If Google is the undisputed king of the search engines then Bing is the challenger to the crown. I do not think at the moment Bing is mounting much of a challenge but realistically it is the only one which can compete over the years with Google. For people who love looking up stuff with search might enjoy this one. A website which gives you search results on Bing and Google side by side on the same page.
Very aptly it is called Bingle and seems like a very handy tool for people trying to look up results from a SEO point of view.
Bingle allowed me to check Bing and Google results side by side not just when it came to web search but I could also compare image search results along with maps being searched for with Google and Bing separately on the same page.
I won’t say it is a great way to look up a particular information but it is quite awesome to carry out the same searches on both engines and look up side by side which link it rates as more important compared to the other.
Often when you look at a search engine you might not be able to make sense of it but with a comparative look-up of search queries can give you an insight into what exactly that search engines gives a higher preference to. 😉
Go ahead and try Bingle and let me know your views by dropping in your comments.
Familiar icons on your desktop play a very important role. They are visual aids for you to not waste too much time and get work done faster. Just imagine if you had 20 folders and the ‘My Computer’ shortcut was also present and all had the same icons on the desktop. You would probably at least waste up-to 2-3 seconds every time you wanted to open a particular shortcut.
Icons with their shortcuts usually save us time. It might seem insignificant but I reckon that for every 2 hours on the computer you probably end up saving up to 3-5 minutes. The time saving aspect is even more prominent for someone multitasking.
This can be quite relevant to your website/ blog as icons or images often help your regular readers to get oriented. I came across this neat website which helps you create and customize some icons and then download them for your personal use.
Iconizer allowed create customized and stylized icons. Even though there are many website which might have a lot many more icons to choose from but this website allows you make changes to the original icon you have chosen.
I could change the foreground and background color of the icon image.
I could also select its width and height in pixel units.
Iconizer also has the option of you generating the icon image in GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP and ICO.
Go ahead and look up Iconizer and let me know if you liked playing around and generating new icons for your desktop or even your website to give it just that extra sense of familiar feel.
Do you know how many verified accounts are there on Twitter? There are at the time of writing this post 1255 people on Twitter with verified accounts. If you are wondering how I got that number it is thanks to a feature in Twitter. Just look up @verified Twitter account. It follows everyone who has a verified Twitter account.
Just about anyone and everyone is allowed to get their Twitter account verified but only a few accounts are verified. @verified bot starts following the person verified by Twitter immediately.
@verified also has arranged the verified twitter accounts in various lists. In this way by following one of the list you can easily start following the verified accounts.
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Even though verified accounts are just 1255 out of some 60 million, some stats it provides are quite interesting. The number of verified accounts for Entertainment and Music are far more than any list. This shows how much Twitter is driven by celebrities in the entertainment field compared to technology. Technology related verified accounts stand at a meager 18. Even sports related verified accounts are not too many.
Closer home there are quite a few Indians with verified accounts and majority of them are again in the Entertainment field. There is one verified account neatly tucked under cricket. Ironically it was not that of a sportsman but an administrator.
DW does not have a verified Twitter account but you can surely follow us on Twitter @devils_workshop. 😉
If you are a blogger one of your biggest resource is a search engine. Looking around for new tricks to webs services or even something as simple as how posts within your blog can be looked with different search engines. We all use search engines and at times carry out multiple searches. It is a little difficult sometimes to keep track of the multiple searches or the queries you entered while carrying out a comprehensive search about a certain subject. I used Search Opener and found it a boon while carrying out multiple searches across different search engines.
Search Opener allows you to carry out different search queries across different search engines. It gave me two different types of options.
It allows me to enter 3-4 different search queries and open them in different tabs within the browser.
These tabs are opened within the same browser you are viewing the website.
It also allows you to use multiple search engines. It supports Yahoo, Bing, Ask and ofcourse Google.
In the above image you can see I typed in all the search queries and selected Google.
This means if I search for Devils Workshop and Facebooknol with Google and Bing being selected, I can at once open 4 tabs within the browser for both search queries with both engines.
This will be quite useful for people doing research and really looking to get deep into search results. I reviewed a similar sort of service called SearchZooka which allowed multiple searches. I admit that search opener has fewer options but it’s minimalistic look does make it a lot less confusing.
Let me know what you like about Search Opener through your comments.
Watching YouTube videos has been a great way for friend to wind down. At work there are also great tutorials and demos for almost everything on You Tube. For instance at rtCamp our new developers often end up spending their first couple of days watching video demos for getting started. It is a great way to learn but sometimes it has its disadvantages.
Having one screen play the video while 4-5 people try and squeeze into nooks and corners to get a better view. A way around this is usually to share the link with everyone and let them see the video in their own time. Sometimes that is not useful or wastes time as you cannot discuss the video immediately or at the same time.
With Synch tube you can now have many computers view You Tube videos in a synchronised way.
Users can now create a room to synchronize the You tube video or can choose to enter a public room.
Once you create a room you are allowed to make it public or keep it private. You can share the link to this room with your friends and everyone can then watch the You Tube Videos in a synchronized way.
It also supports a chat client and you can chat with people you are viewing the synced video with.
So next time you think of sharing a video on youtube you can use SynchTube to watch the video in a synchronized way. Do try it out and drop in your comments to let me know what you think about it.
Today is the 15th of January and the Hostgator Webhosting DW giveaway contest is closed and results are out. First of all let me thank all the participators for taking part in this contest. Also a special thanks to Harsh Agarwal who sponsored this special giveaway on DW.
Over all we had 66 valid entries and the post was Retweeted a 114 times! As Harsh had explained in his post that this contest was a way to encourage people who are still shy of using WordPress because of the cost involved. The prize is hostgator baby plan one year subscription which is worth 120$. You can host multiple domains in this plan along with bandwidth and storage being unlimited.
We used Random.Org . After compiling the whole list of comments which are valid, I used Radnom.org lists to create a randomized list. The one at the top was the winner.
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Congratulations to Vicky whose name popped up first once the list was randomized. He wins the Hostgator goodies worth $120.
Here is the video of the winner being selected through Random.org
Here is the list of all those who participated in the contest.
jaswanth on January 1, 2010
Tech Society on January 1, 2010
Kashish Kaushik on January 1, 2010
Shubhendu Pandey on January 1, 2010
Namit Gupta on January 1, 2010
Manveer Singh on January 1, 2010
S.Pradeep Kumar on January 1, 2010
MostlyBlog on January 1, 2010
sauravjit on January 1, 2010
Avi Singh on January 1, 2010
Athul Jayaram on January 1, 2010
Sagar Gholap on January 1, 2010
Pratik Parekh on January 1, 2010
alok on January 1, 2010
Suhas on January 1, 2010
Joseph on January 1, 2010
Mrpant on January 1, 2010
Richie S. on January 1, 2010
S60 Betalabs on January 1, 2010
Varun Agarwal on January 1, 2010
Mandar Salvi on January 1, 2010
ali360 on January 1, 2010
debayan laha on January 1, 2010
Tech-Freak Stuff on January 1, 2010
P.K.ARUN on January 1, 2010
SirajHassan on January 1, 2010
Pratik Parekh on January 1, 2010
Mahesh on January 1, 2010
Baris on January 1, 2010
Rishabh Agarwal on January 1, 2010
George on January 1, 2010
Paritosh on January 1, 2010
Anurag Mittal on January 1, 2010
srivathsan.GK on January 1, 2010
Akshay Kakkar on January 1, 2010
Mrinmay Bhattacharjee (mrintech) on January 1, 2010
Ankit Bansal on January 1, 2010
thewisecrab on January 1, 2010
Simran on January 1, 2010
Vaibhav Kanwal on January 1, 2010
Mayur on January 1, 2010
Lucifer on January 1, 2010
Sharad Kumar on January 2, 2010
Rajeel on January 2, 2010
Varun Agarwal on January 2, 2010
Sumit Kalra on January 2, 2010
Sithin Sony on January 2, 2010
Gautam on January 2, 2010
ContestItalia on January 2, 2010
Ankit on January 2, 2010
khalid on January 2, 2010
Vicky on January 2, 2010
Sothy on January 3, 2010
Rajesh Kanuri @ TechCats on January 4, 2010
M. R. SOHEL on January 5, 2010
Quakeboy on January 6, 2010
CelebCurry on January 6, 2010
BlogrPro on January 7, 2010
Prasanth Chandra on January 8, 2010
Binoy xavier on January 8, 2010
Akbar on January 8, 2010
Puneet on January 8, 2010
umesh on January 9, 2010
Nandan on January 12, 2010
Atul Tiwari on January 13, 2010
Uttoran Sen on January 13, 2010
PS: The new theme for Devils Workshop is on the verge of completion and and we are hopeful to get it live soon. Also do await a lot more surprises from our rtBlogs network  in the coming days 😀
A day after Google made public that they were under a well organized attack from Chinese hackers news has trickled in that certain Chinese hackers have targeted computers within the Government trying to snare many top level administrators. Apparently an email was sent to top level bureaucrats from a dormant email id. This allowed the hackers the opportunity to access a backdoor within the network for getting access to that computer’s hard disk.
According to the timing that these attacks coincided with the Copenhagen summit last year, there is a theory that Chinese hackers might have tried to get an idea of India’s stand before hand. The Prime Minister’s Office has confirmed about the attack on systems but noted that computers with sensitive material are sanitized and do not have access to the Internet.
Why China?
A lot of experts are saying China has a long term plan to use its cyber hackers to control the internet or atleast develop the ability to cause great harm. I think that idea is a little over stretched. China does have one of the most comprehensive system of monitoring and censoring content on the internet. It might soon have the highest number of Internet users but the content is very controlled. To acheive this sort of monitoring mechanism would need a huge number of hackers who are working round the clock trying to monitor the massive internet population.
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This essentially gives some of these Chinese hackers an ability to be trying their hands at attacking systems and networks outside China. Whereas there is nothing wrong in being aware and vigilant about cyber security, I do not think it is correct to be too carried away with conspiracy theories that will soon start floating on the internet along with some parts of the print and television media.
PDF files are very useful and at times very frustration. Sometimes work pdf files have passwords to protect them but it is not always a good idea. A password is sometimes quite a problem when people using a pdf document are working collaboratively.
Thanks to details provided by a DW follower Owen Lee, I got to know that a software which removes password from protected PDF documents can be downloaded and used for free. This is part of a giveaway by Any PDF Tools.
This is not a hack tool, you can remove password restrictions applied by the author only if you know the original password.
Just download the tool and install it. Open a .pdf file with a password and remove the restrictions.
This allows the user to copy, edit and even print the document without the restrictions.
It is a stand alone application which does not require Adobe reader or Acrobat on your computer.
Best feature is Batch Decryption which allows the decryption of 200 Acrobat files at once.
So if you want to download the PDF Password Remover go ahead and download it. Do download it fast as it is being made available for free only until 24th Februdary 2010.
By now everyone knows that Google has threanted to dump their opearations in China after their certain Gmail accounts were hacked by Chinese. The issue was that most of these accounts were of Chinese dissidents inside China while some of them were even in Europe and the US.
Google has yesterday announced that all the Gmail accounts will be sent over secure servers. This means it will work by default on HTTPS rather than HTTP.
Gmail HTTPS
Gmail allowed you to before use HTTPS by making those changes in your settings.
This was used as usually unencrypted data travels faster than encrypted one.
Now all of Gmail accounts will have default HTTPS. You can notice the difference the minute you log into your Gmail account.
This is true for Gmail but not for all Google accounts.
Using encryption is ideally known to be a good idea when using Gmail with Wifi, especially in a public space.
If you want to disable the default HTTPS, you can make the changes at Settings.
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Gmail HTTPS is actually not such a big deal. It did not really need to announce this on their blog as it is not really a new feature but just something that was optional is now by default. So was this a reaction or way to Google watchers that they will be a lot more secure. Remember inspite of support for Google over its complaints regarding their servers being attacked in China it might start a problem considering sometimes the media can be very paranoid as far as security concerns.
I think Google has known that it has stirred a hornet’s nest and to ease of anyone trying to indirectly imply that Chinese hackers could hack into Gmail because Google takes the security lightly; Google has thwarted such concerns by announcing all Gmail accounts will have default HTTPS.
What do you think? Is Gmail’s default HTTPS a reaction to the issue it has with China?
I think most people who use the internet love to store files on the internet for various reasons. It can be either for backing up important files and documents or even having the option of downloading files to different computers and hence make working on one with with different computers very efficient.
Very soon you will be able to upload and store any file on Google Docs. This will not be just restricted to the three formats available now but will work soon with every type of file.
Google in its blog has announced that everyone with Google Docs access including the ones using Google Apps will have upto 1GB space to store files. It will restrict the size of the file to 250 MB. I guess the 250 MB file size limit is meant to dissuade people from using it to exchange pirate software and movies.
Concerns with Google Docs storage space
The maximum space allowed concerning storage space with Google Docs will be 1 GB. This 1 GB space does not include the files you have converted into Google documents, spreadsheets or presentation.
If you need more than 1 GB space you can purchase extra storage at $ 0.25 per 1 GB for the whole year. This is quite a small amount and I guess is being done with an eye towards Chrome OS.
The details are still sketchy in the sense if someone using Google Apps will be able to limit the free space available or the type of file being uploaded to Google Docs can be restricted.
If you have already purchased extra storage space with Picassa storage it will be available with Google Docs. 😉
I do not think people will start chucking the use of Dropbox very soon but I think it will certainly start picking up once this feature is enabled with your Google Docs account.
