Google Chrome Webcomic may be Dangerous!

It looks like Delicious doesn't have much confidence in Google's "Do no evil" philosophy.

When Google launched its browser — Chrome — it also published this webcomic which looked under the hood of the browser and explained the key engineering decisions taken in designing the browser.

I had bookmarked the Chrome webcomic to my Delicious account when it was published. Today, I was trawling through my Delicious bookmarks, cleaning out the ones I no longer needed, revisiting some, when Delicious displayed this warning when my cursor hovered over the Google Chrome webcomic:

This bookmark may be dangerous and is automatically set as restricted.

Click the image for a larger view

Wonder what prompted Delicious to label the webcomic dangerous (There surely is some technical reason). And is Google looking into this?

Are you Feeling Lucky?

On Google's clean, white homepage the little "I'm Feeling Lucky" button has survived in spite of many changes to the page in all these years. Did you know that it costs Google around $110 million in annual revenue? The button takes searchers directly to the top search result and this doesn't allow Google to show search ads on one percent of all its searches.

Then why does Google keep such a costly button around?

People are Reading This Blog to . . .

Some desperate soul sought some information from Google.

And was directed by the god of search to read this on my blog.

Wot to say? Gods are like that only. God tries us in ways that we cannot comprehend. All we can do is to keep the faith and continue our quest for answers.

Related posts here and here.

Google With AI

The ultimate search engine would understand everything in the world. It would understand everything that you asked it and give you back the exact right thing instantly.

—Larry Page (Google co-founder)

Google feels an Artificial Intelligence (AI) search engine "that can understand the question you are asking even better than you do" could be a reality within a few years.

Technorati Tag(s): Google artificial intelligence (AI)

Google Buns: Ink Scrawl Nugget 12

So what are you having for tea?

"Well, come back and have tea with us," said Moon-Face, "Silky's got some Pop Biscuits - and I have made some Google Buns. I don't often make them - and I tell you they're a treat!"
"Well, come back and have tea with us," said Moon-Face, "Silky's got some Pop Biscuits - and I have made some Google Buns.
"Google Buns!" said Bessie in astonishment. "Whatever are they?"

"You come and see," said Moon-Face, grinning. [. . .]

Soon they were all sitting on the broad branches outside Monn-Face's house, eating Pop Biscuits and Google Buns. The buns were the most peculiar. They each had a very large currant in the middle, and this was filled with sherbet. So when you got to the currant and bit it the sherbet frothed out and filled your mouth with fine bubbles that tasted delicious. The children got a real surprise when they bit their currants, and Moon-Face amost fell off the branch with laughing.

From The Magic Faraway Tree, one of the books from The Faraway Stories by Enid Blyton.

Google Notebook

Finally an interesting service from Google after a long time (by their usual standards).

Google Labs has just released Google Notebook.

The blurb on the overview page says:

Google Notebook makes web research of all kinds – from planning a vacation to researching a school paper to buying a car – easier and more efficient by enabling you to clip and gather information even while you're browsing the web.

And since Google Notebook lives in your browser, you won't be left with a scattered collection of notes, Word docs, and browser bookmarks to sort through; all your web findings will be gathering into one organized, easy accessible location that you can access from any computer.

What can one do with Google Notebook?

At its most simplest, Google Notebook is a nifty tool to assemble and organize reference material and then access it across computers or share it with others.

Google Notebook allows one to click and save items of use and interest that one might come across while browsing or researching on the web. Google Notebook, unlike a service like Del.icio.us, also allows users to clip and save graphics along with the text and the URL. And unlike Del.icio.us, or other social bookmarking tools, there's no provision of tagging.

A user can create multiple Notebooks and then save and organize information from web pages in them with hardly any effort. The notes can be organized under various user defined sections.

Google Notebook uses AJAX allowing users to easily drag and drop notes from one notebook to another. The notebook can also be printed.

By default all notebooks are private, but they can be made public as well. Users can search public notebooks.

I feel Google Notebook will be useful for keeping a list of things I want to post about. It can also become an online version of favorites/bookmarks. And of course, one can use it to collate links and text while researching online. The public notebooks can possibly become something similar to wikis especially for a group. I think an organization/group of people may find Google Notebook to b a neat way of sharing information. Student study groups, teachers, and people working together on a project will find Google Notebook potentially useful.

Technorati Tag(s): Google, Google Notebook

The New World Order

There's a shift happening in the world of IT research. People are moving away from traditional labs, academics, and traditional companies to the organizations that today are shaping the internet as we know it today: Google, Yahoo!, Amazon.

These three companies are doing (or are perceived to be doing) all that's "cool" in R&D in IT and related fields. The "World Order" is changing. Shantanu mentions in a post that Arnab, who wrote about it, also came up with an awesome graphic to depict this new world order.

Google Launches Google Gulp (Beta)

image copyright: Google

At Google our mission is to organize the world's information and make it useful and accessible to our users. But any piece of information's usefulness derives, to a depressing degree, from the cognitive ability of the user who's using it. That's why we're pleased to announce Google Gulp (BETA)™ with Auto-Drink™ (LIMITED RELEASE), a line of "smart drinks" designed to maximize your surfing efficiency by making you more intelligent, and less thirsty.

More here

How does Google Gulp work?

Well, to comprehend the long version of this answer, you'd need a PhD (from Stanford, natch). The short version is, our brains process data by sending electrical impulses called neurotransmitters between billions of neurons via axons running between synapses, much the way buses travel between stations, or MP3 files travel between felonious suburban teenagers. The molecular compound that fuels Google Gulp speeds up this process by, among various startling feats of neurochemical legerdemain, limiting the activity of the enzyme monoamine oxidase. You think faster – and feel better.

What's more, through our patented real-time DNA-scanning process, Auto-Drink™, Google Gulp is actually able to "take a picture" of your genetic profile, reconfigure its molecular composition on the fly, and subtly alter your brain's intricate mosaic of axonial patterns in order to facilitate even faster cognitive processing.

More from the Google Gulp FAQ.

Google Gulp's Product Line:

image copyright: Google

Glutamate Grape, Sugar-Free Radical, Beta Carroty, Sero-Tonic Water – try these four great Google Gulp Flavors.

But before you commit yourselves, read Google Gulp's Privacy policy:

From time to time, in order to improve Google Gulp's usefulness for our users, Google Gulp will send packets of data related to your usage of this product from a wireless transmitter embedded in the base of your Google Gulp bottle to the GulpPlex™, a heavily guarded, massively parallel server farm whose location is known only to Eric Schmidt, who carries its GPS coordinates on a 64-bit-encrypted smart card locked in a stainless-steel briefcase handcuffed to his right wrist. No personally identifiable information of any kind related to your consumption of Google Gulp or any other current or future Google Foods product will ever be given, sold, bartered, auctioned off, tossed into a late-night poker pot, or otherwise transferred in any way to any untrustworthy third party, ever, we swear.

Update: Turns out that this was Google's April 1st gag.
Talk of being behind times:). Anyway I had come across this while surfing yesterday and found it wacky enough to post. If like me, dear reader, you are coming across this for the first time, here's wishing you a very, very, belated April Fool's day.