Google has rolled out a major change in their search algorithms and has re-designed them to push down the search rankings of websites that have low-quality pages. Google has termed these low-quality websites as ‘content farms’. To start with, Google has implemented this change in US only and plans to roll it out elsewhere over time. According to Google, their simple goal is to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible and ensure that the quality of results helps the company to improve Google Search.
Amit Singhal, Google fellow, and Matt Cutts, principal engineer, Google, said, “This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.
According to Google, the changes will noticeably impact 11.8 per cent of the search queries made on Google.com. “Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does,” the company said.
February 24, 2011 Admin
Facebook
Blog
You may know who your Facebook friends are, but can you visualize where they are? You might be surprised when you see “Where My Friends Be?,” a Google Maps mashup with all of their locations pinpointed, showing you just how far-flung your friends really are.
We’ve seen other Facebook/Google Maps mashups before, but this one’s different from other friend-mappers. It’s fast, it takes just a few seconds to click into, and suddenly it’s dropping little pins all over the globe, showing you precisely where your pals reside.
the mashup gives you a quick way to remind yourself that you’re not in Kansas anymore, and neither are your friends. Unless, of course, you all live in Kansas.
February 16, 2011 Admin
Facebook
Blog
A 30 year old British surgeon has saved a long-lost friend’s life by diagnosing his burst appendix on social networking site Facebook. Rahul Velineni working at Swansea Hospital recently logged onto his Facebook account in the middle of his shift and saw posts that his former classmate, Peter Ball kept complaining about a sharp pain in his stomach.
Rahul Velineni did not have his friend’s phone number, so he replied to Peter Ball’s status update with a comment: “Sounds bad, Call me asap. You may have appendicitis.” On seeing Velineni’s post, Ball went to a hospital. His appendix was removed shortly after in an emergency room. Later, the doctors said it was bad, and shouldn’t have been left for much longer.
What are SSL Certificates and which SSL Certificate is the best to buy ?
Reebok will introduce new engagement tools on its Facebook page like contests and applications to provide new ways to have fun to our 4.5 lakh fan base. These engagement tools, which will have some relation to cricket, will also help increase the fan base during the cricket season. Besides, Reebok will bring together mobile and internet platform with an interesting and exciting cricket application. This will keep the audience involved and updated with latest cricket scores, updates, trivia, downloadable wallpapers etc.
Reebok will also launch a TV campaign with M S Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh highlighting the official world cup trainer – the Zig Sonic. This TVC will be heavily promoted on the internet through teasers and replays on video networks.
February 8, 2011 Admin
Facebook
Blog
Germany-based Face-to-Facebook has launched a dating site Lovely-Faces.com using profile pictures of about 250,000 people registered on Facebook. Face-to-Facebook has itself accepted of stealing 1 million Facebook profiles, filtering them with face recognition software and then posting them on Lovely-Faces.com, sorted by their facial expression characteristics.
On its part, Facebook has said “scraping” or mining information violates its terms of service. According to Facebook, the company is investigating and will take “appropriate” action. Ironically, the story of Facebook’s genesis tells of its founder Mark Zuckerberg getting in trouble for hacking Harvard University computers while a student to get pictures of coeds for comparison with each other at a website called ‘Face Mash’ that he created.
January 31, 2011 Admin
PayPal
Blog
PayPal has declared that India-based merchants who use PayPal will not be able to receive payments from outside India for more than $500 per transaction with effect from March 1, 2011.
PayPal has further said that any balance in and all future payments into PayPal account of India-based merchants must be transferred to their bank account in India within seven days from the receipt of confirmation from the buyer in respect of the goods or services.
Cloud Print allows you to register one or more of your printers with Google’s cloud services and associate them to your GMail account. Once you have done so, you can print e-mails and selected attachments (HTML, DOC, PDF, etc.) directly from your phone’s GMail interface, regardless of whether you are on the same network as your printers or not.
The registration process is simple enough: it consists of downloading a special beta version of Google Chrome from the Cloud Print Website, installing it on a computer connected to a printer that you want to make available through the service, and enabling the printer.
The client-side printing functionality offered by Google Cloud Print works with any device compatible with GMail’s mobile service, including all versions of the iPhone and the iPad, without any special software. For the printer side of things, you will need a PC running Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 until a Mac-friendly version of the software becomes available.
January 20, 2011 Admin
hotels, Travel
Blog
Travel search engine Ixigo.com has partnered with Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA), New Delhi for enabling a flights and hotels search engine on the IGIA website NewDelhiAirport.in.
According to Ixigo, the partnership will enable passengers visiting the airport’s website to search for flights and hotels across more than 100 travel websites and to choose and book directly on their preferred airline or hotel booking site for both domestic and international destinations.
This makes NewDelhiAirport.in one of the most innovative and consumer friendly airport websites in the world in terms of real-time travel information and meta-search.
Facebook has waded into yet another privacy quagmire — this time, over plans to share member street addresses and phone numbers with third-party apps and Web sites. Users freaked, and now Facebook says it will suspend the feature pending “improvements” to the permissions process.
The flap began last Friday, after Facebook posted an entry on its developer blog detailing the new feature, which would allow third-party Facebook apps and Web sites to access the phone numbers and actual street addresses of users who’d entered the information into their profiles.
The idea behind the feature was to “streamine” the checkout process for online commerce by automatically filling in shipping and billing addresses before completing a purchase — not the worst idea in the world — as well as allow merchants to send out mobile alerts for, say, specials or discount offers.
But while the new sharing feature was designed as an opt-in — meaning that Facebook users had to explicitly grant their permission before apps and Web sites could see their info — many complained that the standard, single “request for permission” dialog box failed to emphasize that members were about to give third-party app developers and advertisers access to their home addresses and phone numbers.
