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.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
GREP
Many of us regularly use "grep" command day in and day out. It is such a common command. Do you know that grep is an acronym.
GREP - Global Regular Expression Print
Regular expressions are invented by Steven Kleene and "*" used in reg-ex is called "Kleene star".
GREP - Global Regular Expression Print
Regular expressions are invented by Steven Kleene and "*" used in reg-ex is called "Kleene star".
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Google Talk - Audio components
Have anybody checked Google Talk About box.
First thing, they include audio components from Global IP Sounds, seems they are pioneers with VoIP and voice over packet network. See their partners and customers page.
Secondly what is that about play 23 21.....
First thing, they include audio components from Global IP Sounds, seems they are pioneers with VoIP and voice over packet network. See their partners and customers page.
Secondly what is that about play 23 21.....
Monday, August 29, 2005
Hodophobia
I never came across this phrase until now.
Hodophobia - refers to an abnormal and persistent fear of road travel.
And because of which one of my friend doesn't drive vehicles. It seems to be a worthy decision considering the hetic bangalore traffic.
Hodophobia - refers to an abnormal and persistent fear of road travel.
And because of which one of my friend doesn't drive vehicles. It seems to be a worthy decision considering the hetic bangalore traffic.
Respite from spams in comments
Couple of weeks back I reported some spam being left in my comments. Blogger's jumped up to give us a respite sooner than expected. Go to your blog settings -> Comments tab and turn on "Show word verification for comments". By default it is turned off I guess.
This will help you to open up the gates for unregistered people to leave comments in your blog.
This will help you to open up the gates for unregistered people to leave comments in your blog.
Google Ads in Yahoo Flickr
Incidently got noticed that Yahoo! Flickr shows Google Ads. Where is YPN?
But for some pages I could see Ads by Yahoo too. What a mess!
Do users have control over these or is it just by mistake?
But for some pages I could see Ads by Yahoo too. What a mess!
Do users have control over these or is it just by mistake?
Friday, August 26, 2005
Google Talk - Voice chat
Yesterday I tried using Google Talk to do a voice chat with a friend in US (Ann Arbor, Michigan). I am spell bound and awe-stuck by the voice clarity. There is very little unnoticeable lag and the clarity is much more superior than I expected. Evidently Google has added another feather to its rich haul hat.
Google Talk is based on open source jabber (XMPP) spec. The interesting point to note is that the spec has been available since 1999 and google has implemented it to get it noticed.
Also the first line in the Google talk page is interesting.
"They say talk is cheap. Google thinks it should be free."
Google Talk is based on open source jabber (XMPP) spec. The interesting point to note is that the spec has been available since 1999 and google has implemented it to get it noticed.
Also the first line in the Google talk page is interesting.
"They say talk is cheap. Google thinks it should be free."
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Which is India's first Wi-fi city?
Nowadays, my office hour opens with a little tech-geek talk with Abhinav. We share little tit-bits about the tech stuff each day we come across. Our today's chat was about Google talk and Wi-Max technology.
In the course of the chat, he pointed out two things.
Mysore is the India's first Wi-fi enabled city. It beats India's Silicon Valley Bangalore and other metros.
Secondly, India is much ahead in mobile-telecom and Wi-fi incomparison to US. The reason being that we haven't invested much on the conventional wired lines and we are free to embrace mobile and wi-fi now.
In the course of the chat, he pointed out two things.
Mysore is the India's first Wi-fi enabled city. It beats India's Silicon Valley Bangalore and other metros.
Secondly, India is much ahead in mobile-telecom and Wi-fi incomparison to US. The reason being that we haven't invested much on the conventional wired lines and we are free to embrace mobile and wi-fi now.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Google spreading its wings
The much rumored thing is happening again. According to news reported by Reuters in LA Times, it seems that Google is entering IM and VoIP space.
When there is a healthy competition, quality is on the rise. The end users of these services are going to benefit largely.
courtesy: Plaxoed
Update: Till midnight yesterday, it was rumor, but today it is a reality.
http://www.google.com/talk/
When there is a healthy competition, quality is on the rise. The end users of these services are going to benefit largely.
courtesy: Plaxoed
Update: Till midnight yesterday, it was rumor, but today it is a reality.
http://www.google.com/talk/
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Web Popularity
You need not be a celebrity to be in a limelight, ofcourse it is a different kind of limelight. Being popular in Web world enthrals the same kind of experience.
With the search engine wars picking up, I tried to nail down "How popular am I in the web?", just by measuring search rankings of my petty blog contributions.
Search Engines:
Google
Yahoo
Preface:
I have been keeping this blog active with my own musings about the interesting stuff that I come across day in and day out. I haven't used any paid services or through other means of improving traffic to my blog. I have taken measures to popularize my blog only among a selected group of pals. I have added up Google Adsense to my blog which has started showing context sensitive ads very recently. Though I cannot confirm, google does seem to have a slight edge over other search engines in indexing my site.
With this setup, I used the same keywords in both google and yahoo search to analyze the search results. I have used both Web wide search and site specific search.
Keyword used:
rajakumar blogspot
Search Results:
Google Web wide search:
The first hit is a comment that I had posted in Govar's blog.
This blog came up in third place (Hurray, I am not doing bad in ranking it seems)
There were total 19 results, out of which just these two were related to me.
Yahoo Web side search:
The first hit is my bloglines subscription export xml url
The fourth hit is a comment that I had posted in Govar's blog
And on sixteenth hit is this blog
On the whole, the total results were 26 out of which 8 is related to me. To my surprise the index page of my blog has been indexed by Yahoo search and I could see my comments in Gops, Vig and Smart Senthil's blog.
Thanks to Vig for exposing my CGPA to world wide audience and I need not blow my own trumpet :-)
Google site specific search:
In Google's index there is just one entry related to my blog.
This proves that Google adsense doesn't have any relation with search index.
Yahoo site specific search:
Yahoo wins hands down here. There are 7 entries related to my blog
The analysis that I had done doesn't consider factors that influence any of the search engines facility. All I did is from layman perspective. With the results I do not denounce or appreciate google/yahoo. It is just an exercise to find the popularity of my blog with respect to search index.
Comments are welcome.
With the search engine wars picking up, I tried to nail down "How popular am I in the web?", just by measuring search rankings of my petty blog contributions.
Search Engines:
Yahoo
Preface:
I have been keeping this blog active with my own musings about the interesting stuff that I come across day in and day out. I haven't used any paid services or through other means of improving traffic to my blog. I have taken measures to popularize my blog only among a selected group of pals. I have added up Google Adsense to my blog which has started showing context sensitive ads very recently. Though I cannot confirm, google does seem to have a slight edge over other search engines in indexing my site.
With this setup, I used the same keywords in both google and yahoo search to analyze the search results. I have used both Web wide search and site specific search.
Keyword used:
rajakumar blogspot
Search Results:
Google Web wide search:
The first hit is a comment that I had posted in Govar's blog.
This blog came up in third place (Hurray, I am not doing bad in ranking it seems)
There were total 19 results, out of which just these two were related to me.
Yahoo Web side search:
The first hit is my bloglines subscription export xml url
The fourth hit is a comment that I had posted in Govar's blog
And on sixteenth hit is this blog
On the whole, the total results were 26 out of which 8 is related to me. To my surprise the index page of my blog has been indexed by Yahoo search and I could see my comments in Gops, Vig and Smart Senthil's blog.
Thanks to Vig for exposing my CGPA to world wide audience and I need not blow my own trumpet :-)
Google site specific search:
In Google's index there is just one entry related to my blog.
This proves that Google adsense doesn't have any relation with search index.
Yahoo site specific search:
Yahoo wins hands down here. There are 7 entries related to my blog
The analysis that I had done doesn't consider factors that influence any of the search engines facility. All I did is from layman perspective. With the results I do not denounce or appreciate google/yahoo. It is just an exercise to find the popularity of my blog with respect to search index.
Comments are welcome.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
SuDoKu Program
I had posted couple of weeks ago about my intention to write a program to solve the sudoku puzzle. Now I have implemented it incorporating the Elimination, Naked Pair and Unique Member technique. I have also created a UI for the program to enable users to enter and solve the puzzles. I have to accept the fact that the UI is not that snappy, but it is good start to begin with.
Lang: Java 1.5
UI: Java Swing
UI Snapshots:
Puzzle fromThe Hindu (Dated 17-Aug-2005)
Shown are given values and the possibilities for the rest of the cells
Solution by using elimination technique
If you want to try your hand, do drop in an email/comment, I will mail you the binaries and the src code.
Lang: Java 1.5
UI: Java Swing
UI Snapshots:
Puzzle fromThe Hindu (Dated 17-Aug-2005)
Shown are given values and the possibilities for the rest of the cells
Solution by using elimination technique
If you want to try your hand, do drop in an email/comment, I will mail you the binaries and the src code.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Spam in my blog comments
Oops! I got a spam in my comments section. Though I had intentionally prevented anonymous users from commenting, this registered spam user somehow slipped in. Hey blogger guys, are you listening :-(
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Bloging captures Mangal Pandey
Mangal Pandey - The Rising is the latest historic movie from the bollywood releasing this week. It is no surprise that such a big-budget movie getting in all the hypes before reaching screens. The lead actor Aamir Khan has a blog about Mangal Pandey. Check it throu'
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
HSBC Preapproved Personal Loan
Today HSBC sent me a letter with a calligraphic certificate stating that being a priviledged customer, I am afforded a pre-approved personal loan. In that certificate they have stated my bank account number. Given the fact that this being sent in a snail mail/courier, it could have well landed in some wrong hands, exposing my account number.
For the sake of their marketting campaign, I cannot afford to loose my credentials. On the part of the bank's security lapse, I seriously condemn their carelessness in revealing customer credentials.
For the sake of their marketting campaign, I cannot afford to loose my credentials. On the part of the bank's security lapse, I seriously condemn their carelessness in revealing customer credentials.
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