It started with hacking originated from IPs within China that “stole Google’s intellectual property”. Google is the tech leader in Internet. If the hackers were sophisticated enough to breach Google’s defense, wouldn’t they be sophisticated enough to spoof IPs or capture computers outside China so that it does not look like the hacking were from within China? If the security breach were the major reason of the decision, wouldn’t the right response be to shore up the defense, rather than pulling out of an important market?

If censoring search results were the main reason, why was Google okay with it in the past many years? What good will it do by pulling out of China? It is not going to help the free flow of information in China. Now there is not even a foreign competition in the Chinese search market. How would that help bring information to the Chinese people? Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information. Isn’t China a big part of the world? Doesn’t this decision go against Google’s mission?

It would have been much more productive to stay in China and continue to stimulate the competition in the search market in China because that would help a lot more to the eventual free flow of information in China. Now Google just became an irrelevant bystander in search in China.

For example, when you search digital cameras, it shows the images of 1,562 digital cameras in an semi-3D array, see image on the left. You can scroll up and down to pick the ones that look nice to you, or you can use the feature selector on the left to select number of pixels, zoom, price range, etc, and it will narrow down the image array to the ones matching the selected features. So it provides quick way to visually find a camera you like.

On Bing Visual Search, it also offers other pre-made visual searches, including dog breeds, handbags, movies, even politicians. The downside of this visual search feature is that each of these visual searches has to be manually built, very much like the old Yahoo directories, only now with visual navigation. So there is the scalability and timeliness issues. Visual search will work well on things where the looks matter, these actually include many things, such as handbags, shoes, sunglasses, furniture, home decor, fashion, travel, pets, etc. As long as a category is popular enough to warrant the man power to create a visual search for it, it can be done. Because it is pre-made, it will suffer in the real-time-ness of the data. New items may not be included days after launch or until it becomes popular.

Many players have tried different ways of doing visual search, and they all have failed to gain traction. The right areas for visual search should be things where looks matter, there is huge search volume, and it can be monetized.  Shopping and travel are two top candidates. Another area is dating. The first dating site that will bring the Bing Visual Search feature for browsing potential dates will be a hueg hit.

Bing has been providing good search results on par with Google. With the new visual search feature and other planned features to be relased around Christmas this year, we believe that Bing will start to gain market share. This is good thing because when there is only one dominant player in an area, the competition and hence the innovation goes down, and the prices go up.  However, people’s habits are hard to change. Most people’s search needs are met by Google, I doubt the visual search will be enough to convert many people. It may draw some curious drive-by traffic, but it may not be enough to draw people back when they need to do quick search.

Another example is the 8% discount you get on eBay buy-it-now when you use Bing to search for something and then follow the eBay ad to eBay. Many people first pick something they want to buy, just before they click the buy button, they go to Bing to search for a product, then click on the 8% off eBay ad to come back to eBay. Refreshing the screen of the item you want to buy, the 8% discount now shows up. The 8% discount draws people to Bing, but these same people may not use Bing to search for other things.

Surprisingly, one small feature in Bing that has drawn attention from school kids is the high definition images that Bing display on its home page, where when you float your cursors on different parts of the image, an interesting fact and a search link pops up.

What do you think of the search war between Google and Microsoft? What will make you switch to Bing?

Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook have shocked the world by acquiring feed aggregators Friendfeed and also hiring the social networking sites four founders to important positions inside the newly purchased company.

The four founders of Friendfeed were ex-google staff Paul Buchheit, Sanjeev Singh, Jim Norris and Bret Taylor. Most notably, Buchheit was the mastermind behind creating gmail, launching inital advertising products as well as the trusted don’t be evil philosophy.

It is not a huge surprise that Facebook have finally bought Friendfeed since over the past couple of years, they have taken numerous features from the content aggregator site including the “like” option. In addition, Facebook knew themselves that their competitors had a more developed news feed set-up with real time updates, which users from facebook could really do with since they have to refresh the page every other minute!

In addition to acquiring Friendfeed, Facebook have also announced that it is going to release its own unique search engine and they feel that having ex google engineers by their side from Friendfeed will give them all the experience they require! Are Facebook going in for the kill to be the next search engine giant by competing against Google? The next couple of months will be very interesting to see since Google will soon be concerned with how much traffic they recieve in comparison to the ever growing Facebook.

Friendfeed’s reaction to the purchase

Earlier today, Friendfeed released their own press release displaying their feelings towards the takeover, expressing this is the best thing for the company:

The FriendFeed team is extremely excited to become a part of the talented Facebook team. We’ve always been great admirers of Facebook, and our companies share a common vision. Now we have the opportunity to bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world and to work alongside Facebook’s passionate engineers to create even more ways for you to easily share with your friends online.

What does this mean for my FriendFeed account?

FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being. We’re still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team. As usual, we will communicate openly about our plans as they develop — keep an eye on the FriendFeed News group for updates.

Facebook’s feelings towards the acquiring of Friendfeed

Yesterday, Facebook released their own press release effectively saying that this a great move since the two social networking sites have been close friends over the years:

PALO ALTO, CALIF.—August 10, 2009—Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.

“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”

“As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they’ve built and their desire to have us contribute to it,” said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founder. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, added, “It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook’s engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group.”

Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they’ve brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.

“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”

FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

Do you think Facebook will ever become bigger than Google since they have such experienced ex-workers with them now? Or will Google react quickly and effectively by perhaps purchasing Twitter? Please feel free to comment below

http://addons.mozilla.org/ - perhaps the best time saving site ever created?

The biggest advantage FireFox has over other browsers such as Chrome, is the vast collection of free add-ons there are on offer!

Over the last five years, FireFox has been developing and growing at a substantial rate, establishing itself as the most used open source browser. Why has it come such a long way? Well, when users go onto FireFox, they find it to be easy to use, clean interface and most importantly the extensions ( add-ons) which makes online browsing oh so much better and beneficial.

Browser Extensions

Browser extensions refers to codes that are able to be installed inside the browser in order to add an extra feature or function for the user. Hence, we call these jigsaw of codes, add-ons. In addition to adding a new feature, extensions allow us to change the browser interface, adding a language translator, altering the browser’s look and feel by displaying a new theme and more!

For a wide selection of all of Firefox’s add-ons just visit Mozilla’s add-on site. Here you can see and download over 9000 add-ons which are bound to be useful in one or another! Also, when you install all add-ons they arrive in .xpi format but do not worry you’re computer will change it for you.

In this post. I will display what I think is Firefox’s hottest 10 add-ons available to download in sequence. Thus, let’s begin!

1.Greasemonkey

Greasemonkey was one of the first ever add-ons i downloaded into FireFox. Effectively, it allows you to install scripts to any HTML web-page and each time you revisit that page, the changes will always be there. With the scripts you download and manage them, create new ones as well as use manipulation on them and the ability to edit the ones you have downloaded. Another aspect that makes Greasemonkey the best add-on is because you can activate and deactivate any one of your scripts with one click!

Once you have installed Greasemonkey and restarted your browser, you should click on the symbol which enables the application. In order to find already built user scripts visit here. When you find a script you like, merely click install and Greasemonkey will do the rest for you and then supplies you with information about the sites compatibility circumstances.

The whole application revolves around Greasemonkey’s context menu. Here you can enable, disable or un-install any script you have and in addition you will find all the scripts that are obtainable on the left hand side. If you select a script you can see you a full description of each script. Right at the beginning, I found it hard to find how to create a new user script, as silly as it sounds, but all you need to do is go to click on Greasemonkey Menu/New user script.

Greasemonkey is a fantastic application once you get used to it but the initial stages are a bit tricky. Nevertheless, it is an add-on that is easy to use,manage and make user scripts which will make more features to all websites you visit as well as save some valuable time!

Rating : 10/10

2. Adblock Plus

Adblock Plus is also an extremely useful add-on and it was a hard decision putting it at second. This is because the add-on blocks the biggest waste of bandwidth on the Internet, all the advertisements. Instead users, would like to see the content not to look at unattractive ads suggesting You can lose 2 stone in 1 week which everyone knows is not possible!

Adblock Plus allows the browser to filter and stop online adverts, make up your own rules, blocking of flash format and white-listing function. It is a great updated version of Adblock but with many more useful features. In order to enable Adblock Plus, well it’s really quite simple!  Just follow these steps below to make these blockers function properly!

• Add a filter by right clicking on the item you want to discard and click on the Adblock image. You need the web address of the banner you want to get rid and finally check the blocking filter box.
• If this isn’t enough protection for you, go to advanced view where you can block one whole domain.
• In Adblock Plus’s preferences, you can find out what filters have been set for which sites. Thus, it shows the your exceptions, ad blocking rules and filter subscriptions. From here, you are able to add, enable, disable, remove and edit any filters you please.

Overall, Adblock Plus is possibly the most useful add-on out there since it blocks out adverts that ruins your online experience and the settings are easy to customize for your use only.

Rating: 9.5/10

3. ReminderFox

Reminderfox is a sort of add-on that is accustomed to users who either have a bad memory or users that are constantly going to the same site over and over again on a daily basis. The growing add-on allows us to easily manage lists that you need to do/reminders, integrated alarms and notifications and automated synchronization of reminders to your handheld devices!

As soon as you have set a specific reminder, Reminderfox produces a ribbon-like icon in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. In addition, there is almost colour key that shows you the importance of each reminder. The key is as follows:

• Red signifies the reminder is on this day, thus being red-hot in importance.
• Blue represents that it is an upcoming reminder, i.e. two or three days.
• Grey shows that there are not any reminders in the next couple of weeks of any importance.

When you hover over the ReminderFox image, a calender will appear in front you showing you important work you must complete. Here is where you are able to add, delete or edit any reminder you want by selecting Add Reminder. When you are in this option, there are more specific things you can do such as set a time, date or any other notes you prefer to have to help you. Other features include synchronization of the calender with reminders, to -do lists, notifications or customized lists made by you. In addition an alarm can be put on so if you have trouble waking up in the mornings, this can be your assistant!

Overall, this add-on is great for everyone because if you are always on the Internet browsing or working, this application can remind you instantly so there is no way you will forget that haircut appointment at 1pm!

Rating: 9/10

Credit: https://addons.mozilla.org/

4. SmarterFox

SmarterFox is one of my favourite add-ons because the job it does it genius. It allows your browsing to be 2x as fast by speeding up common tasks. This means you get quicker searching, downloading, visiting, copy/paste option and much more.

When searching for a particular keyword, for example, ‘football’ the application highlights it and displays icons linking back to Google, Youtube, Amazon and Wikipedia. If you click on the Youtube icon it takes you to videos that are associated directly with ‘football’ so it could come up with players who are currently big in newspapers. There are many other features to Smarterfox, but I will just share a few below:

• Save bandwidth by downloading all images/videos on the same page.
• Change between rival search engines with just one click!
• Search by highlighting a block of words and then clicking on the desired bubble.
• Results from Google already show whilst typing in your search bar!
• Alter text based urls into clickable links to websites.

Don’t like one of these features? SmarterFox also allows you to disable any one of them by going to Tools/Smarterfox.

In conclusion, Smarterfox is a great tool saving time and bandwidth. From the name, you can see the add-on is always one step ahead of the game and from just a few of the unique features, we can see this! Fast, reliable and smart. A great tool for any user!

Rating : 9/10

5. Web Developer

Web Developer is a neat little add-on which acts as a supplementary toolbar that is integrated into FireFox supplying an assortment of tools for developers and website designers. The add-on gives code validation tools, a vast selection of keyboard shortcuts, a context menu and a View Source option.

The increasingly popular extension is installed as an extra toolbar and thus can be played with via the view menu and when you have tampered with a few of the options, you will see how effective this add-on can really be as well being easy to use.

What does the toolbar contain?

The toolbar has many aspects to it that is in the best interest of all developers out there. To start proceedings, the toolbar contains:

• HTML editor and source viewer/editor.
• User-created spreadsheets and the ability to edit CSS web pages.
• Resources aimed at developers for scripts, forms or styles.
• Useful individual tools such as links, tables and line guides.
• If you have the latest FireFox version, you can use the Document Object Model (DOM) inspector which allows you to inspect, browse and edit the DOM of all the documents you see.
• Validation tools include Feeds, HTML, CSS, Links and WAI.

Subsequently, this tool is a must-have for all web developers as it looks as if it is useless but can turn a normal website designer into one of the worlds best.

Rating : 9/10

Credit: https://addons.mozilla.org/

6. Wolfram Alpha Google

Recently, I have installed this new add-on but I find it to be one of very good use! The new knowledge search engine, Wolfram Alpha, have effectively joined forces with Google making an great add-on. When you install the add-on, which is a simple process of selecting install, type into google something that interests you, for example a famous place like London the add-on will load some brief information about the city. It will load for this particular example the city’s population, weather, time, elevation and where it is located in England.

This is a great extension because it is bringing detailed, useful information into one search because let’s face it, no one wants to search a ten thousand word page on wikipedia to find just one figure! It is a great new feature which will be beneficial to every user since its mathematical, specific and right down to the point. You are able to search for just about anything and still find some very interesting information, if anything! Much more additional features to come since there is so much more developers can add to this extension!

Overall, a great FireFox extension that is valuable to users, especially for students, who need to know distinct facts and figures for their research. A needy add-on for all as you can save huge amounts of time and bandwidth!

Rating: 8.5/10

7. FireFTP

FireFTP wipes out the need for another client outside Firefox such as SmartFTP. This open source add-on contains everything you need to transfer files to your website. FireFTP includes:

• Support for recursions of SSL/TLS/SFTP/CHMOD.
• File condensing and hashing.
• Regular checks.
• IPv6 support.
• 100% secure sessions
• Directory synchronization
• FXP support and much more.

As soon as you have completed the installation process, you can go to FireFTP by the Tools menu. The user space opens into a new tab and out opens a three section page. One for the server directory( located right), one for the local directory (located left) and the remaining one lies across the bottom of the page is for the status of what is happening in the transferring of files and logs it.

In order to commence transferring files across to your web space, you first have to make an account via FTP Host. Login entering your user-name and password and when you have logged in for the first time, you can login from any other FireFTP add-on in the world!

Overall, a good add-on for both beginners and advanced website holders. Though, this is a more compressed version of the desktop edition of FTP client, it still displays many of the advanced features that the more established version contains.

Rating: 8.5/10

Credit: https://addons.mozilla.org/

8. FoxyTunes

Media Player extension, FoxyTunes, is a relatively fresh FireFox add-on however it has been a big hit with the users that is for sure, with over ten and a half million downloads in less than four months! FoxyTunes enables you to see your iTunes or Windows Media Player at the top of your screen whilst still switching between websites!  Some of the valuable features include:

• Ability to toggle with volume, next/previous track button and play-lists.
• Search for the lyrics of a specific song, pictures for an album, artist biographies as well music related to the genre you are currently listening to!
• Auto-hide button
• Supports iTunes, WMP, Songbird, Winamp, VLC and many more!
• Ability to stream from sites like last.fm straight to your media player via FoxyTunes!

FoxyTune’s mobile toolbar can be moved anywhere on screen and can be customized to your liking by tweaking some keyboard shortcuts, colours and button types. This web media player can be even placed on your desktop so if you’re in the middle of playing a game and need some inspiration, FoxyTunes is for you! With the general hype of social networks and blogs, you can submit what songs you are listening to and which ones are your most played to your Twitter account to your WordPress blog as well as having an alarm clock synchronization option which, as we know, is extremely useful.

In conclusion, this FireFox extension is for those who love music and need to have it around with them throughout their tiring day. If you are not so fond of music, it is worth a look since it can perform a selection of actions and well can improve your online experience!

Rating: 8/10

9. Xmarks

Xmarks ( also known as Foxmarks) is one of the best, if not the best bookmarking tool and add-on. If you have use more than one computer daily, i.e. computer in the day and laptop in the night, this is the ideal extension for you. This is because Xmarks keeps all your bookmarks from all your browsers i.e IE, Chrome and Firefox in order. Astonishingly, Xmarks collects data from over seven hundred thousand bookmarking sites, each with a wide range of site suggestions and small bits of information regarding these sites.

In addition, once you have installed the add-on into your browser, the Xmarks icon appears on the right hand side of the address bar and thus displays some brief information about the site i.e. its niche and also lower down the add-on highlights five similar sites, that have been ordered against the number of people who have bookmarked that particular site. Some users may find it hard to synchronize their bookmarks with this add-on, thus let me break it down even further for you,

• Run the automatic configuration wizard, where all you need to do is enter you desired user-name and password. There is only a problem in this stage if Xmarks has identified a registered account with the same account, in which case you change user-names.
• In order to keep all your bookmarks in one group for a specific laptop/computer, you are able to make several profiles via the Profile Manager. You will need to create/edit other profiles. Here you can decide where all your bookmarks go i.e. to which profile and browser.
• Finally, you must assign yourself an individual PIN code as Xmarks may lose your password in the database and making sure account will not be hacked in the future.

This is a great little add-on to have as it helps your browsing substantially. Thus, when you are browsing to find some news on a classic, famous rugby player, Xmarks will give you sites that will be beneficial to your search.

Rating: 7.5/10

10. Glubble for Families

The Glubble add-on is very much ideal for close families with small children. This gives them the chance to connect on an online term as it enables users to take part in fun online activities, be on time for family outings ( which can be a pain in remembering), and the ability to send messages, photos, videos to other family members, effectively acting as a safe facebook. All of the preferences are set via the toolbar which is mostly taken up by family notifications.

Glubble seems to be for young children only as there is a child mode, which limits particular sites that the youth can go on, protecting them from the threatening side of the world wide web. In addition, there is a much more childish interface which users can change to their liking and the web page seems to be secure since the children need to figure out the parent password to get onto the real Internet, which is impossible since parents think of the hardest passwords imaginable. One nifty feature Glubble gives us is that you are able to approve certain sites for individual children, thus is one child is three and the other is thirteen, there is a distinct difference in what they would search/look at.

Overall, a great add-on for family users with all these secured features but a bit useless for all of the 66% of the population which is why i ranked it the lowest! Nevertheless, still a good extension.

Rating : 7/10

I hope this helps you on decision of which extensions to download since there is a huge selection…

Do you not agree with this list? Are there add-ons that are clearly better and are missed out?  Please feel free to comment below!

"Our long-term goal is providing hardware for devices with different operating systems...more competition will drive up more innovations and that's good for consumers,"

Chip makers Intel, have announced publicly that they have been participating in the development of Chrome OS.

With the highly anticipated release of Google’s own operating system, many of us considered that Google couldn’t launch an operating on their own. Thus, Google’s Sundar Pichai confirmed this rumour and unveiled a list on Wednesday quoting,

“The Google Chrome OS team is currently working with a number of technology companies to design and build devices that deliver an extraordinary end user experience. Among others, these companies include Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.”

As you can see, Intel were not included in this group of tech giants. But an Intel representative validated that they worked with Google on the exciting project and the Intel-insider further proved this in saying they were delighted with the progress and outcome of Chrome OS. Well, who wouldn’t be in this stage?

The Intel representative confirmed the speculation by saying,

“We have been privy to the project for some time and we have worked with Google on a variety of projects, including this one. We welcome Google’s move here.”

Will this scare Microsoft?

Seeing Intel and Google work in conjunction must be strange for Microsoft. This is because over they years, Microsoft and Intel have been close friends and this move may upset the balance in the tech market. Especially, as Intel have put their efforts into creating a solely netbook operating system with Moblin, who incidentally are rivals to Google. It’s all a bit complex but all that is happening is that Intel are stuck in the middle of many projects, and perhaps to keep the fine balance, they must now work with Microsoft in a new project.

However, Intel’s Michael Chen, director of Intel’s embedded sales group in Asia, said that his company is completely mutual and is a service for all companies,

“Our long-term goal is providing hardware for devices with different operating systems…more competition will drive up more innovations and that’s good for consumers,”

Furthermore, we can see the operating system market is booming with the release of Chrome OS and soon enought the release of Windows 7. What do you think on Intel’s position at the moment? Are they parting with companies too much? Is Intel making relations worse between Microsoft and Google, by publically announcing they are delighted with Chrome OS? Please feel free to comment below.

Interviewed by the New York Times, Sundar Pichai (vice president of product management), said “Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS”. The operating system software is to be released later this year, and will be free to download. Although it is geared for powering small netbooks, Google believes that Chrome OS will also run on full-sized PC’s.

And no, the Chrome OS is not going to be a simple rebranding of Google’s Android mobile OS, as Pichai stated, “Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems.”

Google official blog post also goes on to give a brief outline of the Chrome’s OS’ goals:

We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Tech analysts have been speculating for a while about Google releasing their own operating system. Now that this idea is coming into fruition, Google has a lot of competition to deal with. Windows is the current heavyweight in the OS market, while Mac OS X and Linux are constantly stealing more market share. However, this is Google we are talking about and also it is important to remember that nost netbooks are currently running Windows XP ( which is 8 years ol and runs on Pentium IIIs and Pentium 4s). Chrome OS, however, is also suitable for netbooks and will run on x86 architecture chips and ARM chips, which are more common in netbooks.

Windows 7 is also considered to be potentially useful for notbooks, and will be released later this year (maybe Google will release Chrome OS’ open source code at the same time?) . This means that we are in for an interesting battle between Chrome OS and Windows 7 here.

What are your views on the announcement of Google Chrome OS? Is it a potential Windows-killer? And what do you think Microsoft’s response will be? Please feel free to comment below.

"When it goes public, I think the rush to grab Google Voice numbers is going to be stunning. I know some of my friends check the Google Voice page almost every day to see when they can grab a number and get started using it."

In May, Google held 1 million phone numbers for future use, possibly preparing the unveiling of its highly anticipated VoIP service.

Google Voice was unveiled back in March but still has a huge impact on internet users! The Skype-like service enables users to manage all their voice communication devices via one “Googlevoiced” number which then calls to any device you please.

During the last couple of months, well since the release of Google Voice, Level 3 have been providing giants Google with numbers indicating that when the numbers will be officially published, the figures will be mind-blowing. Though, analysts did not want to reveal the confidential details publically just yet as a Google spokesman quoted,

“as a matter of policy, we typically do not comment on contracts with third-party technology suppliers.”

When will Google announce its pride and joy to the world?

Many users have been taunted each time they have visited the site for updates as the homepage welcomes you with,

“Google Voice is currently open only for GrandCentral users.”

Google have been partnered with GrandCentral for over two years but things have not really taken a big turn just yet.

Google Voice – what’s so good about it?

Some of you may think, what on earth is all this hype surrounding Google Voice. Well, Google Voice has a number of exclusive and independant features that make it revolutionary. These include:

• Easy control over your mind busting communication devices.
• Integrated with your GoogleMail contacts.
• Filters your calls and sends them to your desired device.
• Transcripts are sent to your email instead of having to listen to repetitive voicemails.
• Cheaper international calls.
• One number that you can tell everyone to contact you by, regardless of where you are.

The only bad thing about Google Voice seems to be the inital family+ friend transaction of telling everyone your independant number and a few complications here and there. But, not all applications are perfect!

Kevin Dando, director of digital and education communications for PBS, expressed his feelings towards the hyped-up Google Voice,

“I’ve only been using Google Voice for a few months, but it’s completely changed the way I use voicemail and communicate, just in general. When it goes public, I think the rush to grab Google Voice numbers is going to be stunning. I know some of my friends check the Google Voice page almost every day to see when they can grab a number and get started using it.”

Have you used Google Voice before? What do you think of it? Brilliant or does it need a few tweaks? Please free to post any feedback by commenting below.

Search engines, such as Google, which help us find useful information on the World Wide Web, are taken by granted by most of us. There are an astounding 150 million+ websites on the internet currently, according to Netcraft. So, how exactly does Google sift through this astounding number of websites, and find information relevant to your query?

The answer is that Google uses algorithms, which are complex mathematical instructions that tell computers how to carry out assigned tasks. When you type in a query, Google’s algorithm essentially searches out webpages that contain the keywords of your query. It then assigns a rank to each page, based on a number of factors ( e.g. how many times the keyword appears on the page).

The higher ranked pages are usually at the top of Google’s search engine results page (SERP). Therefore, you usually get the best links relating to your search query at the top of the list.

As Google is now not only the world’s most visited search engine site, but the most visited website itself (and also the worlds first $100 billion brand), being listed prominently on Google can result in a big boost in traffic for a website.

Google’s keyword search function is similar to other search engines- automated programs called spiders travel across the web, link to link, building up an index page, which contains certain keywords. This index is what is referred to, when a user enters a search query. Google lists the pages that contain the same keywords that are in your search terms.

A big part in how Google finds sites is played by Keyword placement. When Google looks for keywords in a webpage, any keyword in the webpages title or heading is given extra importance. Headings to come in ranges of different size, and the keywords in the larger headings are more valuable than if they were in smaller headings.

Google’s patented PageRank system

Arguably, the most important feature of the Google algorithm is the PageRank system. It is an automated process that determines where each search result appears on Google’s search engine results page. As most people only look at the first few search results, having a webpage at the top will be likely to generate a lot of traffic for a website.

And how are these results standings determined? Well, we don’t exactly know- the official algorithm is kept secret by Google. What we know do know is:

• Every search result is assigned a score by PageRank. The higher the score, the further up the search results will appear.
• Because pages with good quality content usually have lots of trackbacks (i.e. other webpages link to the target page), the scores are partially determined by the number of trackbacks a target page has.
• Trackbacks from higher webpages count more than the lower ranking sites.
• Other factors which affect the score are the longevity of the site, the strength of the domain name, the age of link going to and from the site. Sites that have been around for a while usually have more value placed onto them by Google.

This sort of strategy works quite well as, by focusing on links going to and from a webpage, the search engine can organise results in a very useful way. Arguably, the best way for your website to get a top spot, is to consistently churn out high quality content, as this will result in more webpages linking to you.

Though very few new features have been added, those that have been integrated make all the difference!

As you all know, Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google with extremely fast loading time. Google have now unveiled a much more improved edition of their highly thought of web browser. The issue many of us had with Version 1 was that it seemed to lack some vital tools, such as a “full screen mode” in order to make the internet surfing  experience as best it can possibly be. However, with the introduction of Chrome 2.0, Google have integrated a few more features into the otherwise minimalistic browser.

New Features

Well, here are a handful of new features introduced:

• From the “new tabs” start page you are now able to delete individual thumbnails to your liking, by deciding on the thumbnails to have, and then clicking “done.” Previously you were not given a choice in removing thumbnails, as Chrome automatically chose the “most visited” sites as your thumbnail. Below, is an example of a customized thumbnail page displaying the “thumbnail page” format.

The disadvantage of this feature is that you are unable to arrange the thumbnails in your preferred order and if you delete one thumbnail, when only having four open, this will be deleted by default.

• Full-screen mode via F11 shortcut- Your screen turns completely into one window excluding all the tabs and bookmarks. Perfect for when watching or streaming videos off somewhere like BBC iplayer or Hulu. Then again, you hardly ever used to notice that Chrome was there anyway, because of the fact that vast majority of the screen space was devoted to the site you were visiting, Chrome has such a simple and streamlined design.

• Last but not least, Google have used their initiative and finally integrated an auto-fill feature requiring you not to remember passwords, for those who are forgetful among us! Thank god! Chrome needed this attribute, especially to get back in the hunt for #1 browser!

• In addition to the fresh features, Chrome has got even faster! Which definitely makes the web browser more useful and likeable. Google says that Chrome 2.0 loads JavaScript-heavy web pages 30% faster than older versions of the browser. This improvement is speed, makes it miles ahead of its competetitors, like Safari.

Our Opinion

Pros

• Many bugs have been fixed as well as the whole perfomance of Chrome.
• Super fast and stable, because of the multiprocess foundation- one slow site won’t drag down the rest of your browsing.
• Easy to use interface.

Cons

• No ad-blocking program making you unprotected straight away.
• Lack of add-ons and extentions, which Firefox seem to have every one.
• Potential for high memory usage given that each tab is its own process

Conclusion

If you are looking to simply surf the internet, then Chrome might be for you. It has a simple, minimilastic interface and very fast loading times. However, if you use your internet for alternate purposes such as gaming, you will quickly spot the problems with Chrome, most notably the lack of extensions and add-ons. If Google were to make a few distinct changes to some of the current features, the browser would attract a more sophisticated audience, and so will be widely used as the No.1 Browser which Firefox currently holds the title for.

Please feel free to comment on the Chrome 2.0 below.