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Agiliq Blog | Django web app development

2011-10-13T04:37:00.001-07:00

You can find me now Blogging at Agiliq.com where blog about Django Web Development.

Google Code - Updates: Google Singleton Detector released

2007-07-24T22:26:00.000-07:00

Google Code - Updates: Google Singleton Detector released

Google limits its results to 1000.

2006-02-01T00:49:00.000-08:00

When you search for any common term in google, above the result you will see the number of webpages which matched your querry.
Results 1 - 10 of about 211,000. So what if you wanted to see, say the 1056 th result? Sorry buddy, you are out of luck. This is what they say..
Sorry, Google does not serve more than 1000 results for any query.
Oops.
Any way why would anyone like to get to more than page 100?
Related Trick:
To directly go to page x of search result for a querry, see the URL in the address bar of your browser. There would be a term like &start=(some number). Modify the some number to the number of search term you want to start with.

Google analytics launched.

2005-12-02T06:09:00.000-08:00

Google launched a new service called google analytics. Earlier it used to be called Urhic and was for dead serious sites, and cost something like 250$ per year. Now its free and you can use it for your homepage, blog, whatever. Right now its closed due to excessive demand. Typican google marketing strategy. Create demand by limiting the supply. (Orkut, Gmail all are invites only).
So captain G has even more more info about who visits you site. Google though has said that it will not be used except to tell you about your site. But then who is to gtop Google from using it to *improve* its search algorithm.

Captain Google new clothes.

2005-11-28T19:58:00.000-08:00

If you were like me, you would have had "get firefox" banners on your blog long, not so long ago. Now captain goog has a new ally, the Firefox. Under its new refferal program you can make a dollar for each person you refer to download firefox. Currently its available only to US citizens.
Now I dont know if I should be happy or sad. It helps spread firefox and infuriates m$. But with so many people using the google toolbar, it just increases the google database.
With urchin already free and growing in numbers, google has a way to get stats about the sites. With toolbar they get to know the color of your underwear.

POK part of Pakistan?

2005-11-08T05:27:00.000-08:00

While the threat that Google Earth apparently poses to national security has been grabbing headlines, there’s another potential controversy that’s been overlooked.

If you open the political map of the subcontinent in Google Earth, you’d find that there’s a well-defined boundary between India and Pakistan, and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) is on Pakistan’s side. Further, Aksai Chin isn’t a part of either India or China; it is a separate political entity.
-TOI

There was a similar controversy reagding Taiwan/China. Earlier MS had a similar row in India with win95 product. They had to change their political map after India's protest. We need to make similar protests this time too. Might be, the people of Google India, can take this up with their employer, apart from at a diplomatic level.

Google Earth threat to national security?

2005-11-08T05:19:00.000-08:00

President A P J Abdul Kalam has expressed concern over the security threat posed by Google Earth's free mapping program available on the internet.

Speaking at a top-level meeting in Hyderabad on Saturday, President Kalam voiced concern regarding "sensitive areas clearly marked on Google Earth". He asserted that terrorists and other subversive elements would use these images for their nefarious activities. Kalam also said that present laws are inadequate and that stringent laws are required to restrain the use of these pictures.

It certainly seems that Google is insensitive to security concerns of India. It shows high resolution maps of high security military installations. India has already made its concerns known and yet google refuses to do anything. It is fooder for the terrorists. I am really for the freedom of knowledge, but this is streaching things a bit too far.

Google's Power?

2005-08-17T12:51:00.000-07:00

Top ways Google can (mis)influence you!

Yes I am a Googlophobe. Why? Partly it is because I believe it when Jack Welch says that “only the paranoid survive”. Google is too big, too powerful for my taste. I really can’t see such centralized power. Also it did not allow me to sit for its placement proceedings Not that I wanted to go there, but not even a chance? That hurts. But enough cribbing.

If you are like 70% of other people, including me, either you have a Google toolbar installed, or first page you fire up is Google. Now imagine if instead of giving you the most relevant results (which it could find) it gives you the results *it* wants. Just imagine if the last search query you typed was not influenced by the money of some deep pocket adwords advertiser. And what is to stop Google from doing it? They do not publish the algorithm used to determine the relevancy of results.

What tool do you use to decide the worth of a web page? Well I have the Google toolbar installed, and it tells me the pagerank. What if Google increases the PR of its advertiser and/or decreases PR of its competitors?

Yahoo claims to beat Google

2005-08-14T10:33:00.000-07:00

Yahoo Inc. says its search engine indexes more than 20.8 billion items, which is nearly twice as much as online search leader Google Inc.

In its company blog, Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., says its index includes 19.2 billion web documents, 1.6 billion images and more than 50 million audio and video files. The company typically does not disclose the size of its index.

Mountain View, Calif.-based, Google, on the other hand, indexes about 11.2 billion items, including 8.2 billion web pages and more than 2 billion images and 1 billion items from its discussion groups, according to the company's web site.

But in terms of people using Searches Google beats everyone else. In 2003 it was leading others by at least 80 million searches per day.
Google 250 million
Overture 167 million
Inktomi 80 million
LookSmart 45 million
FindWhat 33 million
Ask Jeeves 20 million
AltaVista 18 million

Right now it has 59 million unique users which is 39% of total internet poulation. Yahoo on the other hand has 45.7 million vistors and not all of them come for search. More than 70% of all search requests are done at Google.

On a lighter note, searching Google for google resylts in 255,000,000 results, while searching Yahoo for yahoo gives 867,000,000 results.

Google answers

2005-08-10T23:48:00.000-07:00

Answers
Ask a question, set a price, get an answer

Answers is a google service which lets you get answers to your questions, for a price. Basically you register, then ask whatever question you have and set a price. One of Google reserchers( presently there are 500) will search for answers to your questions, reply and collect the money. There is $0.5 listing fee for each question. You set the amount of money you are willing to pay for the answer. Set the money you are willing to pay too low and you may not get any ansers. Google recommends that the questions you ask be a fact based question. Personal questions are a definite no-no. The reserchers are not experts in any field, but they are people who are "experts at finding hard to find information"

How to get banned from adsense account really fast?

2005-08-10T22:40:00.000-07:00

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on
the ads on your web pages. We have therefore disabled your Google
AdSense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an
effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers.
(Email continues....)

This is the email from Google which every Adsense publisher worries about. We all have heard horror stories of Adsense accounts getting banned due to no apparent reason. Google is also well known for not providing any response to emails sent in this regard. And really there are to many ways you can get banned, without any fault of yours. What do you do if some of your competitor repeatedly clicks ads on your site with the sole purpose of getting you banned?
So there are some steps you must take not to get into any problem
1. Donot, repeat donot click on your ads ever. Ok I will say it again. Donot click on your ads ever. Google has pretty strong views against it and will disable your account right away if it detects such fraudalent clicks.
2. Donot place ads on sites which in any way hurts Google sensibilities. These include, but are not limited to, pornography, gambling, drugs and similar entities. Donot even put ads on similar sites. Horror stories include getting banned due to putting adsense on "Free Poker" sites. Google probably classifies it as gambling.
3. Never ask your users to click on the links. It is against Google's policy. Recently google won $75,000 against a Texas based companyAuctions Expert.
4. Donot put too many ads on your website. Though too many is subjective, Google specifically has a clause against too many ads. But you will have to go really overboard to get banned due to this reason alone.
5. Be proactive. If you notice many clicks, and suspect someone may be out to get you banned, contact Google before they contact you. If they discover it first, its will not be very plesant.

Adsense terms and conditions explained.

2005-08-10T13:10:00.000-07:00

The adsense program has a number of clauses to make sure that the interests of the advertiser and of Google are being protected. Most of them are to make sure that the viewers the advertisers get are genuine, that Google's good name is not being used in a wrong way and that your actions will not lead to a lawsuit against Google.

* Up to three ad units may be displayed on each Web site page.
* A maximum of two Google AdSense for search boxes may be placed on a page.
If there are any more where do you plan to put in the content buddy?
* No Google ad may be placed on any non-content-based pages. This includes error, login, registration, "thank you" or welcome pages.
* No Google ad or Google search box may be displayed on any domain parking websites, pop-ups, pop-unders, or in any email.
* No Google ad may be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant.
Adsense is targetted ads. No content, no traget.
* Clicks on Google ads must not result in a new browser window being launched.
Now this is a weird restriction, but live with it.
* Any AdSense ad code or search box code must be pasted directly into Web pages without modification. AdSense participants are not allowed to alter any portion of the ad code or change the layout, behavior, targeting, or delivery of ads for any reason.
Yeah you may not change the script in *any* way. No you cant even modify the colors by hand. And you surely cant tweak it to open the link in a new window.
* In order to avoid associations with copyright claims, website publishers may not display Google ads on web pages with MP3, Video, News Groups, and Image Results.
Who wants to be sued if they can help it. Google is just being cautious.
* Web pages may not include incentives of any kind for users to click on ads.
So you cant say something like " Click on the links to support us". Such clicks are crap for the advertisers.
* Any method that artificially generates clicks is strictly prohibited. These prohibited methods include but are not limited to: repeated manual clicks, incentives to click, using robots, automated clicking tools, or other deceptive software. Please note that clicking on your own ads for any reason is prohibited, to avoid potential inflation of advertiser costs.
Oh otherwise I would be clicking on my links making money instead of writing this article.
* Site may not include: (.....................)
Basically you cant put anything illegal, immoral or offending on your webpages along with adsense.

What is Adsense for

2005-08-10T12:49:00.000-07:00

Go to any webpage and chances are that you will come across ads that say "ads by google". Well these are the Adsense ads.
Adsense is a advertising program launched by Google catering mainly to the independent publishers and small business. Joining it is really simple. You sign up for the program( takes what, five mins). Your website gets reviewed. Generally within a day. Then you receive a script which you may put in any of your webpages where you want to show the ads. When viewers click on these ads, you get a percenatge of the money advertisers pay to google.

Advantages:

1. You need to apply only once. Once you are reviewed, the script you get may be added to any number of pages, even from different domains.
2. You donot have to worry about dealing with advertisers or shadowy affiliate programs. You worry about the content, Google deals with the advertisers.
3. The ads are closely matched to tyhe content of your page. So the users have links to resources they are looking for.

Disadvatages:
1. You never know what amount of money you are going to make. The information provided by Google is very vague on this count. You donot even know what percentage of money Google keeps and the percentages you get. The money per clicks varies widely from one ad to other.
2. You may get banned and Google has no liability to explain the reasons to you. People have complained of getting banned without rhyme or reason.
3. The money is paid in multiples of $100. This might be a large amount for a small website with little traffic.

What Google knows?

2005-08-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

" We are moving to a Google that knows more about you."

— Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking to financial analysts,
February 9, 2005, as quoted in the New York Times the next day

Wow! They already know more than enough about us. What else would they like to know? The color of my underwear?

Is Google God?

2005-08-10T11:29:00.000-07:00

An article with this title appeared in The New York Times, June 29, 2003 written by Thomas L. Friedman. In this he asked the question, which has been asked a million times now. And why not. I remember God like once a month, I use Google every hour. Need info about any thing, well Google is the first( and last) stop. Of four windows open right now, one is google, one is blogger(a google service) and rest two are sites I found using google. Heck! There is even a new verb "googled".
They say that god is omniscient. Google sure is. It knows where you live. Omnipresent? Almost. It searches 8,168,684,336 web pages. And that number is growing daily. Do you use Gmail? Or Froogle? Or some of the millions of new invetions google has put in. Well Google has you. God! It gives me creeps to think of the power google holds over us.

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2005-08-10T11:18:00.000-07:00

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