Category Archives: Google/Yahoo

My thoughts on search engine giants. I love both Google and Yahoo equally and I also hate them equally.

Blogger Enhancements

Most of you would have noticed that there are many changes in my blog. Yesterday I got some free time and I used it to make some changes to my blog, which was in my TODO list for long time.

First I changed my Blogger template to Thisaway Blue by Dan Rubin to make it look more colorful. Thanks Dan.

Then I have stated to add Technorati tags to my posts. I am using a greasemonkey userscript for this and is quite handy.

The most important of all, I have added Trackback support to my blog through Haloscan. Improbulus has an excellent article, which explains how to do this.

Again you people could have noticed some new links in my blog, like Bookmark in Del.icio.us or Furl link and “Subscribe via email” from Bloglet. Again Improbulus has an article which tells you how to add this in you blog.

If you have a blog in Blogger and want to enhance it, then I strongly recommend you to visit Improbulus blog. She really has lot of hacks for Blogger including multi-lingual support.

The feature which I still miss out in Blogger is the ability to group my blog entries according to their post category. I searched for it but couldn’t get any solution. So let’s hope Blogger implements it soon.

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Dual search – The future?

In my previous post I wrote about yagoohoogle. Now it has got some features like a firefox extension, its own blog, a YaGoohoogle search box to your site, and movable frames. The author says that he is receiving some fair amount of hits.

One of my friend introduced me to DualSearch. This one allows you to compare the results of both Google and MSN.

Is Dual search going to be the future?

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Getting the Best of both Worlds – Update

In my previous blog, I was talking about how the user is going to get the best of Google and Yahoo. And this site www.yagoohoogle.com has done exactly the same. This site lets you to see the result of both Google and Yahoo in the same page in two different frames. Might be quite useful at times, particularly when comparing the results returned by both Google and Yahoo. Check it out at www.yagoohoogle.com

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Getting the best of two worlds – Google and Yahoo

Not long ago, having an hotmail email account with a couple of MB storage space was the only option left for users who wanted the flexibility of Web-based email. Then came Yahoo with a host of others features like photos, briefcase, messenger, personal website to name a few. A couple of more similar services came into the picture. But things changed dramatically during the DotCom burst. Many popular services either closed their services or converted them into fully paid services like USA.net. A handful of services still offered free services reduced their storage space and also set a limit for the size of the attachment and almost most of them stopped POP access to the mail also.

All these things changed completely some one year back. Yes, when Google launched GMail. Google easily pushed back the leaders in the email service like Hotmail and Yahoo. Though Yahoo some how coped up with it, Hotmail was fully thrown out of business. One of the reasons for initial success of GMail was due the fact that it was available only through invitation. So having a GMail account was a kind of pride together with its 1 GB of space. This was one of the reasons for me to move completely to GMail somewhere in July 2004. Soon GMail became the top story in most of the news channels and also in the blogsphere and Google was clearly leading the competition.

To stay in the competition Yahoo have also started adding new features like 250 MB of space (they even have a plan to give 1GB of space), a sleek layout, auto-complete for address fields to name a few. And Google have been adding features like auto-forward to any email address, free POP access, basic HTML site for older browsers etc.

Off late, Yahoo started to lead the race. One of the main reasons for that was due to the positive environment created by its employees in their blogs. (Om Malik also feels the same way in his blog) Notably Jeremy Zawodny and Russell Beattie. Even Jeremy Zawodny was talking about it in his blog. This created a huge positive image about Yahoo in the blogsphere. Google somehow got lost in this race and got itself a negative image in this blogsphere when it fired its employee Mark Zen for disclosing some sensitive information about Google.

Yahoo has now stated using the buzz word all under one roof by giving a host of services under one account. For instance their new service Yahoo 360 is one such example. Even accruing flicker has helped Yahoo regain its popularity. Jeremy Zawodny also speaks about it in his blog.

April 1st was GMail’s first birthday. So Google has started adding more features to GMail. The recent ones being 2GB of storage space and HTML formatting. So what will be Yahoo’s reaction for this?

So, what is the impact of the clash of these giants? Is it good or bad? But one thing is for sure, this competition has given the users a lot of options to choose from. The web-based email services have seen more features and invocations in the last one year than in the last 10 years or so since their invention. This goes with the saying “Necessity is the mother of invention”. Both of them know that the users have lot of options to choose from, so they will be working very hard to stay in the competition. So the real winner of this race is the users who are using this service. Now they can expect to get the best of both worlds – Google and Yahoo.

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Google’s April Fool’s Day Plot

Google has a habit of generating great hype on April 1st with some imaginary product release. Even this year they have released a great (!) product. Wonder what is it..? It’s called Google Gulp a new cool drink which Google claims can scan your base pair genetic data in a fraction of a second, fine-tuning your individual hormonal cocktail in real time using their patented technology. Check it out here. (check out their FAQ too)

But anyways I feel their last year plot lunar job opening was the greatest of all. Check lunar job plot here.

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GMail storage space has doubled

Today (1-April-2005) is GMail’s First BirthDay. And Google is celebrating it in a grand manner. Yes they have added two more features to GMail.

  • First they have introduced the much waited feature – HTML Formatting. So now you can send formatted emails from GMail.
  • Second they have increased the mailbox size from 1GB to 2GB. And they have promised to increase it still more. (Just compare this 2GB to 2 MB which was offered by Hotmail some 1 year ago.)

More info about this at GMail’s Help page.

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Security hole found in Gmail

I read any article which states that an Israeli hacker has found a security hole in Gmail. I am yet to confirm the claim, but anyways here is the article.

I have copied the article below (since that page was in some other language and many users had trouble in reading it)

So you’ve got a Gmail mail account? Or maybe you’ve just received an invitation? Well, we have some bad news for you: Your mail box is exposed. A major security hole in Google’s mail service, allows full access to user accounts, without the need of a password.

“Everything could get publicly exposed! your received mails might be readable, as well as all of your sent mail, and furthermore anyone could send and receive mail under your name”, thus reveals Nir Goldshlagger, an Israeli hacker, on an exclusive interview with Nana NetLife Magazine. “Even more alarming”, he explains, “is the fact that the hack itself is quite simple. All that is needed of the malicious hacker, beside knowledge of the specific technique, is quite basic computer knowledge, the victim’s username and that’s it, he’s inside”.

When approached, Google admitted to the security flaw. Google also assured us that this matter is being resolved, and that “the company will go to any length to protect its users”.

The flaw which was discovered by Goldshlagger and was tested many times by Nana’s editorial board had shown an alarming success rate. In order not to further jeopardize mail boxes’ owners, we will only disclose that the process is based upon a security breach in the service’s identity authentication. It allows the hacker to “snatch” the victims cookie file (a file planted in the victim’s computer used to identify him) using a seemingly innocent link (which directs to Gmail’s site itself). Once stolen, this cookie file allows the hacker to identify himself as the victim, without the need of a password. Even if the victim does change his password afterwards, it will be to no avail. “The system authenticates the hacker as the victim, using the stolen cookie file. Thus no password is involved in the authentication process. The victim can change his password as many times as he pleases, and it still won’t stop the hacker from using his box”, explains Goldshlagger.

Whether hackers have already used this method to compromise users’ accounts is unclear at the moment.

Matters are several times worse when it comes to a service such as Gmail. Besides the obvious blow to Google’s seemingly spotless image, we’re looking here at a major threat to anyone who has turned to Gmail as his major email box. “Because Gmail offers a gigabyte of storage, several times bigger than most other web based mail services, users hardly delete any old correspondence”, says Goldshlagger. “The result is a huge amount of mail accumulating in the users’ boxes, which frequently include bank notices, passwords, private documents and other files the user wanted to backup. Who ever takes a hold of this data, could literally take over the victim’s life and identity”.

Ofer Elzam, a security expert for “Aladdin”, who examined the security hole at Nana’s Netlife request, explains: “This is a major threat, for the following reasons: First – the users have no way of protecting themselves. Second – it’s quite easy to carry out, and third – it allows identity theft, which is nothing less than a serious danger to the victim”.

“On the bright side”, he adds, “its a good thing that this hole was found now, before the service was officially announced and offered to millions of users world-wide. I reckon it’s just a matter of time before an automatic tool is made, which would allow even the less computer-savvy people to exploit this hack. The damage, needless to say, could be huge”

Is there a way, after all, to protect ourselves in the face of this danger? Elzam does not bear good news on the matter. “The only immediate solution that comes to mind is not using Gmail to store any messages or files that might be maliciously used. At least until Google attends to this problem”

Could anybody throw some light on this issue. 🙄

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Gmail Invites

I have accumulated a couple of Gmail invites, if any one of you are interested leave a comment here, so that I could invite you.

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Google Cheet Sheet

Found this cheetsheet when googling. Find out the various ways by which you could use Google to the fullest. This guide explains the syntax of various operations that can be used the search string while searching in Google. Check it out! surely this will help you in your next search.

May be one day I have to come up with an article explaining all these search syntaxes.

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