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Showing posts from June, 2006

Personalized Signposts: Design your own Street Signs, Warning Labels

Want to put some custom text on a Road Sign like the one you see in the picture above ? No Photoshop skills required. Here are some useful online tools to create your own personalized messages on Traffic Signs or Street Symbols. Just type in the text, choose the warning label sign and click created. Excellent Stuff. Street Sign Generator Warning Sign Generator Warning Label Generator The sites won't require a registration but you will have to download the images locally before using them. You can fine tune the generated pictures using these online image editors . More about history of Road Signs on Wikipedia.

Microsoft Should Rename Office 2007 to Office 2008

Type "Delay" in the Google Search Box, click "I'm Feeling Lucky" button and you'll be redirected to the Microsoft Website. Agree, it's won't happen today but with all the recent annoucements about Windows Vista and Office 2007 delay , Microsoft is clearly on the route to occupy that top slot for Delay just like President George Bush feels lucky when someone types Failure. If you were planning to gift your dad an easy-to-use word precessor called Office Word 2007 during Christmas, you may think of another present - maybe a tutorial on how to use Writely ? Feedback on quality and performance will ultimately determine the exact dates - citing this reason, Microsoft has further pushed the release of Office 2007 to next year. Since Microsoft generally call their products one number more than the release year, it makes sense for them to rename the upcoming Office Suite to Office 2008 as it would now be released in year 2007 +1. If you can't wait unt

Launchy: Windows Start Menu for Geeks

Geeks, especially from the Unix background, are more comfortable using the keyboard than the mouse for doing regular computer tasks like opening documents and running software programs. Not just power users, if you have installed too many software programs on your computer, it gets very difficult to locate the program in the Start Menu. All you remember is the name of the software company or the name of the software itself but it's impossible to guess their location in the Start Menu until it's sorted by Name. If you fall in any of the above category, you will immediately love Launchy - a free Windows software similar to Mac Quicksilver (see screenshot) that tries to guess which program or file you are looking for and will launch it when you hit the enter key. Launchy behaves just like the Google Desktop Search Quick Find bar which is activated by pressing Ctrl twice. But GDS finds files across your entire hard drive whereas Launchy limits the search to Start Menu folders or

Touch Typing Lessons: Learn to type with Typing Tutor Software

Typing Tutor Software are a fun way to learn touch typing for beginners since they are accompanied with typing games and real-world typing exercies. If you already know how to type, these typing exercises can help you improve the overall typing speed (WPM) as well as accuracy. It's been a personal experience that if you stick to the typing lessons schedule, nothing can stop you from becoming a fast proficient typist. And unlike regular classroom typing lessons, a typing tutor software lets you learn touch typing at your own pace anywhere without hiring a typing teacher. While the top selling typing tutor programs like Mario Typing, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing or Typing Master Pro are commercial, there are a lot of excellent online typing tutors and typing tests that need just a web browser and an average speed internet connection with no download. If you still like to learn typing offline but free, there are freeware open source typing tutors for you. Here's a comprensive lis

Adsense brings Channels to Referrals

Adsense Publishers can now track the success rate of product referrals on specific pages or websites as the channel feature is now available for referrals like Picasa, Firefox, Adsense and Adwords. You are allowed to create upto 200 active channel names for Referrals. To add a channel to existing Adsense Referral code, either overwrite the code with the new version or just append the following line: google_ad_channel = "Channel_Number"; My success rate with Google Product Referrals has been satisfactory. Visitors to this site are curious to know about Picasa but they just read about it on Google Website and don't download or install the software. Probably the software size turns them away. On the other hand, Firefox continues to perform well.

Louis Vuitton Ruling Could Mean Serious Consequences for Google Adwords

First it was Microsoft who sued an Adwords Customer for selling fake software on Google Search Results. A week later, a dating website sued Yahoo for using their trademark keywords to advertise on Google. And the most recent case involves Luxury goods maker - Louis Vuitton . Adwords users were advertising for fake Louis Vuitton goods like handbags using Google Sponsored Links. Topping the list for Louis Vuitton are "handbag knock-offs" and "purse knock-offs." The French company didn't like this, sued Google directly over the issue and even won the ruling in a Paris Court. Three lawsuits related to Adwords in a span of just one month ? It may be something to really worry about for Google because most the revenue generated by Google is via advertising. Though they say that their trademark policy prevents bids on other people's registered trademarks, it may not be easy to implement as it sounds. How do you compile the data from various countries ? A lot of

Online Shopping with Google Checkout: How it works ? Screenshots & Video Tour

The search giant today launched a new payment service called Google Checkout that's nearly a clone of Paypal Express Checkout service. Anyone with a credit card can register for this Google Checkout. When you do a product search on Google, some of the sponsored links on the results page will have a tiny shopping cart icon which mean that the advertiser supports payment via Google Checkout. Alternatively, you can visit the merchant's website directly, do the shopping and choose Google checkout button at the time of making the payment. Google will handle the transaction and you won't have to you provide your credit card details to the merchant . Other two main advantages of using Google Checkout are: » You won't need separate accounts on multiple online stores - you single Google Account login will work on any only store that supports Google checkout. » You will be able to track all your purchase histories in one place at Google Accounts console. Normally customers are n

How to Clean an Optical Mouse

Optical Mice and Laser Mice are quickly replacing the traditional Mechanical Ball mouse because they are more sensitive, mouse pointer works on uneven surfaces without the mouse pad and there's no internal cleaning required since there are no rollers or rotating wheels. The only issue associated with LED based Optical Mice is that they tend to get sticky over time because surface dust collects on the soft pads located near the light emitter. This can result in erratic cursor movement like it suddenly jumps to a different location on the computer screen or move very slowly or even worse, the mouse may not work at all. I know it can get very frustrating when the mouse movement is not smooth but there's nothing to worry about. If you notice any of the above symptoms, all you need to do is clean the bottom of the mouse without opening the mouse body. The easiest way to remove dust sticking on the mouse soft pads is by using your finger nail. Invert the mouse and gently rub your fi

EUDI: Extract Tabular Data From Any File

PDF format is a de facto standard for exchanging documents or archiving information since PDF files are non editable and the document layout is preserved. For this reason, most of statistical data like corporate annual reports, stock performance, sale figures, etc are available only in the form of PDF files. But a common problem associated with PDF is that it becomes very difficult to extract data from them. Though there are some workarounds and tools to extract text out of PDF files , they fail to preserve the original document layout. Say, the account department sends you the annual salary sheet in PDF which you want to export to Excel and do some analysis. Or the sales people send their weekly sales report in a plain text email that you like to represent as charts in Excel or even Microsoft Word. Cogniview , an Israel based company, have released EUDI 1.0 , a data extraction software that works with PDF or with any Windows Application that has the Print feature. Like Acrobat, EUDI

Macromedia Flash Player 9 leaves Adobe Building

Adobe has released the final version of Flash Player 9. [ Download Link ]. A beta version has been available on Adobe Labs for some time. The new features of Flash Player 9 include support for AS3, a new ActionScript Virtual Machine, security and performance enhancements. Flash Player 9 is a 1.5 MB download. The auto-update notifications will be on by default to let users know if a new upgrade is available. More details about Flash player 9 are available on Adobe Website .

Blogger Templates: 4.5 Million Blogspot Users are Lazy

Millions of Bloggers on Blogspot.com are either too lazy or don't understand the basic HTML tags . When you create a new blog on Blogger.com, Google provides a default blogspot template that has three links in the side bar - one link points to Google News while the other two links (Edit-Me) are just placeholders for the blogger to insert his own hyperlinks (see screenshot) But bloggers are too busy creating content and don't bother changing these "under construction" areas. There are 4.5 million pages hosted on blogspot.com that still have the Google News and Edit Me links [ site:blogspot.com "Google News" "Edit-Me" ] <h2 class="sidebar-title">Links</h2> <ul> <li><a href="http://news.google.com/">Google News</a></li> <li><a href="http://EDITME">Edit-Me</a></li> <li><a href="http://EDITME">Edit-Me</a></li> <

Google Adsense Mixes Images With Text Ads, CTR Will Increase

There is some good news for webmasters using Adsense to monetize their websites. Google is experimenting a new style of Adsense units - they are blending images inside text ads (see screenshot below) Images near Google Ad units are an effective way to increase the click through rate without violating any of the Adsense policies. What's so appealing about this new style is that the image is an ad itself. So publishers get best of both the world's without doing any labor. About the screenshot: This is 120x600 Adsense Format with Image Ads turned On. The image file dimensions are 90px x 110px with a size of 2.34 kb. The file is hosted on the Google Ads Server - googlesyndication.com

Blogultery: Adultery in the Blogosphere

Wikipedia defines Adultery as consensual sexual intercourse by a married person with someone other than his or her lawful spouse. Now Neha Viswanathan has coined another interesting term - Blogultery She defines Blogultery as when someone stops reading one blog for another, and tell the author of the first one that you still read the blog . You sometimes even comment, and leave a smiley, hoping it is enough for the author. Meanwhile, on the sly you read another blog. Despite yourself you begin to leave comments. You leave them under an anonymous name, hoping that the other blogger doesn’t find out .

The Most Honest Search Engine

I know that our website has roughly 2000 webpages. But search engines seem to narrate a different story. MSN search engine says 1200 webpages while Yahoo says 1900 webpages [very close]. On the other hand, Google claims to index 17000 webpages of this site. Where did Google find those extra 15000 pages which I know for sure that they do not exist on this site . I think Yahoo is the most honest of the lot. It's also the best search engine for finding fresh content. But when it comes to sending traffic, Google rules.

How can I shut-down Google Desktop Search

Question: How can I sensibly shut-down Google Desktop Search so I can allow an upgrade installation of Zone Alarm free firewall to proceed ? [sent by Bill Parry] Bill, there are two ways to stop the Google Desktop Search engine on your computer. Approach 1 [Official] Right Click the Google Desktop Icon on your system tray and choose Exit item in the menu. Google Desktop will show a confirmation message asking if you like to run it the next time you start your computer. Say Yes. Approach 2 [Hack] If for some unknown reason the GDS icon is missing in your tray bar, open the Windows Task Manager by right clicking on the task bar or pressing Alt+Ctrl+Del. You will see three process running GoogleDesktop.exe, GoogleDesktopSetup.exe, GoogleDesktopIndex.exe, and GoogleDesktopCrawl.exe - right click on each of these process and choose the "End Process" menu. Google Desktop can be restarted from the Windows Start menu. Read some more Google Desktop Tips . Important Note: Google Desk

Scoble is no more a Microsoft Geek Blogger

Ever since his decision become public , Scoble virtually stopped covering Microsoft in his blog and focuses more on podcasting and video blogging. And today, FeedDemon popped up a message saying that a Feed has been modified. No suprise, it was Scoble who renamed his blog feed title from " Microsoft Geek Blogger " to " Tech Geek Blogger " Scoble, how about calling yourself PodTech Geek Blogger ? Tech Geek is like saying the same thing twice - A geek is a person who is fascinated, perhaps obsessively, by technology and imagination. Looks like Scoble's last day at Microsoft campus is very near. His house is on sale already.

SlashDot Founder, Microsoft CEO, Linux Creator: What Do They Have In Common ?

Steve Ballmer runs the world's largest software company, Linus Torvalds heads the world's largest open source project Linux while Rob Malda runs the largest geek website. But wait, there's one more common thing . All the three personalites have joined the ranks of 10 People Who Don't Matter - a list of people released by Business 2.0 magazine that you can safely snub at conferences. Linus Torvalds [Creator, Linux] - While Torvalds still oversees any changes made to the innermost core of Linux, most of the innovation is now done by others, and commercial businesses like Red Hat and Novell increasingly steer its future. Steve Ballmer [CEO, Microsoft] - The head of the world's biggest software company is a lame duck. It will be increasingly tempting for Ballmer to follow Bill's lead , and make boosting the shares someone else's problem. Rob Malda [Founder, Slashdot.org] - Slashdot's editor-driven story selection model is being supplanted by user-gen

This School Iteself Requires Internet Education

A North Carolina school webpage containing names, social security numbers and test scores of 619 students were available using Google Search for few days before they were removed by Google. site:www.catawba.k12.nc.us filetype:xls site:www.catawba.k12.nc.us filetype:doc site:www.catawba.k12.nc.us filetype:pdf site:www.catawba.k12.nc.us SSN Obviously, parents are a worried lot and Catawba County Schools are blaming Google for trespassing their servers and indexing "password-protected" confidential data. Google however denies the charge - "If there is a password, we cannot access or cache the site" The school has filed a lawsuit against Google but the chief technology officer of the school has issued a statement that clearly puts the ball in Google's court. One of the students on the list had a presence on the Web. In Google’s effort to get information on her, one of its spiders latched onto her name in this document. We were not aware that password-protected si

Google Seattle Engineering Center: A Silent Rising Star

Did you know that Google has an R&D Office in Seattle that's just a 10 minute drive from Microsoft Headquarters. Google rarely talks about this Seattle Engineering Office located in Microsoft's backyard but most of the products shown by Larry Page at the CES 2006 had their start here. It's a breeding ground for new ideas as at least six products were created here, including Google Talk, Google Maps, Google Video, Google Sitemaps, Google Pack and Google Gadgets. To pamper the talented staff, this Office too has a massage room, Ikea furniture in bright primary colors, soft beanbag chairs and a cafeteria serving gourmet organic fare. There are wine-and-cheese receptions every Friday afternoon with Larry Page and Sergey Brin on videoconference. Infact, Findory chief thinks this move is intended to steal top talent from the Redmond giant. Source: Big Google ideas generated here

Indian Silicon Valley is Cheapest City in the World

Moscow and Seoul are the world's most expensive cities while Tokyo, which ranked first in the past two years, has dropped to third place. Tokyo has lost its title of the world most expensive city because of currency fluctuations between the Japanese Yen and the US dollar. According to Mercer Consulting, the cost of living in a particular city was derived on the basis of cost of a two-bedroom unfurnished apartment, a cup of coffee served, a fast food meal and an international paper. The cheapest cities in the world are Zimbabwe's Harare, Pakistan's Karachi and India's Bangalore. New York remains the most expensive city in North America while London beats other European cities. The survey , conducted by New York-based Mercer in March, measures the costs of more than 200 items in 144 cities. Companies and governments use the information to gauge the purchasing power of employees transferred abroad. Related: Cities with Good Manners

Caught in the Net: Merrill Lynch reads Employee Email

It's a known fact that most employers read staff email and Merrill Lynch is no exception. Today the investment banker fired thirteen employees based in Dublin, Ireland for sending porn through emails. The sacked workers included both men and women. A further 10 staff members were given written warnings for similar, but less serious, inappropriate use of e-mail . Quick Tip: Is someone reading your email ? This guide mentions two simple techniques to determine if you are being watched by your employer or colleague ?

Using iPod as a Voice Recorder or Video Camcorder

Apple iPod has no voice recording or video capturing features but there are some excellent iPod accessories that can convert your player-only iPod into a complete audio-video recording studio. We look at the more popular iPod Audio Recorder and DV Recorder attachments here: Griffin iTalk [Voice Recorder for iPod] - iTalk converts your regulary play/pause buttons on the iPod into voice recording buttongs. First, connect your iTalk to the top of your iPod and its recording functions will automatically appear on the screen. Your iPod will automatically switch to Voice Memo mode,ready to record. Press the Play button on the iPod to begin recording. The iTalk's red LED will light up to indicate it's recording and a 'Recording' prompt will pulse on the screen of the iPod. iPod iTalk Voice recorder comes with an in-built microphone but you can also attach an external mic or headphone mic with a 1/8" audio jack. iTalk can play back audio recordings through its integrated

Warren Buffet Gives Away Wealth to Bill Gates Foundation

The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced. - Philanthropist Andrew Carnegie saw giving to charity as most constructive when done directly by the person who accumulated the money. Warren Edward Buffett , the second richest man in the world, has committed to give away 85% of his $44 billion fortune, most of which would be going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation . Buffet will also join the board of Gates Foundation. The longer answer is that over the years I had gotten to know Bill and Melinda Gates well, spent a lot of time with them having fun and, way beyond that, had grown to admire what they were doing with their foundation. I've seen them give presentations about its programs, and I'm always amazed at the enthusiasm and passion and energy they're pouring into their work. They've gone at it, you might say, with both head and heart. This makes it the single largest monetary donation in history . Bill Gates recently announced plans to retire from Microsoft i

Average CEO Salary = Average Worker Salary * 262

The annual salary and compensation of an average worker in America is roughly the same that the average large-company CEO made in one day . The average CEO of a company with at least $1 billion in annual revenue made $10,982,000 , or 262 times what the average worker made. On the other hand, Chief Executives from Google, Yahoo and Apple received a token salary of $1 last year though there were stock options and cash bonuses. Read more about Executive Compensation .

Thanks Internet: People Have Fewer Close Friends

New technology links people over greater distances, but cuts into face-to-face meeting time. The number of people who say they have no one to talk to about important matters has more than doubled, according to a new study by sociologists at Duke University and the University of Arizona. Increased use of the Internet, along with the number of hours people are spending at work, are factors contributing to a drastic decline in the number of close friends that Americans have. The findings are published in the June 2006 issue of the journal American Sociological Review. Network World | Slashdot.org | Live Science

The 1000 Word Homepage Experiment

Inspired by Alex Tew's Milliondollar Homepage experiment, two students in London have launched a one page website that contains exactly 1000 English words. Here you buy individual words instead of pixels. The price varies from EUR 100 to EUR 1000 depending upon the font size you choose. At the time of writing, 11 words were sold on the The 1000 Word Page . While the idea is nice and may become popular, there are three possible issues that can push advertisers behind: » The price of individual words is just two high for a website that's so new. » The words are not linking directly to the advertiser's website but to an intermediate page which does a meta redirect to the actual site. Therefore, it will not really help in improving the search engine ranking of the advertiser's website. » All the words carry the same price tag. I thought words that are below the main fold should have a much lower value. Update: The location of the words will be random.

Face the Computer all day ? Take enough breaks, Move Around

Don't ignore any pain if you are spending most of your day infront of the computer screen . Else, it may be possible that you would lose the ability to tell hot from cold, find yourself dropping things or develop a syndrome known as "foot drop," in which pressure on the sciatic nerve can cause a foot to drag while you walk. If you have had aching any place - lower back, upper back, between the shoulder blades, wrists or hands - for three days , you need to have it looked at. ExtremeTech story - The Perils of PC Posture - has some good suggestions for "computer workers" to save themselves from a lifetime of aching backs and sore necks - "Get your butt out of the chair as much as possible. You can talk on phone while standing; you can stand to read a document ." "If you do shoulder rolls or simple stretches every 20-30 minutes and walk around for five minutes every hour, you keep your perspective fresh and your mind active. In the end, you'll b

The 1 Second Film: Biggest Shortest Film ever made

The 1 Second Film is a 70mm animated film that's just a second long. Nirvan Mullick is directing this world's shortest movie but anyone can become a producer of the film. Infact, some prominent Hollywood celebrites have already turned up the support the film. You read it correct, the actual film is only 1 second long - the rest 90 minutes will show the making of this documentary and scrolling credits at the end of the movie. Technically, there are 24 frames in one-second of film . In this 1-second film, there will be 12 giant paintings created by hundreds of people . Each painting was then filmed twice (on 70mm) to create the 24 frames in one second of film. The film is already listed in the IMDb Website . If you join as a producer by contributing as low as $1 via Paypal, your name and site link will be added to the IMDb movie database as a producer of this film. After the film's premiere, the 12 giant frames will be on exhibit and auctioned off to raise money for t

Adobe Deal Hints at Google's Long-Term Strategy

Bill Gates started Microsoft with a dream of placing a personal computer in every home, and on every desk. But Larry and Sergey have even more ambitious dreams - they want Google software installed on every computer that's running Microsoft Windows . First, Google agreed to pay Dell a billion dollars who in return will install Google software on all new machines that leave the Dell Building. Now Google has signed a similar multi year agreement with Adobe to distribute Google Toolbar with Macromedia Shockwave player and other Adobe product installations in the future . What's In The Fine Print? Windows Vista, which is nearing launch , has MSN set as the default web search engine. Google realizes the emerging Vista threat and therefore is willing to pay billions of dollars to Dell and Adobe to distributes it's web search software in the form of Toolbar. Google win is a huge setback for Yahoo - Adobe is not likely to continue software-distribution relationships with two r

Newsgator releases RSS Plugin for Yahoo Messenger 8.0

Newsgator, developers of FeedDemon and Newsgator Inbox , have launched a free RSS plug-in for Yahoo Messenger 8.0. When you click on a link, a little window slides open to show you the content [ Download plugin ] In addition to text feeds, Newsgator plug-in also supports feed with enclosures so you can listen to audio podcasts or video podcast directly from the Yahoo IM client. For instance, you can subscribe to any YouTube video feed and play the videos directly inside the Yahoo interface without having to open the YouTube website . While a Newsgator Online account is not essential for using this plugin, it helps to have one when you want to read only feeds that you have previously subscribed to. Each feed item can be sent as an instant message to your Yahoo contact via IM or email.

Taking laptop on airplane ? Also Carry a Fire Extinguisher

Earlier this month, an Apple iBook caught fire when it was left over a room carpet for some time. Today, a Dell Laptop suddenly exploded into flames at a conference in Japan. Inquirer has posted pictures of the burning Dell Laptop. Notice the waiter trying to bring down the Laptop Fire with the water serving jug. Imagine the scenario had the the laptop been on his lap .

Bill Gates admits watching pirated movies on Youtube

Microsoft supremo and the World's Richest Man, Bill Gates, has no plans to create a YouTube clone due to issues associated with copyright violations but he himself watches pirated video clips of movies hosted on YouTube. In an interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher of Wall Street Journal , Bill Gates admitted to watching pirated movies on the Internet. Here are some excerpts from the interview posted on AOL News : MR. MOSSBERG: Talk about YouTube. What do you think about that? Why aren't you doing something like that? MR. GATES: If we did YouTube, we'd be in a lot of trouble. First of all, people would say, "How do you make money?" Second, they'd say, what about all that copyright violation taking place up there. It's a neat site. I saw a bunch of old Harlem Globetrotters movies up there the other night, it's great . MS. SWISHER: You watch physics lectures and Harlem Globetrotters ? MR. GATES: This social-networking thing takes you to crazy pla

New Yorkers most courteous, Asians are rudest

Reader's Digest conducted a good manners survey in 35 cities across the globe. Their "undercover" reporters walked into buildings to see if the people in front of them would hold the door open; bought small items in stores and recorded whether the salespeople said "thank you"; and dropped a folder full of papers in busy locations to see if anyone would help pick them up. Residents of New York, Zurich and Toronto were found to be the most courteous while Mumbai finished last . I guess they missed Delhi in the survey which probably has more rude people than any other city in the world. Also, eight cities out of the bottom nine are in Asia. New Yorkers, particularly in the Manhattan area have dramatically modified their habits since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, turning them into extremely polite and good mannered.

Digg.com for Power Users: 10 Interesting Digg Features

Digg.com, a hugely popular tech-news website, allows readers to submit content and decide what's interesting enough to be promoted to the main pages. But Digg also offers lot of interesting features than just the front page stories. So here we walk you through some of our favorite features of Digg.com that you may not be using : 1) Digg Spy - Think of it as a real time version of Google Zeitgeist. It shows a live preview of activities by Digg members like who is writing comments or promoting a story or marking a story as spam. The digg spy for all stories can be too much to handle so you choose to spy just on front page stories. DiggAll provides a static view of recent submissions. 2) Digg for URL Citations This is just like Technorati Cosmos. Using Digg Citations search, Bloggers can do some ego surfing and discover which of their blogs posts have made to Digg.com. This feature is also useful when you like know the who broke the story on digg. Just type in the full URL in the

Web-design guru prefers email newsletters over RSS

"It's really dangerous to design for a technical elite. We have to design for a broad majority of users." Wall Street Journal carries an interview with Jakob Nielsen where he explains his love for traditional newsletters over blog rss feeds. Q. You say you like traditional newsletters emailed to customers instead of news feeds. A. The best ones don't. With the best ones, it's like a service you are waiting for and expecting. But they have to be very good, very targeted to a specific user's actual needs. And it's got to be very timely as well. For example, one newsletter is called 'Your Baby This Week,' and is targeted at new parents and, in particular, new mothers. It talks on a weekly basis of what you can expect for your new baby. That is something that is extremely relevant, so people really look forward to getting that particular newsletter . Unless a newsletter is very good, people will just say, 'Oh no, more information.' Q. Can

X1 Desktop Search is now free [as in Free Software]

X1 Technologies created a new buzz in the desktop search space today by releasing their enterprise version of X1 Desktop Search for free. The product was earlier priced at $75. I have played around with almost every desktop search software available in the market and X1 has always been a favorite. Their file preview engine can render almost any file including Visio, Illustrator and AutoCAD documents. Also, no other desktop search program comes close to X1 when in comes to supporting various file formats and email clients. How will X1 make money now ? Just like Firefox makes money by giving their product for free. X1 Desktop Search client has a Yahoo search button so when someone searches the web from X1, Yahoo will share the advertising revenue with X1. In addition to new search users, Yahoo also gets to enter the corporate desktop via X1 since existing users are likely to upgrade their installations. Should paid users of X1 upgrade to the free version ? While X1 5.5.3 introduc