Google Chrome Advent Calendar Projection

Google Chrome, the most advertised Google product, is promoted using a calendar projection in London.

"Google Chrome, the big G's web browser and fledgling operating system, is touting itself with a giant advent calendar projected onto the wall of a shopping center in London. The calendar [is] counting down the days until [Christmas] on the side of enormous shopping complex Westfield in Shepherds Bush, West London," wrote Daily Mirror.



In other news, if you want to see how many seconds are left until the New Year, go to Google's homepage and click "I'm Feeling Lucky".

{ via Google Blogoscoped }

On Google's Unofficial Dictionary API

Google Dictionary has an undocumented API that's used in Google Docs. You can obtain a JSON output using a URL like:

http://www.google.com/dictionary/json?callback=dict_api.callbacks.id100&q=test&sl=en&tl=en&restrict=pr%2Cde&client=te

(replace test with your favorite keyword).

A developer built a Chrome extension that used Google Dictionary API to display the definitions of a word without opening a new page.


A few days after releasing the extension, Google asked the developer to stop using the API.

"Until recently, this extension was known as Google Dictionary Lookup and used as its data source the Google Dictionary. Unfortunately, due to Google's contracts with their data providers, they are not legally allowed to expose the Dictionary API to third parties, and as such, I was forced to switch providers. (...) In the spirit of FOSS, I'm leaving the source code of the previous version available at my site until Dec 25, but you are solely responsible for its use, and I urge you not to abuse the Google Dictionary API," explains Max.

If you'd like to see an official API for Google Dictionary, star this issue.

Google Browser Size

Google Browser Size is an experimental service that shows if a web page has interface elements that can't be viewed by a significant amount of people. "Google Browser Size is a visualization of browser window sizes for people who visit Google. For example, the 90% contour means that 90% of people visiting Google have their browser window open to at least this size or larger."

The service can be used for any web page, but the data is obtained from the visitors of google.com. As you can see from the screenshot, Google's top result can be viewed by more than 99% of the visitors if no ad is displayed above the results.


Google Browser Size is one of the many Google tools that help you optimize web sites:

* Google Website Optimizer - testing and optimization tool
* Google Analytics - web analytics
* Google Webmaster Tools - site performance, crawl errors, top search queries
* Page Speed - an open-source Firebug add-on that helps you evaluate the performance of a web page.
* Speed Tracer - a Chrome extension that helps you fix performance problems in your web applications.
* Closure Compiler - a tool for making JavaScript download and run faster.
* "Let's make the web faster" tutorials.

{ Thanks, Kevin. }

Kevin Aprilio - Cathy Sharon

"Om Swastiastu"

Hi guys, this time I want to share Kevin Aprilio's song. The title is Cathy Sharon. I heard that Kevin likes Cathy, so that's why he wrote this song directed to Cathy. But don't worry, Kevin's already have a girlfriend. I just want to share this song. Okay, here are the lyrics.

Kevin Aprilio (Vierra's Pianist)

Cathy Sharon

Her name is Cathy Sharon

I wanna ask her out

Her name is Cathy Sharon

She's way to beautiful

I know I'm way to young

But I don't give a damn

They call me crazy

But my heart speaks out

(*)

Breath in

Don't deny don't hide your feeling

You'll be fine with me

It's not too late

To close my eyes I think about you you'll be fine tonight

(**)

Hey girl give me a chance

To make you smile

Make you high

Cathy what a beatiful

What a pretty name

Give me a chance to tell

That I like you (that I like you)

Musician and a host aren't that so thin

I wanna be your some for of your life

back to: (*), (**)

Listen to my story

And listen to your heartbeat your heartbeat

This song's from my heart for you Sharon

Remember all the words

back to: (*),(**)

I like you

That's all the lyric. I hope you enjoy it. Here is the download link. Click here.

"Om Santhi, Santhi, Santhi, Om"

Clean Up Duplicate Contacts in Gmail

In January, Gmail's Product Manager Todd Jackson said that Gmail will include a contact deduplicator. "Jackson says a de-duper is on the way and that contacts will have more of a presence both in your inbox and in conversations."

11 months later, Gmail added a feature that detects and merges duplicate contacts. "To clean up your contact list in one fell swoop, just click the Find duplicates button in the contact manager, review the merge suggestions (and uncheck any suggestions you don't want merged), and hit the Merge button." If you have many contacts, it's a good idea to consolidate them and to have a single contact for each person.


Other popular webmail services included this feature a long time ago: Yahoo Mail and Hotmail added tools for cleaning up duplicate contacts in 2007.

Google Smart Suggest

Google has recently added a feature that makes search suggestions even more useful. Let's say you type [christmas shop] and then you realize that you wanted to search for [christmas tree shop]. You don't have to add the word "tree" to your query: just type "t" before "shop" and Google adjusts the suggestions. The first suggested query is [christmas tree shop].




The change may seem subtle, but I think it's really significant: Google takes into account the caret position and shows suggestions for the word you are currently typing.

Here's another way to use smart suggestions: type "cat" in the search box, then type "r" before "cat". The first suggestion is [ragdoll cat], a popular query starts with "r" and includes the word "cat".


Yet another reason to use Google's search box instead of typing a query in your browser's search box.

Download Borland C++ 5.02

"Om Swastiastu"

Hai teman-teman sekalian, saya baru saja selesai ngupload Borland C++. Apa itu Borland C++?

Borland C++ adalah salah satu compiler C++ yang sangat terkenal karena kecepatannya mengcompile dan mengeksekusi program dari syntax yang kita buat. Dengan  program ini, kalian bisa belajar banyak mengenai bahasa pemrograman C++, serta bagi kalian yang ingin belajar C++, tetapi tidak mempunyai compiler nya, kalian bisa mendownloadnya disini gratis. Sehingga kalian bisa menerapkan apa yang saya posting di blog ini.

Berikut keterangan lengkap Borland C++ yang saya upload ini.

• Size : 85Mb dalam bentuk .rar
  
• Borland C++ adalah program pengembangan dari Turbo C++
• File version: 5.02 final release 1997
• Bekerja di semua OS Windows (saya menggunakan Windows 7 Ultimate)

CARA MENGINSTALL:

Continue Reading »

Google Real-Time Irrelevance

Google decided to show real-time search results for some popular queries, but the implementation failed miserably. Google forgot to focus on relevancy and started to show irrelevant results from Twitter. Just because someone posts uninteresting messages about a popular topic doesn't mean that the tweets are suddenly relevant.






An article from Wired quoted Google's Amit Singhal, who explained that "Google Real Time search is Google's relevance technology meeting the real-time web":

Google said its real-time search offers not just a stream of data, but an organized stream filtered of spam and other irrelevant information. The key to keeping the updates relevant is that Google judges "author quality," "probability of relevance" and "query hotness," according to Singhal. "That's what real-time search is all about," he said.

From what I've seen so far, Google's real-time search shows the limitations of Google's relevance technology. Until these limitations are addressed, Google should stop cluttering the search results with irrelevant Twitter messages.

Google Docs Indexes PDF Files

This feature should've been added a long time ago: Google Docs indexes PDF files and you can finally search the contents of all your files.

Google Docs search has been recently improved by adding support for automatic stemming and synonyms, so you can search for [create shortcut] and find documents that contain [creating shortcuts] or [creates a shortcut].


To make things even better, Google should detect scanned PDF documents and use OCR to extract text. This feature is already used by Google's search engine to index scanned documents and it's available as an experiment for Google Docs API.

Achieving Success through Effective Business Communication

"Om Swastiastu"

Communication, Business and You

Communication is the process of sending and receiving message
Communication is effective only when people:

• Provide practical information
• Give facts instead of vague impressions
• Present information in consist and efficient manner
• Clarify expectations and responsibilities
• Offer persuasive arguments and recommendations

 Effective communication benefit both you and your organization by helping you:

•  Increase productivity - both yours and your company's
• Anticipate problems
• Make decisions
• Coordinate workflow
  
• Supervise others
• Develop relationship
• Promote products/services
• Shape the impressions you make on stakeholders
• Perceive and respond to the needs of stakeholders

 Without effective communication:

• People misunderstand each other and misinterpret information
• Ideas misfire or fail to get attention

Effective business message:

• Provide practical information
• Give facts rather than impressions
• Clarify and condense informations
• State precise responsibilities
• Persuade other and offer recommendations

Communication occurs in many form:

• verbal/nonverbal
• internal/external
• formal/informal

Nonverbal Communication is

• Communication without words
• Less structured and more spontaneous than verbal communication
• Often a more accurate and reliable indicator of meaning than words

Verbal Communication consist of words arranged in meaningful patterns, according to the rules of grammar.

 Given a choice, people would rather talk than write.

Continue Reading »

FeedBurner Socialize: Add Your Feed to Twitter

If you've used TwitterFeed to post updates from a blog to your Twitter account, you'll like FeedBurner Socialize. It's a new FeedBurner feature that distributes the content from a feed on Twitter.

"To get started, go to the Socialize service on FeedBurner's Publicize tab and add the Twitter account to which you would like to post items from your feed. You can take the default settings and click [Save] to start socializing immediately, or use the options we offer to customize exactly which feed items are sent to Twitter and how exactly you would like them to look. The next time you post a new item to your feed it will be sent to Twitter," mentions FeedBurner's blog.

Socialize uses Google's new URL shortener and it adds a parameter that helps you track Twitter traffic in Google Analytics.



My favorite thing about FeedBurner Socialize is that the tweet is posted immediately after I publish a blog post. That's because both FeedBurner and Blogger support PubSubHubbub, a protocol designed for near-instant notifications.

Share Web Pages and Your Location in Google Toolbar

Google Toolbar 6.4 for IE and Firefox adds a feature that lets you share web pages using social networking sites, mail services, bookmarking services and other sites. You can select your favorite services from the settings page or repeatedly click on one of the options to bring it to the top of the menu.


If you share links using Twitter, you'll notice a new URL shortening service: goo.gl. "Google URL Shortener at goo.gl is a service that takes long URLs and squeezes them into fewer characters to make a link that is easier to share, tweet, or email to friends. The core goals of this service are: stability, security and speed." The service is only used by Google Toolbar and FeedBurner, so there's no web interface or API for goo.gl.

Another new Google Toolbar feature implements W3C's geolocation API, which allows web pages to access detailed information about the locations of their visitors. "We use information transmitted by nearby WiFi access points to determine your approximate location. Accuracy and coverage will vary by location, and we're working to improve both over time," explains Google. This feature is already available in Firefox 3.5, so Google only added it to the IE version of Google Toolbar.


One of the few sites that use the geolocation API is Google Maps: "visit Google Maps and click the My Location button above the zoom slider. Click Share my location if you give your permission for Google Maps to use your location, and the map should center on your approximate location, if available."

{ via Google Blog }