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Google’s WebP to Replace JPEG

Rebekah — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 03:26:24 +0000

Images undoubtedly make up a large percentage of data, reportedly up to 65% of the total bytes that makes up the data on the Web.

In its efforts to make the Web faster, Google has come up with a new file format, known as WebP to further compress the file size of these image files.

The reduction of file sizes should enable websites to load a whole lot faster.

Richard Rabbat, a lead production manager at Google, wrote in a blog post, “In order to gauge the effectiveness of our efforts, we randomly picked about 1,000,000 images from the web (mostly JPEGs and some PNGs and GIFs) and re-encoded them to WebP without perceptibly compromising visual quality. This resulted in an average 39% reduction in file size. We expect that developers will achieve in practice even better file size reduction with WebP when starting from an uncompressed image.”

The smaller file sizes would also make the transfer of images much faster, as well as enable storage of more images for a smaller amount of disk space.

Samples of the converted files can be viewed on this page (in a PNG container as browsers do not yet support the WebP file format)

Personally, I don’t think WebP will replace JPEG as a standard just yet. What I really want to know is why the JPEG 2000 format hasn’t received wider support.

Google New: So What’s Really New At Google?

monkey99 — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 17:50:48 +0000

These days, with so many new features, software, browsers, plug-ins, and whatnots, coming out of the Mountain View, California company, how does one keep up with the relentless outpouring of new stuff from Google?
Easy! **With triumphant music blaring in the background!**
Introducing the new Google New!
Google New is a one-stop page to help us keep track of all the latest Google technology streaming out from all of Google’s blogs and services in the internet.

Ok, Let’s surf over there now and see what’s new!
Click on Google New (http:/www.google.com/newproducts/) to open it in a new window.
If you’re reading this article in Oct 2010, let us try and find the piece (NOT the video at the top!) on the new Google Instant which came out in Sept 2010. Can’t find it on the first page? Too many feature updates and what-have-yous in the way? You get the idea?

Google is a big company which is coming out with lot of updates and new features to existing programs and services. In the space of less than a month, it has already came out with lots of new stuff; some are big – like Google Instant, but many are not so well known, like those you see on the page. Which is why this Google New is handy and for keeps, as I often have to find out about Google’s new stuff from other blogs and new sites. With this, I can check back every now and then for the new stuff. This one-stop page is something like Google Accounts’ (https://www.google.com/accounts/) page, where you can keep track of all the Google services you had ever signed up for (under the same email address).

While we’re still on the subject of Google, also check out these Google pages:

Google Image Labeler (http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/)
This is like a game where you can have fun labeling images with a random internet partner selected by Google. Only catch is, while you’re having fun, you are also working for Google for free labeling all the images found by its search engine. This is Google’s bright idea to label all the images found by its search engine without paying any interns for the job. They found lots of people willing to work for free – one of which is YOU, of course!

Me? At the very least, Monkey#99 work for peanuts, so I refuse to hang around there any longer than necessary. :/
So I digressed. But from a management point of view, this is so much better than crowdsourcing, as you don’t even get paid peanuts. From a worker’s point of view, this is fun; which was what you had had, if you had tried out the game.

Very Short Review: Addictive, but you may end up feeling lower than a monkey – for not even getting peanuts for your effort.

Google Pacman (http://www.google.com/pacman/)
First seen on Google’s search page on May 22, 2010, which was Pacman’s 30th anniversary. AFAIK, this is the first playable search page ever. And it delighted bored lunch time surfers everywhere for 3-5 days before it disappeared from the web; but later, it has been given its own page due to threats of anarchy from disappointed office workers. If you had played it and missed it, now you know where to find it again.
Tip: Set this as your homepage instead of the default Google search page for the nostalgia, OR to surprise your grandma*. -_-
Very Short Review: Nowhere near as good as the original; but will do for a little lunch break distraction.

Google Labs (http://www.googlelabs.com/)
Here you can check out Google’s latest ideas and technologies, fresh from the lab. So many things to play with, if you have the time.

Until the next article, have fun!

*Be close at hand to perform CPR if needed. -_-

Urban Legends – How To Tell Whether An Email Is A Hoax?

monkey99 — Tue, 04 May 2010 10:13:41 +0000

It so happens that I just got one of those emails. The title of the email says “Are Leftover Onions Poisonous?” Now what do I do? Do I forward it to my friends and ask for their opinions? And appear stupid if it turned out to be a hoax?

Truth or lie?

Nah, I’ll just ask Big G - which you all know as Google – and search using these parameters:

“urban legend Leftover Onions Poisonous” (keyed in the search box without the apostrophes) OR

“urban myth Leftover Onions Poisonous”

*If you keyed in the above without “urban legend/myth”, you will find many who received the same email and who are now wise (or so they think!) are warning their dear friends/readers of their doom bringing habit.

And If you have time to kill, they are pretty interesting read.

If you did the search above to check out the results, then you will see that according to Google’s results, this is a HOAX; and you will find that many has written about this in the past.

Explanation:

You can search using the “urban legend/myth” parameters above because, in the internet, a hoax (in email, esp) is known as URBAN LEGEND/MYTH! There are also lesser known terms but these 2 are the most important.

There is many a website whose sole existence is to keep track of these things because these emails bugged the hell out of a lot of people too.

Conclusion:

I have suspected it but now it’s confirmed 100%! So the guy who forwarded this was either a postman or courier for DHL. That’s why he didn’t check the message before resending it to lots of his friends. Oh but then again he can’t, he was NOT ALLOWED to do it in his previous job.

But, YOU, my dear reader, is more savvy than that. You know that emails that

-ask to be forwarded to as many people as possible (esp when they are religious in nature)

-will cause you untold misery if you don’t forward them; but will bring you luck if you do

(I am pretty sure of this cause NONE of my family members died since I started discarding Chain letters)

-didn’t pass my built-in common-sense filter (like this one)

are the FIRST emails you discard.

NEVER send them to your friends if you don’t want them recommending you for vacancies at POS Malaysia. This habit of deleting emails alone, practiced often, will make you appear more internet savvy among your friends!

Blind Testing your Search Engine: Yahoo, Google or Bing!

Howard — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 06:04:36 +0000

This pretty cool website allows you to run a blind test on the three major search engines at the moment, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft’s Bing!. Now, search results have always been a very tight competition between tech companies as it is probably the main website that people visit and being ‘famous’ for providing consistent and reliable search results can mean very huge profits just by virtue of driving traffic to your website.

For many years now, I have been a loyal Google fan and scoff at anybody who uses other search engines, especially Yahoo’s. But research have shown that just by attaching a logo or trademark to search results, you can be biased towards the brand that you are used to. That’s the purpose of the Search Engine Blind Test website linked above.

The site is pretty simple, just type in any search query and it shows you results in three columns side by side. Simply choose the one you think shows you the best results and the site will reveal who them belong to. In my limited testing, I found that I tend to average pretty evenly between all three websites. Then again, it may be because my queries are pretty general and the results show more or less the same things, albeit ordered differently.

The website also supports searching for images, which is a plus for me because I do a lot of stuff that requires looking up images constantly and now I am able to search across all three sites in one page.

Understand though that this website will strip out all personalization and localization that companies like Google and Microsoft often incorporate into their search results. It is purely a test of the search algorithms with some parts of it disabled. Some argue that the personalization (where past searches are used to compute future search results) means the test is rather crippled. However, until someone comes up with a better idea, you can head on over to the website and let us know which search engines you end up choosing the most.

The following are the top 10 search terms that the website have gotten so far:

	Web	Image
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10	Mashable google bing test sex michael jackson linux microsoft yahoo porn	sex porn google boobs megan fox bing pussy apple tits nude

Scoopler real time search engine

Chingya — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:18:54 +0000

Dying to know the latest scoop online? Here comes Scoopler!

Scoopler is a real time search engine created by AJ Asver and Dilan Jayawardane. Yes, you heard it right – real-time! The main factor that got everybody into Twitter frenzy lately. Scoopler gathers all the real-time results from the web, and presents you the most relevant and breaking news available based on your keyword search.

The page is divided into 3 columns. The middle column shows the live updates of your search. Once you mouseover any particular result, the updating will pause temporary for you to scan through the content and find your best pick. At the same time, two option buttons will appear:

“Peek” to preview the content before navigating to the real site; and
“Shared” that allows submission to Digg, Stumbleupon, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and more.

While some might not appreciate Twitter to dominate most of the “Live” updates, you could still head over to the right column for less-active but Popular picks. Browsing through the links, or have your results shown in videos or images. It is mentioned that the service will include blog comments and more live videos soon.

However, it would probably be a good idea to include an advanced search feature so users could filter out some dominating search results like Twitter; or even categories ranging from news, blogs etc. Overall, Scoopler is still an awesome idea to capture real-time results and offer web users an alternative besides the usual search engines.

What do you think of Scoopler?

Any chance for real-time search engines to overtake Google in the long run? What expectations you have for the developers to enhance their current service? Kindly share your views in the comment section below.

Most popular searches in Google

Kitkat — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 09:49:20 +0000

It’s the time of the year again! No, I am not talking about Christmas and year end sales, but I am talking about the top searches in Google which has been compiled and released by this most widely used search engine.

Earlier this year, I certainly didn’t believe that “anwar ibrahim” would top the most searched local (Malaysia) celebrity list!

The volume of searches topped when the Dow dropped 733 points. This simple chart is certainly interesting.

The Malaysia Google Zeitgeist has this to say…

2008 has been a year of change in Malaysia and people have certainly been using Google to access information about these changes. The fastest rising searched items documented the rise in popularity of local news portals like Malaysiakini and Malaysia Today.

Politics was also a topic of great interest in Malaysia this year, with searches aimed not only at politicians like Anwar Ibrahim and Lim Kit Siang, but also significant political events such as this year’s general election. Local car brand Perodua Nautica, Olympic badminton medalist Lee Chong Wei and domestic travel destination Terengganu also figured prominently.

The following are the most popular searches in the local news section.

Google News local searches

ibiden asia
anwar ibrahim
datuk seri
olympic badminton results
chua soi lek
malaysian election results
malaysia budget 2009
malaysia new cabinet
permatang pauh election
gamuda bhd

Check out the Google Zeitgeist page for more.

Google’s SEO Starter Guide

Kitkat — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:17:01 +0000

Earlier this month, Google released its Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. The guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters and bloggers might consider optimizing. The areas discussed include; improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and many more.

SEO guru from Google

There is also a document listing important tips for bloggers by the same Google Webmaster Central team.

You most likely already know most of this but for those who are unaware of this, here’s a quick summary of the guide.

1. Create unique, accurate page titles
Choose a title that effectively communicates the topic of the page’s content, and make sure it’s unique or different from that of the other pages on your site.

2. Provide full-text RSS feeds
Rich, full-content feeds make users happy because they can view your full content quickly. This may result in a short-term decline in visits to your actual blog, but the long-term gains of increased readership and mind share are typically worth it. Also, keep in mind that a regular subscriber is more valuable than an occasional visitor.

3. Write well and often
Write regularly as a frequently updated site encourages people to return. Make sure your content remains relevant and engaging. A useful post once a week is better than low-quality content published daily.

4. Leave thoughtful comments on other blogs
Visit other blogs, comment on their posts, and participate in the discussion. Thoughtful comments with useful information will make new readers more likely to visit your site.

5. Make use of categories and tags in your blog
Labels and tags are a great way to organize your content. This will make your blog easier to navigate and your readers will be able to find the content they wish to read more easily.

Check Google PageRank and Alexa Rank in Google Chrome

Kitkat — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:29:41 +0000

You can easily check a website’s PageRank and Alexa rank in Firefox and Internet Explorer. Just install and use the Google Toolbar and Alexa Toolbar. In Firefox, if you do not like the Google Toolbar, you can use a nifty plugin called Searchstatus to do the job effectively – this is one of my favorite plugin for Firefox.

Unfortunately, up until now Google Chrome, still doesn’t support plugins. So, as much as I love Chrome, when I need to check a website’s PageRank and Alexa rank, I still need to switch to Firefox. Not very time saving of course.

However, big thanks to the boys at chromefans.org, they made available a Javascript Plug-in that allows Google Chrome user to check the PageRank and Alexa rank of websites, effortlessly!

Good thing is, this javascript bookmarklet can be used in any browser, even FireFox, Safari and Internet Explorer. Simply drag and drop the bookmarklet (go to chromefans.org to get it) to your bookmark toolbar and click on it when you want to check the rankings. Really easy to install and use… go get it, Chrome users!

iGoogle Artist Themes

Kitkat — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 07:03:40 +0000

I know iGoogle isn’t something released yesterday nor are its artist themes. But it’s still interesting to check out what themes there are where you can use to personalize your Google homepage. Yeah, give that simple boring homepage a face lift!

Google has obviously collaborated with many designers/artists to create many beautiful themes for the iGoogle users. They are work of art from fashion designers (Oscar de la Renta), musicians (Coldplay, Beastie Boys), actors (Jackie Chan), sportsmen (Lance Armstrong), photographers (Yann Arthus-Bertrand), choreographers (Mark Morris), cartoonists (Robert Mankoff), illustrators (Camilla Engman), architects (Cameron Sinclair) and more. View more themes here.

Out of all those, today I picked Jackie Chan’s theme.

Now, only if someone created a theme based on Jessica Alba, I would certainly be delighted to give her a try…

Anyway, if you cannot decide which theme you want to use, try the sampler theme. “With this theme, you’ll get to try out a new featured theme every day and decide whether you want to keep it.”

I love Google Chrome

Kitkat — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:25:34 +0000

Back in August, Google was making a big hype about their brand new application code named “Chrome”. I wondered, “What could this new application be as it’s causing so much hype? It must be big!”. A couple of weeks after the announcement, I found out what was this new application. It turns out that to be nothing more than a new web browser. I felt a mixture of disappointment and excitement. Like most other people, I wasted no time and downloaded the new application. After two weeks of playing around with Google Chrome, I’m here to talk about what I love and hate about this browser from Google.

Picture sourced from Google Chrome I choose you.

If you used Firefox 3 or Internet Explorer 7, then you’ll be right at home. Google Chrome features the same tab system that can be found in the other popular browsers. In fact, rearranging the tabs in Google Chrome is much faster, and easier than in Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7.

Another feature which Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7 users will enjoy in Google Chrome is importing all of your bookmarks into Google Chrome, it is fast and simple! When I used Google Chrome’s import bookmark feature, it imported all of my bookmarks under a minute!

Although Google Chrome basically features similar to Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7, there are other things with this browser that truly set it apart. For example, I enjoyed Google Chrome’s welcome page. This welcome page features a list of your most visited websites, recent bookmarks, and recently closed tabs. It’s so convenient to go to your most visited websites now!

There’s another feature that Google added to Chrome that I find really funny called the Incognito Window. The Incognito Window allows the pages you view to leave no traces behind in your browser history or search history. Not only that, there won’t be any cookies too! This should suit people who likes to get naughty at work I guess.

Other than the above, creating a new bookmark in Google Chrome is a lot faster than creating a bookmark in Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 combined! Don’t believe me? Download and try Google Chrome for yourself today and you will see.

Last but not least, what amazed me with Google Chrome is that it didn’t come with any glitches! Why did I make this point? Usually with a new Internet browser, it usually comes with a lot of glitches (e.g Firefox 3′s “Sorry This Page Is Busy” message every time I visit AOL). I have used Google Chrome for two weeks now, and I have yet to face a crash.

The only thing I hate about Google Chrome is the way the bookmarks are organized. Accessing your bookmarks in Google Chrome is very difficult. In fact, I found myself using the welcome screen to access my bookmarks. Weird, you may say! Also, I would love to see add-ons capabilities for Google Chrome like what you have in Firefox. Add-ons will extend the capability of Google Chrome, making it more features rich.

Despite my initial feelings for the Chrome browser, I think it has a defiant shot in taking down big time Internet browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer. What’s ironic is that I found myself using Google Chrome more than Firefox 3 now!