Thursday, May 31, 2007

The Google Channel on YouTube

Much has been made of the 'YouTube' phenomenon, which has emerged
thanks to relatively inexpensive and easy to operate video cameras,
faster computers with more storage space (to hold all that footage)
and easy uploading. The creativity and fun factor are worth
celebrating -- but don't lose sight of online video's ability to show,
tell, teach, and share information quickly. Increasingly, businesses
are showcasing their products, promoting their initiatives and
exposing their employees via video. You may learn something or you may
dislike the marketing messages, but either way, better get used to it
- corporate use of popular online video channels is here to stay. In
Google's case, we've chosen to share quite a few talks by technology
gurus and popular authors, conversations with presidential candidates
(all of whom we've invited to visit our Mountain View campus), and
other presentations and product demonstrations -- and we're adding
more material all the time. Enjoy the view.
http://www.youtube.com/google

Google: NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES

Search across all content with new universal search effort

In striving to give you the best results to your search queries, we've
found that the best information can take many different forms. For
this reason, we have taken the beginning steps towards a new universal
search effort that provides a more holistic search experience on
Google. Until recently, you could find the best results for your
searches within the separate and distinct Google properties (e.g.,
web, images, maps, videos, books) by clicking a link above the search
box. Using a universal search approach, Google technology searches
across all of the content sources, integrates, and then ranks the
results for the best answers. So depending on your search query, you
may see results from news, images, videos, local, or books integrated
with the web search results. We also introduced new contextual
navigational links so that you can click to see more results from a
suggested type of content. And we've added a new Google navigation bar
to the top of the page to provide easier navigation to Google's
products.
http://www.google.com

Sneak a peek with Street View

Street View gives you navigable 360-degree street-level imagery in
Google Maps for selected cities. You can see images for a spot and
take virtual walks along that street. So when you're trying to find
the perfect outdoor cafe for lunch with friends or want a glimpse of
the neighborhood you're considering moving to, use Google Maps to see
what the spot actually looks like, as if you were right there in
person. Currently Street View imagery is available for the San
Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver; and
we expect to launch this feature in many more cities soon. Click on
the "Street View" tab at the top of the Google Maps page or follow the
demo link in the left panel.
http://maps.google.com

Check out Google's latest search ideas

Google Experimental showcases our latest ideas for improving the
search experience - for example, viewing search results on a timeline
or a map, navigating results with keyboard shortcuts, or refining your
search with left-/right-hand navigation. Take a tour of these
experiments, and tell us what you think by clicking "Send Feedback"
from the page you're on.
http://www.google.com/experimental

New tools in Google Finance

Stay on top of your investments with recent upgrades to Google
Finance. View and download historical end-of-day prices for any US or
Canadian company; download the latest performance, returns and
transactions from your portfolio; stay on top of news from your
favorite companies using feed applications like Google Reader; view
events such as earnings calls and analyst meetings on company or
portfolio pages.
http://finance.google.com

Search across more books

In addition to the searching the full text of more than a million book
titles, you can now find information on even more books using Google
Book Search. Millions of metadata records have been added to the
index, which means you can find images of book covers, summaries and
references for even more titles in Google book results. We've also
added new information to the "About this book" page so that now, in
addition to basic information about the book like title and author,
you'll also see reviews and references to the book from web pages as
well as other books.
http://books.google.com

Find your next appointment on your phone

Google Calendar is now available for mobile devices. Just point your
phone's browser to calendar.google.com, and you'll immediately access
your day's agenda, complete with details like date, time, location,
description, and guest list.
http://calendar.google.com

POWER TIP on iGoogle

Create and send your own message on iGoogle

A new feature of iGoogle enables anyone to send and update personal
messages through gadgets on the iGoogle homepage. You can choose from
seven gadget types: Photo Album, Google Gram, The Daily Me, Free Form,
YouTube Channel, Personal List, and Countdown. Either send your
gadgets to selected friends and family, or share them with everyone on
the public directory of iGoogle gadgets.
Create your iGoogle gadget: http://www.google.com/ig/gmchoices
Create your iGoogle homepage: http://www.google.com/ig

500 years of imagining the woman



An excellent collection, 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art.

Director:
eggman913

Surfaced before Microsoft surface !!!

In this demo, Jeff Han shows off (for the first time publicly) a high-resolution multi-touch computer screen that may herald the end of the point-and-click mouse. The demo, which drew spontaneous applause and audible gasps from the audience, begins with a simple lava lamp, then turns into a virtual photo-editing tabletop, where Han flicks photos across the screen as if they were paper snapshots. (The Apple iPhone, to be released a year later, also does multi-touch -- but only with two fingers.)

Here is his Video of an amazing technology

Jeff Han is a research scientist for NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He demonstrates--for the first time publicly--his intuitive, "interface-free," touch-driven computer screen, which can be manipulated intuitively with the fingertips, and responds to varying levels of pressure.

A similar Technology developed by Microsoft, Microsoft Surface - www.microsoft.com/surface

Isn't it Awesome !!

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

An exercise in hacking

The concept of "infinity" is not like "ojofuffo". You know the meaning of infinity but you cannot comprehend it. But, you neither know the meaning of "ojofuffo", nor you can comprehend it. Whenever you assign a meaning to "ojofuffo", you relate it to an already existing concept, and it comes into the universe of existence. -- got this excerpt while googling ojofuffo to find its meaning.

A friend (Nithin) of mine sent me this link http://www.freestuffhotdeals.com/hacker/1.html,

Now thats puzzle page... goto that page and you will know what to do... don't read any further unless you wanna know the answers before hand.. that takes away the fun in cracking the puzzle..

Below are the answers to all the pages:

The first page gives all the hint you’ll ever need, and you have to be really dumb if you cant get to the next page. Just replace 1 with 2.

Page 2 has the word “two”, follow the pattern to go to the next level… replace 2 with three.

To get to page 4 just replace three with iv. Think that’s self explanatory, since iv is the roman numeral of the number four.

You’ll get the word ruof which is the number four spelled backwards. Since the next page you want to go to is 5, you have to type the word five in reverse as well, so type in evif to go to page 5.

You’re in page five and have this ffiivvee glaring at you. You just have to see the pattern; you want to get to page 6, double every letter and you’ll get ssiixx.

666666. No its not an evil sign or something. Just follow the pattern, no need to compute… just type in 7 seven times. 7777777

uranus is the seventh planet in the solar system, so you have to ask what the eighth planet is… and the only answer is neptune.

acht is number 8 in German language… so it’s telling us to give the number 9 in German which is neun, pronounced as noin.

sept, once again you just have to see the pattern, September is the ninth month and October is the tenth month but you have to just type in oct since the clue is abbreviated.

Next page will give you a 10th of spades playing card, the next level you’re aiming is 11, and if you’re talking about cards, there is no eleven, but there is jack.

Page 11 just shows you eLeVeN, so all you need to do is follow suit and type in the number twelve, but make sure you’re following the pattern, notice that the word eLeVeN has caps alternately, so you have to type in twelve in the same pattern… tWeLvE

144, now you have to do some math in here. 144 is the product of 12 x 12, since we want the page 13, you have to compute for 13 x 13 = 169

You’ll only get a black page on level 13, so you have the highlight the center and you’ll get the word number13, so level 14 means typing in number14, no space between number and 14.

catorce, is the number 14 in Spanish… so the number 15 is quince

James Buchanan, is the fifteenth president of the USA, and so it follows that the site is asking for the sixteenth president who is none other than Abraham Lincoln. just type in lincoln.

sedecim is number 16 in latin, and you know the rule… number 17 in Latin is septendecim

10001 is 17 in binary. You just have to find the conversion of the decimal number 18 into binary. The binary numeral system (base 2 numerals) represents numeric values using two symbols, and the only numbers you’ll be seeing are 0 and 1.

<-- this is the long way to compute.
Based on this computation/formula you will gather that the typical way to count numbers in binary is 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 and so on. You just have to put 1s and 0s in the sequence to add up to 18, another thing is you count it backwards. See the table below to get to the 10010 binary value of 18.



(Just remember that 1 has a value and 0 is null, so you’ll notice that only the numbers 2 and 16 are marked with 1… so 2+16 = 18)

argon is the 18th element in the periodic table of elements, and potassium is the 19th element. (Now, this one makes you remember your chemistry teacher and how you hated her when she asked you to memorized all the elements and its corresponding number in the table)

ojofuffo, now this fuckin word kept me stuck! How could this meaningless word would mean anything like 19 or be related to 20? I’ve tried different languages but no, anyways... googling helped a bit and there are 'n' number of sites which talk about this funny word... the answer is uxfouz. Ok what the heck! I can’t just accept that the answer is uxfouz, there has to be logic. Then when you see the logic you’ll realize that ojofuffo is not meaningless afterall. It’s a sequence wherein you replace an alphabet letter by shifting one letter forward. So b=a, c=b, d=c, and so on. So.... o= n, j= i, o= n, f=e, u=t, f=e, f=e, o=n, nineteen becomes ojofuffo and
t=u, w=x, e=f, n=o, t=u, y=z, twenty becomes uxfouz.

icosagon is the 20 sided polygon. Remember the rule of naming polygons with greek prefixes. Anyways, the 21 sided polygon is called icosihenagon.

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ... 10946. This is the famous fibonacci sequence (adding the last 2 digits to get the next number). 10946 is the 21st number in the sequence so you have to compute to get the 22nd number which is 17711. The formula is usually Fn = Fn-1 + Fn-2

Aoozy, Booyy, Cooxy, ... Vooey… look for the pattern, and you’ll see the answer. First letter in the word is capitalized and follow the normal sequence of the alphabet. Next letter to V in the alphabet is W, it is consistent that the 2nd and 3rd letters is o, so we now have Woo. The fourth letter is backwards, from z to a, hence from vooey, the next letter to e is d, and we have the word Wood. The last letter is always y, so the answer would be Woody.

And you’ll see this granny dancing..

Monday, May 28, 2007

Collection of links: free educational resources, for engineering, management and medicine.

1. Free video lectures and animations on all subjects Huge Collection. Text materials and videos on all Engineering and Medical Sciences.
2. Joint venture by IIT's and IISc
3. MIT Open Course Text materials, video lectures on all subjects
4. MIT world Video lectures
5. MIT lecture Browser browse video lectures on all topics
6. Online Course Materials you can find any course here, where ever it is.
7. WGBH Forum Network videos on all subjects
8. Vega Science Trust Physics Special
9. Micro Biology Video Library Biology
10. Animations Genetics, Biochemistry, Immunology, Physiology etc...
11. National Institutes of Health Medicine Special
12. Free Science Online
13. Free Science Videos and Education



Business, Management and Leadership
1. HBR Idea Cast Archive
2. Interviews with Great Entrepreneurs
3. HARVARD Working Knowledge
4. Stanford University Videos
5. Knowledge @ Wharton Business
6. Huge Collection of many other including the above all.

Other Useful Search Engines
1. Google Book Search Search the all books.
2. Google Code Search searches public source code
3. Google Scholar Search searches all the Scholar papers.
4. Educational Special Search Engine searches all sites for e-books, study materials, video lectures, animations
Others... EngineeringDegree.net