Google Search Tips - part1

1. Google can be your phone book. Type the person's name, city and state directly into the search box, Google will deliver phone and address at the top of the results. This feature works for business listing too.

      Google can also work as the reverse directory; if you have phone number, type in the search box, and google will deliver the results that matches the phone number.

2. Google can be your calculator. Type a math problem into the search box and google will compute and display the result. You can spell out the equation in words (one plus one, six divided by two), use numbers and symbols (4*5,6/2), or type in a combination of both (ten million *pi, 15% of six).

3. Longer queries is better, but shorter is okay. Google is designed to deliver high quality result even if you are searching for one or two word queries, so its better to keep your search short. But adding a few more words will yield better result.

     For Example : When you are searching information on applying to colleges, include the word admissions after the name of the university you are searching to get more relevent results.

4. Use quotation marks when precision matters. Typing "the truth of linux" into the google search box will yield Web pages about the linux truth - but leaving off the quotes will produce an assortment of unrelated pages.

     The reason behind this : adding quote marks around the search query tells google to look for occurrences of the exact phrase as it was typed. That makes quote marks especially helpful when searching for song lyrics, people's name or expressions such as "to be or not to be" that include very common words.

5. Google can be your dictionary. Type define followed by any English word into the search box, and google will deliver a quick definition at the top of the result.

6. Forgot plural. Google automatically search for all the stems of a word , so you don't need to do separate searches for sleep, sleeps, sleeping. Just type one of the words into the search box, and google will take care of the rest, giving you results all in one list.

Next Post : Google Search Tips - part2

Google's Bigtable

 Big Table is an ongoing research project to create a structured database that will operate in a distributed environment. It is a distributed storage system for managing structured data that is designed to scale to a very large size: petabytes of data across thousands of commodity servers.

It is like a spreadsheet with hugh limitless rows and columns, each rows will be identified by key. It is different from traditional Hierarchy Database where it will have lot of tables and each table will be linked by keys. BigTable will have only one table with limitless rows and columns. We can perform joins, sub selects and other queries in bigtable similar to Traditional hierarchial tables, but in a different way.

Many projects at Google store data in Bigtable, including web indexing, Google Earth, and Google Finance.Bigtable has successfully provided a flexible, high-performance solution for all of these Google products.

Google can crawl text in Flash files

Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, we've improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe's Flash Player technology.

In the past, web designers faced challenges if they chose to develop a site in Flash because the content they included was not indexable by search engines. They needed to make extra effort to ensure that their content was also presented in another way that search engines could find.

Now that we've launched our Flash indexing algorithm, web designers can expect improved visibility of their published Flash content, and you can expect to see better search results and snippets. There's more info on the Webmaster Central blog provides more technical details about the Searchable SWF integration.

Google ratproxy Web Application Tool

A semi-automated, largely passive web application security audit tool, optimized for an accurate and sensitive detection, and automatic annotation, of potential problems and security-relevant design patterns based on the observation of existing, user-initiated traffic in complex web 2.0 environments.

Detects and prioritizes broad classes of security problems, such as dynamic cross-site trust model considerations, script inclusion issues, content serving problems,insufficient XSRF and XSS defenses, and much more.

Ratproxy is currently believed to support Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS X, and Windows (Cygwin) environments.

For more details and download ,please visit google official site here.

Google Warns Against Weak Passwords

Google would like to take this moment to remind you to choose a strong password. Too many passwords are weak or poorly guarded. People choose obvious passwords, like "password," or share them with friends or display them on Post-it notes that hang from their computer monitors.

Surveys detailing such folly can be found at PasswordResearch.com, a site maintained by IT security consultant Bruce K. Marshall. They present findings like 70% of people do not have unique passwords for each Web site and nearly half of all people write down their passwords. Read the papers and weep.

Password security is particularly important for Google because Google Account passwords unlock the keys to an individual's Google kingdom from anywhere in the world. (Google does not currently offer a way to limit Google Account access to certain IP addresses or ranges.) There is no firewall to bypass or office to break into when compromising a Google Account. The right password is all that's needed.

Google engineer HongHai Shen wrote a blog post about password security on Wednesday, acknowledging that fanatical devotion to strong passwords -- generating a random eight character string every two or three months -- probably isn't necessary for everyone. But he still believes passwords should be chosen with care. "Whether it's for your Google account, your banking center, or your favorite store, choosing a good password and keeping it safe can go a long way toward protecting your information online," he wrote in his blog post.

HongHai's advice, though timeworn, bears repeating because so few take such recommendations to heart:

Avoid common elements when choosing your password. That means no words you'd find in a dictionary, which might be vulnerable to "dictionary attacks." It also means that clever concatenated phrases like "letmein" or "opensesame" probably aren't all that clever. Figure too on the fact that patterns on keyboards, like "1234" or "asdf" are available on keyboards all over.

Make your password as unique as possible. This ought to go without saying, but, there, it's been said. Add numbers and non-alphanumeric characters to your password. Mix uppercase and lowercase letters.

Create different passwords for different sites. The benefit of doing so is obvious: If someone does steal your password, he or she doesn't have access to every Internet service you use. Particularly for financial and health sites, you should have unique passwords.

Don't share your passwords with anyone. And don't send them in an e-mail if you can help it.

Be careful how you share your information online. Social networking sites in particular have a poor record of keeping user information private and the gadgets that are popular on many of these sites are not developed with security in mind. If there's a way to find out how these sites and applications share data, it can be worth doing so.

Google provides additional password guidance in its Gmail Help Center documents.

Google: No Web browser plans

Google executives said they have no plans to build a browser and downplayed threats from Microsoft's new advertising system and plans to bundle search into Vista.

Following complaints from the investment community that Google doesn't offer enough insight into the company's business and strategy, Google executives on Wednesday held a live question-and-answer Webcast with analysts.

Asked if Google would consider developing its own browser, as has been speculated for some time, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said, "We would only do so...if we thought there was a real user benefit."

Google makes decisions on what products to develop based on what users want and not on what rival companies are doing, he said. "The industry is obsessed with this browser question. And our observation is you have a number of good browsers now," including Firefox and Apple Computer's Safari.

In response to a question about how Google executives feel about the possibility of losing revenue to advertising customers who may jump ship to Microsoft's new AdCenter, Schmidt predicted that the impact of the competition will be either neutral or positive to Google's business because it will likely encourage even more people to buy ads who aren't already doing so.

"Microsoft entering the market undoubtedly will influence some people to enter the market," he said. "Yahoo and Google will be beneficiaries of more motion."

As far as Microsoft's plan to integrate search into the Vista operating system, of which Google has previously been critical, Schmidt said, "There is a lot of opportunity for Microsoft to change what they're doing based on customer feedback...We want to make sure that the use of the power of Windows is done in a correct and legal way."

Google's partnership with Dell, announced last week, was in no way formed as a response to competition from Microsoft, Schmidt said. Under the deal, millions of Dell PCs will be preloaded with the Google toolbar for Web and PC search, along with a co-branded home page.

"We are ecstatic over the Dell deal," he said. "We did a six-month test because we wanted to test various components of how people would react from an end-user perspective to an integrated offering." Google found that users liked it.

"The thing that distinguishes the Dell deal is its comprehensiveness," Schmidt said. "We obviously would like to do deals like Dell if they test out well."

Asked if the company would consider buying companies rather than just partnering to get more customers and broader distribution of its products, he said no.

"M&A (mergers and acquisitions) as a method to acquire traffic has not historically worked," Schmidt said. "I wouldn't rule that out, but it's unlikely that in and of itself we could just buy customers...It's a bad business strategy, and it's not consistent" with Google's philosophy.

Meanwhile, Google is not planning to create a service that would compete with shopping Web sites by allowing consumers to shop from aggregated merchants for things like iPods, mobile phones and furniture, as analysts speculated, Schmidt said.

A report released on Tuesday by Bear Stearns said: "We understand that Google has contacted some testers recently to run a beta on a new program that allows the testers to shop from 'high quality merchants'...This could be pretty significant, as Google could be using this program to test for large sellers, a way to dump inventory into Google Base, and potentially create an eBay Express/Amazon like experience for buyers."

But according to Schmidt, "we have been working to automate the advertiser cycle. The moment the customer wants to purchase something we want to make that as fast as we can" by building a "payment system that would enable that, but not the kind of payment system that would result in what you are describing."

Asked why Google is working with EarthLink to cover San Francisco with wireless Internet connectivity and also offering Wi-Fi in Silicon Valley's Mountain View, Schmidt said that making sure people have access to high-speed connections will increase the company's business.

"From the very beginning at Google we understood that customers who move from narrowband to broadband are heavy users of Google" and are more likely to click on ads and make purchases, he said.

Google wants to serve as a catalyst and model for the industry to spur the spread of broadband deployment, Schmidt said.

"Lesson one is we are going to do it with partners. Lesson two is that the hardware is moving quickly forward," he said. "We do not yet have an answer to the question which is the obvious question of what are the limits to an advertising-supported model."

Asked what the company's biggest success story has been, Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president for product management at Google, pointed to the integration of Keyhole technology into Google Earth and the ad-based business the mapping has driven. The disappointment has been Google's "offline print efforts," he said, under which Google is selling ads for use in print publications. "That probably hasn't taken off as fast as we'd like."

Asked about how the company plans to gain market share in China, a market dominated by local search company Baidu.com, Schmidt said, "It's too early to call that question for many months...Things don't occur in a month or two, even in China."

Adobe's Buzzword Fails To Compete With Google Docs

I'll say this: Adobe's Buzzword, a cloud computing word processor, sure is pretty. That will be the last positive comment I make about Buzzword, though, which trades functionality for form, simplicity for style, and substance, for, er, Flash.

As many of you surely know, I am a daily user of Google's Docs software. For a change, this post is actually being written in Buzzword, a new online tool from Adobe, purveyor of Flash technology. Adobe also is offering up an online conference tool called ConnectNow, as well as a PDF creator and a repository for you to store and share online files.

First, the sign-up and sign-in process was simply arduous. With absolutely no exaggeration, it took 15 minutes to create and confirm an account, and then sign in and wait for the software to sort itself out. In comparison, I can get from Zero to Productive in about 30 seconds with Google Docs. Just for kicks, I signed back out and back in to Buzzword. The initial loading process of the software takes several minutes. That didn't change even though I attempted it three separate times. That's way too long for a sign-in process. (I checked my broadband speeds: 10.5 Mbps down, and 1.8 Mbps up. That should be plenty fast to load some Flash software.)

The user interface takes Google's simplicity and chucks it out the window. Smooth, gorgeous animations float all about the screen as you mouse over action items and icons. Along the top of the document is the expected set of document tools that allow you to change the font, type size, coloring, formatting, and so on. To the right of that is a set of six different expandable icons that let you do a few other things, such as insert paragraphs, lists, images, tables, etc.

In the bottom left corner of the screen is a "share" button. Clicking this lets you share the document with other users. You can also access you other documents stored on Adobe's servers.

The style of the user interface was obviously crafted carefully. The animations are all nice and fun to interact with, but I have to question how much fun it will really be day in and day out.

Was this document created successfully? Yes. Can I share it with others? Yes. Does it perform the basic functions of word processing without too much fuss? Yes.

But as Google has added functionality to its Docs programs over the last 18 months, I find them to be richer in overall usefulness.

Buzzword is a good first effort. I expect Adobe to make improvements over time.

Google outlines Web development investments in three areas

To encourage the creation of more Web-based applications during the next several years, Google will invest in three key areas for developers, including opening up its servers to host their applications, encouraging pervasive connectivity to the Web, and making the browser more powerful, says Vic Gundotra, Google's vice president of engineering, who the led opening keynote speech at this year's Google Developer Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

"Google was born in the era of the Web," Gundotra says. "It's the only platform we've known. It was a platform that was formed by consensus. It was all of us collectively that agreed to a few standards. We feel a debt of gratitude toward that community."

Gundotra conceded that Web developers working atop Google-provided development tools and servers would lead to remunerative opportunities for the Mountain View, Calif.-based giant. "As the Web gets bigger and enables better Web apps, it attracts more users. For us, more users means more Google searches, which leads to more revenue. But the money we make will get dumped back into the platform."

Here's a summary of Google's investment plans (though they never specified dollar amounts):

1. Making the Cloud More Accessible

Google will open up the Google data centers so that developers can more easily scale their applications. This means that developers will still create their app locally on their machines and test it, but once it's ready, they can deploy it to millions of users, according to Gundotra.

This will be done using the Google App Engine. Kevin Gibbs, Tech Lead for the Google App Engine, told the audience that the product would be free for up to five million page views a month. After that, a price plan will be worked out involving metrics such as page views, storage and CPUs.

2. Keeping Connectivity Pervasive

Google believes the mobile revolution will improve connectivity, and it's betting on its Android platform to be the central place for development on top of the mobile Web. Gundotra says the various mobile platforms (such as Windows mobile, Apple's SDK, and RIM's BlackBerry platform) are "too fragmented." In his view, an open source, mobile stack can centralize mobile development, which Google believes will be embodied by Android.

During the presentation, Steve Horowitz, Android's engineering director, displayed the Android platform's capabilities on a touch screen phone. These included some of Google's basic apps, such as Gmail and calendaring, and a more complex Google Maps feature called street view, which allows users to see pictures of streets in major cities.

3. Make the Client (Browser) More Powerful

Google believes its Gears plug-in (which allows people to take Web apps offline and utilize the power of their desktop) and HTML 5 represent the future of the Web-browser. By using these tools to extend the capabilities of JavaScript, Gundotra says, Web apps can become more powerful and more rich.

Google releases Google Earth plug-in and API

Google is looking to expand the reach of Google Earth with a new browser plug-in and API released Wednesday that allows developers to infuse 3-D geographic views into Web applications.

The new tools will let users "fly" over different venues on Earth or access other features of Google's digital globe without having to run the client installation of Google Earth. Google hopes the plug-in and API will make Google Earth as popular among developers as the company's Google Maps application, whose API now runs on more than 150,000 sites, noted Paul Rademacher, technical lead for the Google Earth plug-in and API.

"We recognize that there are tens of thousands Map API sites," he said. "We want those to all be 3-D enabled very easily, so we're making it possible for existing sites to be 3-D enabled with a single line of JavaScript code. What's been missing [in Google Earth] is the ability for developers to use Google Earth inside their own Web pages. Now inside a Web page you'll be able to fly through San Francisco or see a 3-D model of a cabin with exactly the view out the window of the mountains."

Rademacher said he expects Google Earth to be particularly popular on real estate sites so people can get a 3-D view of houses and on travel sites where consumers can see the view from a hotel room.

Google said key features of the API include:

-- The ability to embed Google Earth inside any Web page with only a few lines of code;

-- A JavaScript API to enable rich Earth-based web applications;

-- Support for manipulating KML and the 3-D environment to create polygons, lines and placemarks;

-- The ability to view the thousands of existing 3-D buildings, or add a developer's own 3D models; and

-- Support for switching to Google Sky mode for high-resolution imagery of stars, planets, and galaxies.

Google made the Google Earth announcement in conjunction with its Google I/O developer conference that got underway Wednesday in San Francisco.

"This is a relatively rare example of Google releasing a new technology to developers first," Rademacher noted. "Now we're very comfortable with the fact that developers do great things when you give them a new tool."

Google holds meeting on revived Microsoft-Yahoo deal

Executives of Google Inc. held an emergency meeting last night to discuss the implications of revived talks between Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., according to a report in The Times in the U.K.

Over the weekend, Microsoft said it might be interested in buying part of Yahoo, but not all of it.

For the past month or so, Google has been in talks with Yahoo to extend a two-week test whereby Yahoo would deliver Web advertising from Google alongside its own search results. According to various reports, that deal could be solidified this week.

Google and Yahoo could not be reached for comment at deadline. Microsoft declined comment

Speaking at the Google Zeitgeist conference in Hertfordshire, which was hosted by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the company CEO Eric Schmidt said, "After this press conference, the three of us will meet and decide what our response is," according to The Times.

The renewed talks between Microsoft and Yahoo come as billionaire investor Carl Icahn gears up to launch a proxy fight to replace Yahoo's board of directors. Icahn and other investors are angry that Yahoo snubbed Microsoft's initial offer to purchase the company for US$44.6 billion.

In addition, according to The Times, Brin said Monday that he would give Yahoo's CEO, Jerry Yang, "refuge within Google" if he were forced out of the company. Brin also said Google had not yet ruled out a deal with Yahoo, The Times said.

Google, Not Yahoo, Now Top Destination why?

As Google trounced Yahoo in various fields, fans of the second company could always point out that its sites received more U.S. traffic overall. New comScore stats show that this is no longer true.

In April, 140.6 million Americans visited Yahoo's properties, and 141.1 million stopped by Google's, according to the research company. Microsoft, if it matters, saw closer to 121 million visitors.

But even as it sits in third place, Microsoft's probably having a laugh over all this; comScore's news puts Yahoo in a significantly weaker position as Carl Icahn does his thing. Since Google achieved a higher year-over-year growth rate - 18
percent versus seven - it doesn't look like Yahoo is liable to take back the top spot on its own.

For Yahoo's supporters, here's the one encouraging point: Nathania Johnson reports, "Yahoo does still lead in page views, meaning either people are returning or are more engaged in Yahoo content. Yahoo had 33.6 billion page views while Google saw 28.7 billion page views."

Oh, and Yahoo should still have the lead in photo-sharing with Flickr, whereas Google is shutting down its Hello product.

Whatever happens in Google's peripheral industry dabbling, the search giant lives up to its core reputation by grabbing 67.9 percent of US searches in April, a 4 percent increase year-over-year, according to Hitwise.

The usual rivals are present in the top four with a noticeable decline for third-place breath-holder MSN. Microsoft's confusingly branded search engine dropped from 6.65 percent in March to 6.26 percent in April, down from 7.77 percent a year ago, and down significantly from search share once hovering around 12 percent.

Yahoo has shown little change over time, dropping from 20.29 percent in March to 20.28 percent in April. Ask.com showed an increase in usage, gaining from 4.09 percent to 4.17 percent. The remaining 45 search engines Hitwise measured accounted for only 1.4 percent combined.

Please share your thoughts as comments 'why Google is Top Destination?'.

Google announces plans for free open source OS

It seems every day Google is coming up with new ways to impact our daily lives.

Therefore, one could reason Google's Android cellphone OS was simply the beginning as Google looks towards home and business computing (and not purely running software inside a browser window).

One potential growth market could be a more fully developed OS.

This is a prediction that Google will announce plans before the end of the year to release an open source operating system - i.e., one that can be fully operational on a desktop computer and serve as a basis for that computer - not simply Android as it currently stands running on a PC, nor an emulator, but a real-deal OS. (Let us not mince words.)

If this comes true, this operating system will be viewed as a direct threat against Windows and OS X.

The intended goal need only be announced by Google publicly, that it also be open source based, and reported by the mainstream media in the US some time in 2008. Rumors do not count. It needs to be official.