Technology Madness

Google gunning for IE with Chrome

In 2008, Google chrome become aggressive in browser market, accomplished some OEM deals for Chrome browser. Currently Internet explorer commands approximately 70% of market, 20% is covered by Firefox and rest is shared between Chrome, Safari and others.

However, now, Google is in street, started fighting directly against IE. Since last few days, Google is putting “Install Google Chrome” button on top right corner of IE browser when you visit Google in Internet explorer and recommend installing Chrome. However, no chrome ads on Firefox though.

It’s now clear that Google wants you to live your life around Google in every possible way. In fact, I would love if Firefox and Chrome can both combine togather. Chromefire? FireChrome? Chromefox?

See latest Chrome advertizement:

Google’s Big Blunder: “This site may harm your computer”.

Since this morning every search query on Google.com is labeled with “This site may harm your computer.” What the heck! Even Google’s own pages are labeled with the same warning. Even if you want to ignore that warning, google will stop you on next page with another big warning:
“Warning - visiting this web site may harm your computer!”

This is clearly a blunder of Google and may be potential lawsuit from many company for harming their online reputation. As I write this, there is no warning information on google blog

See this screen snap:

Update: As of 10:25 ET, things are just fine but the reddit community confirms that Google searches were suffered worldwide. No word from Google Yet.

Update: 12:02 EST, Google has posted an update to its official Google blog that attributes this fairly major “bug” to human error: “We periodically receive updates to that list and received one such update to release on the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs.

Earlier Google Blog reported that Google gets its list of bad URLs from stopBadware.org. However, stopnadware.org denied such statement. Later, Google updated its earlier post and stated that “bug” was due human error.

‘/’ has been removed and placed where it belongs to… All in all, things are happy now!

Update: 3:05 ET, I notice that some of my legitimate gmail email that I received between this down time, went to spam folder of my gmail:

See this screen snap of legitimate email that I used to get in my inbox but today it went to spam.

Example 1: Google’s own email went to Spam

Example 2:

Extra reading: Google’s Black Day: Truths - Myths - Pros - Cons via PavanKumar

Google Energy Savings Calculator with Halloween Theme

Halloween is around the corner. Google has long been eco-conscious. From tips on how to save energy in data centers, to investments in plug-in cars and batteries and a fleet of PHEVs. Recently Google have created a handy energy saving calculator to help us see how simple steps in/around your house can save few hundreds and prevent scary carbon emission. In addition, Google have also put together a webpage full of tricks to help you save energy and more importantly—your money. I punch in my numbers; here is my result from the bottom of the page: “You can save 7000 pounds of CO2. That’s equivalent to not driving your car for 212 days.”

By estimation, If 80% of us follow just one simple trick (close fireplace flue in winter) we could save over $6 billion a year. So what’s your contribution, I would say what is your commitment to eliminate carbon emission produced from your home?

Via [Google Official blog]

Don’t Miss:

• Visualising energy usage to change habits: Part A - Power Conscience
• Visualising energy usage to change habits: Part B: The Home Joule

Get unlimited email addresses from Gmail.Google.com

You must have experienced how Gmail is cool and better than its peers. But do you know that you can create unlimited gmail address for yourself from your primary account. Let’s say, my email address is – technologymadness@gmail.com. Here are three different ways you can get unlimited Gmail address and still get your mail to your primary account.

Tip 1: Insert one or several dots (”.”) anywhere in your email address.
technologymadness@gmail.com is same as technology.madness@gmail.com, tech.nology.mad.ness@gmail.com (you can insert as may as dot you want and create a new email address) so on and so forth. All these email variants ultimately delivers emails to my main-primary account: technologymadness@gmail.com

Tip 2: Append a plus (”+”) sign and any combination of words or numbers after your email address.
So technologymadness+Craigslist@gmail.com (email comes from my craigslist listing), technologymadness+family@gmail.com (email comes from my sister/brother/parents) and technologymadness+junk@gmail.com (email comes from my ex or boss)– all these emails ultimately delivers your mail to your primary account. So next time when you are registering on a site or a forum or any freebees sites and all you need to give them their email address with (+) varient, and later you can create a filter for the specific email which comes from that address to skip the inbox and get archived. Cool, isn’t it?

Tip 3: You get 2 email addresses automatically!
If you got abc@gmail.com, you automatically get another email address which is abc@googlemail.com. And yes, it’s the same as abc@gmail.com-your primary account. So Now you can apply tip 1 and 2 (above) to your googlemail.com email address and have some more emails.

You can start organizing all your emails effectively using above tips. Let me know how is your experience about it?

Additional Gmail Tips:

• Conduct Survey by email using Gmail @labnol.org
• 11 Power Tips for Gmail @mattcutts.com
• Migrating from Gmail to Google Apps or other email accounts to Gmail @sudarmuthu.com

Update (08/03/2008):

I notice that several sites do reject addresses with a plus sign. You might use other services like Mailinator for disposable addresses instead. Also, you can use the services like SpamGourmet, which redirects mail to your real address. Good Luck!

Via [gmailblog.blogspot and Know more about gmail @digisteps.com]

Google introduced speech-to-text technology and search for spoken content of speech

Google introduced speech-to-text technology and search for spoken content of speech. This is huge. Currently this functionality is added to some of the YouTube videos that enable you to search for text spoken in these videos. You can see what’s coming next from Google. I guess its still under beta version as its available through google gadget only to your Google homepage only. Using the gadget you can search spoken content as well as gadget will tell you exactly when words are spoken in the video, you can jump right to the most relevant parts of the videos.

According to Google blog: The gadget only searches videos uploaded to YouTube’s Politicians channels, which include videos from Senator Obama’s and Senator McCain’s campaigns, as well as those from dozens of other candidates and politicians

Here’s a look:

If your search query match some YouTube video, the positions indicates by yellow marker- and hover the mouse to read the text.

Via [in their own words political videos]

Releated: blinkx video search engine @ labnol.blogspot.com

Friday Thrill From Google Maps

Upside Down House Caught in Google map. In fact it’s not a real house but an amusement park in ‘Orlando, Florida’, called Wonder Works. This amusement park is featuring over 100 interactive exhibits for the entire family.

View Larger Map

Disaster - House fire caught in Google map camera in the small town of Gibson, Arkansas.

View Larger Map

“Landform” by Charles Jencks - an immaculately sculpted earth, grass and water monument in the grounds of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. Read more about Charles Jencks, the artist and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art at Wikipedia.

View Larger Map

Tour the Tour de France with Street View

From July 5th Tour de France is started. I am not going to be there to watch, and there are plenty of coverage (official Tour site is at letour.fr, You can get live updates, photo galleries, video highlights and in-depth analysis of TdF website at VeloNews. Tour De France video coverage optimized for iPhone at mobile.velonews.com. Cyclingnews.com and Pez Cycling News have dedicated and comprehensive TdF coverage with live reports, news and videos. Wired has a great online guide to the Tour, You tube Tour De France 2008 Video coverage) but What if I want take a look at the route from a spectator’s view? Google thought about that, and has developed a Street View of the entire route of Tour de France

Watch official video below or take a tour in Google Maps

Google’s blog post announcing the launch gives us the info:

With this launch, you can now follow the race through each of the 21 stages with just a click of a mouse and enjoy a perspective similar to what your favorite cyclists see as they wind through France’s majestic mountains, vivacious cities, and tranquil countryside.

The Tour de France route marks our first launch of Street View imagery in Europe, and we’re bringing with us some of our newly released features such as ground-filling and face blurring.

View Larger Map

MapMyRide.com also has interactive maps of the Tour de France. Each stage is marked out and people can view the course on street maps, satellite maps, or even download right into Google Earth and ‘Fly the Course’ in 3D. MapMyRide.com’s Tour de France Maps

Via [Google Blog and Wired.com wiki website and google.com/tourdefrance2008]

Designer Indian Saree Inspired by Google Search

Famous Indian fashion designer, Satya Paul, is inspired by Google and came up with an idea of Google Saree. (Actually, nothing to do with technology or what Google does, but still this is some interesting piece of art) (What is Saree?, definition of sari/saree) In fact Google is written as “Oogle” on saree (replacing the “G” in the Google logo with “O”) maybe to avoid any brand name issues with the search company—Google. Here is the picture of fashion model wearing Saree but frankly specking she is not wearing it properly as her foot is visible when she is walking. It’s good effort though but not executed very well.

Anyway, are you feeling luck?

Via [labnol.org and Top 5 designer sarees of 2007]

Similar reading:

• cool outdoor advertising by google AT Chandoo.org

• Katherine Heigl of Grey’s Anatomy wears a sari for her upcoming film 27 Dresses: See pictures here and here

Google finance trick: Get multiple stock quote is one click.

Every morning when I come to work, I check current price of my favorite stocks/ETFs. The easiest way for me to type ticker symbol in Google search box, hit enter and get the stock quote. But I have a long list of stocks that I would like to know today’s price. So, I need to enter one-by-one ticker symbol and get a quote one at a time. But here is the kicker: to view multiple stock quotes and/or fund information, enter two or more ticker symbols (rather than company names) into the Google search box. If all ticker symbols are correct then Google will give you “Stock quotes” link that includes all ticket symbols that you entered earlier. And Clicking on that link will give you all stocks quote in subsequent page including other useful information about each stock. Its a small trick but saves little bit time and few clicks.

Yahoo beats Google in providing real time stock quote

Yesterday, Yahoo Finance declared to provide real time stock quote on their finance portal. They announce the availability of free US real-time ECN (ECN stands for electronic communication network, and serves as alternative trading place to the various exchanges) quotes on Yahoo! Finance. Yahoo has partnered with a company called BATS Trading for such service.

As a matter of fact, Yahoo introduced such real time data back in August 2006 but later due to change in pricing structure, it’s been removed from Yahoo! Finance. But now, it’s back.

Google is still behind in the race of providing real time stock quote. (However, they (Google finance) do provide major Indices data in real time, but not any individual stock price - reference: here)

Check it out on http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=GS and watch your favorite stock in real-time.

Here’s a screen shot from the normal quote page: (After the market closed, it stopped saying “real time” and started saying “After hours”):

Update: [June 3, 2008] Google just announced that they’ll be providing stock prices in real time on the Google Finance website. However, NYSE and Dow quotes remain delayed

Who else join the gang in providing live-real time quote: CNBC, Google, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network and Xignite.

“This is an important, and in many ways, overdue development in the U.S. securities markets,” stated Adena Friedman, Executive Vice President, NASDAQ OMX. “With universal access to the Internet and the real-time nature of the web, investors need real time data, and now they don’t have to pay for it, thanks to CNBC, Google, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network and Xignite.”

Via [Yahoo Finance Blog and Google blog and BATS trading press release, Nasdaq] lifehacker.com