Google Maps India learns to navigate like a local

India is different – a nightmare for a map maker. Google Maps now talks in the language of India. Read complete article.

Twitter down; hacked by "Iranian cyber army"?

At right around 10 pm PST Twitter was hacked and defaced. The site was offline for a while.

Via- http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/17/twitter-reportedly-hacked-by-iranian-cyber-army/

Google Public DNS Aims to Speed Up Your Browsing

Google today launched a new, free DNS service—called Google Public DNS—aimed at making your web browsing experience even faster. Here’s how it works:

For those of you who are unfamiliar with DNS (and it’s cool if you are—as long as DNS is working, most people never need to know what’s going on), Google offers an explanation:

Most of us aren’t familiar with DNS because it’s often handled automatically by our Internet Service Provider (ISP), but it provides an essential function for the web. You could think of it as the switchboard of the Internet, converting easy-to-remember domain names – e.g., www.google.com – into the unique Internet Protocol (IP) numbers – e.g., 74.125.45.100 – that computers use to communicate with one another.

Google Public DNS, then, aims to replace your ISP’s default DNS with a (hopefully) faster, safer, and more reliable alternative. Google Public DNS isn’t the first freely available alternate DNS we’ve seen. OpenDNS is an excellent DNS alternative (it boasts keyboard shortcuts, parental filters, and more), but—for better or worse—we’re guessing that even more people may be interested in Google’s offering.

To set up your computer or router to use Google Public DNS, hit up Google’s instructions (they’ve got specific instructions for Windows, Mac, Linux, or your router).

Google’s Fade-In Homepage Now Official

This might surprise you, but Google has made their “fade-in” homepage variant – or more precisely, one of the several prototypes they were testing – their official homepage design now, as they announce at their blog. This is a major redesign for Google.com: at first when you see the page, you’ll only be looking at the Google logo, the search box, and the search and feeling lucky buttons. Only after you’ve moved your mouse will other bits of the page appear, too, letting you jump over to apps like Gmail or Google Maps.

61 Free Apps We’re Most Thankful For {Thanks Lifehacker for this}

Lifehacker’s list of 61 Free Desktop Applications, Webapps, and Tools We’re Most Thankful For

1. Firefox (see also: Power User’s Guide to Firefox 3, Top 10 Firefox 3.5 Features)
2. VLC (see also: Master Your Digital Media with VLC, VLC Hits 1.0 with Better Playback and File Support)
3. CCleaner (see also: Five Best Windows Maintenance Tools)
4. Dropbox (see also: Use Dropbox for More Than Just File Syncing, Sync Files and Folders Outside Your My Dropbox Folder)
5. 7-Zip (see also: Five Best File Compression Tools)
6. OpenOffice.org (see also: OpenOffice.org 3.1’s Usability Tweaks, OpenOffice.org Screenshots Preview a Ribbon-Like Toolbar)
7. Google Chrome (see also: The Power User’s Guide to Google Chrome, 2009 Edition)
8. µTorrent (see also: Tweak uTorrent’s Settings for Faster Downloads, Five Best BitTorrent Applications)
9. Notepad++ (see also: Five Best Text Editors, AutoSave Adds Reassurance to Notepad++ Editing)
10. Gmail (see also: Our full Gmail coverage)
11. GIMP (see also: Gimp 2.7 Beta Improves Text Editing, Streamlines Saving)
12. Paint.NET (see also: Paint.NET Releases Big Update, Still a Killer Photoshop Alternative, Paint.NET Plugin Lets You Open Photoshop Files)
13. Microsoft Security Essentials (see also: Microsoft Security Essentials Free Antivirus App Leaves Beta, Stop Paying for Windows Security; Microsoft’s Security Tools Are Good Enough)
14. Revo Uninstaller (see also: Lifehacker Pack 2009: Our List of Essential Free Windows Downloads)
15. Evernote (see also: Evernote 3.5 Beta Brings Tons of Tiny Fixes to Windows, Expand Your Brain with Evernote)
16. Thunderbird (see also: Thunderbird 3 Release Candidate Available for Download)
17. Audacity (see also: Geek to Live: Make a ringtone from any MP3)
18. ImgBurn (see also: Turn Your PC into a DVD Ripping Monster, Five Best CD and DVD Burning Tools)
19. Picasa (see also: Picasa 3.5 Organizes Your Photos with Facial Recognition)
20. Skype (see also: Our full Skype coverage)
21. Pidgin (see also: Ten Must-Have Plug-ins to Power Up Pidgin, Five Best Instant Messengers)
22. Ubuntu (see also: First Look at Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, Dual-Boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu in Perfect Harmony)
23. iTunes (see also: iTunes 9 Improves Syncing, Network Sharing, More)
24. foobar2000 (see also: Screenshot Tour: The beautiful and varied world of foobar2000, Hack Attack: Roll your own killer audio player with foobar2000)
25. Foxit Reader (see also: Five Best PDF Readers, Lifehacker Pack 2009: Our List of Essential Free Windows Downloads)
26. FileZilla (see also: Five Best FTP Clients, Build a Home FTP Server with FileZilla)
27. VirtualBox (see also: The Beginner’s Guide to Creating Virtual Machines with VirtualBox)
28. TrueCrypt (see also: Geek to Live: Encrypt your data, Five Best Portable Applications)
29. Avast! (see also: Five Best Antivirus Applications)
30. Defraggler (see also: Five Best Disk Defragmenters)
31. KeePass (see also: Eight Best KeePass Plug-Ins to Master Your Passwords, How to Use Dropbox as the Ultimate Password Syncer)
32. Opera (see also: Opera 10.10 with Unite Media Server Released)
33. AVG (see also: AVG 9 Free Now Available for Download)
34. Digsby (see also: Five Best Instant Messengers, Digsby Sees the Light, Removes (Some) Bundled Crapware)
35. Google Reader (see also: Our full Google Reader coverage)
36. Winamp (see also: Win7shell Adds Windows 7 Jump List Support to Winamp)
37. Google Earth (see also: Google Earth 5.1 Speeds Up Your World Browsing)
38. TeraCopy (see also: Five Best Alternative File Copiers)
39. Launchy (see also: Our full Launchy coverage)
40. Transmission (see also: Lifehacker Pack 2009: Our List of Essential Free Mac Downloads)
41. Eclipse IDE
42. SpyBot Search & Destroy (see also: Five Best Malware Removal Tools)
43. Adium (see also: Adium Updates with Security Fixes, Better Facebook Integration)
44. PuTTY (see also: Add Tabs to PuTTY with PuTTY Connection Manager)
45. Songbird (see also: Songbird 1.0 Release Official, Fixes Bugs, Plays iTunes Purchases, Killer Add-ons Make Songbird So Much Better)
46. Sumatra PDF (see also: Sumatra 1.0 is a Blazing Fast Replacement for Adobe Reader)
47. XBMC (see also: Build a Silent, Standalone XBMC Media Center On the Cheap, Customize XBMC with These Five Awesome Skins, Turbo Charge Your New XBMC Installation)
48. Blender (see also: Learn Blender with free e-book)
49. CDBurnerXP (see also: Five Best CD and DVD Burning Tools)
50. Everything (see also: Everything Finds Windows Files As You Type, Top 10 Tiny & Awesome Windows Utilities)
51. HandBrake (see also: HandBrake Updates to 0.9.4 with Over 1,000 Changes, 64-Bit Support)
52. Rainmeter (see also: Rainmeter 1.0 Brings the Enigma Desktop to Everyone)
53. AutoHotkey (see also: Turn Any Action into a Keyboard Shortcut, Hack Attack: Knock down repetitive email with AutoHotKey)
54. Google Calendar (see also: Our full Google Calendar coverage)
55. MediaMonkey (see also: MediaMonkey 3.2 Syncs with More Devices, Adds Auto Folder Watching)
56. Quicksilver (see also: A beginner’s guide to Quicksilver)
57. WinSCP
58. Google Voice (see also: Make Unlimited Free Calls on Your Cellphone with Google Voice, How to Ease Your Transition to Google Voice)
59. Boxee (see also: Build a Cheap But Powerful Boxee Media Center, Boxee to Launch Beta with Loads of New Features)
60. AdBlock Plus (see also: Top 10 Must-Have Firefox Extensions, 2009 Edition)
61. Media Player Classic (see also: Five Best Video Players)

A Preview of Google Chrome OS

Google has released Chromium OS*, the open source precursor to their Chrome OS (which Google says will be “ready for users” in a year). Google in a blog post explains that the Chrome operating system will be all about web apps, not traditional apps, so the “entire experience” takes place within the browser. Additional focus in Chrome OS will be on speed, as well as security; “Every time you restart your computer the operating system verifies the integrity of its code,” Google promises. They also mention that they “benefited hugely from projects like GNU, the Linux Kernel, Moblin, Ubuntu, WebKit”, some of the layers of Chrome OS.

Google Holding Chrome OS Event Thursday. Complete Overview And Launch Plans To Be Revealed.

Google is planning to hold a special Chrome OS event at its headquarters in Mountain View, CA this Thursday morning. The plan is to give some technical background information as well as show off some demos. More notably, they will be giving a “complete overview” of the new OS, which they say will launch next year.

Sundar Pichai, Google’s VP of Product Management and Matthew Papakipos, Google Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS will be speaking at the event. And there will be a Q&A session afterwards.

Are you ready for a Windows 7 cell phone?

A customizable cell phone called the xpPhone will be available running the full desktop version of Windows 7 (or Windows XP or DOS). The phone will run on multiple carriers and multiple wireless technologies — and even using multiple simultaneous SIM cards.

The idea with this phone is that it’s a build-to-order device, like a Dell PC. You can choose up to a 7-inch screen, 5 megapixel camera, 120 GB hard drive and up to 64 GB of memory.

The base configuration includes a slide-out key, and a pretty large overall handset size.

The question is: Does the build-to-order model work with cell phones? Shouldn’t phones be tightly designed and engineered?

What do you think? Do want a Windows 7 cell phone?

Google Chrome OS To Launch Within A Week

Google’s Chrome OS project, first announced in July, will become available for download within a week, we’ve heard from a reliable source. Google previously said to expect an early version of the OS in the fall.

Check convincing and not so convincing screenshots of Chrome OS over the last several months. The good news is the speculation is about to end, and you can try it out yourself. If you have one of the supported devices, that is.

 

Go-go Google Gopher… Go! Google invents its own programming language

In exciting, but not unexpected news, Google has has put its name behind the brainchild of three of their in-house genius programmers. But it’s not a web app, nor is it an enterprise solution — it’s not even a downloadable tool like their Chrome browser. They’ve actually gone and invented a new language. It’s called Go. (That’s their mascot, the Go-Gopher, over on the right.)

Citing difficulties with existing languages and arbitrary restrictions that prevent them from making the Google services as good as they could be… they did the only really sensible thing they could do: they made their own superior language. To put it into simple terms: imagine trying to communicate with grunts and squeals. That’s how Google feels with today’s languages, and why they’ve made their own one. It’s why we speak English today, rather than Tarzan Talk.

And in true Google style, they’ve done it right. Go is fast. It’s secure. They even go as far as to call it ‘fun’ on their homepage!

I don’t want to bore you with specifications — they’re all there on their site if you’re a developer and want to get going immediately (it’s open source, of course!) — but I will tell you that this is big, big news.

We haven’t seen a new systems-oriented language for over a decade. Technology has moved on a lot. Heck, Google themselves have pushed the requirements of computer systems. When you’re trying to build a system that scales to hundreds of thousands — or millions — of servers, it’s no surprise that existing languages don’t quite hit the spot.

Say they’re only squeezing 40% of the max theoretical output from their server farm. If Go could push that utilization up to 60 or 70%… imagine the gains! For them, for us! This is even good news for the environment!

Of course, it’s free to download and use, and there are tutorials that are very easy to get started with. There’s even a little video showcasing just how fast it is, after the break.

Firefox 3.6 Beta 2 Available for Download

Less than two weeks after they released the first beta, Mozilla is back with Firefox 3.6 beta 2. This release includes over 190 bug fixes from beta 1, in addition to the already existing performance boosts and support for one-click themes.

You can grab the latest straight from the Firefox beta page; if you’re already using 3.6 beta 1, those 190+ bug fixes seem like they’d be well worth the update.

Again, this is a beta release, so only upgrade if you’re an early adopter willing to deal with some potential bugs. That said, if you’ve been using 3.6 over the last week or so, let’s hear how you’ve liked it so far in the comments.

Firefox 3.6 Beta 2 [Mozilla]

Google Music Search Officially Launched

Today Google is officially launching built-in music playback results on regular Google search queries.

Much has been made of this new feature, and it certainly will make it easier for users to get straight to a song they’re looking for, but it’s not something we’re getting all that excited about. We’ll admit that finding and playing back a song when all you’ve done is search for lyrics is kind of cool. Still, Google already puts video results from YouTube in the search results page, and more often than not they’re what you’re looking for, anyway.

Right now we’re not seeing the updates in our results, but chances are you’ll start seeing them in the next day or so if you aren’t already.

Making search more musical [Official Google Blog]

Firefox 3.5.4 Security Update Available for Download

Mozilla just released a small security update for Firefox, bringing the ‘fox to version 3.5.4. Like most of these updates, you’re mostly looking at security issues and a few stability improvements. (You can read through the full changelog here. On the Mac, I was pretty keen to see the "slow script dialog appears while print dialogs are open" fix, since it’s an annoyance I’d dealt with.) You should automatically be prompted to upgrade sometime in the next day or so, but if you don’t feel like waiting, you can also go ahead and grab the latest yourself here. [Mozilla Developer Center]

Google’s tribute to Gandhi.

Christ gave us the goals and Mahatma Gandhi the tactics. — Martin Luther King Jr, 1955

2nd October was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s birthday. Gandhi was not only the architect of Indian freedom movement but one of the greatest leaders of all time.

Google today changed its logo to give a fitting tribute to this great humanitarian.

Google Wave opens to 100,000 users today

According to the official Google blog, 100,000 invitations to Google’s most hotly-anticipated new service, Google Wave, are going out today. Wave is being touted as a communication tool that reimagines the way email should work. So, who’s getting invited to use this next-generation communication tool? Well, it helps if you signed up early for an invitation and wrote the Wave team a message offering to give feedback. If you’re a developer who’s been using the developer preview of Wave, you might also get an invitation, and some are going out to paying customers of Google Apps.
In their blog post, the Google Wave folks stress that – if you do land an invitation – you’re not going to be playing with a finished product. Wave is still missing some crucial features, and bugs are going to be par for the course until the team starts using the feedback from these 100,000 new users to start identifying problems. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to directly invite friends to Wave, but you will be able to nominate them for invitations.
Do you have a Wave invitation yet? What do you think of the service so far?

Gmail Slow or Down for Some, IMAP Still Working

Trouble grabbing your mail this morning? Google says Gmail’s web interface is unavailable to an uncannily familiar "small subset of users." They officially recommend accessing Gmail through an IMAP mail client, among other ways to.

Google’s Apps Status Dashboard states that an update will be issued by 8:29 Pacific time with more details, and reminds us that Gmail can still be accessed by IMAP clients, as it was the last time this happened. Best option is to enable IMAP to access Gmail during outage – Google’s step-by-step instructions.

Technorati Tags: Gmail outage

FeedDemon 3.0 Final

The official 3.0 version of FeedDemon, the desktop feed reader that synchronizes with Google Reader, is now available, bringing with it many, many fixes, features, and updates.

FeedDemon 3.0 Final [Downloads]

10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines

Everyone would agree that usability is an important aspect of Web design. Whether you’re working on a portfolio website, online store or Web app, making your pages easy and enjoyable for your visitors to use is key. Many studies have been done over the years on various aspects of Web and interface design, and the findings are valuable in helping us improve our work. Here are 10 useful usability findings and guidelines that may help you improve the user experience on your websites.

This brilliant article is from – 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines

Login to Facebook with your vanity URL

 

Here’s a bit of ground breaking news for you (or pretty lame news). Facebook, known for their popular social networking website and recently flurry of product and service enhancements, has made possibly the biggest change yet. With over 50 million vanity names reserved since the social networking website started allowing users to pick their own unique URL, they have now announced that the names can be used to sign in as well.
You’ll still be able to login using your email, mobile phone number or through a Facebook Connect website as always, this just adds another (more convenient?) way to sign in. I guess it’s good that Facebook is keeping themselves balanced. After all, it’d be awful if all they did was release new features and functionality. That would almost be too much.

Picasa 3.5 Organizes Your Photos with Facial Recognition

Google’s free desktop photo organizer added face recognition and sync with Picasa Web Albums.

The new Picasa 3.5 contains a facial recognition feature similar to the one already present on Picasa Web Albums, but letting it run over your likely vast collection of assorted photos stashed on your hard drive is a lot more convenient. Picasa creates a new sidebar menu list of "People," and asks you to name the folks it finds in its main "Scanning" menu. If you’re signed into Web Albums with a Google account stuffed with contacts, that’s pretty easy, actually—just start typing a name, then select the contact that pops up as you type.

You’ll probably have to leave Picasa running a long time to get through everything—after 20 minutes, it’s about 9 percent through with 13.8GB of photos on my laptop. As you might guess, some of the facial matching is hit and miss, but you get to approve any of the picks Picasa isn’t absolutely sure of, and if someone’s in your photo library who you don’t want to take the time to tag, you can send them to the "Ignored People" pile. All this is in service of a better search function, so you can more easily find photos of yourself and your spouse, your spouse and her friend, or any combination of people, dates, or other search parameters.

Here’s Google’s video demonstration of how name tagging works in Picasa 3.5:

As noted in the video, the other additions to Picasa 3.5 are a tool to use integrated Google Maps pickers to geo-tag photos, and an option to import photos from a camera card onto Picasa Web Albums directly. Neat features, but kind of underwhelming paired with something like facial recognition, no?

Read up on Picasa’s name tag features, grab it at the link, and tell us how well facial recognition is working, or not, with your own photos in the comments.

Picasa 3.5, now with name tags and more [Official Google Blog]