Software utilities

Aaagh! What is up with Microsoft? Do they perhaps need a technical equivalent of a shrink? No sooner did they withdraw their billion-dollar takeover bid for Yahoo, and now they go ahead and change their minds. On Sunday afternoon, they announced that they’re putting in a fresh bid for Yahoo, but apparently this time, it’s not for all of Yahoo’s assets, just some (whatever that means).

How is Microsoft to be taken seriously with the back-and-forths? I wouldn’t. Especially as they were the ones that pulled out of the negotiating table in the first place.

Maybe it’s best for different parts of Yahoo to be owned by more than one company, anyway. It might be healthier that way. I hear Google are working on a deal with Yahoo (for Yahoo to utilise Google search ads on their network).

In other news, did you know that a fifth of Americans, over 20 million of them, have never used email? Ever?

I find that amazing.

Maybe it’s ignorant of me as I’m so used to using the web / emailing, but I do find the findings intriguing especially coming from a developed country, an apparent super power.

My immediate hunch was that age plays a factor in this. And I was right. According to the survey, half of those surveyed were over 65 years old. Education also comes into play with 56% not having gone beyond high-school level. (It’d be interesting to find out the breakdown of the other 50%.)

There were other findings such as 30% of Americans never having created a document on a computer before.

I expect that a lot of this isn’t necessarily down to age and education. Some people who’ve never touched a computer or have never been online might simply be scared of the unknown.

If you ask me, the whole Microsoft bid to takeover Yahoo is getting to be a bit of a joke, don’t you think?

After 3 months of negotiations, you’d think that the finest minds in the technology world would be able to wrap up a deal – but nope, Microsoft and Yahoo are right back where they started (which was where exactly? Maybe they were never anywhere in the first place. Maybe Yahoo was never interested in giving up their goodies and were merely interested in getting some inside information on Microsoft.)

First of all, there’s the embarrassment of looking ‘stoopid’ when things don’t go according to plan - which is exactly why Microsoft should have kept its pretty lil digital mouth firmly shut and not blubbered to the whole world and their mama that they were looking to buy Yahoo out (who does their PR for god’s sake?). I call it cockiness. Serves them right.

In terms of a super-duper advertising network, Yahoo is almost Google; almost, but not quite, but will do very nicely for Microsoft, because Google sure as hell ain’t gonna give up their golden jewels to Microsoft. (Maybe Microsoft was never really looking to take over Yahoo anyway, but were just trying to puff up their chests to Google, i.e. ‘We’ve still got the technical funk, itty bitty Google. And you’d do well to remember that, or else next time we try bedding Yahoo, we’ll win. WO-HA-HAAA.’)

As much as I don’t particularly like Google (or Microsoft, for that matter), I think Google should try stirring things up a bit with their pocket change and make a Yahoo bid of their own. That should take the heat off Britney for a while!

Ah well, I guess we’ll have to watch this space and see what ole’ four-eyed Billy boy’s next move will be.

(Update: Well, it looks like Microsoft have dropped their bid altogether. Apparently, Yahoo asked for a $55bn minimum to the $47.5bn Microsoft offered (up from the $44.6bn previously offered), but neither party could agree on a final figure. Oh well, Google, here’s your chance …if ya think you’re hard enough).

Google researchers announced at the International World Wide Web Conference held in Beijing the development of an algorithm to rank images, called Visualrank (pdf available). Google engineers claim this new image search results in much more relevant image results. This algorithm get the first images returned by a standard query and then analyzes them, finding the more similar ones, using a similar approach to the one used for Pagerank (the algorithm for ordering web page results). The paper shows image search results for some sets of images, such as Mona Lisa (on the left), grouped and linked (the two big ones on the center are the more relevant ones).

The old image ranking algorithm was based on text associated to images on the page, leading sometimes to inaccurate, or also completely wrong, results.

The algorithm has been developed by focusing on the top 2000 searched products on Google, such as iPod, XBox or Zune (the Microsoft MP3 reader).

This has not yet been developed, but you can have a look at the Google image search to see for example the face recognition feature, try it and check if it is enabled on your website.

On a recent Gmail official blog post, two interesting hidden features were exposed. The first one is that when you have a Gmail address, let’s say myaddress@gmail.com, you can add a plus sign at the end of the user name (technically, the local part) to get additional addresses (in this way, you get unlimited addresses!). This can be useful in many situations. The first one can be to filter particular messages, let’s say, you use myaddress+bank@… for your bank account, and star or filter it. Since this can be exploited by spammers, I suggest you to use more sophisticated names, not a simple +bank, to certify the authenticity of an e-mail. You could also use this feature to track your e-mail, for example, you give it to someone with a +id123 and when you receive an e-mail to that address you know that that person gave it away without your permission.

Another hidden Gmail feature is that it does not recognizes dots in the username, so my.address and myaddress are the same for Google. Dunno how one could use this, any ides?

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