Google Knol is Live

So Google has officially opened up Knol to the public. FYI, Knol is G’s next attempt to take over the world (or at least its information) by building a community-driven, open-source encyclopedia similar to Wikipedia.

Google gives us all the goods on its Googleblog, so I’ll let you do the reading yourself. Do note, though, that they are encouraging people to use their real names on this. Google argues that the authority we find in Knol will be vested in the authors and the author communities. Whereas Bearcat258, Hellfire23f, or some other alias was once our authority for everything we needed to know from Wikipedia’s entry on X, the end-user will now hopefully be able to cross-reference the names of Knol’s authors against other pieces of information (ostenbsibly on Knol profile pages or by way of a google-search) to determine the article’s own veracity and quality.

Fair enough. Google is correct in this regard. Information and authority is all relative anyway. Both are fairly dependent on identity. We generally differentiate between truth and rumour when we can (1) verify the content of the statement, and (2) find the source of the knowledge. I still find Google and Knol’s demands for open identity troubling, though. I think the likes of Facebook and Google has destroyed anonymity on the internet, and I’m not always certain if that’s a good thing. Google really does have the goods on us, and I wonder if I want this mega-corp being able to draw a character sketch of my person. I’m still unsure what the implications would be if I were to merge my internet and IRL personas into one name/user.

Knol will be a success, truly, but I wonder what the wider implications of such ‘non-anonymous’ projects are..

Anyway.

Just Enjoy Googles next inovation

Cuil --- New Generation Search

I knew we will have somebody soon trying to compete with the mighty Google in the web search market and here they are - CUIL - meaning Knowledge . They opened their service today with some claims “Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.” . This means they have more pages indexed in the server to look into. I think the number of pages indexes doesn’t matter but it really matters how intelligently you use an algorithm to bring out the best results out of the pages you have indexed.
Some insights on what I felt when I tried some fast tests on the new search engine. I was not at all impressed by the results I got for some typical keywords that anybody can look on the internet. I searched for ‘order food online’ , the keywords that someone search for finding take away food in their country .The first four results were fine and a bit related, but not the best ones in the market right now. I was also given some blog posts which had the keywords in their content. And that was never expected too.
Other changes that can be seen are the three column page layout when the results are shown . I really don’t think the we are unhappy with the current simple and straight layout from Google .Also I didn’t find the page to include some thing new or innovative in their idea .Google have always tried to make things simple and they were successful in fulfilling the users requirements.
I really think if any company wants to compete with Google their first and last improvement must be in Search quality. As a frequent reader of Google research blog, I am pretty sure that they are well ahead in future ideas and are going to come with something new for the semantic web or the future Web 3.0.
It didn’t look good to me when a start up come in public hinting at competing with the big players before proving their quality in search. I feel ‘Cuil’ needs to improve a lot in their search quality and need to compete with the smaller players before aiming to the top.

When Google is Evil....

Some serious aligations against Google...

Give me your views....

1. Google's immortal cookie:Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Now it's years later, and immortal cookies are commonplace among search engines; Google set the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a Google cookie if you don't already have one. If you have one, they read and record your unique ID number.
2. Google records everything they can:For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as "IP delivery based on geolocation."
3. Google retains all data indefinitely:Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save.
4. Google won't say why they need this data:Inquiries to Google about their privacy policies are ignored. When the New York Times (2002-11-28) asked Sergey Brin about whether Google ever gets subpoenaed for this information, he had no comment.
5. Google hires spooks:Matt Cutts, a key Google engineer, used to work for the National Security Agency. Google wants to hire more people with security clearances, so that they can peddle their corporate assets to the spooks in Washington.
6. Google's toolbar is spyware:With the advanced features enabled, Google's free toolbar for Explorer phones home with every page you surf, and yes, it reads your cookie too. Their privacy policy confesses this, but that's only because Alexa lost a class-action lawsuit when their toolbar did the same thing, and their privacy policy failed to explain this. Worse yet, Google's toolbar updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have the toolbar installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk every time you connect to Google (which is many times a day). Most software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Google. Any software that updates automatically presents a massive security risk.
7. Google's cache copy is illegal:Judging from Ninth Circuit precedent on the application of U.S. copyright laws to the Internet, Google's cache copy appears to be illegal. The only way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached on Google is to put a "noarchive" meta in the header of every page on his site. Surfers like the cache, but webmasters don't. Many webmasters have deleted questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the problem pages live merrily on in Google's cache. The cache copy should be "opt-in" for webmasters, not "opt-out."
8. Google is not your friend:By now Google enjoys a 75 percent monopoly for all external referrals to most websites. Webmasters cannot avoid seeking Google's approval these days, assuming they want to increase traffic to their site. If they try to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Google's semi-secret algorithms, they may find themselves penalized by Google, and their traffic disappears. There are no detailed, published standards issued by Google, and there is no appeal process for penalized sites. Google is completely unaccountable. Most of the time Google doesn't even answer email from webmasters
9. Google is a privacy time bomb:With 200 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S., Google amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newly-commissioned data-mining bureaucrats in Washington can only dream about the sort of slick efficiency that Google has already achieved.

You bet they are serious and we never knew....

For more details refer... http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html

1GB : Then and Now

Lively from Google

GOOGLE, KNOWN for its plain-Jane approach to Web design, has come up with something much wackier.On Tuesday the company introduced Lively an online tool that allows people to embody a cartoon-ish online avatar and have text-based conversations with friends and other Internet users in virtual chat rooms. The rooms can be added to any blog or Web site.

Google unveiled the new product in a post on its official blog. It can be reached at www.lively.com but is officially part of Google Labs, an area of the company's site where it showcases projects that remain in the beta, or experimental, phase.

Online chat rooms are two-dimensional - they include text, and sometimes voice and video. Lively tries to make that conversation three-dimensional, more interactive and more fun. As if they were playing a game, users choose from a selection of unrealistically handsome or Disneyesque avatars.They can also create their own rooms, which can be posted to a blog or social network profile as easily as a YouTube video.

Up to 20 people can occupy a room and chat with one an-other. Users can design their own virtual environments, hang-ing on the walls videos from YouTube and photos from Picasa,
Google's photo service, as if they were pieces of art.

Inside Google, the product was headed by Niniane Wang, an engineering manager. Students at the University of Arizona have been testing Lively for several months.

Hiberfil.sys

Hiberfil.sys:

• How to delete it
• What is it's function?
• How do I use it?

In theory, it is supposed to be a quick shortcut or power saving option that allows you to leave your PC in suspended animation until you are ready to work again. However, in practice, most people find little time difference between shutting down and using hibernation. For people who use drive imaging to backup their system, the hiberfil.sys file can bloat the backup files - making them larger (sometimes over 1GB bigger!) and therefore slower to copy/restore.

Hibernation temporarily 'freezes' the computer when the PC becomes inactive, so it won't work if you have tasks running constantly (eg downloading files). However it can be handy if you want the computer to sleep after a task has completed (such as creating a video).

OK, that's the role of hibernation - so what is the hiberfil.sys file and why is it so big? Hibernation takes everything in memory and writes it to your hard drive as the hiberfil.sys file. If you have 512MB of memory, then hiberfil.sys will be about 512MB. If you have 1GB, the file will be around 1GB. The important point to remember is that even if you don't use hibernation, hiberfil.sys will still take up this huge amount of disk space. The way to remove the file is to turn off the hibernation feature (by default, hibernate is activated automatically when XP is installed). Here's how to do it:

• Open the Windows Control Panel
• Double-click Power Options
• Click the Hibernate tab, de-select the 'Enable hibernate support' check box, and then click Apply.
• Restart your computer and hiberfil.sys will be automatically deleted.
• If you change your mind in the future and would like to use hibernation, go to the Windows Help & Support Center and search for 'enable hibernation'. It should be the first result. The instructions detail some other steps you may need to follow to reactivate the hibernation.