Tune Up your Firefox

Firetune is the first automated tuner for Firefox 1.x. Usually you have to optimize Firefox manually by typing about:config in address bar and changing the properties of various components. It can be time consuming and difficult for the novice user. FireTune will optimize several internal settings of Firefox for better performance, according to your specific computer speed and internet connection speed.

Google alternate Search

Google is conducting limited tests on "Alternate Search".This new interface includes a new link at the bottom of a Google results page. The link Try Alternate Searches, when clicked on, takes you to a page that includes other suggest keyword searches, you may want to consider.

Lots of other blogger are reporting about this. Here are few good ones that i spotted

Google Blogoscoped -has screenshot
WebproNews (by Olivier Duffez)
Andy Beal (Google Testing "Alternate Search) - has screenshot

Google Patent Examined

Very good article indeed !

"Here is a quick breakdown of "history factors" we think are relevant to Google's algorithm today. Please note, each item might refer to a specific page and at the same time, also refer to all other pages associated with it.

• How long a domain or URL has has been registered.
• Has ownership of a domain changed after previous registrations expired?
• Has the physical location of the registrant changed?
• How lengthy is the URL itself? Was it registered to game the index?
• How many pages are included in the website? (A one document or page website is not considered a highly relevant source of information.)
• Freshness and age of document.
• Use of anchor text (both on site and in links directed to site).
• "Trust Factors" regarding sites or pages outbound links refer to, and inbound links are found on.
• The "discovery date" of a particular link and the history of changes involving that link.
• Rate of growth for new links. A sudden burst of growth likely indicates some form of link-spam.
• Variations in anchor text used to phrase links directed to a page being evaluated. If the same anchor text is used in every inbound link, are they phrased that way for branding purposes or spamming purposes?
• Number of searches for keyword phrase associated with the anchor text used in links.
• Number of times Google users click on Google results by entering keyword phrases used in anchor text of incoming links. Does the page being evaluated receive visitors for that keyword phrase on Google's search engine?
• How do users actually behave while on the page, site or document being evaluated?"
  

Bill Gates Think Week

"The week typically starts with Gates, 49, taking a helicopter or seaplane to the two-story clapboard cottage on a quiet waterfront. It's a tidy, relatively modest place with a small bedroom for Gates. During the week he bars all outside visitors -- including family and Microsoft staff -- except for a caretaker who slips him two simple meals a day.

He starts the morning in bed poring through papers mostly by Microsoft engineers, executives and product managers and scribbling notes on the covers. Skipping breakfast, he pads upstairs in his stocking feet to read more papers. Noon and dinnertime bring him back downstairs to read papers over meals at the kitchen table, where he has a view of the Olympic Mountains.

Facing the windows with a water view stands a desk with two Dell personal-computer monitors. To the side is a bookshelf lined with literary classics. A portrait of Victor Hugo hangs nearby. A bathroom and a small refrigerator, stocked with Diet Orange Crush and Diet Coke, have been added to the office in recent years, Gates said, so he can maximize his reading time by not having to go downstairs. Papers in orange covers litter the floor, their pages stamped "Microsoft Confidential."

On this particular day, Gates settled behind the PC monitors, which displayed a database of nearly 300 papers for this week. Among the topics: the growth of Internet video, hard-drive capacity and the diminishing advances in microprocessor "clock speed," historically the driver of PC-market growth. Other paper topics included trends in digital photography, computing trends in 2005 and ways for software to better handle languages like Vietnamese."

(Via Indystar)

New search Toolbar from viewpoint

Viewpoint's has a toolbar powered by Yahoo Search. Itis graphically enhanced with custom skin features. It has interesting features like Comparitive search, graphical search results and visual bookmarking.
check it out

MSN testing new shopping search

MSN Shopping Beta allows you to search various products.

I tried to search 1 GB pen drive which i am planning to buy, it showed results from EBay Marketplace. interesting !

My GMaps - custom maps on Google Maps

myGmaps enables you to create, save and host custom data files and display them with Google Maps.

This site looks like in very primary stage and i not very stable.
The Disclaimer of the site says:
Not official, supported or endorsed by Google. No warranty. Use at your own risk. May be insecure, may cause data loss, may break terms of service. May cause excessive small print.

Still, a very good site to give a try. You can create maps, put 10 locations on it and access them anywhere.
Here is a sample

Found Nice links about Google Map on that site
Google Maps Hacking and Bookmarklets
Google Maps Standalone Mode

Security concerns over MS Communicator 2005

Why IM viruses should worry Microsoft

In the coming months, you'll hear Microsoft chairman Bill Gates making a big deal out of presence -- the ability to communicate in real time with anyone, anywhere. With Microsoft Office Communicator 2005, a new productivity application designed to find and connect people in real time (expected to ship within the first half of 2005), users of Microsoft Office with Live Communications Server 2005 will be able to determine from within any Office program who on your Outlook contact list is currently online, and then contact them via email, chat (using MSN, AOL and Yahoo) or by phone. Like simple IM, Communicator 2005 will provide the benefit of spontaneous meetings online. That's the upside.

The downside is that a single virus that can infiltrate email, IM and mobiles (such a triple-threat beast has yet to exist, but the tools are there now) might soon infect large parts of the Internet within 15 minutes or less. Such 'Andy Warhol' viruses have been suggested for years but have failed to materialise. Perhaps Microsoft's marriage of IM into Office will be the perfect vector for such maliciousness.

[via]

Linspire: New version available

Linspire INC annonced new operating system, Linspire Five-0. Here is screenshot of it




More screenshots available on this page.
It is based on Linux operating system. It is not available for free ;-).

Anyway..Really coool UI !!

Anyone blogger who posts from Linspire ??