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Showing posts from May, 2005

Track your spouse 24 hours a day

Those readers who suspect that their other half may be playing away from home, or that their teenage daughter is currently getting down and dirty with some spotty ne'er-do-well are pointed in the direction of the ultimate errant female tracking device: the truly sensational forget-me-not panties with sensatech technology. These "panties" can trace the exact location of your woman and send the information, via satellite, to your cell phone, PDA, and PC simultaneously! Use our patented mapping system, pantyMap®, to find the exact location of your loved one 24 hours a day. The technology is embedded into a piece of fabric so seamlessly she will never know it's there! According to David, When my daughter hit puberty I nearly had a heart attack. She started looking like a woman and suddenly she was wearing revealing clothing and staying out late with her friends. Rather than become an over-protective parent , I decided to try forget-me-not panties™. They work

Sony has a new idea to stop piracy

ABC reports: Sony tests anti-CD burning technology. As part of its mounting United States rollout of content-enhanced and copy-protected CDs, Sony BMG is testing technology that bars consumers from making additional copies of burned CD-R discs. Since March the company has released at least 10 commercial titles - more than 1 million discs in total, featuring technology from UK anti-piracy specialist First4Internet that allows consumers to make limited copies of protected discs, but blocks users from making copies of the copies. The concept is known as "sterile burning" and, in the eyes of Sony BMG executives, the initiative is central to the industry's efforts to curb casual CD burning. "Two-thirds of all piracy comes from ripping and burning CDs, which is why making the CD a secure format is of the utmost importance." To date, most copy protection and other digital rights management-based solutions that allow for burning have not included secure burning. Early

How Google News works

Joi writes about a presentation by Krishna Bharat titled: Inside Google News where Bharat explained how Google News works. [Dan Gillmor pressed Krishna for more transparency on the algorithm and the list of sources.] Google News basically crawls news sites, finds "story clusters", ranks the sources, figures out how prominently each source is running the story, figures out whether its a big story or a little story, figures out geographic references, and builds the pages for the various geographic and language editions. He was talking to an audience of editors so there were many questions about how the "editing" process worked and many people couldn't seem to believe it was algorithmic. Some people seemed afraid that Google News would replace them. The point that he made and was clear from the process that he explained is that it uses the decisions that the editors of the various media make about what story to run and where in deciding how important a story was.

Exploring the Hidden Web

Google, one of the most popular search engines, at best can index and search about 4 billion to 5 billion Web pages, representing only 1 percent of the World Wide Web. But officials from Connotate Technologies , said they have developed technology that can mine and extract data from the Deep Web, which contains an estimated 500 billion Web pages, and deliver it in any format and through any delivery mechanism. The Deep Web refers to content in databases that rarely shows up in Web searches. Through the use of intelligence-based software modules called information agents, corporate and government organizations can quickly and easily target specific unstructured data from intranets and password-protected Web sites on a continual basis. Molloy said information agents can go to complex Web sites and databases, extract information — such as dates, names or contract identification numbers — and automatically deliver that data in any format. Pricing starts at a little more than $100,

Inside Bill Gates House - Pictures of Bill Gates Home

Take a virtual tour of the Bill Gates Mansion where he stays with his family. Watch the beautiful neighbourhood of Bill Gates house. The Bill Gates family lives in the exclusive suburb of Medina, Washington, in a huge earth-sheltered home in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington. Billionaire Bill Gates home is a very modern 21st century house in the "Pacific lodge" style, with advanced electronic systems everywhere. In one respect though it is more like an 18th or 19th century mansion: it has a large private library with a domed reading room. While it does have a classic flavour, the home has many unique qualities. Lights would automatically come on when you came home. Speakers would be hidden beneath the wallpaper to allow music to follow you from room to room. Portable touch pads would control everything from the TV sets to the temperature and the lights, which would brighten or dim to fit the occasion or to match the outdoor light. Photographs - Bill G

Microsoft Office Tips and Tricks

Most of us use Microsoft Office, but do we know how to make the most of it? Computeractive reveals 100 top tips for mastering this suite. We probably use office programs - word processors, spreadsheets, email and presentation applications - more than any other kind of software on our computers. Of this kind of software, Microsoft's Office suite is the most popular. It can, however, be hard to get to grips with all the time-saving features; all those menus, toolbars and buttons can seem overwhelming at times, particularly if you are just starting out. Once you delve a little deeper and discover Office's hidden shortcuts and tricks, however, you can make your software work a lot harder for you and make your life easier in the process. My favourite MS Word trick is Scraps - You can create 'scraps' in Word, which are small blocks of text from a document. Highlight some text in an open document and drag it to the Desktop, and you will see it appear as a document sc

Did Google visit your website today?

I'm always curious to know how often Googlebot is visiting my website. I get maximum traffic from Google Search Engine, so it becomes very important that Googlebot pays frequent visits to my website and indexes maximum number of pages. Googlebot is Google's web-crawling robot. It collects documents from the web to build a searchable index for the Google search engine. Since this blog is hosted on Blogger, I do not have any access to their webserver logs and the only way to find out if Google visited my site is check the date on Google Cache . But looks like there exists a better way of doing things - I just came across an undocumented but very powerful syntax called "daterange" - Google did mention it in the API documentation but very few know about it. Remember: A date-range search has nothing to do with the creation date of the content and everything to do with the indexing date of the content. And this is exactly what I was looking for. If you want to limit you

Read this page before Microsoft sues you

Microsoft has listed all its Trademarks here . According to MS, the absence of a name or logo in this list does not constitute a waiver of any and all intellectual property rights that Microsoft Corporation has established in any of its product, feature, or service names or logos. The name Microsoft is synonymous with high-quality computer software and hardware products and services. Microsoft trademarks are extremely valuable because they represent the standards of excellence and consistent quality associated with Microsoft. This page contains detailed information about how to reference Microsoft trademarks in different scenarios. Read General Microsoft Trademark Guidelines . After reading the guidelines, I found one mistake which almost all of do all the time. See the example below. Set Microsoft Trademarks Apart From Other Words or Nouns They Modify The common way to do this is to capitalize the product name and use the appropriate trademark symbol and appropriate descriptor. You ma

Download your favourite Programming Fonts

Every font you will find here was created by a programmer and is free. Proggy Programming Fonts is the home of the Proggy programmer's fonts (Proggy Clean, Proggy Square, Proggy Small, and Proggy Tiny) as well as a number of contributed programming fonts (Crisp, Speedy, CodingFontTobi1, and Opti). It is also the home of two other proportional bitmap fonts for use on web pages (Webby Caps and Webby Small). The proggy fonts are a set of fixed-width screen fonts that are designed for code listings. They are distributed in Microsoft's .fon format, the truetype (ttf) format, as well as XWindows (Linux/BSD...) pcf format. The .fon format works well with MS Visual Studio, a command prompt, Photoshop, etc. Some editors do not recognize .fon fonts, in which case you should use the ttf version (12pt PC, 16pt Mac). Each font only comes in one size that it looks good at. The ttf fonts should also be used at their intended point size as they are basically conversions of the pixel based bit

Try software for 7 days - either buy it or delete it

Jeff writes about his passion for trying out new software. He says : I love to try out new software all the time, in fact its sort of an obsession. I'm always on the prowl for cool new applications. After seven days of use though if I'm not totally blowon away or if its not improving my PC life, its straight to add/remove programs I go. What will make a piece of software get registered vs. uninstalled? 1. Does it play well with my other applications or does it clobber my other applications? 2. Does it have a weird user interface or is the experience sleek? 3. Is the data easily available to all of my machines or do I have to perform registry judo to get the data to another desktop? 4. Does it improve my PC experience, make me more productivity or do I have fun with it? 5. Have I completely forgotten about the application after seven days? Edd adds : Actually, I have a similar rule. I will not install a new program when I first hear about it, no matter how tempting it sounds. In

Secure Windows login with typing a password

Palcott Software have just released Natural Login Pro that offers secure Windows login without the need to type your password every time. It works by storing your password on a USB key, which automatically identifies you and can log you in automatically. To log-off, you can simply remove the USB key and the computer will be locked. The program supports multiple users, and can also store multiple account logins on a single USB key. In addition, Natural Login Pro offers an emergency login that can be used if you forgot or lost your USB key. With Auto-Login, a user can be automatically logged in to their computer as they insert the device into the USB port. Natural Login Pro recognizes the user, determines their access privileges, and connects them to the appropriate account on the computer. The result is powerful hardware-based security melded with convenient access. In addition, unlike other security schemes that require users to carry around hardware tokens made specifically for a

The Battle for Bloggers

As big-footed competitors like Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft enter the blogosphere, Juan Carlos ponders whether the changes they are bringing will be benefitial or detrimental to the [blogging] market. MSN Spaces was topped only by blogging stalwarts. Google's Blogger and its accompanying Blogspot hosting site together drew 12.63 million unique visitors in April, followed by Six Apart's Typepad and LiveJournal services, which together rang up 11.47 million, and by Xanga.com with 8.26 million. Introduced in beta form just last December, MSN Spaces now hosts over 10 million blogs, an eye-popping adoption rate that has blown past internal Microsoft expectations. In April, when MSN Spaces exited its beta period, it was already among the most popular blogging sites in the U.S. based on stats indicating 2.87 million unique visitors that month, according to market researcher comScore Networks. Microsoft is tapping mostly people who haven't blogged before, and specifically among th

What's missing in MSN Search Toolbar

Paul Thurrott does an extensive review of MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search and says that is the best desktop search tool available to Windows users, and a must-have addition to any XP user's desktop. It's fast, free, and functional, and offers virtually every feature you'll ever need. And thanks to its open architecture, companies can create custom iFilter extensions that let WDS index any file type. This will prove hugely important for corporations that have created proprietary file types, but it also means that WDS can be instantly updated should some popular new document type hit the Web tomorrow. No software is perfect and the missing features that Paul mentions are also an extension to my previous post MSN - You could not win my heart : WDS finds documents (and email), and not "files." The distinction is important. If you want to find every document you've written that includes the text "MSN," WDS is a great tool. If you w

Why are Bull and Bear symbols of the stock market?

For those who don't spend a lot of time on Wall Street, bulls and bears refer to opposite trends in the stock market. According to Investor Words, a bull market is "a prolonged period in which investment prices rise faster than their historical average." Conversely, a bear market means "a prolonged period in which investment prices fall, accompanied by widespread pessimism." So, bulls good, bears bad... No one's quite sure how the two animals came to symbolize the market, but there are a few theories floating around. According to Motley Fool, a bear market earned its name because bears tend to swat at things with their paws in a downward motion (as in "the market's going down"). A bull market, on the other hand, got its name because bulls swing their horns upward when they strike (as in "the market's going up"). Another theory proposes that the animals' personalities are behind the symbolism. Bears move with caution, while bul

Simplifying the complex amazon.com image URLs

Nat Gertler has done a complete investigation of the Amazon.COM URLs which are really difficult to understand. According to Nat, the details of size and format are built into the image's URL. What that means that, if you want, you can create URLs that generate odd and unlikely Amazon images. The proper combination of product choice and added elements and effects could create an interesting visual. The foreign Amazon sites all seem to use the same method; the only difference is that instead of starting with the http://images.amazon.com/ domain, the amazon.jp images start with http://images-jp.amazon.com/ while the amazon.co.uk and amazon.de images start with http://images-eu.amazon.com/ - Amazon.ca uses the same domain as Amazon.com. http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0762423374.01._PE20_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg http://images.amazon.com/images/P/ - doesn't vary. That points to the right place on the Amazon servers. 0762423374 is the ASIN, the identifier that Amazon uses for e

Images in Google Adsense Text Only Ads

Jensense reports that icons, better known as 16 by 16 pixel favicons, have been spotted in AdSense wide skyscraper ad units (160x600). Register.com, eBay.com and Amazon.com are among those advertisers whose favicons are being shown. This could have a negative impact on the earnings of Google Adsense publishers. A text link with an image on the left would attract more attention of the visitor and is more likely to be clicked than the one without an image. And premium advertisors might be paying less per click. So your Google.com Adsense CTR may go up but the EPC may fall. Or, Google might be still testing this adsense feature and may eventually allow all adsense adwords users to use favicon in their ads. In that case, the skyscraper units will definitely catch the eye of the person viewing the webpage, which will be good for publishers as well as the advertisers who are using them to attract clicks. DigitalPoint members have seen favicon icons even in LeaderBoard style. See some scr

Bloglines developing a blog search engine

In an interview , Mark Fletcher, the CEO of Bloglines (now a division of AskJeeves) says that his company will release a blog search engine this summer which will surpass the likes of Technorati , Feedster , and PubSub . "The challenge," he says, "is to create world-class blog search, which we don't think exists now." Bloglines is one of the most popular online news aggregator but faces strong competition from emerging players like Pluck , Newsgator , Microsoft's Start.com and even Findory which learns from the articles you read and surfaces other interesting weblog posts and news articles. Bloglines has one big advantage - It has a huge subscriber base, they know what blogs are popular and what posts are most frequently viewed or emailed. This could be potentially a very big parameter in ranking blogs. We can also see a site search box from bloglines similar to Technorati Searchlet. But how does Bloglines expect to make money ? Jack Krupansky has an i

FlashPaper to become a feature in Acrobat

Macromedia FlashPaper allows easy creation of both PDFs and Flash documents - SWF files that are interchangeable with PDFs for most Web purposes. Look for Adobe to rapidly make FlashPaper go away as a standalone product, replaced by new functionality in Acrobat: the ability to save documents as SWF files. This is predicted in a report by the Forrester research group on the future of Flash after the Adobe-Macromedia merger Adobe's PDF standard is already facing the heat from Microsoft's Metro which is being called by some as a potential "Adobe Killer". Similar to NPD prediction , this report also carries good news from Flash users. Adobe Systems’ impending purchase of Macromedia has raised questions about the future of Flash. But the acquisition makes prospects for Flash-related products even brighter than before as Macromedia gets a much-needed infusion of marketing clout along with some intriguing opportunities for tool synergies. Flash Player will keep its sacre

Say No to Software Piracy - Downloading Serials or Cracks from Internet Could be Dangerous

Do not download pirated software or patches from the internet - When you download a crack, you can be almost certain that some bad things will be included. If you really can't afford the software you are looking for, contact the author and explain your situation. There is a big chance that you get a reduction or that you get the software for free. Most crackers will include trojans that they have written themselves and are therefore not detected by virus scanners. Many cracks will include spyware. The trojans allow the cracker to access your computer. If you use your computer to make payments by credit card or to do online banking, the cracker will have access to your passwords and pin codes and will use your credit card or bank account to buy things. The spyware can break many things in your computer. It can make your browser unusable. There is also a good chance that viruses are included. Now you may think that serials are safer. You don't need to install anything on your co

MSN - You could not win my heart

Nor a place on my desktop. The MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search was officially launched today. The toolbar also includes a pop-up blocker and form fill functions to enhance the browsing experience. Users of MSN's line of services, such as Hotmail, Messenger and Spaces, will find one-click access within the product. To address some privacy concerns , you can control which files the software indexes and how often. But are there enough reasons for me to switch from Copernic to MSN ? No, not yet. 1. MSN Desktop Search is only available on machines running Microsoft Windows XP/Server 2003/2000 & Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 or later. If you are a Firefox fan like me, stay away from it. 2. MSN added a preview pane similar to the one in Microsoft Outlook. This is a useful enhancement but according to SEW , Microsoft's preview is painfully sluggish compared to Yahoo's, to the point of being virtually unusable. 3. There is a toolbar everywhere. (See the image

Some amazing software will cease to exist

In the battle for "Survival of the Fittest" - Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Flash are expected to survive the Adobe-Macromedia merger , while Fireworks, Freehand, and GoLive will be eliminated. This is predicted in an NPD report cited by MacNN . Photoshop and Dreamweaver customers will be least affected by the merger, as these products will remain largely intact. However, the FTC regulations may require Adobe to sell GoLive, Fireworks, FreeHand to another vendor. NPD believes that customers will "most definitely" benefit from the merger. For example, integration between Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Flash would enable animators, Web designers and advertising professionals to "streamline their workflows." In the short run, the customer using both Photoshop and Dreamweaver "won’t need to do anything differently." Later, this customer will "probably be able to buy a single suite of tools from Adobe, resulting in significant cost

Screencasting Software Guide - Review of Desktop Screen Recording Tools

Screencasting to help your mom is a software buying guide to help you choose the right software for screen capture and for screencasting or recording movies of your desktop screen activity . How often friends visit you to learn how to use email, how to search Google or how to install a software. Or how do you teach Microsoft Office to mom who is sitting miles away. Well, the answer is simple - just record a screencast video of your screen with voice narration (aka screencast) and upload it a website like YouTube. What is Screencasting (Desktop Screen + Broadcast) Screencasting (see glossary ) is a process of creating interactive demonstrations and software simulations by capturing a series of screenshots of any running software application. The screencasting software (like a video camera) records all your actions and instantly creates a simulation or screencast. These screencast movies can be exported in a variety of formats like Standalone EXE, SWF, Flash Video, Windows Media, AVI, Q

U.S. Government RSS Library

The U.S. government's official web portal now offers an RSS Library . My favourites are the NASA RSS feeds available in the Science Section . General Science Information from NASA Image of the Day At the time of writing this post, the link to U.S. Army News was broken. You can even suggest a Feed here .

Guide for Google AdSense Publishers

If you are a regular visitor to my site, you might have noticed some changes in the style. Well, I drew most of the inspiration from the picture above also known as the "heat map". This “heat map” illustrates ideal ad placements on a sample page layout. Google folk have published an elaborate Optimization Tips page for Google Adsense publishers. Looking at my recent adsense statistics, I must admit that the above illustration is fairly nice. The colors fade from dark orange (strongest performance) to light yellow (weakest performance). All other things being equal, ad placements above the fold tend to perform better than those below the fold. Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page. Google has done an impressive presentation to woo new Adsense Publishers. Adsense for Content remains my primary source of revenue from this blog. I do not use " Adsense for Search " as Googlebot doesn'

Microsoft Office 2006

Microsoft has established an internal Office 12 ship calendar that pegs Office Beta 1 availability for August 29, 2005. Beta 2 is slated for December 5, 2005. The internal release-to-manufacturing target is May 22, 2006. And the target for "street" availability for the Office 12 System is July 17, 2006, the sources said. Looks like Microsoft is sticking to the deadline. The next version of Microsoft Office would be coming in 2006. With Office 12, Microsoft is expected to release more server products designed for workgroup collaboration. Industry observers and analysts have speculated a new Excel server might be in the works, for example, but Microsoft has declined to comment. Existing server products in the Office System family include Project Server, Portal Server and Live Communications Server. Microsoft originally planned to ship Office 12 alongside the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn. The Office release is now likely to come before the new Window

X1 or Yahoo! desktop search ?

If you are wondering why X1 is charging for features that Yahoo! is offering for free, think again. X1 , the big brother of all desktop search tools offers some unique features including special versions for Government and Enterprise users who have valid security concerns . To help consumers choose which desktop search tool is right for them, X1 provides of comparison summary here . Yahoo! Desktop Search - Gives consumers the power of X1 Desktop Search, including the ability to: • Find all of your emails, attachments, files and contacts on your computer - spanning over 200 different file types. • Instantly preview results - as fast as you type. • Search directly from within Outlook. • Customize and control your desktop search experience. X1 Desktop Search - Provides professionals and businesses with additional unique features, including the ability to: • Index and search network drives. • Index and act on email messages stored in external PST archives - even if they're not loa

To Read or Not to Read: That is the Query

To Search or Not to Search: That is the Query - Robert J. Boeri writes his views on Desktop Search Tools in this article on EContent. I have been following the desktop search tool market for quite sometime now and would like to comment on this article. Robert is right in pointing out that the desktop search market is hot. PC hard drive space has increased a thousand-fold. Google has become a common-place verb for searching, and with PCs always connected via broadband or DSL we simply have more to search for. The rest of the article is however embedded with not-so-correct information. It seems the author has little or no knowledge about the desktop search companies and their tools. To Read or Not to Read this article ? That is the Query . As of this writing, Google's desktop search tool is a "beta" edition, and is still being fine-tuned. The article was posted on May 09, 2005 and GDS was completely out of Beta on ..... - Yes there are security concerns with GDS but it

Tools for generating email signatures

Google is getting generous and tons of GMail invites are now available. You don't need to be a Photoshop expert to generate that cool looking GMail signature graphic. Just check out these two G m a i l Signature Generator sites: gizmo967.mgs3.org/Gmail/ playtime.uni.cc/gmail.php Playtime allows you to download the source code of the gmail signature generator script but I personally like the styles of gizmo967 . Both these services are very simple to use: Enter you GMail username, click the 'Create' button and save the generated graphic as a .png file. Convert it other formats like .jpg or .gif using free tool like IrfanView. Done ! And putting a graphic instead of the email prevents you from spam as well. S ome more services for GMail and other popular email services. 1. http://www.nhacks.com/email/index.php - Get email graphic signatures for GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, ATT, Bigfoot, RocketMail, QQ, Comcast, Netscape, Blueyonder, SBCGlobal, Earthlink and Lycos 2.

The last page on the Internet

So many websites claim to be The End of Internet . You can even shutdown the internet by clicking the red button . The message is clear: Leave the computer, do something productive or just go out and play. You have reached the very last page of the Internet. We hope you have enjoyed your browsing. Enjoy the rest of your life.

Google relaunches an old service with a new name

You would have read about the "new" Google service called Blogger Mobile where you need to do to use it is send an email or MMS from your phone to go@blogger.com - your blog is automatically created, and whatever text or photos (or both) you send in the message becomes your post. Before you say "This is cool" - think again. Such a service existed even when Google purchased Blogger from Pyralabs. It just had a different name Mail-To-Blogger - I really see no difference in Blogger Mobile and Mail-To-Blogger except that the former automatically create a blog for you the first time you use it and it send you confirmation notices of your posts. Such kind of marketing is rarely seen from Google which itself admits the similarities in the two features . Once you have a blog set up, posting through go@blogger.com will be equivalent to posting with your Mail-to-Blogger address (since Mail-to-Blogger now supports image attachments). This service is not for everyone ha

X1 desktop search countinues to impress

X1 Technologies, Inc., a recognized leader in desktop search solutions, today announced the immediate availability of X1 Desktop Search with support for the IBM Lotus Notes® email messaging system. The more than 118 million users of Lotus Notes now gain access to critical knowledge stored in their email, attachments, contacts and files via one of the most robust, award-winning desktop search tools currently on the market. X1 is the brainchild of entrepreneur Bill Gross, who conceived and developed a similar product, called Lotus Magellan in 1989. Bill Gross is the founder of Idealab , a company that incubates Internet startups such as X1. Idealab founded Overture , which of course was acquired by Yahoo in 2003. When Yahoo! released their desktop search product, I was a little concerned over the fate of X1 . But X1 developers continue to impress and and X1 remains one of my my favorite desktop search tool. No desktop search tool comes close when it comes to file preview (Contextual

Google Blog has a new home

Googler insights into product and technology news and our culture. Eric Case of the Blogger team writes about Google Blog's to new home at Blogspot. However, you don't need to resubscribe - the old Atom feed is being redirected to its new URL . The old blog at http://www.google.com/googleblog/ is no longer updated. Google folks have even added a blogroll in this new blog which to my surprise includes blogs of their main competitors - AJ , MSN and Yahoo! . Scoble was also present.

A picture is worth a thousand pictures

Photomosaics are also referred to as photo montages, photo-tiled pictures, mixed mosaics, random mosaics and photo tapestries. Photomosaics is an image creation process where a final image is formed from a collection of smaller images called tiles. The tiles are blend together to form a larger image completely unrelated to the individual images that form it. The small tile images can be seen up close, but at a distance, an entirely different image can be seen. See this popular photomosiac of George Bush . Photomosiac creation software was initially developed by Robert Silvers at the MIT labs and he does not license the technology which is protected by US patent 6,137,498, which also protects photomosaic's "look and feel". Since then over 100 of the Fortune 500 companies have been clients of Runaway Technology. Silvers has created covers for magazines such as Life, Newsweek, and Playboy and has created commissioned portraits for Vice President Al Gore, H. M. King Husse

The dark side of Desktop Search Tools

There is a lot of mention on UW's study that found Copernic software to be the most well-balanced of desktop search tool among those evaluated, ranking it above 11 competitors including MSN Toolbar Suite, Google Desktop, Yahoo! Desktop Search, Wizetech Archivarius 3000, Ask Jeeves, Enfish Professional, ISYS Desktop, dtSearch Desktop, diskMETA Pro, Blinkx, and HotBot Desktop. The "Benchmark Study of Desktop Search Tools" is available to the public at no cost here . (PDF 2.4 MB) Earlier, WP described Copernic as obscure , a comment that drew widespread criticisim . But the most important aspect of this study is when all the results were reviewed, it was determined that most of the desktop search tools were still too immature for significant business use due primarily to a lack of mature security and overall manageability. This is definitely bad news for Desktop search companies. Even Federal agencies remain worried of free desktop search tools due to security problem

Filehand 3.0 Desktop Search

It is unfortunate that Filehand Search , winner of a 2004 Shareware Industry Association award for best utility using .NET, was not included in the latest report comparing desktop search tools. Bob Gelinas just informed me that Filehand Search 3.0 is officially released and new features include better support for Outlook and use of tabs to multi-task among different searches. To me, the most unique and innovative feature of Filehand is Full scrollable extracts - You can see the extracts of the files you found, even for PDF files and even scroll through the extracts so you can quickly find the information you're looking for. (look at the illustration below) The new Filehand API provides tight integration of the Filehand search functions into any .NET application, including ASP.NET. The API is priced at $995 for a single use license. Multi-use and re-distribution licenses are also available. The product brief summarizes the Filehand API capabilities and also describes a .NET demo

E-learning could be the next success story

BS writes that e-learning is slowly gaining ground as companies try to save time and costs. And if you thought that only IT firms were cashing in on their inherent technology strengths, think again – manufacturing firms too are using e-learning tools for, yes, the shop floor. Two years ago, a couple of software engineers at Patni Computers had to be urgently trained for a critical application assignment. With no skilled personnel in India, the only trainer Patni had available was in Singapore. But with the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic raging there, there was no way he could wing his way down. So what happened? Thanks to the e-learning systems installed by Patni, he could train the engineers in time so that they could complete the work for their client. Patni isn’t the only company that is taking recourse to e-learning. Today, e-learning encompasses all aspects of life, and is used for induction programmes, sales training or softskills, computer applications,

Who answers your 911 call?

It's the phone number that can help save a life . But calling 911 and expecting help to come running is becoming more of a gamble than ever before -- especially in a tech-savvy place like Silicon Valley, where people rely heavily on cell phones and are more likely to try out a new technology such as Internet phone service. Now more than ever, the emergency phone system is being put to the test. As mobile and Internet phone services spread, it's becoming harder for 911 dispatchers to pinpoint a caller's geographic location, a crucial element of 911 and speedy response times. In most Santa Clara County cities, 911 calls from a cell phone will end up at the local, city-run police dispatch centers. But dial 911 from Fremont or Menlo Park and it's more likely to end up at the California Highway Patrol catchall dispatch center in Vallejo, where it will be rerouted to a closer 911 center -- an extra step that could slow emergency response times. For those using one of the new

Using Mahatma Gandhi to sell mobile phones

What if a great man of the last century - Gandhi, say had had access to the communications networks of our age when he made one of his most important speeches? The result is 'Telecom Italia Gandhi', an astonishing 60-second spot that has just started airing in Italy. In fall 2004 Telecom Italia released a commercial using Gandhi's feature and exerpts of his speech at the Inter-Asian Relations Conference, New Delhi, 1947. Imagine the world today if he could have communicated like this The ad features Mahatma Gandhi giving a speech from a village hut in India. This ad file is a 60 seconds video done entirely in streaming Flash Video and can be viewed here (Flash) or here (Quicktime) See ad details here .You can even buy this ad on a CD. Or Watch the commercial here . Using a brilliant blend of real archive footage and sound in combination with specially shot material, 'Telecom Italia Gandhi' shows Gandhi repairing to a simple hut, where he seats himself and begins t

Tweaking Tools from Google Fans

The WSJ has compiled a list of tools created by Google fans and critics that add features or remove ads. Google Logos and Google Mirror are missing from the writeup but they are another great innovations from Googe Fans. The services were developed not by the search giant's engineers but by enterprising Web users with a bit of programming moxie. Many are hobbyists who design the tools for fun, then realize others might find them handy and give them away. Some are companies looking to make a buck by riding on Google's coattails. Still others are critics trying to draw traffic from the search giant's site. Officially, Google frowns on the services, but it rarely goes after the people behind them. Marcos Weskamp created a graphical interface for Google News as a way to see how much attention is given to individual stories. A headline that has appeared in several publications is represented by a large box, while a story that is less widely covered shows up as a smaller s

Windows XP Service Pack 3 - XP SP3

Microsoft has officially confirmed that Windows XP SP3 will be released after Windows Vista sometime in 2006. Windows XP Service Pack 3 (XP SP3) will be a regular customer fix and not a major upgrade . SP3 will contain significant security enhancements, in addition to stability and performance improvements. Mr. Ballmer made some interesting remarks: Microsoft might indeed ship SP3 for Windows XP before Longhorn comes out. Also, upcoming version 7 of Internet Explorer should have anti-phishing technology built-in. [longhorn=Windows Vista] IE7 will only be available to users running XP SP2. I hope that build Windows Media Player WMP 10 and Windows Movie Maker into XP SP3 itself. The most important part of SP2 is an new firewall program to stop break-ins by network worms such as Blaster. Unlike XP's earlier firewall, this one is turned on automatically and protects every connection on a computer -- even if you already have another firewall active. It also watches what your programs

Internet Giants come together

M Networks announced today the participation of the world's leading technology companies at Small eBusiness World , a two-day technology event that educates small business owners and entrepreneurs on using Internet technologies to start or grow an online business. Small eBusiness World helps business owners evaluate online business technologies and learn how to adopt these technologies into their daily business lives. Companies offering free training include eBay, Google, Yahoo!, Amazon.com, Microsoft, Monster, Marketworks, Constant Contact, PayPal and Intuit. The inaugural Small eBusiness World is scheduled to take place May 6-7, 2005 at the Donald E. Stephens conference center in Rosemont, IL (next to O'Hare). Small eBusiness World contains an exhibit area, guest speakers and more than 30 hours of free workshops including: -- Google Ad Words 101 -- How to Sell on eBay -- Growing an Online Business with Amazon.com -- Online Hiring Solutions by Monster.com

Want to publish your own book

Someday you may be able to walk into your grocery store and convert your Christmas photos into an instant coffee-table book written in your own deathless prose. And this may happen very soon. Sarah Glazer writes about a new phenomenon in the printing industry - " Print-On-Demand ". When Amy Fisher finished writing her memoir about shooting her lover's wife, she told her agent not to send the manuscript to New York publishers. Instead, Fisher, who made headlines in 1992 as the 17-year-old ''Long Island Lolita,'' turned to iUniverse in Lincoln, Neb. The company charges authors several hundred dollars to convert a manuscript into a book and make it available for sale online. iUniverse is one of more than 100 ''author services'' companies in a fast-growing industry aimed primarily at writers who can't get the attention of traditional publishers. Self-publishing companies like iUniverse have been growing rapidly in recent years, displacing

Slipstream Microsoft products

Have you ever wanted a Windows CD that would install Windows by automatically putting in your name, product key, timezone and regional settings? And have it merged with the latest Service Pack to save time? Followed by silently installing all your favourite applications along with DirectX 9.0c, .Net Framework 1.1 and then all the required hotfixes, updated drivers, registry tweaks, and a readily patched UXTheme.dll without any user interaction whatsoever? Then this guide will show you how you can do just that! According to Langa , slipstreaming means you create a new setup CD that includes all the patches and updates right in the setup files, so you can create a new Windows installation that won't need hours of downloading and installing patches and updates to be made current. Instead, it will be fully current from the start. L@rray, a Langalist read has come across a goldmine of a site . While there, I learned to slipstream XP and various versions of Office, create a bootable CD/