Repoted on UK Timesonline website, Google image search is going for a major update/enhancement that will change the way Google searches images around the web and tags it.

“Google has unveiled a technology which it says will make the task of searching for images on the web far simpler and more effective.”This new technology will search and rank images. the same way Google pagerank does webpages. Till now most of the image search is doen on the web, by looking for keywords around images, mainly captions.

“By treating images as web documents and their similarities as probabilistic visual hyperlinks, we estimate the likelihood of images [being] visited by a user traversing through these visual-hyperlinks,” said Shumeet Balujaz, a Google researcher, in a paper he co-wrote with a colleague from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

In a trial which compared the results for the 2,000 most popular queries on Google Images, the new algorithm was found to reduce the number of “irrelevant images” by 83 per cent in comparison with those returned by the existing Google Images search, the researchers said.

This new engine will join a number of new techniques employed to search the visual content including the new engine by Blinkx, whuch has developed an engine to search videos.

This is the list of the secret/suspicious domains purchased by Google i grabbed from various sources:

• georgle.com
• glogoo.com
• 30dayfitness.com
• essentialmommy.com
• thesecretofburritos.com
• goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle.com
• googlelovers.com
• googlereligion.com
• bankgoogle.com
• kuwaitgoogle.com
• google-yahoo-porn.com
• checkoutsucks.com
• googlepoo.com

I have drained whatever sense of domains, i have gathered, on thinking the use of most of these domains purchase. But still i am clueless about the intentions of Google in doing this.

One more domain, purchased reported way back was http://www.gbrowser.com . Speculations were hot that Google is roll its own web browser, but nothing came out.

Now let’s see what happens with these domains??

Review-http://www.techshout.com

1. The site’s intension looks promising.
2. The professional approach is missing definitely.
3. Uses no customized theme, uses three column Kubrick’s theme, with just a customized header.
4. Too much full of ads.
5. Focus is on quantity of post rather than quality, content is updated like 3-4, sometimes more posts in a day.But all of them about every new hardware, game, gadget and anything latest, without a through product review and no personal opinion.
6. But sadly, has Google Pagerank 6 (surprising!)

Suggestion:

1. Put on a more professional approach.
2. Shed some bucks and get a new customized theme like engadget, spending on content writers heavily without watching the layout of blog is useless.
3. Remove hell lots of ads, apply quality and content-matching ads, if the content is worth, traffic will surely pour in and the money too.
4. Do a through review of anything, before going to post. Number of posts in a day doesn’t matters neither the quantity. Posts worth reading, are the thing that attracts the visitors and give a good reputation and feedback.

One strange search engine i came across:

http://googlepirate.com

The search engine clearly indicates it has no connection with Google.com, but still it uses Google to search the web, but with something it calls Google-hack, strange??

Impression:The search results are exceptionally accurate and refined, worth a try.

Here is what i found a complete list, worth a look for reference, of all the Top level domain names of all countries:

click on the image to zoom

I found an infosheet, for complete linux shell commands….worth look for a Linux user, be it a pro or a newbie:

click on the image to zoom

First open the Linux Console which is found on the Panel at the bottom of your screen generally shown by an icon that looks like TV switched off with a black screen. The following commands are to be type in the console, pressing enter after you have entered the full command.

The ‘useradd‘ Command

The general syntax for the useradd command is :

useradd -d home_directory -e expire_date -g initial_group -p password login_name

home_directory : Is the main directory within which the user is expected to story all his files and subdirectories.
For a user named ‘foo’ the home directory generally is /home/foo
expire_date : This is the date on which the user’s account expires and he/she cannot access the computer
anymore unless the account is renewed. This is somewhat similar to your ISP account
expiring in 6 months or one year. The expire date is in yyyy-mm-dd format (2002-08-30)
initial_group : Every user in Linux belongs to a group which affects his file permissions. The initial group
must be a group which already exists.
Password : This will be the user’s password to access his account
login_name : This will be the user name with which the user will access his account.

Eg :

useradd -d /home/einstein -e 2002-08-30 -g root -p relativitysucks einstein

creates a user named einstein on my computer.

His home directory is /home/einstein
His expirty date is 30th august 2002
He belongs to the ‘root’ group
His password is relativitysucks
His username is einstein.
Incase you do not enter one of the parameters group, home, expire or shell they are replaced by their default values. These default values can be viewed using the ” useradd -D” command and can also be changed which however we will cover in a later document.

The ls command

The ls command is equivalent of the DOS dir command. It lists the files and subdirectories contained within the present directory.

Some possible flags which can be used with the ls command are :

ls -a

List all files (Some configuration files starting with a dot ‘.’ are otherwise not listed). Often the number of files in a directory is too large to be fitted within one screenfull of data. In such a case we use dir/p for DOS. For linux a similar command is

ls | more

Lists files and directories page after page on keystroke. The above command actually is a combination of two commands. It introduces a new concept called ‘Piping’. It is done using the logical OR or | character found just above the Enter key on your keyboard. In Linux it is possible to give the output of one command to another command as an input.The ls command lists files & subdirectories and the more commands divides its input into page length views. Thus piping the ls output to more results in page length views of files and subdirectories.

ls -R

It lists the files and subdirectories of a directory and further lists the contents of each subdirectory recursively. The output of this command is usually large and is best seen when piped through more.

The pwd command

The pwd or the present working directory command gives you the path to the directory in which you presently are. It is used without flags simply as ‘pwd’

The su command

Many a times you might have logged in as a normal used and might need to be root to install a software or for some other small task. You could logout then login as root complete the work logout and login back as a normal user. Instead, you can just use the su command. The format is :

su username

eg : su root

when you ’su’ to become root from a normal user, you are asked for the root password. But if you are root, you can use ’su’ to become any user without using a password. Once your work is finished, use ‘exit’ to become yourself.

The whoami command

Sorry folks! This command won’t solve your teenage identity crisis but it will tell you which user you are logged in as. Useful when you have used ’su’ many times and now don’t know who you are.

The cp command

This one copies files / directories from one place to another it’s syntax is

cp source_file_with_path destination_path

eg : cp /home/aarjav/secret.txt /ftp/pub

This would make all my secrets public :). But my secrets wouldn’t fit on my 8.4 Gb hard-disk The cp command can be used with some useful flags also :

cp -i

Interactive copying, prompts before overwriting files or directories

cp -l source_file_with_path destination_path

Makes a link (shortcut) to the source_file at the destination path instead of actually copying it there.

cp -p

Preserve file attributes while copying if possible

cp -R

Copy Recursively . Used when copying directories. This command also copies the contents of the subdirectories.

cp -u

Update i.e. Copy only if the source file is newer than the destination file or the destination file does not exist.

The rm command

The rm command is used to remove or delete files or directories. Its general format is:

rm -flag file_or_directory_with_path

eg : rm /home/aarjav/waste.txt

Some flags which can be used with the rm command are

rm -v file.txt

Remove verbosely, explain what is being done.

rm -r my_directory

Remove the directory and its contents recursively.

The mkdir command

This command is used to create new a new directory. Its syntax is

mkdir -optional_flag directory_name

The possible flags are

mkdir -v directory_name

Tell what is going on.

mkdir -p directory_with_path

This is a cool command. Suppose you need a directory named SEIT within another directory called PVPP in /usr/local and the parent directory PVPP itself does not exist, then you can use :

mkdir -p /usr/local/PVPP/SEIT

This command creates the PVPP directory and the SEIT subdirectory in one go.

The man command

For someone new to linux, the man command is one of the most important commands. The syntax is:

man command_name

Suppose you have not understood fully one of the above commands or want to find out about a new command you have learnt , the man command provides a manual for that command

Thus

man cp

to be continued in next posts……

You’ve read the reviews and digested the key feature enhancements and operational changes. Now it’s time to delve a bit deeper and uncover some of Windows XP’s secrets.

1. It boasts how long it can stay up. Whereas previous versions of Windows were coy about how long they went between boots, XP is positively proud of its stamina. Go to the Command Prompt in the Accessories menu from the All Programs start button option, and then type ’systeminfo’. The computer will produce a lot of useful info, including the uptime. If you want to keep these, type ’systeminfo > info.txt’. This creates a file called info.txt you can look at later with Notepad. (Professional Edition only).

2. You can delete files immediately, without having them move to the Recycle Bin first. Go to the Start menu, select Run… and type ‘gpedit.msc’; then select User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Explorer and find the Do not move deleted files to the Recycle Bin setting. Set it. Poking around in gpedit will reveal a great many interface and system options, but take care — some may stop your computer behaving as you wish. (Professional Edition only).

3. You can lock your XP workstation with two clicks of the mouse. Create a new shortcut on your desktop using a right mouse click, and enter ‘rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation’ in the location field. Give the shortcut a name you like. That’s it — just double click on it and your computer will be locked. And if that’s not easy enough, Windows key + L will do the same.

4. XP hides some system software you might want to remove, such as Windows Messenger, but you can tickle it and make it disgorge everything. Using Notepad or Edit, edit the text file /windows/inf/sysoc.inf, search for the word ‘hide’ and remove it. You can then go to the Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel, select Add/Remove Windows Components and there will be your prey, exposed and vulnerable.

5. For those skilled in the art of DOS batch files, XP has a number of interesting new commands. These include ‘eventcreate’ and ‘eventtriggers’ for creating and watching system events, ‘typeperf’ for monitoring performance of various subsystems, and ’schtasks’ for handling scheduled tasks. As usual, typing the command name followed by /? will give a list of options — they’re all far too baroque to go into here.

6. XP has IP version 6 support — the next generation of IP. Unfortunately this is more than your ISP has, so you can only experiment with this on your LAN. Type ‘ipv6 install’ into Run… (it’s OK, it won’t ruin your existing network setup) and then ‘ipv6 /?’ at the command line to find out more. If you don’t know what IPv6 is, don’t worry and don’t bother.

7. You can at last get rid of tasks on the computer from the command line by using ‘taskkill /pid’ and the task number, or just ‘tskill’ and the process number. Find that out by typing ‘tasklist’, which will also tell you a lot about what’s going on in your system.

8. XP will treat Zip files like folders, which is nice if you’ve got a fast machine. On slower machines, you can make XP leave zip files well alone by typing ‘regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll’ at the command line. If you change your mind later, you can put things back as they were by typing ‘regsvr32 zipfldr.dll’.

9. XP has ClearType — Microsoft’s anti-aliasing font display technology — but doesn’t have it enabled by default. It’s well worth trying, especially if you were there for DOS and all those years of staring at a screen have given you the eyes of an astigmatic bat. To enable ClearType, right click on the desktop, select Properties, Appearance, Effects, select ClearType from the second drop-down menu and enable the selection. Expect best results on laptop displays. If you want to use ClearType on the Welcome login screen as well, set the registry entry HKEY_USERS/.DEFAULT/Control Panel/Desktop/FontSmoothingType to 2.

10. You can use Remote Assistance to help a friend who’s using network address translation (NAT) on a home network, but not automatically. Get your pal to email you a Remote Assistance invitation and edit the file. Under the RCTICKET attribute will be a NAT IP address, like 192.168.1.10. Replace this with your chum’s real IP address — they can find this out by going to www.whatismyip.com — and get them to make sure that they’ve got port 3389 open on their firewall and forwarded to the errant computer.

11. You can run a program as a different user without logging out and back in again. Right click the icon, select Run As… and enter the user name and password you want to use. This only applies for that run. The trick is particularly useful if you need to have administrative permissions to install a program, which many require. Note that you can have some fun by running programs multiple times on the same system as different users, but this can have unforeseen effects.

12. Windows XP can be very insistent about you checking for auto updates, registering a Passport, using Windows Messenger and so on. After a while, the nagging goes away, but if you feel you might slip the bonds of sanity before that point, run Regedit, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/Advanced and create a DWORD value called EnableBalloonTips with a value of 0.

13. You can start up without needing to enter a user name or password. Select Run… from the start menu and type ‘control userpasswords2′, which will open the user accounts application. On the Users tab, clear the box for Users Must Enter A User Name And Password To Use This Computer, and click on OK. An Automatically Log On dialog box will appear; enter the user name and password for the account you want to use.

14. Internet Explorer 6 will automatically delete temporary files, but only if you tell it to. Start the browser, select Tools / Internet Options… and Advanced, go down to the Security area and check the box to Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed.

15. XP comes with a free Network Activity Light, just in case you can’t see the LEDs twinkle on your network card. Right click on My Network Places on the desktop, then select Properties. Right click on the description for your LAN or dial-up connection, select Properties, then check the Show icon in notification area when connected box. You’ll now see a tiny network icon on the right of your task bar that glimmers nicely during network traffic.

16. The Start Menu can be leisurely when it decides to appear, but you can speed things along by changing the registry entry HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Desktop/MenuShowDelay from the default 400 to something a little snappier. Like 0.

17. You can rename loads of files at once in Windows Explorer. Highlight a set of files in a window, then right click on one and rename it. All the other files will be renamed to that name, with individual numbers in brackets to distinguish them. Also, in a folder you can arrange icons in alphabetised groups by View, Arrange Icon By… Show In Groups.

18. Windows Media Player will display the cover art for albums as it plays the tracks — if it found the picture on the Internet when you copied the tracks from the CD. If it didn’t, or if you have lots of pre-WMP music files, you can put your own copy of the cover art in the same directory as the tracks. Just call it folder.jpg and Windows Media Player will pick it up and display it.

19. Windows key + Break brings up the System Properties dialogue box; Windows key + D brings up the desktop; Windows key + Tab moves through the taskbar buttons.

20. The next release of Windows XP, codenamed Longhorn, is due out late next year or early 2003 and won’t be much to write home about. The next big release is codenamed Blackcomb and will be out in 2003/2004.