Earlier Google homepage use to show the index size (some 8 billion pages) used in search. With the onslaught from competitors like Yahoo who claims to have indexed more than 20 billion pages and in the absence of standards in measuring the index size and its relevancy to search result, Google seems to have removed its index size in its homepage.
More news related to this in CNET. Moreover it is the 7th birthday of Google.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Google blog search
I can not resist from blogging this.
Google has joined the fray of blog search engines with its ultra-fast search.
Ok, What to try... I tried this blog and with sort of relevance, the Related Blog pointed out this blog clearly. Awesome.... But rest of the results seemed crappy to me as I was not related to any of those. I do not know how they rank those blogs high on the list.
I tried sorting by Date and there came the google with the bang. Almost all my recent updates are listed in the results section. Pretty fast though. So with google's entry the blog search arena will be hot and will also get a close watch.
Google has joined the fray of blog search engines with its ultra-fast search.
Ok, What to try... I tried this blog and with sort of relevance, the Related Blog pointed out this blog clearly. Awesome.... But rest of the results seemed crappy to me as I was not related to any of those. I do not know how they rank those blogs high on the list.
I tried sorting by Date and there came the google with the bang. Almost all my recent updates are listed in the results section. Pretty fast though. So with google's entry the blog search arena will be hot and will also get a close watch.
Friday, September 09, 2005
iAudioU2 Updates
In my previous entry I posted about my recent purchase of iAudio U2 mp3 player. Here are some more updates to it after a couple of days of use.
1. Firmware releases happen more often and contain handful of good bugfixes. The latest firmware version is 1.40.
2. The BBE options really rocks. iAudio is superior in sound quality compared to Creative MuVo and iPod Mini. I found that iPod Shuffle is better than iPod Mini.
3. The earphones doesn't really fit. It is very uncomforatble though the sound quality is good. So I started using my old Sony ear phones.
4. There is a cap of 175 on the number of mp3 files that you can have. If you exceed this number then the firmware starts misbehaving. Hope that future firmware updates will rectify this.
Yesterday myself and Gops did a cost-wise split-up to see how worthy the iAudio mp3 parts are. The split-up is very approximate based on the facts that we know.
1 GB CF memory - $45
4 line LCD - $10
Internal components - $20 (includes mp3 encoder/decoder, fm tuner, line in recoder, Direct MP3)
Earphones - $5
Casing - $5
Misc -$10 (includes cables, USB adapters, lanyard, Packaging)
Software - $15
Total - $110
On Stores -$160.
1. Firmware releases happen more often and contain handful of good bugfixes. The latest firmware version is 1.40.
2. The BBE options really rocks. iAudio is superior in sound quality compared to Creative MuVo and iPod Mini. I found that iPod Shuffle is better than iPod Mini.
3. The earphones doesn't really fit. It is very uncomforatble though the sound quality is good. So I started using my old Sony ear phones.
4. There is a cap of 175 on the number of mp3 files that you can have. If you exceed this number then the firmware starts misbehaving. Hope that future firmware updates will rectify this.
Yesterday myself and Gops did a cost-wise split-up to see how worthy the iAudio mp3 parts are. The split-up is very approximate based on the facts that we know.
1 GB CF memory - $45
4 line LCD - $10
Internal components - $20 (includes mp3 encoder/decoder, fm tuner, line in recoder, Direct MP3)
Earphones - $5
Casing - $5
Misc -$10 (includes cables, USB adapters, lanyard, Packaging)
Software - $15
Total - $110
On Stores -$160.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Dearer Foundation Ceremonies
Karnataka Govt has spent 3.1 crores on laying foundation stones and conducting inaugural ceremonies for infrastructure improvements and other programmes.
Source: The Week.
Source: The Week.
Monday, September 05, 2005
iAudio U2
Though Chandan suggests to be less materialistic in the 43things to do in life, I can not resist myself from buying iAudio U2. The frequent monotonic travel on road forced me to buy this.
Gops has already blogged an extensive rave review of iAudio U2. Rather than repeating the same stuff once more over here, I prefer linking to his blog.
To be frank, it was not my decision to go for this player. I blindly went ahead with Gops decision as I knew that he would have done an extensive analysis and has the experience of owning 2 mp3 players previously.
Gops, You need to take a pat on the back for this well thought decision!
The sound quality is cut above the rest. It is pretty awesome.
Gops has already blogged an extensive rave review of iAudio U2. Rather than repeating the same stuff once more over here, I prefer linking to his blog.
To be frank, it was not my decision to go for this player. I blindly went ahead with Gops decision as I knew that he would have done an extensive analysis and has the experience of owning 2 mp3 players previously.
Gops, You need to take a pat on the back for this well thought decision!
The sound quality is cut above the rest. It is pretty awesome.
Friday, September 02, 2005
Blog hit stats
This personal blog has been up for quiet some time now. I created it some time back in June 2004 and was in hibernation till Jan 2005 when I revived it back to life. From then on there is no look back, I had consistent postings about vivid topics. This post is my 100th post to this blog.
To keep abreast about the traffic, two weeks back I added a hit counter to this blog. Most of you wouldn't have noticed as it is a non-intrusive hidden counter. StatCounter is pretty good in features. It had everything I looked for. You can create different projects using the same login for different blogs. You can create html based, hidden counter and even set a blocking cookie so that you can prevent your visit from being counted.
For a free account, the stats collected are pretty good. I could get a summary of total hits per daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. A nice bar graph shows you the details of the traffic. I would prefer Line Graph instead of Bar and Area Graph. With Line Graph plotted over the period of time you can easily see the trend in the traffic.
Another interesting stat is about your readers location based on Country, State/Region, City and ISP. Majority of the hits are from India and US. Gulf and Europe provided minor contributions.
Browser based stats provided interesting clue. Though IE is predominant, but FireFox is catching up. Ahaa.. Safari also figured in, so somebody had a Mac OS.
OS stats reveals this. Again Windows is predominant. But where is Linux in the picture?
So on the whole for the past two weeks I have been averaging 77 hits per week. Will I retain and increase readers is a question that will be answered as time flies by.
To keep abreast about the traffic, two weeks back I added a hit counter to this blog. Most of you wouldn't have noticed as it is a non-intrusive hidden counter. StatCounter is pretty good in features. It had everything I looked for. You can create different projects using the same login for different blogs. You can create html based, hidden counter and even set a blocking cookie so that you can prevent your visit from being counted.
For a free account, the stats collected are pretty good. I could get a summary of total hits per daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. A nice bar graph shows you the details of the traffic. I would prefer Line Graph instead of Bar and Area Graph. With Line Graph plotted over the period of time you can easily see the trend in the traffic.
Another interesting stat is about your readers location based on Country, State/Region, City and ISP. Majority of the hits are from India and US. Gulf and Europe provided minor contributions.
Browser based stats provided interesting clue. Though IE is predominant, but FireFox is catching up. Ahaa.. Safari also figured in, so somebody had a Mac OS.
OS stats reveals this. Again Windows is predominant. But where is Linux in the picture?
So on the whole for the past two weeks I have been averaging 77 hits per week. Will I retain and increase readers is a question that will be answered as time flies by.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Airtel Services....
Really SUCKS :-(
My roommate Gops has narrated his experience with the shoddy Airtel Customer Service. Here is one that I faced in the recent past.
In our house, there are six Airtel connections and we live in prime residential area in Bangalore. Out of the six, couple of them are corporate connections. Often (almost every time) the call gets disconnected if we try to receive one from inside the house. The model of handset has no significance. The case is valid across both Nokia and Motorola models. One could see us rushing out of the house if a call comes in.
I had to receive an early morning call from my parents and the call dropped numerous times even when I moved out of the house to the balcony. It is frustrating when you had something important and calls drop off abruptly. It screwed up the whole thing.
Out of infuriation, I tried to reach the Airtel customer service to complain. The connection that I own is personal connection and I had a hard time crossing the Airtel tune to the customer helpdesk. Finally I broke and used Arun's corporate connection to reach the corporate customer helpdesk and got the call transferred to the regular customer helpdesk.
After hearing my complaint and threatening to move out of Airtel, they accepted to look into the matter and gave me a complain number(5492359, Date: 25th July 2005) stating that I will hear back from them in 24 hrs. The 24hr deadline is still approaching and I haven't received a call from them.
It would be better if Airtel stops bragging about providing network to remote areas and does something to help their pathetic services within the city.
I know that there will be numerous souls around bangalore frustrated because of Airtel and I am venting my anger out through this post.
My roommate Gops has narrated his experience with the shoddy Airtel Customer Service. Here is one that I faced in the recent past.
In our house, there are six Airtel connections and we live in prime residential area in Bangalore. Out of the six, couple of them are corporate connections. Often (almost every time) the call gets disconnected if we try to receive one from inside the house. The model of handset has no significance. The case is valid across both Nokia and Motorola models. One could see us rushing out of the house if a call comes in.
I had to receive an early morning call from my parents and the call dropped numerous times even when I moved out of the house to the balcony. It is frustrating when you had something important and calls drop off abruptly. It screwed up the whole thing.
Out of infuriation, I tried to reach the Airtel customer service to complain. The connection that I own is personal connection and I had a hard time crossing the Airtel tune to the customer helpdesk. Finally I broke and used Arun's corporate connection to reach the corporate customer helpdesk and got the call transferred to the regular customer helpdesk.
After hearing my complaint and threatening to move out of Airtel, they accepted to look into the matter and gave me a complain number(5492359, Date: 25th July 2005) stating that I will hear back from them in 24 hrs. The 24hr deadline is still approaching and I haven't received a call from them.
It would be better if Airtel stops bragging about providing network to remote areas and does something to help their pathetic services within the city.
I know that there will be numerous souls around bangalore frustrated because of Airtel and I am venting my anger out through this post.
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