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Year-End Google Zeitgeist India 2009

December 29, 2009December 28, 2009 by bharath

Worldwide recession in this year has taken on a toll on the common man in India, it is evident even on the data released by the 2009 Google Zeitgeist for India (zeitgeist — the spirit of the times).

Google has prepared this putting together data from all the billions of anonymous search queries from Indians.

Google Zeitgeist 2009 India

Take a look at the above chart, the recession effect is clear during the end of 2008 and it has reached to it’s peak level around the first quarter of 2009 before just starting to dip from the second quarter of 2009.

A Look Back @ 2009

Below are the list of the popular searches/topics on the Google among the Indians.

‘Budget 2009’ has been the fastest rising search term in 2009, it can be attributed to the anticipations if the people waiting for tax reductions in the recession hit economy.While the movie ‘Kambaqt Ishaq’ takes the next position, IRCTC is at #3 as more people found it to be easier to book railway tickets from their PCs.’Satyam share price’ is at #4 as it has reached to lowest Rs 6.50 at the NSE earlier this year.ISRO’s own Google Earth like Bhuvan definitely made the Indians interested so as general Election results 2009(#8) of April-May.Other major incidents included the death of Michael Jockson(@ #6), the launches of Windows 7(@ #9),Nokia 5800 (@ #10).Twitter managed position #7.

Google 2009 Zeitgeist Most Popular

3 of the Google’s services have made it to the most popular searches of 2009: Gmail (#1),YouTube(#2),Orkut(#4).

Katrina Kaif managed to stay back at #1 spot in the category of Most popular celebrities as she did in last year too.She is placed ahead of Micheal jackson(#2), Salman khan(#3), Aishwarya rai (#4), Shahid kapoor(#5), Kareena kapoor(#6).

Rahul Gandhi, as a youth leader of congress is undoubtedly the most popular politician on Google India, also in the list is another young MP from Congress, Sachin Pilot.

Love Aaj Kal(#1) has been declared as the most popular movie on Google India, followed by Harry Potter(#2), Slumdog millionaire(#3)

Most Poular Movies Google 2009

How-Tos of Kissing, hacking, Meditation etc. have been popular in the year 2009 among Indian users.

For complete list and other details, please visit 2009 Google Zeitgeist India page.

I’m Feeling Lucky Now Shows Countdown to 2010

December 26, 2009 by bharath

Yesterday I just opened Google as I usually do but I hit ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button without actually entering any search term in the search box.

And I observed something different at the bottom of the page.It’s actually a countdown.

As you can see it is showing 465198 seconds to 2010, Jan 1st as of the time this post being published.You can use Google Calculator (via search) to convert this into hours.

google calculator seconds to hours

Get Free Backupify Account To Backup Your Online Data

December 26, 2009 by bharath

Backupify, well-known paid online data backup service is offering free signups to the service till January 31, 2010.After this period, however it’ll be switched back to paid service, so you have to pay to use the service for unlimited data backup.

If you signup during this period, you will get a free account with unlimited data backup for all your online accounts.Currently Backupify supports the following services: (See How Backupify works)

Twitter
WordPress
Facebook
Google Docs
Gmail
Flickr
Photobucket
Delicious
Zoho
Basecamp

They are also working on to provide support for ‘YouTube’ service too.

SO remember the dead line Jan 31, 2010 and it remains free service with unlimited storage until then.

Awesome deal, isn’t it? Go get your free Backupify account now.

IMEI SMS Verification For Indian Mobile Phones

April 17, 2011December 1, 2009 by bharath

ATTENTION Mobile Phone Users in India:

Indian govt is all set to block millions of mobile phones starting from today for security reasons.

Many of the mobile phone users may not be aware that the Government of India has ordered all the mobile network operators across the country to stop services to all those mobile handsets that don’t have an IMEI number or have an invalid IMEI number beginning from today i.e. December 1, 2009 as they are found being misused by terrorists thus posing security threat to the nation.

What is IMEI and what’s this all buzz about this?

Well, IMEI stands for International Mobile Equipment Identity, as the name suggests it is an unique 15 digit number for mobiles all across the globe.So no two mobiles will have the same IMEI.

The IMEI number is used by the GSM network to identify valid devices and therefore can be used to stop a stolen phone from accessing the network. For example, if a mobile phone is stolen, the owner can call his or her network provider and instruct them to “ban” the phone using its IMEI number (from IMEI Wiki page)

To find your mobile handset IMEI number, press *#06#

IMEI number display in mobile phone

Note down your phone IMEI number in places like a dairy so that you can retrieve it later when required to use it in your mobile’s tracking.

VALIDATE YOUR IMEI:

Q. I have pressed *#06# on my phone and got a number, Is my mobile phone safe then?

Ans. No, sometimes your mobile handset may have come with an invalid IMEI number (mostly in the case of those smuggled cheap phones that are available in huge numbers in market nowadays).

Q. How to validate my IMEI number?

Ans. IMEI Validation through SMS: It’s so simple, just type “IMEI<space> Your 15 digit IMEI” and send an SMS to 53232 or 57886 (Premium SMS charge of Rs. 2 or 3 will apply for each SMS0

If your IMEI is valid you get a message saying success and details of your manufacturer, else if you are informed that the IMEI that you sent is invalid, then you have to approach Mobile Standards Alliance of India (MSAI) to get a new and valid IMEI at a cost of Rs. 200 /-.

Use Genuine IMEI Implant Service MSAI centre Locator to locate IMEI implant service at near your place.

No Component Directory Based Third Party Add-Ons in Firefox 3.6

November 30, 2009 by bharath

Component Directory Lockdown in Firefox 3.6:

Firefox until now has been allowing third party contributions to be added to the application’s components/ directory.However starting with Firefox 3.6 (Download), they have decided to change this.The reason? To minimize the Firefox crashes.

Usually components that are being added by these third party contributors in this way would be invisible to users and cannot be updated nor can they be managed through Firefox add-on manager.Even worse is that they can’t specify the version of Firefox with which they are compatible, thus creating problems and compatibility issues when you upgrade your Firefox.

The above reasons are good enough for the Mozilla team to think about closing the door for third party softwares access to component directory.

In Firefox 3.6 (including upcoming beta refreshes), we’re closing the door. Third party applications can still extend Firefox via add-ons and plugins the way they always could, but the components directory will be for Firefox only.

Q. This is fine, but what are the other alternatives for me to install these third-party sofwares in my Firefox?

Ans: Firefox from now on allows third party softwares in Firefox only as add-ons (as XPI additions).So these developers just need to change their packaging of their software to XPI- based approach.Nothing needs to be done on the Firefox users part though.There is a migration document available for the developers for more directions on the changes they need to make.

Firefox 5th Anniversary @ #CODEFAIL Party Bangkok Thailand

[This special cake in the above pic was designed for 5th anniversary of Firefox part @ Bangkok]

Firefox 3.6 Beta Revision 4 Version Available For Download

November 30, 2009 by bharath

Okay, if you are still using Firefox Beta 3 version, just check it out guys, Firefox has released beta 4 version couple of days back.

Upgrades in FF 3.6 B4:

Third party components lock down
Fixes for more than 140 bugs since the last beta version.
It can run scripts asynchronously

I just kept it simple by giving some major upgrades, the list is pretty big, you can check it out at this page.

Download FF 3.6 Beta Revision 4 (For Windows–English (US), 7.7 MB)

Click on the below link to go to download page:

Using Webmaster Tools To Find Malicious Hacks In a Website

November 30, 2009 by bharath

These are the days where many websites (even prestigious ones) like FMS (see my post about FMS hack) are getting hacked by malicious parties.These hackers/spammers penetrate into the site and insert spammy or dangerous stuff.Many a times it may not appear to the normal users of the website.But when you do a Google search of the website, it may appear like

Thanks to Google Webmaster Tools(GWT), Fetch as Googlebot feature gives a breather to the webmasters.Fetch as Googlebot fetches any webpage of your site as it appears to the Googlebot.

Just login to Webmaster Tools, .Click on Fetch as Googlebot under “Labs” section inside your website profile dashboard.

Fetch as Googlebot in Webmaster tools

Fetching a webpage as Googlebot

Now enter URL of any particular page which you want to fetch as a Googlebot or just leave it as blank to fetch the Homepage of your site.

Results of Fetch as Googlebot

There you go!! There’s the spammy content that’s being injected.GWT made this easier for you through ‘Fetch as Googlebot’ option.This confirms that the site has been hacked, the next step is to contact your server administrator or your hosting provider to take further actions.

Illustrative Images via Google Webmaster Central Blog post.

Gmail Tip : Send Email With Attachments While Offline

November 27, 2009 by bharath

Many Gmail users are aware of accessing Gmail offline.That means reading all your mails while you are traveling in a plane or when you are at work with no internet access or in some cases when there is a temporary problem with your internet connection and you need to access your mail a bit urgent.

But until now there’s no option to add attachment while sending mail offline.But now it is here.Just attach files to your mail even while composing them offline just as you do when doing it online.Gmail will automatically captures them to Outbox (even if you suddenly get disconnected from network) and tries to send them as and when you are online again.

To Activate This Feature:

You must eave enabled ‘Offline Gmail’ under ‘Labs’ section first (Click ‘Enable’ and save settings)

You will see the ‘Offline’ link next to the green Labs features button just right next to your username inside your Gmail.

Click the above Offline link and install the Gears

Install Offline Gmail Access Gears

Installing Gears for Gmail Offline

Install Gears and you are done.Go through your mails offline and send attachments offline and even more of them.

But perhaps one thing you can’t do using offline access is ‘Adding Inline Images’ , except that you can virtually play around with your offline Gmail messages.