Google has been granted a patent to a technology that will track mouse movements to deliver relevant results. The title is “System and method for modulating search relevancy using pointer activity monitoring”. Here is how the abstract for the patent describes it:

A method and system of modulating search result relevancy use various types of user browsing activities. In particular, a client assistant residing in a client computer monitors movements of a user controlled pointer in a web browser, e.g., when the pointer moves into a predefined region and when it moves out of the predefined region. A server then determines a relevancy value between an informational item associated with the predefined region and a search query according to the pointer hover period. When preparing a new search result responsive to a search query, the server re-orders identified informational items in accordance with their respective relevancy values such that more relevant items appear before less relevant ones. The server also uses the relevancy values to determine and/or adjust the content of an one-box result associated with a search query.

It means that if a user quickly moves his mouse towards a result, Google will know that it is relevant to him.  If a user hovers over a result or an ad then it means that the user found the result or ad interesting.

Using Google App Inventor now anyone can create an android app. Google says that App Inventor is built on the idea that you do not need to be a developer to build great mobile applications. Instead of code, App Inventor allows you to visually design applications and use blocks to specify application logic.

Now many have a genuine worries that this might lead to a flurry of crap apps in the marketplace. For one thing registration costs $25 and that will be a hindrance for many. Plus, I think, Google might charge more from such developers. Google is in a win-win situation over here. It can get lots of apps in its marketplace and all it has to do is sort out the good ones for users.

Further, many non-geeky iPhone loving youngsters might be attracted in buying android phones once they start creating their own apps. It is like watching a crap television show on TV just because you have featured in it

Apply for it over here. You can watch the video hereon youtube. Its is an unlisted video, ie. only those with the link can view it. Wonder why Google does not want to make it viral?

It has been quite a while since Google have started displaying related searches for the keywords you have searched.

I just noticed that they are showing related ads (Sponsored Links) for the keywords you searched. It is a interesting feature for Adwords advertisers who can target users searching Google using related keywords

This might be old news, but I noticed this feature today.

Shown on the left is the screenshot of the search result page of  “World cup”

As you know HTTPS sites are secure sites and your transaction with them is safe from eavesdropping. Google recently launched Google ssl for this purpose hwre your search is secure.

Now Electronic Search Frontier has developed an add on for firefox browser that will help you surf the web in HTTPS.  Sites like the New York Times, Washington Post, Twitter and Facebook,  Google services and a good many popular and semi-obscure sites are covered.

On installation, your browser automatically goes for the HTTPS/SSL connection option, or uses TOR’s resources to make it encrypted.

However , remember that unless Firefox displays a colored address bar and a complete lock in the status bar the  connection is not secure. This is because the webpage may contain third-party elements like advertisements which can be exploited.

Please note that surfing the web in HTTPS is comparatively slower than surfing without it.

Download the addon at EFF

According to advertising network Chitika, when Googlers fail to find what they are searching for , they move on to yahoo, Ask.com to search for it.

The interesting part is that Googlers  prefer Ask more than much fancied Microsoft’s Bing. Yahoo grabs nearly 50% of the share while ask.com 30%. Bing manages only 16%. However, we don’t know what the trend is as Bing was launched only a year ago. We don’t know whose share is going up and whose share is going down.

We all Google. You very well know that Google collects search keywords anonymously to give search suggestions to a particular region or worldwide. More than that they use it to help advertisers using adwords to get the list of keywords they can advertise on.  Well this is acceptable.

But due you know (via Datamation) that google uses your brain to help develop its own technology.

As you probably know, Google is in the book-scanning business. The company works with libraries and publications (including the New York Times) to scan and digitize book collections. It then posts these texts on the Internet and sells advertising against it. Scanning books is like printing money.

he challenge is that computers aren’t as good as humans at recognizing words. Fortunately, optical character recognition (OCR) systems nowadays are at least smart enough to know what they don’t know — they can identify words that they can’t read, or can’t recognize with certainty.

But what should Google do with those unrecognizable mystery words?

You know those squiggly or otherwise deliberately warped or obscured words you have to type in to “prove you’re human”? They’re called CAPTCHA systems, and they make the world a better place by thwarting software robots that would hack, exploit and abuse various software services if they could.

Less than a year ago, Google bought an interesting variant of CAPTCHA called reCAPTCHA. When you “prove you’re human” at a site using reCAPTCHA, one of the words you identify for access is actually one of those mystery words Google’s OCR computers can’t read. (The other word is known by the system, and used for actually proving you’re human.)

They’re sending the same word to other users, and use the general consensus to identify the word. The results are fed back to the scanning effort, bringing word recognition very close to 100%.

Nice work! Thanks to your brain’s amazing ability to recognize words, Google is making a fortune in the book scanning racket!

Datamation have also written about how Google uses your home.

However, these is acceptable if you look what Facebook does. It uses your private data , what you ‘Like’, etc and shares it with advertisers and third party websites to target you with offers.

Free blogging platforms like Blogger and WordPress have been a boon to many people who had little or no knowledge about web designing an programming. It was just add gadgets/widgets or search Google to find minor hacks or tweaks for things these platforms didn’t provide any direct help.

However, this is going to change. The search engine giant Google has announced that Website’s Page Speed will be a factor in its search ranking. It is currently applicable for English searches from Google.com only and that it only carries little weight in comparison with relevancy. Knowing Google, it wouldn’t be long before they make page speed a significant part of the algorithm for ranking websites.

This means that every serious blogger will have to learn basics for web designing and programming in order to make his site outrank others. There are many tools for help. They have been mentioned on the google blog post like Firefox addon Page Speed, Yahoo’s ySlow, etc.

These tools will only help you find out issues with your site and give suggestions. You will have to make the suitable changes yourself and for that you will need learn the basics at least .

Some suggestions for improving site speed is that serve images from your own server to minimise DNS look ups, remove unused codes and use ads from networks that load quickly.

Many professional web developers are going to gain from this as many people would want their services.

More people visited Facebook  than Google, gaining the No 1 spot in the US the previous week, according to hitwise. Google does not minds that as long as these people are using Chrome to visit the site.

Google whose revenues comes from advertising dollars by means of cpc and cpm ads from its search results and publisher sites cannot match the viral nature of facebook.

Google has been trying hard to push its web browser Google Chrome. Though initially it did well in getting users its growth has been stagnant. It is still far, far behind the much hated and obsolete IE6.

With facebook advertising, it might get lot of people recommending chrome to others by means of share and like buttons. And hopefully more users.

Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins Jr. has accused Apple Inc of having a strategy of little more than “zero-sum maneuvering versus hated rivals.” Critics had claimed on the very day of iPad’s launch that it is a DRM haven.

He argues that Apple’s decision to ship it’s latest product iPad without Flash is an attempt by the company to lock the users to iTunes.

Apple may be succumbing to the seductive temptations of “network effects,” in which the all-consuming goal becomes getting its mobile devices into more and more hands simply for the purpose of locking more and more users into iTunes….

Network effects can be a path to power and riches, but (as Microsoft has shown) much of the proceeds can also end up being squandered on defensive and paranoid attempts to secure the privileged position.

So, is Apple interested in making revolutionary and futuristic products or create network of fan boys who are forced to use only their products and services earning them more revenues.

I am not a Flash fan and I wish that we fast forward to HTML5.

In stark contrast, Google has been launching its products like android in an open manner. Their believe is that making the web highly accessible will help more users to access their products and gain more advertising dollars. Its’ competitors can gain from Google’ s good work but most of the users will stick to Google for being open and and not being locked in to any thing.

Google, Apple and Microsoft – The Good, the Bad and The Ugly? Please comment.

Google in its Chrome Blog has announced rewards to developers who discover and report the bugs to Google. This is in line with Mozilla’s Security Bug Bounty Program where you can earn US$ 500 for reporting a new bug in the latest version of FireFox , ThunderBird and other software.

Google’s cash reward like Mozilla’s starts from US$ 500 and can go up to US$ 1337.  You must be the first to report that bug. Depending upon the severity of the security hole, you will get a suitable reward.

However, in both Mozilla and Chrome, the bug must be in the core browser. Vulnerabilities due to third party software and OS will not be rewarded.

So, there you go; one more reasons to learn hacking.

The latest version of these software can be found here ->Mozilla and Chrome