GooPhone

Well, I am back after a hiatus and back with my favorite topic :)

Google has plans to come out with a mobile phone, dubbed GooPhone (a very orginal name !) which it is going to offer for free !!
The plan is to extend their successful ad model to the phone. As far as extending success stories are concerned, this sure 
takes the cake.

Read more about it here

The Chosen One - A thriller

It turned out to be a potboiler after all; John Emburey made a trip and a presentation in vain; Graham Ford rejected the job offered to him; and Chandu Borde said "I am very happy" after getting a job out of the blue.

Happy Ending, the Indian gets the job. But wait ! the story is not over yet, with Indian cricket, you never know what can happen next.

The story :

The Chosen One - An anticlimax

The Chosen One

Orkut to be banned in India ?

The call for the censorship of Orkut has come from Shivsena. Last week, some internet cafes in Mumbai were vandalized since they had not blocked Orkut.

From an article in the Economic Times

"Orkut is used by many destructive elements to spread canards about India, Hindus, our gods and cultural heritage," said Abhijit Phanse, president of Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena, the student group. "We are gently telling Internet cafe owners that it is their responsibility to see that surfers do not use their facility to carry out such hate campaigns ... Or else, we will have to do that job for them."


Special software is being developed by the Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena, which will filter objectionable content, this s/w is to be used in internet cafes. Orkut & Google have been informed of these developments. Earlier, objections were raised about the detail that Google maps provided about the Indian terrain, which could possibly be used by terrorist elements to plan attacks; Google had then agreed to filter out sensitive sites. It will be interesting to see what stand Google takes on this. Currently, there is an option in Orkut to flag communities as objectionable, and Google/Orkut will review the content and remove the community, if the objection is valid.

Read all the news about this on Google News

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team is investigating the issue, they will decide the way forward in this matter.

The Chosen One - An anticlimax

After so much brouhaha about choosing the next Indian cricket coach, it has ended up in an all familiar anticlimax, much like the Matrix, with the players (Neo) becoming GOD.

The current contenders are John Emburey and Graham Ford; now where did he come from ? Both guys had strong backing from the players. It seems that Dav Whatmore was never a front runner for the post, or says the elite panel. BCCI has decided to play it safe by choosing a back room coach instead of a high profile one, since they had enough of leaked mails/SMS and factionalism in the dressing room. It is another thing that the players wanted Tom Moody who has already chosen to coach Western Australia.

India's loss is Pakistan's gain. Now Pakistan has their sights set on Whatmore, whether Dav will take up the job is yet to be seen; initial offers by PCB were rejected by Whatmore, since he was expecting to land the India job. Whatmore being the spunky guy he is, might just take up the job, and make worldbeaters out of Pakistan and BCCI is sure to land in a soup if Pakistan beats India.

Read my previous post about The Chosen One

Spurious Search results

Yes, search results that are not only unauthentic, but those which install trojans and viruses in your system exploiting those back doors that Microsoft guys have intentionally or unintentionally left open. (One more reason to use Linux). Once these small harmless looking pgms are in, its your systems' Waterloo. One such virus in Bancos, which is aimed at stealing passwords of bank accounts. In these days of online transactions, that can burn quite a hole in your pocket, if it manages to get itself installed in your system. Scary, but the truth. Around 4-5 % of search results are links to risky sites which install spyware, adware, trojans or show popup ads which do the same. If you think it is a small percentage, you should check out how many of them appear at the top of the search results and many of them appear as sponsored links.
According to McAfee's site advisor study, 'The State of Search Engine Safety', Yahoo returns the most search results rated "Red" or "Yellow" whereas AOL has the least. For once, Yahoo has managed to top Google. The study compares this years results with the previous year and states that while Google, AOL and ASK have managed to increase the safety of their search results, that of Yahoo and MSN have declined. Lots of details are available in the study, worth a read, so that next time you think twice before clicking on that search result.
So what do we do about this ? Invariably, one is bound to click on a problem link. A good AntiVirus Software should prevent installation of any problematic programs. To ease matters, there are some tools like McAfee Site Advisor and Link Scanner from Exploit Prevention Labs that give you an idea about how safe the site that you are currently browsing or about to visit.

I checked out SiteAdvisor; the features are quite good, it is available as a Firefox and IE plugin and its free. Its safe browsing button sits at the bottom right hand corner of Firefox and signals the safety of yoursite. You can also view the site details by clicking the button.
Another feature of SiteAdvisor is that it displays icons near each link in the Search results indicating whether that site is safe or not.

Google

Yahoo



The search query is for "bearshare", the top most dangerous keyword ! Check the number of risky sponsored links in Yahoo.

I will try out Link Scanner as soon as I (and if I) get time. Watch this space for more info.


Further Reading

The State of Search Engine Safety

Booby-Traps Hide in Google Sponsored Links

Users exposed to millions of risky searches

Dont forget to check the site advisor safe browsing button's color when you visit these sites.

Privacy concerns about Google

Check out all the news about Google privacy from Google News

Read my post about this here

Bulla Fiji

I was in Fiji for a day last weekend, the trip was too short but long enough to make me want to go back there.

Fiji reminded me of Goa with its numerous beaches but the beaches here are just perfect. After the cold weather in Auckland, the sun and the sand was just what the doctor ordered.

Google being compared to Big Brother

Google is now being compared to Big Brother !!! Check this article

European Data Privacy Officials Worry About Big Brother Google

Some of the information maintained by Google is quite interesting and if it falls in the wrong hands, can be used for malicious purposes. Search history is quite a useful feature and you opt whether you want to enable it or not but I wonder whether Google tracks it anyway. The tracking is cookie based, so what will happen if cookies are disabled ?

All these concerns crop up due to lack of visibility to the inner working of Google, which they have no intention of making public. And why should they ?

Quoting Alex Bakst in the article, success prompts distrust.

Fog and Dog

Fog and Dog ? What are those ? To the layman, fog would be something that reduces visibility and a dog would be his favorite pet.

Of course, I am not referring to that.

Fog is Fear of Google
&
Dog is Disdain of Google

Back to my pet subject :)


If you google Fog + Google or Dog + Google, you do get to read some results that talk about this. But due to Universal Search, you can see some links on pets, videos of a skateboarding dog and videos on fog before you get to the links that you were looking for.

I read about it here. There are interesting allusions to the future as well - all people plugged into a mainframe and Google helping you find what you will do tomorrow. Typical Matrix. Interesting read ! Discusses about the privacy concerns as well; quoting the article

“Google will not only know what you search for, what ads you click on, but they will also know exactly what you are subscribed to at a very intimate level . . . they are going to know more about some people than their own family members may.”

There has been privacy concerns about the kind of data that Google holds for a long time now. There was a big brouhaha about Google reading all our mail when they started showing ads based on keywords inside the mail content. Yes, it is a bit disconcerting when you suddenly see that appear but quite helpful at times, and again a great strategy by Google. I wonder if they started offering Gmail so that they can increase the visibility of their ads.

The Chosen one

Some much has been written about this and conspiracy theories abound, it is no less than a thriller whose climax will unfold during the second week of June. So is it about Neo of the Matrix Trilogy, is Keanu Reeves going to reprise his role and start off a new series about 'The One'. Nope, Keanu has moved on to movies like The Lake House, good for him, Thomas Anderson was almost becoming GOD.

So what is it about? It is what millions of Indians are waiting for with bated breath - the new Indian cricket coach. An anticlimax? Yes, for some who lost their interest in cricket after India crashed out in the first round of the World Cup. This is a hot discussion topic everywhere, from roadside chai stalls to boardroom meetings, from X to Y, everyone is just talking about this, who will be the next cricket coach, who is going to change India's fortunes.

Talking about changing Indias fortunes, the erstwhile coach, Greg Chappel sure did change it. Sure, we got knocked out by Bangladesh in the first round but we had a record 17 odd run chases (sports gurus, pls validate), something which we were never famous for. Yes, there are factions within the dressing room but which team sport doesnt have it ? But on the day, it is not the coach who is in the middle; all said and done, the team has to deliver, even if the coach is Sir Donald Bradman.

So who will it be ? There were lots of names floating around, even Sir Vivian Richards expressed an interest in the hot seat but the last man standing has turned out to be Dav Whatmore, the Australian born Sri Lankan bred maverick. He is a cricketing great in his own right, the 1996 World Cup being his successful shot at fame and the 2007 World Cup adding much credibility to his image. The BCCI officials deny the existence of any such favorite and say that noone has been shortlisted for the job yet. So it is an open-for-all job, wonder whether they will put an ad in the national dailies.

The time allocated for finalising on the coach is nothing short of absurd - one week! In the 7-8 days spanning June 4 -12, India will get its new coach. But how much time does it take to chose the next scapegoat who will take responsibility for all Indian failures while the captain will bask in the glory of all successes.


The commitee comprising Ravi Shastri, S Venkataraghavan, Sunil Gavaskar and few BCCI officials (in no particular order of importance) will have some prospective candidates in mind, but they are certainly very tight lipped about it. They will outline their plans to the media on June 4th, I hope the stupid argument about a foreign coach vs an Indian coach is put aside and more important matters like a bowling coach and a fielding coach are considered.

Let the best man become the unlucky coach, who cares ? I hope they dont drop Sachin !!!

Why are all my posts about Google ?

Before you ask me, let me tell you. The answer is somewhere on top of this page :)

To avoid repetition, next post will be about something else for sure.

How does Google make money ?

This question must have risen in the minds of millions, the hard core Google followers and the tech savvy guys should know the answer. For a normal guy, the answer would seem incredulous. Through ads, no way! That is the repartee I get when I tell this to someone.

Although the sponsored links concept has expanded with Ad Sense and stuff like that, the basic philosophy is still the same. Google's acquisition of Double Click seems to indicate that they are planning to make more money from ads, and not from the text kind alone.

Text ads were a welcome change from the irritating popups that most sites had, and this was one of the things that gave Google a very clean look and made it popular. To start of, even text ads were missing from the Search Results. Then we had context specific text ads, aptly called sponsored links which appear with a clear demarcation from the search results. Sponsored links appear based on a ranking system, its kind of an online auction for words. Read about the AdWords program.

AdSense was again something that made one think that the Google guys have lost it. If a marketing campaign were made for this one, it would go something like
"Google has made so much money with your support. Now it would like give back some of it to you."
But again, this was something that just skyrocketed their earnings. 'Ads by Google' started appearing all over the place, and the probability of ads getting clicked increased multifold.

So what next ? Google's philosophy is to enable the end user to find what is he/she is looking for in the shortest possible time, without any distractions. When are we going to see colorful banners and popups appearing when you google ? Hopefully, NEVER !

Google Universal Search - the next level

I have been hearing about Google Universal Search but why cant I see it yet ? Is this a phased rollout ? This should be interesting, merging of their different searches, its literally the next level. Dont know how cluttered it will be, but they are sure to come out with a good thing. Cant wait to see it.

Just something I read now, Google surpassed Microsoft to become the world's most vistited family of websites in March and it is not by any measly number, it is by a million. One up for Google.

I wonder what will be the impact of Universal Search on performance but considering the degree of parallelism the Google servers have, it should be as fast as now. It will depend on whether all search results are shown at the same time.

Just read further about it, dont even bother to ask where I got the info from - Google News, of course. A series of tabs will appear between the search box and the results allowing users to navigate to other categories. So no impact of performance, you need not fetch results for all tabs when the user hits the Seach button, it can be an asynchronous fetch.

Its Friday

Hmm the end of a week, the start of a weekend. Feels like Monday though, with the kind of work that I have planned for the weekend. Working on a weekend is anathema to some, but once you get used to it, it is hard to avoid it. Its like a bad habit that you find hard to kick. Maybe, it is more like since you know you are working on the weekend, you take the weekdays easy and put some work off for the weekend. Which is better, spreading your work for 7 days or finishing it 5 days and enjoying the weekend. Definitely the former, but each day has to be enjoyed, you dont need a weekend for letting your hair down. Wicked philosophy, but you can mix the 2 and have a hybrid one which works for you.

If it works for you, then it is the best that you can get.

The most important thing

I forgot to mention the most important thing of all in my previous post - you need to remember only one clever password and one clever question if you are using Google products.

For ppl who tell me to keep the same password for all accounts, naah, thats not my style... and its not secure

Thats quite a title

Well, the title is something. Couldn't think of something more creative than this :)

I am doing this for the umpteenth time - starting a blog. Haven't really stuck on to one, mostly because I forgot the clever password that I had conjured up while creating the blog and the even more clever password recovery questions. Now all my writings are lost all over the web, not that there were many..

Off to the topic of the day..

Google is really something, its a real big enterprise with eggs in so many baskets and all that under one roof. Its becoming the real portal, all your services on one site - I dont know whether the google guys had this in mind in their search engine days. For me, google is my take off point to the web. And I always keep coming back for more.

So no wonder my blog has appeared here.

And iGoogle and the gadget concept really takes thing to the next level. Customized content to your taste. I really dont know whether there is anything similar out there, I may be just plain ignorant. The roots of iGoogle or the spark could have come from Google news which is customized news; its my my news"paper" for some time now and I am getting by quite well.

All other so called portals and portal users, no offense, to each his own.

The new usability features (or those that I have seen - the navigation frame on top,..) are really cool, something that should have been implemented long before. Hats off to Marissa Mayer and her team for conceptualizing and executing this one.