Wikipedia Goes Dark, Reddit Down. What next??

SOPA is creating a lot of buzz lately. Or should I say the SOPA protesters are. Well If you dont know what SOPA is all about see this:

Stop Online Piracy Act - Wikipedia

Wait this is a Wikipedia link and I just said that wikipedia goes dark today. Apparently this is the only page thats working  fine today and won't go dark after some seconds. Smart move by wikipedia isn't it?

Image credit: Watblog

What is SOPA??

SOPA( Stop Online Piracy Act) is a bill which if passed would change the way internet works. And when I say change I don't mean in a good way. It would give the US government right to take down any site infringing copyright material. That doesn't sound bad isn't it?? Well it is. Its not in what SOPA aims for but how it works. I dont want to write a lot about how SOPA is dangerous because a lot has already been written about it.

Have a look at this: Why is SOPA Dangerous
You can read the bill here: SOPA


What's Next??

What's next. That's the main concern I have. With popular sites like google, wikipedia, reddit protesting actively against SOPA and more joining the protest soon, SOPA seems unlikely to happen:

1. People: In the coming days we will see that more and more people would get aware of how dangerous SOPA is for the internet and would join the revolution.  According to me, the people would show there protest by sharing there views on various social networking sites, changing there profile pictures to oppose SOPA and participating in various discussion forums.

2. Websites: 18th Jan is the anti SOPA protest day. But I don't see this protest getting extended. I believe we won't see another blackout by these sites in the future. That means all sites would get back to normal by tomorrow.

3. Government: Eventually we will see the US government backing out of the bill. We may see another version of SOPA introduced. But with giants like Google opposing SOPA, there is no way that such a bill will get passed. Just imagine if SOPA gets passed and we see the end of pouplar sites like wikileaks, people would go crazy and we may see a worldwide protest. So I say again SOPA seems very unlikely to get passed.


Sites Protesting Against SOPA:


These are some of the popular sites protesting against SOPA as on 18th Jan 2012.

• Wikipedia: The english desktop version of WIKIPEDIA is down for 24 hrs. It will blackout within seconds of  loading any page

• Reddit: The popular Social sharing site would be down for 12 hrs today 

• Google: Google US shows protest against SOPA on its homepage. Being in India I can't see the US version of google. So curious to find how google US homepage looks today I used a US proxy site to access google. So if you are someone living outside US and want to see how Google US homepage looks go to the site UsWebProxy and enter google.com in the url field and click on proxy now.

• Other Sites: Other popular sites like Wordpress, Craigslist, Boingboing and some others are also down today informing people how bad SOPA is for the internet

So what are your views about SOPA??? Are you one of those rare people who happen to support it? Also what do you think will happen in the coming days. Share your views in the comments section below.


Thanks for reading

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Now Play Games In Google Plus!!!

According to the official Google blog, Google plus users will soon be able to see a games section which will allow them to play some cool games like Angry birds, Bejeweled and a lot more . After games like farmville being a big success in Facebook taking social networking to a whole new level, this doesn't come as a big surprise. This means that you can check out games too when you try to spot the differences between Google Plus and Facebook.

Image source

But with games being such an important part in social networking sites like Facebook, what can Google Plus provide so that it stands above the competition. So here is a list of things that Google is promising to deliver in its Google Plus games service:

1. Games Offered

First of all the lets see the the list of games which you can play on Google Plus. On its official blog Google has provided a list of 16 games that will be available as soon as you get that games button in your Google plus account. These include games like the massively popular Angry bird from Rovio and classical games like Bejewelled, Soduku, poker etc. See the picture below for all the games.

More games will be made available gradually once the rollout is complete. Angry birds stands out for me in the above list which could become really fun if you could play it with your friends.


2. Control over games 

One of the best thing about Google Plus games service is that there will be a dedicated button at the top for the games if you wish to play them. So if you are someone who is not so keen to play games or even be informed about your friends update about what game they played, then you can be assured that these games won't interfere with your conversations.

Facebook news feed can get totally cluttered with games and application updates from friends which can get really irritating at times. Google Plus has taken care of it and you will get game updates only if you click on the games button which is really cool.


3. More for the developers

Google will take only 5% on in app purchases in comparison to 30% which Facebook charges its developers right now. I am sure this will attract a lot of great developers. More developers mean more games. So you may see some great games coming to Google Plus in future..

Well these were the things which make Google Plus games service stand above Facebook games, according to me of course. And this is just the starting, more features will be added soon which can prove to be a selling point to Google Plus.

Facebook launched some new features too: 

As soon as Google announced about the introduction of games in its Google plus service, Facebook too announced some new features which will be added to Facebook games. According to a post on the Facebook official blog, Jared Morgenstern said:

"When you’re playing games, you’ll now see a separate stream of your friends’ game activity, scores, and achievements in a ticker. The best way to find new games is through friends, and now you’ll have more opportunities to see what they’re playing"

You can read more here if you are interested Facebook Blog


So what you think about this. Game on I guess????

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Google To Launch New Page Speed Service Soon!!!

In an effort to make the web a richer and faster place google  introduces new services from time to time.  Recently google launched the instant pages service which allows google to cache pages even before the user finsishes typing the search query and expected that it will save atleast 3-5 seconds in this process.

Now google is all set to launch a new "Page Speed service" through which google will fetch all your data, host it in its own servers and lastly tweak them to get the lowest loading time possible. Read on to find out more..

Image src - cbsnews.com

How Will Google Page Speed Service Work?

Google explained how the page speed service will work:

"Page Speed Service is an online service that automatically speeds up loading of your web pages. To use the service, you need to sign up and point your site’s DNS entry to Google. Page Speed Service fetches content from your servers, rewrites your pages by applying web performance best practices, and serves them to end users via Google’s servers across the globe. Your users will continue to access your site just as they did before, only with faster load times. Now you don’t have to worry about concatenating CSS, compressing images, caching, zipping resources or other web performance best practices."

So that means you are almost guaranteed some amount of gain in page load speed. According to google they saw improvements from 25-60% on several sites they tested.

How much speed i will gain by using this service?

The service is not available for public right now. Only some beta testers can get to try this. But if you are really curious to know how much speed you can gain right now then you can head on to this compare page

WebPageTest

It provides a complete comparison between the loading time of the original page and the optimized page. I tested it on my blog and saw an improvement of around 19% which is not that amazing. Here is the screenshot:

Curious to find out more i tested a site i follow, netchunks and i was surprised to see the result. It predicted a gain of about 50% in loading time which is truly awesome. Have a look at the screenshot below:

Will It Be Free?

Sadly no it won't be free. If you were expecting it to be free like other google services then you will be disappointed. And i can totally understand why it won't be free. After all they are optimizing and hosting your site on their own servers which will cost something to google. But the actual price is still not out. Lets wait and see..

If you are interested in beta testing of this service for free then you can register here and hope that they approve your request:

Google Page Speed Service sign up page.


So what you think about this service? Will you spend some of your hard earned monry to improve the user experience. Personally i won't go for it if the price is too high and/or if there isn't any significant improvement in the page load time. What do you think?????

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Google Plus One's For Sale!!!

Are you really disappointed that inspite of writing quality content you still don't get the fame you deserve. Your content doesn't get viral and you are obsessed with people that get 100's of +1's on every post they write. Well then why not buy them! You all must be familiar with sites that sell backlinks and they were doing really good. And now its the season of Google's Plus One sales. Read on..

Does Google +1's Really Matter?? 

Apart from the fact that having +1's may make your site look good and respected there are some SEO advantages too.

First of all i want to make it clear that i am not an SEO expert and i won't even pretend to be. Now with what i read some SEO experts are saying that social exposure i.e facebook likes, google +1's and retweets etc will also play a major role in ranking of websites in google. There is no official statement by google about google +1 affecting rankings although. 

A good reason why search engine's may consider this is that people are really selective while sharing something. If they don't find anything useful then forget that they will even move there mouse anywhere near the share or like button. 

So if a post has 100's of likes, shares etc it will act as a seal of approval that the content is really good. And we all know how much google loves unique and useful content, it wants to get rid of all the spammy sites from its search results. So you may start seeing +1's affecting your site ranking in the near future.

How to Buy Google +1's??

A site called Plussem.com is all into this and is selling google +1's for a moderate price. Plussem is probably the first one to offer such a service. It is run by a site SEOshop.biz. Here are the prices..

Buy 50 Google Plus One for 20$
Buy 250 Google Plus One for 70$ 
Buy 2000 Google Plus One for 360$  

So how does Plussem Work??

They say that each +1 apparently comes from a real person with a verified Google account and is given manually by visiting the buyer's site. All +1s trace back to different IP addresses, and are distributed over a number of days to make them look more natural. That means that they will make sure that google finds these +1's legitimate.

 

Lastly no i do not recommend buying social fame through such sites. I also wouldn't ever buy backlinks although that is quite common. I believe in doing these things the hard way, i.e by hard work. But there are a lot of people that do everything they can to rank in Search Engine's. Be it buying backlinks, buying SEO softwares and what not. So if you are one of them go ahead try this you may get some benefits right now or in the future.

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Charge Your Laptop By Typing!!!

A team of researchers at Australia’s Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) have successfully demonstrated a new, “nano-scaled” piezoelectric film’s capacity for turning mechanical pressure into electricity. I know this sounds weird but you can now charge your laptops by typing. Well not right now, it would take around 3 yrs to realize this technology on commercial basis. But nonetheless this is really a big achievement which can change the way we use our laptops. 

How's this possible:

The technology used to convert mechanical energy(typing) into electricity(power) is pretty simple. I mean simple to understand. They used piezoelectric materials i.e the materials which produce electricity when some pressure is applied, to accomplish this task. Now if we put a piezoelectric plate underneath our keyboard, the pressure generated by typing can be converted to electricity which can then charge our laptop. Sounds legit to me.

So why wait 3 yrs:

To clarify this, Dr Madhu Bhaskaran, who led the research told ABC News in Australia said "Currently the energy levels we're able to generate is around ten times less than what's required, so that's the next step, to amplify it by ten times, so we can produce an everlasting battery or replace existing batteries.

Now to do this it will take atleast 3 yrs. Once they are able to amplify it, i guess the technology will get commercially available pretty quicky. And i am sure this will become quite a selling point for the companies that will be able to incorporate this technology first.

What's next:

Apart from using piezoelectric materials to charge your laptop, scientists are looking at some other applications too.These include running shoes which can power up your cell phone and a pacemaker which is powered by your blood pressure. Also scientists are looking for a way to power touchscreen devices with the swipes of our fingers using the same technology.

Some alternatives:

When i read about this research i was sure that there would be some other ways too by which we can charge our laptops. So after doing my bit of research i found these:

• Charge your laptop with a foot pedal 
• Charge your laptop by using friction

So what you think about this?? I mean i am really excited about this research. It could be really useful for bloggers like me. And who knows, some day you may be able to charge your laptop by moving your mouse or maybe with the blink of your eyes:D

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Google To Fight Malwares Now!!!

Google today announced that it will now warn people if it finds any malware activity on your computer. That's a big step by google, for the first time a search engine will issue warnings about the state of your computer if it is infected or not. Of course its still in its initial stages and can't detect 100% of all malwares. I doubt that it will ever be able to do that. But nonetheless this adds another unique ability to google and will surely be helpful to a lot of people.

So How Will Google Detect Malwares :

It all started when google was conducting its regular checks and found some unusual search traffic. After conducting some more tests google found that the computers exhibiting this behavior were infected with a particular strain of malicious software, or “malware.”

So basically google will warn people whose traffic is coming from these malicious proxies.

What If Google Detects Malware :

First of all google will issue an warning in a yellow box saying that you computer may be infected. The warning  will also contain a link having information on how to get rid of that malware. It will also provide links to AV softwares to scan your computer.

So Can I Uninstall My Antivirus Software Now :

No. Don't even think about that. Google is in no way a replacement to your AV softwares. It can detect only certain type of malwares. And as you may be knowing that there are thousands of other virus available for free download on the internet so it won't be a good idea:D

So if you see a warning while searching for something in google don't ignore that. Just click on the link that show the information on how to get rid of that malware. If that doesn't help do a full scan with your your favourite antivirus program. You can also use malwarebytes to scan your computer for malwares.

So what you think, is it a good step taken by google??

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Latest Google Search Engine Improvements

Did you know Google recently added some new features in its already great search engine to save some more milliseconds when we search for something. These include instant pages, google search by image and google voice search.

Instant pages caches pages even before you open any link. With google image search you can just drag and drop any image onto the search bar and and it will find similar images. And lastly with voice search you can search by just speaking the search keywords.

These are some of the latest google search improvements. Looks interesting? Read on to find out more....

1. Instant Pages:

This is based on Google instant. which searches for results as you start typing and provides suggestions side by side. With google instant, google predicted that it will save 2-5 seconds while searching for something. Recently google introduced another addition to this feature, now google will predict the link users wants to use and begins fetching its data and caching it before user clicks on the link. This can save another 2-3 seconds while searching which is great. 

To test out this new feature you can download google chrome beta from here. I did notice some improvement in speed when i tried this..

Image Source - http://www.buzzingup.com

2. Search By Image

I know this may sound a bit weird but you can just drag and drop any image from your computer to the search box and google will search for related images. Understanding you request, google then goes on a quest for similar images. It worked pretty well when i tried to use this feature by uploading an image related to computer. You can try this by visiting Google image search and then dragging any image to the search box. See image below..

3. Google Voice Search :

The last addition is the google voice search. As is clear from its name with google voice search you can search with google by just speaking the search keywords. Only english vocals are accepted right now. You can try this by visiting, Google voice search. I am not sure if it is supported in browsers other than google chrome right now. There is an android app too with which you can use this feature on your mobile..

So what are you wating for!!! Go ahead and try these new features and share your opinions here...

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Mark Zuckerberg On Google Plus!!!!

Yes you read it right facebook founder mark zuckerberg is on google +. If you are not aware Google +(PLUS) is a new social networking site made by Google which is a direct rival to Facebook. Its less than a week old and still not available to everyone..

So who is the most popular person on Google +??  Not just Mark Zuckerberg is there on Google +, he is the most popular person on Google + right now. With more than 35,000 followers his fan base is greater than that of Larry Page, one of the founders of Google. 

So what is Mark Zuckerberg doing on a rival site?? Apparently he signed up to Google + to check out how good Google + is and keep tabs on his new adversary:D This proves that the social networking wars are reaching a new height.

In a recent interview Zuckerberg explained why Facebook is the no.1 Social networking site and will remain so forever. Zuckerberg said "Facebook is strictly a social network, people don't want to manage groups, everyone is already on Facebook, and Facebook's video chat is more appealing". He also said that "Companies doing one thing will always do better than companies doing a million things". We all can see what he is trying to point out here:) Lets see if Google can prove him wrong....

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Cloud Computing - The Future Is Here

You must have heard about cloud computing?? Haven't you?? Cloud computing is what i believe the future of computing. Five yrs from now and we will see everyone using cloud computing to store their important files and access them from anywhere..

But i have no idea what cloud computing means???

According to wikipedia "Cloud computing refers to the use and access of multiple server-based computational resources via a digital network (WAN, Internet connection using the World Wide Web, etc.)". What this basically means is that it is an Internet-based computing solution where shared resources are provided like electricity distributed on the electrical grid. In cloud computing resources are allocated dynamically depending on the requirement.

Cloud computing is now agrressively used by companies so that all their employees can work on the same software simultaneously. I don't want to go into any further details because cloud computing is very complex and knowing how it works is not useful to most of us. I am here to tell you how you can be benefited from cloud computing by using online operating system which are based on this technology..

Whats an online operating system now???

This one is easy to explain. An online or web operating system is something like a website which you can access through your browser and it presents a full operating system which you can use without needing to download anything. You can upload files through your browser in such an os and can access it from anywhere around the world, even on a mobile phone. In this post i will provide a preview of  eyeOS 2.5. Lets start..

eye OS 2.5:

Not to be confused with iOS it is an web operating system which you can access by visiting this site eyeOS. An updated version of this os i.e eyeOS 2.5 was released today(6th july 2011) and you can test it for free. You just need to register with a new account and you will be taken to the home page which will look like this...

If you are using a web os for the first time i am sure you will be surprised to see how much has the technology advanced in time. It looks almost similar to your desktop os. You will see a documents shortcut and a home shortcut. 

When you double click on the home it will open your file system and you can see different directories like my music, my files etc. These folders will be empty by default. You can upload any file by right clicking on the open area and clicking on upload. Then you can select the file you want to upload. Now that you know how an web OS looks like lets see some of the features of eyeOS.

eyeOS features:

• Various versatile applications like word processor, pdf reader,calculator, calender, chat etc
• Upload files directly and access them from anywhere
• Mobile phone support, you can access and download any files which you uploaded to your os from the mobile
• Fast, efficient and stable
• A program which you can download and make use as a server to access files on your hard disk directly from anywhere as long as it is connected to the internet

Although eyeOS is great but some apps are missing in 2.5 version right now like a browser which were present in version 2.0. Imagine using a browser within a browser, inception:D Am sure these apps will be updated and available soon..

So is it safe to store important files and photos online using eyeOS???

The answer is yes. Actually it is safer to store your files in online OS than on your hard disk. When you upload a file it is sent to different servers worldwide in pieces and when you require to access any stored file the OS retrieves it back. This process ensures that no one can access your files while they are stored online...

Some other web OS to look out for:

• OOS - Online Operating System that provides windows os like interface and features
• CloudO- Another great web os. Very fast and stable..
• iCloud - Cloud computing service from Apple Inc, coming soon
• Ghost- Not available for free right now

So go ahead and try it for free before you are late and tell me what you feel about it in the comments section below:D

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iPhone 5!!!!!!

Yeah i love future technology. Recently i talked about the upcoming windows 8 and now am here to show you some features of the much awaited "Apple iPhone 5". According to reports, iPhone 5 is set to launch this october which isnt too far from now. Nothing is confirmed about this next generation phone. We don't even know if it will be called iPhone 5 or iPhone 4S(like 3GS). But what we all know is it will be faster, better and cooler than the amazing iPhone 4.

Iphone 5 curved design

A new antenna, 1.2GHz processor (possibly dual-core) and a larger screen: 3.7" instead of 3.5" are some of the expected features. The iPhone 5 may also be made from a new kind of alloy. Also it is said that it will have a different design. Although iPhone 4 design was great, probably the best looking phone ever but who knows apple may come up with something even better. And we all know the iPhone 4 design was flawed because of reception issues which million's of people faced.Hundreds of leaked photos are available everywhere showing a lot of different design. But the most convincing rumours show that it will have a curved back or it may be box shaped(a very thin box indeed). You can see the pics..

  

Iphone 5 Box design

Apart from that apple recently announced iOS 5 and iCloud and it also said that it will be compatible with iphone 4 and iphone 3GS(thats some good news). It will be available to the public in fall. It is confirmed that iPhone 5 will be based on iOS 5 and iCloud. You can see the details about the new features here...

Other rumours about iphone 5:

• a white iPhone
• a cheaper version of iPhone(iPhone nano)
• NFC technology(provides credit/debit card features to iPhone)
• 8 mp camera
• 4G connectivity
• and some others

None of the features mentioned above are confirmed by apple but there is a great probability that it will have those features. So what do you expect from the next iPhone:)

                                  

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Windows 8 features

Well microsoft windows 8 is set to release in 2012, probably in april and it is already creating a lot of buzz around the techies. We all hope that it will be a significant improvement over windows 7 because so far windows falls behind other popular os's like mac and linux(ubuntu) in stability. So lets look at some of the features windows 8 has to offer..

If anything windows 8 does look promising to me and completely looks like a future os. Lets look at some the important changes microsoft is considering to bring in windows 8.

First of all microsoft is saying that it will be a 64 bit os only which means that it wont support 32 bit processors. So thats some bad news if you you have a 32 bit processor and eagerly waiting for windows 8.

Secondly the look of windows 8 will be completely different and will be a true eye candy. It will have tablet like interface and it will use interactive mosaic tiles for most of the applications. Have a look below..

It will also support something called snap to multitask between different open applications. You can snap application one over the other with a simple gesture. You can even have a standard Windows 8 desktop on one side and a new Windows 8 app on the other. This is actually quite cool.

N lastly performance wise it does look pretty fast and fluid. But again that is something which i cant guarantee right now, It will depend on how it performs on actual computers that people use with limited amount of memory...

Some other Windows 8 features:

Apart from the above mentioned features windows 8 will have a lot of features which are not that important. Some of them are:

• New task manager
• Hybrid booting
• Internet explorer 10
• Genuine center
• Black Screen of Death ( which replaces the blue screen of death:D)
• n many other improvements

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