Saturday, November 5, 2011

Does Google accept itself as Search Engine ?

After learning about Google easter eggs, I thought there would be many competitions to Google, and how it tries to maintain its market share. Unfortunately there is a big competition between Google and Bing, as soon as Bing was launched, it occupied 5% of search engine market share, slowly it occupied 30% of market share. This is amazing, but Google somehow got serious on this and was suspicious on Bing copying Google.

Now funniest part of the story is, Does Google consider itself as search engine, today I tried few search in Google and was surprised to see the search results.

Go to Google.com and search for "search", My thought was, since Google is the top search engine, it will come in the search result as top one, but rather I got this strange result. Interesting part is, few months back, Google accused Bing of copying their search results and proved it also, but the top search result for the word search is Bing, then Yahoo, then Dogpile etc etc, I found Google search somewhere to the end of the page. Ok, assuming search is something very common, I tried the next keyword "search engine" and it came to me as a surprise again, Google search never returned back on first page. Does anyone know of this strange behavior? Any reason why this would happen in Google?

Google's Weapon - hiybbprqag, mbzrxpgjys

Weapons, they are not just killing mechanism, but also used in cyber world for exposing rivals, Google tops the world search engine market, but slowly lost its share to Bing, from the time it was launched. Bing started with 5% market share, but slowly growed in to 30% market share. Main reason is Internet Explorer, which dominated the world in browser market, since it was Microsoft product, they provided option to type search keyword in address bar and press enter, so the text is search using Bing search engine.

Google's first weapon was Chrome, its home made browser, which not only provide a bouquet of browsing features, but also integrated the same searching through address bar concept, but the search engine used was Google. Doing all these, Google was suspecting Bing always, whether it copied search results from Google.

Google's second weapon was pattern search comparison between Google and Bing search results. Search for torsoraphy in Google, which return this

In this example, Google searches for correct spelling , tarsorrhaphy, even though it was entered incorrectly. Same search at Bing, manages to list the same Wikipedia page at the top of its results as Google does for its corrected spelling results: Got it? Despite the word being misspelled — and the misspelling not being corrected — Bing still manages to get the right page from Wikipedia at the top of its results, one of four total pages it finds from across the web. How did it do that? Great Mystery huh!!

Google's third weapon was sting operation, where Google created new words, hiybbprqag, mbzrxpgjys which does not exist in real world, and induced unrelated search results when searched through Google. After a couple of weeks this program was launched, Bing was caught giving same results for the words formed by google, see screenshots below for better understanding.

With this Google publicly went saying "Bing Copies Google". Wait this is only first part of the story, only Google's point of argument, but Microsoft in return denied this, which I will discuss detail in my next article.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Google Hidden Secrets Unvieled - Easter Eggs

This Internet Giant has been doing many things their own way, which most of us still do not know, until it is shared by some one through social networking sites. The expression " do a barrel roll" has become a trending topic on Twitter after internet users discovered a new feature on Google that makes the screen perform a 360-degree spin on typing the phrase into the search box.

The barrel roll game does not seem to function on all browsers but appears to work best using Firefox and Chrome. There are many such easter eggs, which are hidden in Google, some of them

  1. do a barrel roll - Type "do a barrel roll" in search text box and press enter
  2. askew - Type "askew" in search text box and press enter
  3. Google Calculator - Type "answer to life the universe and everything" in search text box and press enter
  4. Google Calculator - Type "once in a blue moon" in search text box and press enter
  5. Google Logo - Type "ascii art" in search text box and press enter to see Google logo in ascii format
  6. recursion - Type "recursion" in search text box and press enter to see Google suggests to search for recursion again
  7. Google Gravity - Click here to see it live

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Semordnilap - Derived from Palindrome

PALINDROME, every one should know this term, I knew this term while doing my engineering, during a computer programming session. For those who do not know what is Palindrome, here it is, any word which forms the same word when written in reverse order is a Palindrome, for example, MALAYALAM is same when spelled in reverse. A list of all palindrome words can be found in http://www.palindromelist.net/ , funniest part is palindrome is not a palindrome word :)

"PALINDROME IS NOT A PALINDROME, BUT
SEMORDNILAP IS A SEMORDNILAP"

Now a derived version of palindrome is SEMORDNILAP, hope everyone will face it difficult to pronounce it, atleast I had difficulty pronouncing it :), ok how did this word derive from? it is palindrome written in reverse order, and what does this word mean? Any word which forms a meaningful different word when written in reverse order is a semordnilap. for example LIVED -> DEVIL, there are many words like this, a complete list can be found in http://kgfamily.com/files/semordnilaps.html

Intersting part of this word is, GOOGLE has only 10000 search results for this term. atleast the least search results I have seen so far for a meaningful word in google.

Save Anna Centenary Library - Support Please

Support by signing @ SAVE ANNA CENTENARY LIBRARY - PLEASE SIGN HERE


As a citizen, student, reader, we should oppose Tamilnadu Government's decision to shift Anna Centenary Library to DPI complex. As public we are directly impacted by this decision. This library is Asia's Largest library with state of art facilities. Now it is time to call back this decision by signing this petition. 

When Anna Hazare fights against corruption, why this decision is not taken to Him? Why public money is wasted in such decisions? This is also one way of corruption, When such decisions are taken, public voting has to be conducted, but I believe public will give 0% support only for this decision, when government takes such decision, it is our responsibility to raise our voice against such decisions.

Advocate Prabhakar has filed a Public Interest Litigation in High Court opposing this decision to shift. Some highlights of Anna Centenary Library


  • South Asia's Largest Library
  • Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State had lauded the library during her visit to Chennai on 20 July 2011.
  • 9-floor library building houses a total area of 333,140 sq. ft and has a capacity to accommodate 1.2 million books.
  • The library is designed to accommodate a total of 1,250 persons
  • An auditorium of 50,000 sq. ft. with a seating capacity of 1,280
  • An amphitheatre on the terrace that can accommodate more than 800 persons
  • Two conference halls with capacities of 151 and 30 persons
  • A dedicated children's section, spread over 15,000 sq. ft. has a fun-filled theme-based reading area with multimedia kits and storybooks.
  • CCTV cameras have been installed in 493 locations in the building.
  • Collection of 550,000 books
Let us sign this petition as online signature campaign to stop shifting OUR library @ SAVE ANNA CENTENARY LIBRARY

More details of Anna Library

http://annacentenarylibrary.blogspot.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Centenary_Library
http://themadras.in/annacentenarylibrary
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Anna-Centenary-Library/176926392345414

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Earn through Social Networking Sites (SNS)

In my previous post, Is Social Networking Sites (SNS) really required ? I discussed, how we are wasting time in Social Networking Sites (SNS), I do not tell, its complete waste of SNS, but as humans we should find ways to be productive from waste also, so when SNS are useful, why dont we make them more productive, at times use them to make money also, here are my findings of famous SNS and how to make money from them. First thing we should do is increase our contact in SNS, increase followers, increase friends.

Create an account in Amazon Associates and link it to orkut profile's wish list, which will drive traffic to Amazon, when your friends click to see what it is, and if by chance they buy something from Amazon, you will be paid for it.
Sponsored Tweets You just sign-up as a Tweeter, with your Twitter sign-in information, then wait for Advertisers to “hire” you. If you’re a Tweeter that’s relevant to their product, brand, or service, and the price is something they’re willing to pay, then they’ll send you an invitation to work with them. You can either choose to work with them, or decline the offer. If you choose to work with the Advertiser, then you’ll get paid afterward.

Direct Advertisement – If a lot of people are following you in ‘twitter’ or in other words if you have a ‘wide reach’ to a large number of twitter users, you can probably look into direct advertisements for monetization.
Recommendation – You can recommend a particular product or service on behalf of your advertisers & peruse your followers to take an ‘action’.
Promotion – You can help your advertiser to promote a new product or service to your twitter followers.


Paid Review– This is pretty much like the direct advertisement, however the only difference would be, instead of blindly suggesting a product or a service to someone, you can actually do some ‘paid reviews’.
Sponsored Contest– An advertiser may want to run a contest via a popular twitter user to get feedback about his product & services or just to create some brand awareness.
Affiliate Marketing - This is an area where every one can really look into. For instance say when one of your followers is asking for suggestion to choose a web host, you can always suggest him the best one from your experience but at the same time use your affiliate link which can earn you some quick cash.
YouNews is yet another digg clone where members can bookmark and share interesting links. Interestingly, they have an orkut application which is a good idea to gain popularity quickly and reaching masses on orkut. Interestingly, YouNews offers revenue sharing with it’s users which may attract youth on orkut.
Advertise your company, its products and services by using direct ad feature provided by orkut, facebook, linkedin. This allows you to create custom, targeted advertising campaigns designed to attract customers and help you make money
An indirect source of funds: develop applications under contract for third parties. A number of companies have been posting contract jobs over at the Facebook’s developer forums. There exists a large gap in the supply and demand of available Facebook application developers; as a result, finding potential clients to charge reasonable rates should not be a hassle
Sell services within Facebook through micro-payment transactions. PayPal payments made for accessing premium services could potentially yield reasonable income depending on the application’s purpose, size, and prospective users.
Ether is a website that you can make money on by giving advice to people over the phone or by chatting. But now, you can use their new application on Facebook to make money while giving advice to people over the phone. If you’re good at giving advice, this may be the way for you to make some extra money on Facebook. Also if you know a second language, this app makes it easy to teach others and make money. You set the rates and Ether provides a number that individuals can call. The call will then be forwarded to your personal telephone number.
With MusicBlaster you can put a simple little music store on your Facebook, and sell music from BlastMyMusic.com. You earn 5% for each song sold. The cool think about this app is the fact that you can help your favorite band or singer to sell their music while you make money, as well as helping them to gain more exposure.
The name says it all, its the good old Garage Sale, but a “Facebooky” Garage Sale. Simply add Garage Sale to your profile page and list every thing you want to sell. When someone buys something, Garage Sale automatically bills the buyer’s credit card and lets you when to ship the item. Your money is deposited directly into your Pay Pal account, or you can request payment by check. However they charge a 5% commission on the total sales price, but that’s all. No other fee for setup or anything like that.
Shopit is a free Social Commerce Network that gives users the ability to buy, sell or trade any product or service. Simply add a free store to your Facebook and sell anything you like. Another easy way to make money on Facebook.
FT was founded in 2007 by an Iranian-American named Nima Khakpour. This app is more for the artists to sell their music. So, if you are an artist, FlameTunes enables you to sell your music on your Facebook. You can also use it to sell music on MySpace.
Remember when you setup your first lemonade stand in your community? Well, this app allows you to use the same concept, combining commerce and community, and have a lemonade stand in a digital (Facebook) neighborhood. Basically you add what you want to sell to a lemonade stand, and put it on your Facebook.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Is Social Networking Sites (SNS) really required ?

Can anyone tell, why social network came into this internet revolution, for obvious reasons, to connect people, both known and unknown having similar interests. Slowly competition increased and then came chat rooms, a little more with social network sites like orkut, facebook, linkedin, google+ and many more started to evolve, but has anyone thought what we do after registering with social network sites and updating our hourly status in those sites.

"Are we losing our privacy posting our live status there?"

One very good reason, everyone accept is connect with school mates, college mates, old friends irrespective of  which part of the world we are in. I would say social networking sites should take the credit in connecting them. A recent research revealed, what people do in Facebook.
  • 15% of Facebook users update their own status.
  • 22% comment on another’s post or status.
  • 20% comment on another user’s photos.
  • 26% “Like” another user’s content.
  • 10% send another user a private message
What purpose does it really serve? Did anyone think of this ? Pew Research Center has released their statistics of facebook usage.

People just love to look at pictures. That's the killer app of all online social networks. Seventy percent of all actions are related to viewing pictures or viewing other people's profiles. The biggest usage categories are men looking at women they don't know, followed by men looking at women they do know. Women look at other women they know. Overall, women receive two-thirds of all page views. 

Little about Twitter, which restricts 140 characters of text messages? 90% of Twitter posts were created by only 10% of users, because the technology uses words without photos to communicate. MySpace, which we can say, almost dead even though there are around 70million users, 3 times greater than Twitter, but still does not have high page rank. 

For few years people were behind Orkut, then moved on to Facebook, now Google+ has emerged with lot of features which facebook does not have. One such feature is Hangouts, where we can initiate video conferencing with maximum 10 people from different circles. We have control on the circles which can participate, ofcourse no control on the users from the circles. Facebook tied up with Skype for video conferencing, but it is one-to-one video chat, which gtalk already has. A great reason for people to move to google+ is this. Another reason is Google Docs, which is another product of Google, so it integrates well with Google+ to share between friends, colleagues and others, which Facebook and other SNS does not have.

If we discuss, it is never going to end, I will talk on how SNS can be useful to us, can be used productively, can be used to make money. One last thing which needs our attention is QUITTING these sites, slowly we have piled up lots of personal information in these websites, did we ever think how easy is it to quit these sites taking backup of all the information stored, like contacts, photos, documents.

Thnk, Think once again well before we spend time in Social Networking Sites.

 
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