How Instant Can Google Instant Be ?

Well we all know how fast Google is. Better than most of the search engines are and it takes just a few Milli-secs to get your thoughts searched through huge bytes of data. As always Google is setting the benchmark of sorts in the race for quicker access to data you need.

Introducing Google Instant with the tag line “search-before-you-type” – well you may ask, what’s new in this? Many of us usually use ‘Google Suggest’ to get instant suggestions.. Google Instant takes this process a step further is my answer. Not only do you get the dandy suggestions, but u get the search page refreshed in micro-secs. Howzzat..

Here is what Google’s Blog has to say, “Instant takes what you have typed already, predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real-time for those predictions—yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive, predictive and powerful.”

The screenshot below shows u everything and do note, it took Google just 0.05 seconds to go through about 134,000,000 results. Whoa!

Yesterday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt did hint about this change on his Twitter page (https://twitter.com/ericschmidt). 😛

All the speed with which we access data is a bit overwhelming sometimes, makes me wonder when Google or for that matter any data retrieval system/process will be faster than the human mind. Will discuss this in a future post.

So try it out here.. Google Instant and yes you can find a turn on/off switch on your top right hand side. If you want to switch the functionality off, then just hit the ‘Search’ button or the ‘Enter’ key on your keyboard.

Verdict: I did find Google Instant handy, as you don’t have to hit that Search button no more. Just one question that crops up is: how accurate is the search? Hope not to get addicted to it though. 😛

Windows in High Definition!

This one is really good. A detailed DIY guide for Virtual Windows, dubbed as Winscape can be found on RationalCraft.com.

For those who are wondering what it is, here is the You Tube video:

If the Embedded Video does not show-up, then please click on the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqu9NuINKbc&feature=player_embedded

Google Reader Is Now A Website Watcher

Recently my dear friend and fellow blogger, RockSta, peppered an article in front of me about Google’s new ability to track a webpage / website that does not have feeds. I was really excited at the prospect.

How many times haven’t we thought about this small but very essential part of a website? When RSS feeds first appeared, it brought in with it the ability to read our favorite sites at one shot, but not all webmasters were happy to publish their feeds. Some were reluctant (to use the new technology), some were afraid (of plagiarism) and some had no idea (like me!). RSS has revolutionized the way we read posts of our favorite author, blogger, website or the comments they attract.

Now for the reality check. I tried using this new feature on Google Reader. Set up a few feeds. Will check over a few weeks on how precisely it works. For starters who want to set up a feed from a feed-less website, read an example from the Google Reader Blog

For example, if you wanted to follow Google.org’s latest products, just type “http://www.google.org/products.html” into Reader’s “Add a subscription” field. Click “create a feed”, and Reader will periodically visit the page and publish any significant changes it finds as items in a custom feed created just for that page.

Some stuff to keep in mind while using this feature:
1. The updates on your reader account depend on the periodicity with which Google checks that site
2. A caution that Google wants us to note, “Reader may not always detect updates to your content”. Whoa…!
3. Updates to any content that is in frames will not be detected nor can one get updates from sites that require you to sign-in
4. And this functionality is up for grabs only on sites with English language content as of now

The whole procedure works on Google’s ability to cache a page and compare it with any changes a page might have undergone, every time it visits it. Pretty neat!

Smart webmasters who don’t want their website to be Googled or G Read by Google Bots can add the following meta tag to any page they want to block

<meta name=”googlebot” content=”noarchive”>

The above meta tag tells Google not to take a snapshot or cache that webpage.

This is not the first time Google is coming out with a user-demanded feature, but hats-off they did!

There are many third party services too that claim to create feeds for websites, but many aren’t promising. I like one software in particular that achieves an overall watch over a website or a domain. It’s called Website Watcher. Check out their website for more details. A review of it in another post, so stay tuned.

Twitter Phrases, Terms And Most Often Used Words Demystified

Opened my Twitter account many months ago but din’t tweet much then. But when I started to, I really could not make out the different phrases people used. So thought of sharing few commonly used twitter terms with you all.

Tweet

– This is the first and most important word. It’s a phrase used for a 140-character message sent to Twitter through a phone, the web, or any third-party applications. Tweets are public and can be read by anyone accessing the TwitterStream. (Tweets can be made public or private in the settings.)

@username

– replies/direction to a particular person in a conversation. If the @username begins the Tweet then it’s a “reply” and if the @username appears somewhere else then it’s a “mention”. These replies and mentions can be accessed from your Twitter account in the “replies” tab.

Follower

– If someone comes across your tweets and finds it interesting, he/she might want to get updates from you as and when you tweet, then he/she can follow you and become a “Follower”. It is also possible to “block” someone from following. A blocked account cannot “follow” your tweets but can easily see your public tweets in a search.

#topic

– signal that a message is about a particular topic or event. Oftentimes, that event is an online chat.

Favorite

– Remember “favorites” tab in your Twitter account? If you have bookmarked a tweet then it will be saved here.

DM or DT

– Short for Direct Message/Direct Tweet. Direct tweets are private and do not appear in the public timeline.

RT or Retweet

– It’s like forwarding an interesting mail to someone. But here you forward or “retweet” the tweet. Please make sure you give the original credit using the @username.

TwitterStream

– Is a continuous flow of tweets by everyone you follow or on a public timeline.

Twitterfeed

–RSS feed for any twitter account.

Tweetdeck

– where one can see replies and tag cloud

Twitter Lingo

Tweeple

– people who tweet and are regular tweeters

TweetUp

– This word is used for a real-world meeting of people who have been connected through Twitter.

Twitterati

– Welcome to the world of Celebrity Tweeple or Tweeters.

Twelepathy

– Just like Telepathy, a situation where one can predict what a tweeter is going to tweet before they even tweet it.

Twidium

– a twitter stadium. Ah no, this phrase is used when Tweeple are watching a game and twitting each play.

Tweskank

– is someone who twitters while on a date. Oh man.

Twexting

– text messaging a tweet to Twitter.

Twitphilia

– Is made up of two words, Twit (meaning Twitter ) and Philia (meaning Love), so the word denotes a person who has an obsession with Twitter.

Twitanoia

– Opposite to the above, used to denote someone with a strong disliking to everything Twitter.

Twitterverse

– Welcome to the Twitter universe.

There are hundreds of such words coined by so many tweeters till now. This is a just a small collection of top phrases. Do comment on any other top twitter word you think is important to add up.

The New Threat To Your Mobile – SMS Spam

Well, late Saturday afternoon I got a SMS on my mobile phone. The SMS sent by TM – Winners, read like this…

Congratulation!!! You have won GBP-250,000.00, in 2009 (SHELL) INT’L Mobile Draw. Winning #3, To claim your prize Contact Mr. Mike via E-mail: spdc68@live.com

I was thinking for a minute. It sounded crazy. Shell was legitimate company. How did they get my number and why were they using live.com as their contact. Well something dint sound right. I knew it was some kind of spam. But am I the only one ?

Well coincidently, a local newspaper also wrote a similar story of a person in Bangalore, receiving similar message. As I read through the post, my initial thoughts were sealed. Yes, it was a spam message.

This kinda spam is described as mobile spamming, SMS spam, text spam, or SpaSMS also called commonly as m-spam. This is not something new, as I thought earlier, it started with the increase in popularity of mobile phones.

Some handy SMS spam-reduction techniques:

• Don’t give your cell phone numbers to unknown websites
• Don’t give number to Internet sites offering “free” ring tone downloads
• If you are using a Symbian OS, then there are software that can use some keyword/phone number filtering system to deliver only relevant messages
• If you don’t want to utilize the SMS service then you can call up your mobile service provider and stop the service.

Some telecommunications providers believe that SMS spam is going to be a huge challenge for them, since spamsters are using different means to send SMS spams.

Run Multiple Instances Of Yahoo Messenger

I have different Yahoo! Messenger ID’s. After logging into one ID, when I tried to log into another ID, I could not do that.

So what one can do is: To get multiple instances of Yahoo! Messenger running at the same time, follow this –

Download and run the ym8multi.reg file from this ZIP archive

For uninstall, download and run the ym8multi_unist.reg file from this ZIP archive

Now isn’t this great.

I just loved this patch…. 🙂