disappeared after five minutes. He submitted the post again only to find out that his account was disabled.
Chapter four - in which Digg Club responds
Chapter five - in which the story gets to the nice guys from Slashdot
The good old Slashdot was kind to add on the frontpage this shallow story about the Digg Club. Obviously, the Linux geeks were more concern with the philosophy of the Digg Club:
Chapter six - in which the story ends
To show they aren't censoring anyone, the Digg Club guys put the story on the homepage. See? Everything turned out OK, and the good old Slashdot saved the day.
Digg Club Soundtrack
With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
But there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself
Where is my mind?
[Credit: The Pixies].
Digg Club is a Club 2.0, where anyone can submit his opinions to the bartender. If you speak loud enough and your story is voted by the others, everyone will hear it. But Digg Club has some tough rules.
First of rule of Digg Club: Don't say anything bad about Digg Club.
Second of rule of Digg Club: If you say something bad about Digg and you submit your article at Digg Club, your submission will never appear on the front page.
Third rule of Digg Club: If you submit another negative story about Digg, your account will be disabled, your IP will be banned and your username will be put on the Indignation Hall of Infamy.
Chapter two - in which a geek discovered some coincidences
Forever Geek found on the Digg Club homepage two stories submitted by the same person that were voted by almost the same persons in almost the same order.
Chapter three - in which someone shares the discovery
Splasho saw the article and submitted it to the Digg Club, but it disappeared after five minutes. He submitted the post again only to find out that his account was disabled.
Chapter four - in which Digg Club responds
Dear Sir,
As you pointed out "to abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Digg users". We have had many problems in the past due to users accusing other users of abuse based on false facts. As we have told other users that have emailed us about this subject, there is no abuse involved here, we have investigated it and yes it does look suspicious to the eye, but they are all legit users and therefor we can not ban them. We ask you kindly to email us if you believe a story is being abused. We would have done the same to any other user that might have been accusing you. You can post negative comments and negative stories [I had implied perhaps unjustly in my email that I was blocked for submitting negative stories about Digg] about digg, but please restrain from accusing or intimidating other users. Your account has been unblocked. If you have any other questions, please email us and weÂ’ll do our best to help you.
Thank you,
-The Digg Watch Team.
Chapter five - in which the story gets to the nice guys from Slashdot
The good old Slashdot was kind to add on the frontpage this shallow story about the Digg Club. Obviously, the Linux geeks were more concern with the philosophy of the Digg Club:
The main problem with digg at the moment is the immature style of writing most of its users has. A quickly written story about a great thing (tm) will get more diggs than the carefully written one that is posted 5 minutes later. This is a huge disadvantage for digg as I have to read the awfully written summaries to find the goodies.
It is a dark time for Web 2.0. Although the Beatles_Beatles has been destroyed, Slashbot troops have driven the Digg forces from their Ajax den and pursued them across the Internet.
Evading the dreaded Slashdot Moderator Fleet, a group of Web 2.0 upstarts led by Kevin Rose has established a new Digg site on the remote web servers of Revision3 Corporation.
Chapter six - in which the story ends
To show they aren't censoring anyone, the Digg Club guys put the story on the homepage. See? Everything turned out OK, and the good old Slashdot saved the day.
Digg Club Soundtrack
With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
But there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself
Where is my mind?
[Credit: The Pixies].
Google Calendar Synchronization With iPod
If you have an iPod and you use Windows, there is a small application that can help synchronize your Google Calendar with iPod: getCals. It works with iPod Video and iPod Nano.
Google Calendar API
To create a Google Calendar API, Google developed GData, a new protocol based on Atom 1.0 and RSS 2.0 that can be used to query and to update data. GData supports authentication and can be integrated with JavaScript/AJAX-based clients in a web browser.
Google Calendar allows client applications to view and update calendar events as GData feeds. You can use Google Calendar data API to create new events, edit or delete existing events, and query for events that match a criteria.
Google Calendar API may be useful to create a different interface for Google Calendar, a Google Calendar viewer for public calendars or you can display your agenda for today.
Google Enterprise Launch With No Working Links
The launch of the new Google Search Appliance was announced by Google in many places. Unfortunately, most of the links return the 404 error code.Google Enterprise Developer Community features OneBox modules from Oracle, SalesForce and Cognos. Only Cognos link works.
Google Press Release links to http://www.google.com/enterprise/onebox that also doesn't work.
Google Enterprise Blog talks about a video that doesn't exist yet:
"Take a peek at this video to hear some of our partners talk about why they think a Google search box is a great way to reach their applications."
Find Clinical Trials on Google
The most commonly performed clinical trials (medical studies) evaluate new drugs, medical devices, biologics, or other interventions to patients. You can use Google Base to help medical institutes find new treatments for brain tumor, breast cancer, breast neoplasms, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, HIV infections, leukemia, lymphoma or osteoporosis.
Pharmaceutical clinical trials are classified into four phases:
Phase 1
- small (20-80) group of healthy volunteers or patients (for cancer and HIV drug trials)
- test safety and tolerability
Phase 2
- larger groups (100-300)
- test clinical efficacity
Phase 3
- large patient groups (1000-3000)
- compare the treatment with other alternatives
Phase 4
- after launching the medicine
You can also select the organization that is responsible for the clinical trial.
ScanR - use camera phones for OCR
scanR is a free service that lets you transform camera phone pictures into PDF documents. You can take a picture of a document, send it to scanR by email and in less than a minute you'll get a PDF file. If you save the file as text in Acrobat Reader, you'll have the text contained in the document. You can also use it for whiteboard images.
scanR requires 1 megapixel cameras for whiteboard scanning and 2 megapixel cameras for document scanning. For best results, take pictures about 12" from the document, in a well-lit area.
I tested this online OCR service with Sony Ericsson K750i and the results were pretty good. It missed some characters, so it can't be used as a replacement for an OCR software as Abbyy FineReader, but the PDF from scanR can improve the results of an OCR processing with a commercial software.
Related:
Use Gmail to break PDF DRM
scanR requires 1 megapixel cameras for whiteboard scanning and 2 megapixel cameras for document scanning. For best results, take pictures about 12" from the document, in a well-lit area.
I tested this online OCR service with Sony Ericsson K750i and the results were pretty good. It missed some characters, so it can't be used as a replacement for an OCR software as Abbyy FineReader, but the PDF from scanR can improve the results of an OCR processing with a commercial software.
Related:
Use Gmail to break PDF DRM
New Google Mini
In addition to the updated Search Appliance, Google launched the new Google Mini, that's 25 times faster and half the size of the previous version. Google Mini, a reduced version of Google Search Appliance, is designed to help small and medium-sized business search their intranet, documents and websites.
Google OneBox for Enterprise
Google integrated OneBox functionality in their Google Search Appliance for corpoate environment. Now employees can see real-time contact info, sales forecasts, and customer information related to their search queries.
Google launched an initial set of OneBox modules with Oracle, Cognos, SAS and Salesforce.com. That means Google will combine Oracle databases, Cognos business intelligence software, and Salesforce.com customer info in a similar way with Google Maps mashups.
"It's not just looking through Web pages," says Dave Girouard, general manager of Google's enterprise business. "It's actually a front door to business applications."
Earlier versions of Google Search Appliance had the ability to index structured and unstructured data, but they didn't have a good way to access dynamic data. Now business users of Google can find everything in one place, without using a special syntax.
The new Google Search Appliance (GB-1001) can handle twice as many documents - up to 3 million up from 1.5 million documents and 5 times as many queries - up to 1500 queries per minute from 300. It also includes the ability to index external metadata repositories and the ability to expand queries based on context and synonyms.
Is Google The Next Goowy?
Goowy is an online operating system designed in Flash that features:* email (2GB storage), instant messenger, calendar
* virtual file storage
* minis (similar to Google Homepage modules)
Goowy IM will be integrated with Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and ICQ and will include themes and alerts.
Goowy file storage (not yet released to public) allows you to upload and share your personal files with friends and family. You can organize your files in folders, use drag and drop, listen to your music online.
Although Goowy is slow, it doesn't have all the feature implemented and will sometimes crash your browser, the project is extremely ambitious. Goowy wants to add new features like: creating personal pages and blogs, audio and video email.
Goowy is like integrating Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Reader, Google Personalized Homepage, GDrive (still a project) and managing your personal information in a coherent way.You can sign up for free and it's best to try Goowy with Internet Explorer.
Related:
Google Desktop is Google Operating System kernel
Google Operating System as a hosted desktop
Google Image Search Game
Guess the Google is a Flash game that displays 20 images that are the results of a query in Google Image Search. Your task is to guess the query.
To make your mission easier, the query is just a single word. You have only 20 seconds, so you have to be quick.
You can see in the screenshot how easy is sometimes to "guess the Google".
Related:
A similar game for Flickr: Fastr, with a not-so-pretty interface.
Use Gmail To Copy Text From Restricted PDF Documents
Some PDF documents have restrictions: you can't copy them or you can't print them. If you have such a PDF and you have to copy a fragment from the text, just send it to yourself in Gmail. When you receive the message, just click "View as HTML" next to the attachment link.
From: Circumvent PDF DRM with Gmail
From: Circumvent PDF DRM with Gmail
Google Travel
A job listing for a Google Senior Account Executive, Travel Vertical made a ZDNet Blog think that Google intends to launch a booking feature, Google Travel. They even imagine how Google Travel would integrate with Google Videos (to promote destinations), Google Talk (click-to-call feature for listed hotels, restaurants) and Google AdSense."Your main responsibility is to drive new business revenue growth with our Fortune 1000 advertisers in a specified vertical [my note: travel vertical] in one or more regions" the job listing mentions.
For now, when you enter two cities in your query, Google links to third-parties travel planning and flight-booking sites (Expedia, Hotwire, Orbitz), but the experience isn't very good: these flight-booking sites have slow search engines and intrusive ads.
The Thing About Windows Security
Windows security is as effective as a screen door on a submarine.
It'd take the malware makers about an hour to find any of the what, probably 80 holes that would let them go around such windows security. A back-and-forth battle like that could easily go on for months if not years. In Unix, security and permissions are the foundation, on top of which everything is built. In Windows, security is a hack that was added on later with no due consideration during the initial design phase of windows. It's no wonder it's next to impossible to get it to work the way you want it to.
When you are designing security, the sad truth of it is, the user is the enemy. There's no nicer way to look at it. So it takes a great deal of care to design a security system that can withstand the assult of a user while at the same time being functional and serving the user. It's too late for Windows to make those design considerations. They have errored on the side of functionality and sacrificed the security of the system. There is no fixing that.
Google Presents Da Vinci Code Game
Da Vinci Code Game is better than the book and is, of course, better than the yet unreleased movie. In fact, anything is better than Dan Brown's best-seller. Da Vinci Code Game features 12,358 original puzzles created by Googlers. They'll be released over the next 24 days, in the form of six different challenges at four difficulty levels. If you are from the US, you can even win some prizes. What do you think about a first-class round-trip air transportation for four to New York, Paris, Rome and London?
Search Gmail In Your Browser
Search Gmail in Firefox
Go to this site and install Gmail Search.
Search Gmail in Internet Explorer
Download the new Google Toolbar 4.
Search Gmail in Opera
Go to Help/About Opera, copy the folder location for "Opera Profile", open it. Edit search.ini, go to one of the entries [Search Engine n] (for example, [Search Engine 2]) and replace the first two lines with:
Name=Gmail
URL=http://mail.google.com/mail/?search=query&view=tl&start=0&init=1&fs=1&q=%s
More about Gmail:
Gmail Chat in Opera
Switch from Yahoo Mail / Hotmail to Gmail
5 fast ways to check your Gmail account
Marissa Mayer, Google VP, prefers Pine to Gmail
Go to this site and install Gmail Search.
Search Gmail in Internet Explorer
Download the new Google Toolbar 4.
Search Gmail in Opera
Go to Help/About Opera, copy the folder location for "Opera Profile", open it. Edit search.ini, go to one of the entries [Search Engine n] (for example, [Search Engine 2]) and replace the first two lines with:
Name=Gmail
URL=http://mail.google.com/mail/?search=query&view=tl&start=0&init=1&fs=1&q=%s
More about Gmail:
Gmail Chat in Opera
Switch from Yahoo Mail / Hotmail to Gmail
5 fast ways to check your Gmail account
Marissa Mayer, Google VP, prefers Pine to Gmail
Google Wishlist
Google Blogoscoped has a Google Feature Request page where you can write your top 3 feature wishes.
What people want from Google?
Gmail
* more reliable spam detection
* search within Gmail attachments
* integration with Reader
* voice in Gmail Chat
Search
* cross-language search
* being able to search for parts of words instead of whole words
* support for regular expressions in search
* request pages that are under a certain size.
* search results in RSS or Atom format
Gtalk
* integration with AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo
* send files with GTalk
* record GTalk conversations
* voice conferencing
Calendar
* Calendar sync with Pocket PC, PDA
* Mobile Calendar
* show Google Calendar within blogs
People also want: GDrive, better integration between Google services, updated Blogger with categories, cross-platform Google Software and a better translation service.
This list contains the feature requests sorted by frequency.
What do you want from Google?
What people want from Google?
Gmail
* more reliable spam detection
* search within Gmail attachments
* integration with Reader
* voice in Gmail Chat
Search
* cross-language search
* being able to search for parts of words instead of whole words
* support for regular expressions in search
* request pages that are under a certain size.
* search results in RSS or Atom format
Gtalk
* integration with AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo
* send files with GTalk
* record GTalk conversations
* voice conferencing
Calendar
* Calendar sync with Pocket PC, PDA
* Mobile Calendar
* show Google Calendar within blogs
People also want: GDrive, better integration between Google services, updated Blogger with categories, cross-platform Google Software and a better translation service.
This list contains the feature requests sorted by frequency.
What do you want from Google?
PageRank: More Popularity, Less Content Quality?
Jerry Chase has an article about Google PageRank and how sometimes link-ranking fails.
I've seen many times that PageRank is a big factor in determining results order. Websites that just republish content outweigh original sites that have a lower PageRank. The problem with link popularity is that when you don't have it, almost nobody finds you or links to you and when some important website links to you, other sites start to link to you and then people find you even for queries that are not so relevant to your site.
Google just didn't solve the problem of finding good content per se, they just avoided it by letting the other sites to decide about that.
Related:
ExpertRank - find the best, not the biggest
What Google, Yahoo and MSN think about the future of search
Popularity ranking does not work with many subjects, because reality exists independently of popularity, and is not achieved by common consensus. As Google grows further away from its roots, it becomes more bizarre in ranking pages.
Galileo was not thinking the popular choice when he re-asserted that the earth rotated the sun. Pasteur was not promoting the popular choice when he told doctors to wash their hands. Popularity is a transient phenomenon. Betamax was popular at one point in time. Eight track tapes were popular at one point.
Galileo summarized the problem with this type of ranking long ago:
"I seem to discern the belief that in philosophizing one must support oneself on the opinion of some celebrated author, as if our minds ought to remain completely sterile and barren unless wedded to the reasoning of someone else."
I've seen many times that PageRank is a big factor in determining results order. Websites that just republish content outweigh original sites that have a lower PageRank. The problem with link popularity is that when you don't have it, almost nobody finds you or links to you and when some important website links to you, other sites start to link to you and then people find you even for queries that are not so relevant to your site.
Google just didn't solve the problem of finding good content per se, they just avoided it by letting the other sites to decide about that.
Related:
ExpertRank - find the best, not the biggest
What Google, Yahoo and MSN think about the future of search
Google Earth Reveals Iran's Nuclear Sites
New satellite imagery indicate Iran has expanded its uranium conversion site at Isfahan and reinforced its Natanz underground uranium enrichment plant against possible military strikes.
Iran last week announced it had enriched uranium for use in fuelling power stations for the first time, stoking a diplomatic crisis over Western suspicions of a covert Iranian atomic bomb project. Iran says it seeks only nuclear energy for its economy.
(Reuters)
Isfahan is the place where uranium is first processed and where a storage facility is being built. You can compare how it looked a year ago and how it looks now using Google Earth. You just need to import a KMZ file.
More: Ogle Earth
Integrate Google Desktop With Any Program
Do you ever open an application, click File/Open and wonder what's the location of that document with the latest sales report? You don't remember the filename, but you know some keywords from the document. You have Google Desktop, but you don't want to open a new window with the document. Besides, you are using OpenOffice, and the document will open with Microsoft Word.
There's a new plugin for Google Desktop that adds a new entry in Open/Save standard dialogs and allows you to search files using Google Desktop. Instant Search from X-Ray Folders integrates with Windows interface and transforms Google Desktop into a true desktop enhancement tool. It's much faster than navigating between directories.
Related:
Google Calendar plugin for Google Desktop
Google Desktop as data recovery software
Preview Google Results
Cooliris Previews is a Firefox extension that lets you preview Google results in an inline box when you hover the links. This is useful to decide if that site is really god and relevant for your search.
Cooliris Previews prefetches the sites so they load really fast.
Related:
Inline Google Definitions
Google Toolbar for Firefox 2.0
Reduce RAM usage in Firefox
No Spyware, No Viruses
Get our free software. It doesn't have spyware, or viruses. You won't see pop-ups, your browser won't be hijacked, and your home page will remain the same. Our free software doesn't ask for personal information, like your name, your email, or your bank account. It won't even try to search for your email address in your documents or your computer's registry. As a bonus, our freeware won't send the list of the sites you visit to our server.
This great free software won't embed itself into critical components of your operating system and bloat your memory with its monitoring and collection processing executables. Moreover, it won't install other software on your computer without you even knowing it, it won't corrupt critical system files and trigger your computer to crash repeatedly.
Download it now!
This great free software won't embed itself into critical components of your operating system and bloat your memory with its monitoring and collection processing executables. Moreover, it won't install other software on your computer without you even knowing it, it won't corrupt critical system files and trigger your computer to crash repeatedly.
Download it now!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)