Vadivel's blog

Only yesterday I came to know that we can add webtoim@gmail.com to our Gtalk contact list and start chatting with that BOT. I understand that now, instead of Googling and digging Wikipedia for the correct answer, you can take assistance from the WebToIM Bot that is designed to answer such questions. Few of my observations: 1. Almost for all questions it starts answering as ”hmm…” which looks odd to me. 2. Very often even for basic questions (or) for questions for which I would get the answer by googling is throwing me “Sorry. I couldn't understand what you are asking. Please rephrase.” 3. I tried the following queries “Whats your age” it said sorry. I rephrased it as “What is your age” it again said sorry. Finally I asked “How old are you?” and it answered hmmm... 3 years and 9 months old 4. I got this response quite often as well hmmm... I found ...

By this time you would have heard about ' Cuil ' - a search engine developed by ex-top engineers of Google. I tried our few searches in that and as of now I am not pleased with the search results. I came to know from their site that "Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge" 1. Search Result looks like a news site. This is not a complaint :) May be I am used to the search results page template used by Google , Yahoo , Microsoft . But I like this Cuil result template as well. 2. As usual I tried searching for my name ( 'Vadivel' ) and found that Cuil wasn't able to find my blog (atleast it was not available within the first two pages) whereas Google was able to show my blogspot in the first page itself. I even tried changing the search string as Vadivel Blogspot still it wasn't able to pickup! 3. If a search string has multiple meanings they provide those options as a menu style. For ex: Find attached the screenshot which I took by searching SQL 4. Explo...

From a fellow MVP ( Harish Ranganathan ) I came to know about this interesting fact. Old News: If you search for "Failure" in Google and click on "I'm feeling lucky" button it would take you to President Bush's homepage :) Latest News: Now, interestingly, if you search for the word "Search" in Google and click on "I'm feeling lucky" button, it goes to Windows Live Search Page. Technorati tags: Google , Microsoft , Windows Live

Do a search for “ therapy products “ in Google and see what happens! In the “See results for” section Google suggests searching this in “yahoo”. Source: InsideGoogle Technorati Tags: Google , Yahoo

Somehow I landed into Girgle now. They claim it to be "Google for Girls". I don't really understand the concept. The only point is they have used a girlish background color. Apart from that I don't see anything else to be specifically targetted for girls! I checked out the blog of Javier , the guy who has created this still I am not clear about the concept :) Many people say this has something to do with Adsense!! Anyway I am sure Google would surely bring this site down. Technorati Tags: Google

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This is real interesting move from Google. It is taking on Microsoft on its home ground :) Sometime today, Google would be opening out its new Spreadsheet software for limited number of users. They call it as "limited test". What does "limited test" mean? Some Google Labs prototypes can handle only a limited number of users in their initial stages. When we know that's the case, we do our best to let you know too, by putting "limited test" next to its name, along with some screenshots and/or more information about the product for those of you who weren't able to get there in time to actually try it out. This FAQ might interest you: 1. What are the key features of Google Spreadsheets? 2. How do I sign up for Google Spreadsheets? 3. What browsers does Google Spreadsheets support? Do you want to have a sneek preview check this out :: TOUR If at all you are interested in testing out the beta software signup and wait for their mail (like what I am doing ...

For past 3 days I am having trouble accessing my gmail a/c. Actually it takes too much time to login and show my inbox. Many times, only blank screen is displayed and I had no other option than to hit my keyboards F5 key. I am really surprised!! One of the advantages which people said when GMail came into picture was SPEED. Get it right, I am able to access Yahoo or Hotmail pretty normally on the same box. So something somewhere is going wrong for GMail. May be they are not able to handle the real load! Update on May 26, 2006 @ 7.30 PM: I forgot to mention that "TOO MANY" junk/spam mails are delivered to my Inbox. I am wondering how it fooled the spam filter and managed to get into my inbox. Something is SURELY wrong with Gmail server / application. Hope Gmail team to look into this ASAP before realising that it has gone above their head!

In a talk with The New Yorker writer Ken Auletta as part of a Newhouse School lecture series, Semel was asked what his dumbest decision was after taking the job at the Net media company in 2001. Shortly after joining Yahoo, Semel said, company founders Jerry Yang and David Filo suggested he look at buying up-and-comer Google, whose Stanford grad founders looked up Yahoo's inventors. So Semel said he had dinner with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, asking them what their business was with Yahoo paying only $7 million annually as its biggest licensor of Google search technology. "They had no thought process on the subject," Semel said. So Semel nevertheless asked to buy Google. They replied that they wanted $1 billion and didn't want to sell. Semel said he'd think about the price. Another dinner and Semel agreed to the $1 billion. Larry and Sergey replied that they wanted $3 billion and didn't want to sell. "I couldn't and didn't buy this company and the...

This is the mail which I sent to my team mates / group of friends in Verizon on 9th Feb 2006. I thought let me post it here as well. Does search engines lie on the number of results shown for a search string? I tried searching for the word "vadivel.blogspot" in Google . It said there are 178 results found. But actually they are able to display only 23 results. The funny part is ... at the end of the page there was this block of text. "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 23 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included." So now I searched again including the duplicates as well .. still it is able to list only 168 results :) After this, I searched the same search string in Yahoo it said 164 results are there. But on clicking 2nd page ... the numbers changed to 280!! very strange. Still they where listing 129 records only. So to my knowledge the numbers which ...

In continuation to my yesterdays post I read an interesting article Google cries foul, but for what? Ed Bott in this article has explained with screenshots on how changing providers in IE7 is about the same as changing in Firefox with one exception - MSN Search is NOT an option in Firefox while Google IS an option in IE7!!!!!!!!! Now, will Google put real pressure on Firefox to let Microsoft Search in their existing list? As I mentioned in the earlier post if you purchase a DELL machines Google search box comes in-built. So I don't think people would really take seriously as everyone by now would have known that "Google follow double standards" :) Btw apple's new browser (called safari) has google search in-built in it. I have never used it. But I have read that there isn't any option to change it to any other search providers. If this is a fair game .. then whats the problem with Microsofts approach?

Check out http://tech.memeorandum.com/060501/p8#a060501p8 In this article I found this, "The new browser includes a search box in the upper-right corner that is typically set up to send users to Microsoft's MSN search service. Google contends that this puts Microsoft in a position to unfairly grab Web traffic and advertising dollars from its competitors." I also found this, "The focus of Google's concern is a slender box in the corner of the browser window that allows users to start a search directly instead of first going to the Web site of a search engine like Google, Yahoo or MSN. Typing a query and hitting "Enter" immediately brings up a page of results from a designated search engine." hmm i am really pissed off on seeing Google's reaction. Why? Because just couple of weeks back I bought a new Dell Inspiron 1505 notebook. I was really shocked to see that Google search box was by DEFAULT added to the Internet Explorer. Now if the same thing...