Google has yet to make any announcements about becoming domain registrar number 895, but that hasn’t stopped the rumor mill. Google
offers a special AdSense service for domain sellers to make money from unused Web addresses, and the company could also benefit by offering low-cost domain names to its Blogger user base.
Tom King has put together a list of best newslettes for e-learning. You can see the list here.
Learning. For a change - Excellent e-zine from Allen Interactions with a fun column from Dr. Michael Allen. I love the material and even better for Macromedia that they use Flash and do it so well (Take note of the live poll results, discussion threads, and proper updates of browser URL as you navigate!)
Online Learning News & Reviews - Moderated newsletter where you can post questions and get responses from peers, including corporate training & development staff and elearning consultants. Mixes breaking elearning stories with ideas and comments the latest e-learning practices, processes and products from your peers.
It also reminds me of The Guardian which recently published a list of most popular websites. I picked up my two favorite topics from that list:
Education - Skoool.com is Irish, exported here by Intel; it covers a lot of ground (though has big holes), and will prove handy for pupils studying/revising at home. Nrich has a wealth of intriguing maths activities which extend and enliven the subject. National Archives (the government agency) has put together the huge and cleverly-presented Learning curve. The best new site, though shallow in content as yet, is the National Theatre’s Stagework site: nice video clips to support drama. And the prize for neatest, simplest idea has to go to britkid.org, a resource for opening children’s eyes to the diversity of our culture.
www.skoool.com
www.nrich.maths.org.uk
www.stagework.org.uk
www.learningcurve.gov.uk
www.britkid.org
Reference - The web is often the quickest place to look something up - if you know where to go. If you don’t, you can always start with Jim Martindale’s Reference Desk, an astonishing collection that has been 10 years in the making. Usually, however, you will probably want to look up a word, a phone number, a place or whatever. For words, try Onelook, which indexes more than 6m words in 981 dictionaries. It also has a “reverse lookup” to find words from their meanings. For longer items, the Concise Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia is online (the Britannica costs money). There are links to the world’s online phone books at Teldir, which is now on the Infobel site. Finally, there are maps of just about everywhere at Multimaps.
www.martindalecenter.com
www.onelook.com
www.multimaps.com
www.infobel.com/teldir
www.encyclopedia.com
EWeek reports that Microsoft Corp. has no immediate plans to integrate desktop search into its operating system. Speaking on a panel on search technology at the Harvard Business School’s Cyberposium, Mark Kroese, general manager of information services and merchant platform product marketing for MSN, said the federal antitrust battle Microsoft waged with the government has made the company think twice about what technologies it can add to the operating system.
Indeed, while including desktop search in Windows might seem like a logical step to many, “there’s no immediate plan to do that as far as I know,” Kroese said. “That would have to be a Bill G. [Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates] and the lawyers’ decision.”
But the $100m question - Do you really need MS Desktop Search ?Your windows computer already has MS Desktop Search installed - Microsoft just didn’t tell you until now how to use it. It’s called Windows Indexing Service, and it’s a standard feature of Windows 2000 and Windows XP. You can use Indexing Service to index documents and document properties on your disks and store the information in a catalog. You can also use Indexing Service to search for documents, either through Search on the Start menu or through a Web browser.
The founder and chairman of the MIT Media Lab wants to create a $100 portable computer for the developing world. Nicholas Negroponte, author of Being Digital and the Wiesner Professor of Media Technology at MIT, says he has obtained promises of support from a number of major companies, including Advanced Micro Devices, Google, Motorola, Samsung, and News Corp.
The low-cost computer will have a 14-inch color screen, AMD chips, and will run Linux software, Mr. Negroponte said during an interview Friday with Red Herring at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. AMD is separately working on a cheap desktop computer for emerging markets. It will be sold to governments for wide distribution.
An engineering prototype is nearly ready, with alpha units expected by year’s end and real production around 18 months from now, he said. The portable PCs will be shipped directly to education ministries, with China first on the list. Only orders of 1 million or more units will be accepted.
Via Red Herring | Inquirer
Blogger refers to the blog hosting company, while the lower case generic term blogger indicates the blog writer.
BBW has an interesting article on Optimization for Blogger hosted blogs. He points three very powerful optimization tools that are missing from Blogger templates, and would be very helpful in improving searches for Blogger hosted blogs.
One missing item is categories. Blogger users can’t place their posts into theme related categories. The ability of other blog hosts to provide categories gives those blogs a bit of a theme related SEO advantage. That is to say nothing of the benefit to the blog readers of neatly organized categories for related links.
Blogger doesn’t provide a related links feature that lets readers find additional posts on the same blog topic. Another benefit to readers, and to the search engines due to the loss of an internal link, is missed by Blogger.
A third issue is the lack of internal “tag” coding. Blogger users are required to write their own tag code for Technorati and other users of post tags for search. As embedded linked keywords, tags are also very powerful for creating themes in search engines.
He also has a tip for you. Blogs are well crawled by the major and lesser known search engine spiders. Because the posts are so frequent, the spiders return to reindex the blog, on at least a daily basis. By pinging the blog, which is notifying the specialized blog search engines and RSS aggregators of an update, the blog reaches a huge audience including media outlets. A good one stop multiple site pinger is Ping-O-Matic.
From Wikipedia: On August 5, 1960, Mughal-e-Azam released and became the biggest grossing film at that time, a record that went unbroken for 15 years until the release of the film Sholay in 1975. It still ranks second in the list of all time box-office hits of Indian cinema (inflation adjusted). Despite performing alongside the most respected acting talent of the industry, Prithviraj Kapoor, Durga Khote, and Dilip Kumar, critics recognised and appreciated Madhubala’s intelligent and multi layered performance.
The film Mughal-e-azam re-tells a popular Indian tale, which was previously filmed as Loves of a Mughal Prince (1928) and Anarkali (1953). It is loosely based on an episode in the life of the Mughal prince Salim, who went on to become the Emperor Jahangir. In the movie, the great conqueror Akbar (played by Prithviraj Kapoor) and his Rajput wife, Mariam-uz-Zamani (played by Durga Khote) have a son - the weak and pleasure-loving Salim - played by Dilip Kumar. Salim falls in love with Anarkali (Madhubala), a court-dancer. He wants to marry her, but his father objects and throws Anarkali into prison.
Despite imprisonment, Anarkali refuses to reject Salim. Salim rebels against his father, is defeated in battle, and is sentenced to death. Anarkali pleads for his life in exchange for her own, and is condemned to be walled up alive. However, it is revealed that Akbar owed a favor to Anarkali’s mother, since she informed him of the birth of his son. Anarkali’s mother takes advantage of this, and begs for her daughter’s life. The emperor relents, and arranges for Anarkali’s secret escape into exile. Unfortunately, it is still announced that Anarkali was killed, and Salim is heartbroken.
Director K. Asif, unaware of the extent of Madhubala’s illness, required long and grueling shooting schedules that made heavy physical demands on her. Whether it was posing as a veiled statue in suffocating make-up for hours under the sweltering studio lights or being shackled with heavy chains. From 1951 through to 1959 Madhubala invested her best efforts into Mughal-e-Azam.
Post 1956 and her separation from Dilip Kumar, the film’s remaining intimate romantic scenes were filmed under much tension and strain between Madhubala and her now estranged co-star. This emotionally and physically taxing experience is widely perceived as a major factor in her subsequent decline in health.
I tried this 40 word query on Google words and got this warning: “3” (and any subsequent words) was ignored because we limit queries to 32 words. (The “3” was the 33rd word in my query) Click on the above image to see the results.
So they have quietly raised the search limit to 32 words. But why didn’t they annouce it officially ? There’s no mention in even the Google Blog.
The 32 word limit is used on the main search engine, image search, Froogle, and via the Google search API which you still have to live with the 10 word limitation on Google groups and Google news
There was lot of stuff on Getting Around the 10 Word Limit by replacing unimportant with words with * within quotation marks ” “. None worked completely and all had their downsides. Now that Google gives us 32 words as native search feature, hacks like these will be a thing of the past. Of course, you may still need them if you want to stretch your search to cover 33 words.
[ via Welsh, Outer-court, zsmarties ]
Quick Google Links from GoogleBlog
Web, Images, Groups, Directory, News, Catalogs, Labs, Answers, US, Linux, Mac, BSD, Microsoft, Language Tools, Translate, Appliance, Services, Store, Toolbar, Compute, Contest, In Your Language, Quiz, Zeitgeist
Chances are, you have spyware on your computer. If you’re using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and if you’ve been visiting a wide variety of Web sites, that chance reaches close to certainty. And if you’ve ever clicked on a pop-up offer of any kind, including an offer to check for spyware, then you can assume you’re infected.
After you’re infected, you probably don’t notice anything bad at first. And in many cases, nothing very bad does happen. Many spyware programs just report back on what Web sites you visit or what software you’re running. But some report back your user names and passwords, checking account and credit card numbers, or even on the contents of your hard disk.
Wayne Rash has a nice round-up of products that help you fight spyware. He starts with explaining the basics of spyware, their impact on your privacy, your PC performance and then he reviews some of the tools available to get rid of spyware. As per Rash, the most workable solution is to ditch Windows and use Linus or MacOS. Secondly, he wants you to stop using IE and switch to Mozilla browsers to prevent your PC from getting infected again when you just cleaned it. Also, don’t click on pop-ups, don’t click on unexpected links in e-mail; they may lead you to spyware along with a lot of other nasty things.
Rash has reviewed Ad-aware, Spybot, MS Antispyware and Yahoo’s Toolbar in this article. Any of the three applications will take care of at least most of the spyware on your system, and that will give you the breathing room you need to decide how you want to proceed.
Microsoft At Work is a great site for articles on different topics available on Microsoft website. The articles aim to help you get the most out of your computer. Some of the main categories are:
Get the most out of your computer and Microsoft products.
Find tips and tools to work more efficiently.
Work securely and efficiently in a collaborative environment.
Be productive and stay in touch wherever you go.
Some people already have 25MB and even 250MB, but the majority of Hotmail users still have only 2MB. The Inquirer writes has found a workaound to this problem.
All you have to do is to turn off Messenger and sign up in your Hotmail account. Go to options/personal and than My profile. Change your country code to USA and pick one of the states - we tried Florida and used 33332 as the zip code. After you change this, go to update than continue. While you are still logged into Hotmail go here and deactivate your account. Don’t worry - all your mails will remain safe. Now you have to go to hotmail.com and log with your username and password and you will automatically re-activate your account.
When you log in you will see that you already have a 25MB account while it’s supposed to upgrade to 250MB soon. I did it few days ago and I am still at 25MB.
Apple has unveiled a new, low-cost Macintosh computer for the masses, billed as the Apple - Mac mini
Just 6.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall, weighs just 2.9 pounds and starts for $499 only !
Mac mini could be about to do for the personal computer market what iPod has achieved for the music industry and the role of the internet.
The hardware drivers on your original recovery CD are probably out of date, either made obsolete by newer and better versions available online, or simply irrelevant because of new hardware you’ve installed.
So, instead of fretting about the old recovery CD, why not take a few minutes and make one of your own?
To prepare a recovery CD, you’ll need: (1) an original Windows XP CD, (2) a valid Windows product key, (3) a collection of your most essential hardware drivers, and (4) a copy of your backup software so you can access your archived data.
The Windows XP SP2 setup files should now consume about 600MB , leaving about 100MB free when they are placed on a garden-variety CD-R. Use this space to include drivers for your most important hardware devices. You can download the appropriate drivers from the hardware manufacturers’ Web sites.
In the C:\xp folder, create a new folder called DRIVERS, and then create a subfolder for each driver. For instance, create a VIDEO folder for your display adapter drivers, a NETWORK folder for your Ethernet or wireless-network adapter driver, and MODEM for your modem driver (if needed). Make sure to include all drivers and software you will need to get your PC connected to the Internet. Once your Internet connection is up and running, you’ll be able to download the less-vital drivers, such as those for your printer and sound card.
To be certain all these drivers will work when you need them, don’t use anything you haven’t personally tested. And don’t forget to expand any ZIP files or self-extracting EXE files now, so that you’ll be able to access the individual driver files during Windows setup if needed.
Read full article here.
This site - Submit your RSS Feed lets you add your Feed to currently 15 RSS aggregators including Google and Yahoo Search.
Just enter your Feed URL and email address. The script will do the rest and give you success/error messages for every site.
Do you need an Orkut Invitation to become a member of Orkut. Get an Orkut Invite here on Digital Inspiration..
To get an immediate Orkut invite, please support this website by making a donation via Paypal. Post your Orkut Invite request via Paypal
Leave your Name, Gender and EMail address here. Also tell us how did you find this website ? We will send you an Orkut invitation right away.
To join orkut, simply click on the link in the email you received and follow the instructions for creating a user name and password. If orkut doesn’t sound like it’s for you, feel free to delete your invitation.
And existing Orkut users can send out an invitation to their friends using these steps:
1. Click on the “Friends” link in the blue bar at the top of the page.
2. Click on the “book” tab to the right of your name (this tab displays a pencil.)
3. Enter your friend’s first and last name and their email address, and click the “add as a friend” button.
You can still request for invitation to GMail or Yahoo 360 service.
Get a GMail Invite | Get a Yahoo 360 Invite.
The desktop search offerings unveiled in the last three months by Google, Microsoft, Ask Jeeves (ASKJ ), and Yahoo are all still in test mode. Yahoo is working with software from X1 Technologies for its desktop search product. AOL, which is expected to release a similar product early this year, is partnering with Copernic Technologies for its software.
The money-making potential of desktop search is dubious in the short term. The various players haven’t announced business blueprints, but it’s likely that some will experiment with ways to cash in, such as placing relevant ads alongside search results.
Such a move, however, would be rife with controversy. Google sparked a firestorm last year when it announced that its free e-mail service, Gmail, would scan customers’ messages and place relevant ads next to the text. An effort to scan the content of personal files would likely prompt an even testier reaction.
Nevertheless, desktop search offerings appear to be a strategic necessity in this increasingly competitive niche. And the winners will be the ones who find a way to make it pay.
Via Can Desktop Search Find Profits?
Yahoo Desktop Search, long awaited is finally out. It allows you to search for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, Outlook, Outlook Express, HTML, text, ZIP, PhotoShop, Illustrator and over 200 other file types. All of them are viewable in the Preview Pane in Yahoo! Desktop Search. This reminds me of X1 deskop search. Yahoo has earlier entered into a partnership with X1, an IdeaLabs product.
Yahoo! desktop search has a built-in viewer and you can view search results as quickly as you can type with your search terms highlighted. The file preview looks exactly as they should look (e.g., Excel looks like Excel, PDF looks like PDF). You can even play audio files without the need of an external player.
Unlike rival applications, Yahoo’s software lets people sort and refine query results within seconds by merely typing a letter or two into one of several linear search boxes, which include file size, name and date/time.
Since Yahoo supports text search, you can even use to search inside your source code files like *.c, *.cc. YDS ensures your privacy by not indexing your Web browser history. You can even save your favorite searches for one-click reuse. Yahoo! Desktop Search provides you with an indicator of its indexing progress in the bottom right hand corner of the application so you’ll know when all of your files and emails are searchable.
YDS inherets so many features of X1 - A preview pane in the search interface lets users look at the contents of the file without opening it; search terms are highlighted in the preview. All files can be launched from within the search interface; audio and video content can be played without launching a media player. I am wondering why would someone buy X1 if Yahoo! gives all those wonderful features for free ? I see that X1 supports Eudora and Netscape Mail clients also but YDS support only Outlook and Outlook Express.
X1 would definitely have a tough time convincing buyers to pay for their X1 desktop search product when YDS, which carries most of the essential and best features of X1 is available for free. X1 folks will be well aware of this situation and may have different plans altogether. Maybe, they would now focus on enterprise search. For this reason, just days before YDS beta was due, X1 released their X1 Workgroup Edition that includes all the capabilities of X1’s desktop search product but further enhanced to include shared network solutions. It has enhanced data security options and extensible to include custom sources of data.
Yahoo has acknowledged that the beta product has one data security issue. It will index and display as search results e-mail that’s been archived into a password-protected file will be indexed and displayed in the preview pane. The company promised to fix the bug in a subsequent release.
If you have any questions related to YDS, they have a nice FAQ for you here.
Download Yahoo Desktop Search Beta here. (7.5 Mb File)
A small warning For users currently running X1, Yahoo! recommends you not to install both the products. First un-install X1 and then install Yahoo! desktop search.
My Verdict: There is absolutely no need to buy X1 when Yahoo! gives you all the best things for free !!. Thank you Yahoo! And I am sure they will keep improving the product which is already so impressive. For those folks who are skeptical of Google privacy concerns, swith to YDS! now.
Anna Lagerkvist of Personal Computer World has done an extensive review of the two most popular digital encyclopedia titles - Encyclopaedia Britannica 2005 vs Microsoft Encarta 2005 here. The days of using heavy, printed encyclopaedias are long gone. Now, all you need to do is move your mouse around digital pages on your PC. Microsoft and Britannica have released 2005 versions of their reference suites; here is a comparison of the DVD editions.
Microsoft Encarta 2005 - The latest DVD allegedly holds more information than 60 print volumes, with some 130,000 articles, 1.8 million map locations and over 3,000 audio and music clips. There’s a large archive from The Times and a year of free online updates. The Interactive Timeline shows cultural, social or scientific events across the years and how they relate. This is as impressive as ever, allowing users to jump in and out of history to find out more about key developments.
Encyclopaedia Britannica 2005 - The single-disc DVD Ultimate Reference Suite 2005 contains a Student Library, Elementary Library, General Reference Library and the Britannica Brainstormer. Britannica displays search results in alphabetical order, rather than order of importance or according to the country you’re in. For example, searching for ‘London’ will show up London in Ontario, Canada, before London, England.
The final verdict
MICROSOFT ENCARTA Publisher’s Site
Encarta is miles ahead thanks to its impressive content, use of multimedia and easy navigation. There’s no denying the pedigree of Britannica, but it hasn’t made the best transition from print to desktop.
Pros: User-friendly, impressive content; new Search Bar
Cons: Can be a little slow
Verdict: Full of features but still affordable
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA Publisher’s Site
Britannica is let down by poor interface design. Each article still opens up in a new window, making it hard to return to one without wading through them all. Where Encarta excels with its Interactive Timeline, Britannica feels a bit dull with its scrollable boxes. The atlas still doesn’t fit onto a 1,024 x 768 screen, and the outline feels flat.
Pros: Content; value for money
Cons: Static feel; interface design
Verdict: It has the content, but the interface needs to be improved to really compete with Encarta
Indian Edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Flexbeta.net has posted an excellent comparison of Microsoft’s new spyware fighting tool, Windows AntiSpyware, to Ad-Aware and SpyBot S&D here.
Ad-aware revealed that Microsoft AntiSpyware failed to detect 272 critical objects including 73 registry keys, 107 registry values, 89 files and 3 folders. Choosing not to remove any of the files identified and closing Ad-Aware, SpyBot S&D was used to scan the machine in able to see how many infected files it can identify. SpyBot reported 61 problems clearly not as many as Ad-Aware but still surprising that some infected files from Gator where still present on the machine.
Though still in beta, Microsoft AntiSpyware was able to detect more infected files than the current leading anti-spyware applications in the market today, Ad-Aware and SpyBot S&D. AntiSpyware™’s user interface is better looking than both SpyBot and Ad-Aware, not to mention much easier to use than SpyBot. Though Microsoft AntiSpyware was able to use better detection than both Ad-Aware and SpyBot, there is still the difference of cost between the three. Ad-Aware and SpyBot offer great performance for free, yet when Microsoft debuts its AntiSpyware application, it will require a subscription fee. Is Microsoft AntiSpyware really worth the subscription fee when there are currently good spyware removal applications out there that will do it for free? My answer to that question would be, if you can afford the fee, it is absolutely worth it; however, if you chose to use Microsoft AntiSpyware as your spyware removal tool, you will still need to run other tools such as Ad-Aware and SpyBot.
How about adding Symantec, Mcafee, Real to the comparison table ?
Back in 1996, we featured our first-ever Yahoo! Picks of the Year. Eight years later, we’re still scouring the Internet for fresh, fun, or funky sites to spotlight every day. Over the course of the year, we’ve featured hundreds of sites, and we think the very best deserve another look. From fascinating photos to sophomoric stunts to intriguing innovations, these sites are as an eclectic a mix as the Web itself. Selected by the Yahoo! Picks editors, Yahoo! Picks of 2004 represent our favorite 25 sites of the year.The Yahoo! Picks are nicely categorized here. The Yahoo! Picks are also available in Email (Daily / Weekly) or as RSS feed.
Extensions are small add-ons that add new functionality to Firefox. They can add anything from a toolbar button to a completely new feature. They allow the browser to be customized to fit the personal needs of each user if they need additional features, while keeping Firefox small to download .
The Firefox Extensions site is completely redesigned and also provides an RSS feed to notify whenever new extensions are added.
I see some new categories in extensions like Blogging, Website Integration and Web Annoyances.
Last month, a Mumbai tabloid wanted to demonstrate that the average Indian cop lived in a world far removed from everyday technology. It asked a constable to use his ATM card and photographed his every step. He did not know how to use the card and the machine swallowed it. He was left smiling sheepishly in the final frame.
"The cop who checks your car license does not own a car," said Raghu Raman, who heads an information security firm called Mahindra Special Services Group. “The passport official who checks your passport does not go abroad. The cop to whom you go to register a credit card misuse does not own a credit card. If a cop is in no position to own a computer, how can he fight cybercrime? The field cop (and) the beat constable live in another world.”
According to Tim Berners-Lee, this is a copy of the first web page ever.
It is so plain, yet so informative, and could have been easily written in vi with the most basic HTML knowledge.
For those curious minds, don’t forget to take a look at the simple HTML source code. [Via]
(The original URL, nxoc01.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html, ceased to exist a long time ago.)
Firewall Test, Adware and Popup Blocker Test. Test your PC for possible security vulnerabilities.
Using readily available diagnostic tools and your Internet connection, the AuditMyPC.com site will tell you exactly what security holes you have open, Windows patches that you are missing, spyware that is installed, ports that are open (and which viruses take advantage of which open port), and a host of other useful information.
Tests offered include a firewall test, patch test, open ports test, popup test, spyware detection, and more.
And all for free!
If you’re not convinced that you need to visit this site and avail yourself of their services, take a look at their “kudos” page, where other users have posted such comments as “Your auditing stuff is really really superb. Although I am a computer professional, all this time I was unaware that someone was accessing my computer”, and “Thank you so much for this site. I never realized how vulnerable my computer was, and the browser tests freaked me out! Thanks for making the world a better place.”
[Via] Firewall Test, Port Scan and Internet Security made easy - Spy Ware, Audit and Tools
VisitorVille Intelligence has released information on how employees of several large companies use the web based on their monitoring of thousands of websites. Presumably using IP address blocks, they group company employees together to produce some interesting facts and figures: Microsoft employees use Google for their searches 66% of the time, but MSN Search only 20% of the time, and Firefox is their second most popular browser behind Internet Explorer 6’s whopping 98.76% share. Google employees use Google as their search engine 100% of the time and 21% use a Mozilla or Firefox browser. Apple employees like Google best and 68% use Safari. 91% of Internap employees use Mozilla or Firefox, Deutsche Telekom AG employees are the biggest users of Linux, and 39% of Sun Microsystems employees use SunOS. Other groups of interest to Slashdot readers include: The White House, the United Nations, The New York Times, Red Hat, and IBM.
I am little surprised to see that Microsoft has given freedom to their employees to install software of their choice ? Maybe they use it for testing their applications across different browsers.
Update: The VisitorVille site is currently down because their servers could not handle the traffic from Slashdot. In your infinite bounty, you have brought down our server.
Via Slashdot | How Company Employees Use The Web
Firefox users typically ignore online ads when compared to IE users.
CNET reports that a German maketing company Adtech, found that during October and November, only 0.11 percent of Firefox users ever clicked on an ad, compared with around 0.5 percent of IE users. The percentage of IE users clicking on ads varied depending on which version of the browser was being used, the company said: from 0.44 percent of version 6.x users to 0.53 percent of version 5.5 users. The survey was based on 1,000 Web sites in Europe that use Adtech’s ad server.
Dirk Freytag, the chief operations officer of Adtech, said in a statement that the reason for this trend is probably the different surfing habits of Firefox and IE users, plus the inclusion of an integrated pop-up ad blocker in Firefox. Among IE users, only those who have version 6 and who have installed Windows XP Service Pack 2 have an integrated pop-up blocker, although IE users can also choose to install a third-party pop-up blocker.
Firefox is more popular among more technical users (or geeks) who are less likely to clicks ads by mistake as they are generally more aware of the site structure and can easily spot adcontent. They will never click a flashing banner that says “Click here to win a $50000 lotto” or “Click here to tune-up your PC”. Also, Firefox comes with a built-in image blocker and advanced users can get more control using Adblock extension which is more robust and more precise. Adblock allows the user to specify filters, which remove unwanted content based on the source-address. All Macromedia Flash content, a very popular form of online advertising, can be blocked with just a right click and even makes surfing faster as when the site loads again, the bulks swf file would not be downloaded. Here are some example of using adblock filters:
* Blocking all gif-images: .gif
* Blocking all content served from Doubleclick: doubleclick.net
* Blocking the contents of an ad-directory: http://example.com/ads/
It is also possible to block Google Adboxes by blocking the page http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js which serves the Google ads but it is not recommended as it distorts the layout of the webpage in most of the cases. Also, Google Adsense is popular for serving only relevant ads related to the content of the webpage. They are easily distinguishable and look like ads and not system dialogs.
Adtech’s findings could have significant implications for the online-advertising market. It may be bad news for sites that rely on online advertising, because as the number of Firefox users grows, those sites may get lower click-through rates. In some cases, Web surfers would be well-advised to stay clear of banner ads. Last month, ZDNet UK reported that hackers have attacked ad servers and have modified the banner ads so that they redirect users to Web sites that download malicious code.
There may be 101 reasons to use Firefox over IE but for this one single reason, website owners will really wish to have more IE users than Firefox users.
Where is a location? How to get there? What is located around it?
MapmyIndia allows users to find any location or landmark in India and see it on a dynamic, interactive, searchable and highly detailed map, get routes between any two major locations and view various tourist and business locations instantaneously on the map. This interactive and intelligence based web site, combined with in-depth coverage enables you to see detailed maps at various levels, bringing about a paradigm shift in the way people in India have been looking at maps.
Other map sites of India which also offer driving directions, road connections, shortest route services.
National Geographic Xpeditions Atlas: India - offers a printable map of India.
WorldAtlas.Com: India - interactive map outlining the country as well as its landforms and rivers. Also provides a country profile with recommended links.
Imapindia - cities and states with some maps in Hindi and Bengali.
India Maps - Perry-Castaneda Map Collection - includes political, shaded relief, historical, and thematic maps.Also features detailed maps of major cities and certain regions.
India Road Map
Lonely Planet: India Map - interactive map with links to information on attractions and points of interest.
Map India: Tourism Network - shows major tourist circuits in India.
Maps of India- includes state and union territories, population, air network, railway, mineral, income, highway, literacy, and distance charts.
