Google BigQuery helps companies of any size analyse their datasets

So-called “big data” – the concept of us all creating an ever-increasing amount of data and requiring it processed and analysed – is a hot topic at the moment, both among big companies and startups looking to get an edge in the sector.
Google have announced the availability of BigQuery, a web service designed for everyone from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies to help them analyse their massive datasets. A preview of the service was made available at the Google IO conference in 2010, and now anyone can get involved with its new UI and REST APIs. Other new functionality includes JOIN statement and support for Google Cloud Storage data export.
“We’re looking forward to helping businesses innovate faster by harnessing their own large data sets” writes BigQuery’s product manager, Ju-kay Kwek. “[We’re] putting one of Google's most powerful data analysis systems into the hands of more companies of all sizes.”
Use cases for the service vary from quick analysis of a dataset in a one-off case through to heavy API-based usage. The service is currently free (with 30 days’ notice before any charges are brought into effect), and developers can get involved on the Google Code site.

Place a Google Map in your Web Page

Hi Guys.. here is Nice tutorial for placing Google Map in your webApplication..



First of all define the DIV element with Proper Height and Width in your page where you want to Place a Google map in your Web Page.

For Example :

 <div id="uniqueMap" style="width: 299px; height: 214px"> </div>  

now In the Head Element add the following javascript line :

<script src="http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&amp;

v=2&key=ENTER_API_KEY_HERE"
        type="text/javascript"></script>

In the Above link API Key is the one you have to generate yourself by registering your website on the following link:

http://code.google.com/apis/loader/signup.html

Enter your website name and click on Generate ASP Key it will Generate one API Key, Paste it in the above script in place of "ENTER_API_KEY_HERE"

Now in the Head Element Paste the following Code to create another Javascript

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">

            function load() {

        if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) {

           

            map = new GMap2(document.getElementById("uniqueMap"));

            map.setCenter(new GLatLng(37.0625, -95.677068), 13);

            map.addControl(new GSmallMapControl());

            geocoder = new GClientGeocoder();

        }

    }

     function showAddress(address) {

       

      

        if (geocoder) {

            geocoder.getLatLng(

          address,

          function(point) {

              if (!point) {

                //  alert(address + " not found");

              } else {

                  map.setCenter(point, 13);

                   var marker = new GMarker(point);

                   map.addOverlay(marker);

                  marker.openInfoWindowHtml(address);

              }

          }

        );

        }

    }

    </script>

thats it!! now get ready to call the above defined javascript function :

in the end of your HTML page(just before the Closing </form> tag) add the following lines:

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">

     load();

     showAddress('Ahmedabad');   //Specify your own favorite city

        </script>

Compile and run your application you would see Google Map Placed in you Page displaying Ahmedabad Location as a Defauilt Location.. you can display your favorite city by specifying city Name in the calling function code.

Thanks !!!

Google ReCaptcha

reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows. Check out our paper in Science about it (or read more below).

A CAPTCHA is a program that can tell whether its user is a human or a computer. You've probably seen them — colorful images with distorted text at the bottom of Web registration forms. CAPTCHAs are used by many websites to prevent abuse from "bots," or automated programs usually written to generate spam. No computer program can read distorted text as well as humans can, so bots cannot navigate sites protected by CAPTCHAs.
About 200 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent. Individually, that's not a lot of time, but in aggregate these little puzzles consume more than 150,000 hours of work each day. What if we could make positive use of this human effort? reCAPTCHA does exactly that by channeling the effort spent solving CAPTCHAs online into "reading" books.
To archive human knowledge and to make information more accessible to the world, multiple projects are currently digitizing physical books that were written before the computer age. The book pages are being photographically scanned, and then transformed into text using "Optical Character Recognition" (OCR). The transformation into text is useful because scanning a book produces images, which are difficult to store on small devices, expensive to download, and cannot be searched. The problem is that OCR is not perfect.

reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA. This is possible because most OCR programs alert you when a word cannot be read correctly.

But if a computer can't read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here's how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.
 

Use reCAPTCHA on Your Site!

reCAPTCHA helps prevent automated abuse of your site (such as comment spam or bogus registrations) by using a CAPTCHA to ensure that only humans perform certain actions.

• It's Free! Yep, reCAPTCHA is free.
• It's Useful. Why waste the effort of your users? reCAPTCHA helps to digitize books.
• It's Accessible. reCAPTCHA has an audio test that allows blind people to freely navigate your site.
• It's Secure. Most other CAPTCHA implementations can be easily broken.
• It's Popular. Over 100,000 sites use reCAPTCHA, including household names like Facebook, Ticketmaster, and Craigslist.
• It's Easy. reCAPTCHA is a Web service. As such, adopting it is as simple as adding a few lines of code on your site. For many applications and programming languages such as Wordpress and PHP we also have easy-to-install plugins available. We generate and check the distorted images, so you don't need to run costly image generation programs.

3 Gmail Labs features that will spice up your inbox

3 Gmail Labs features that will spice up your inbox

Posted by Robby Stein, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Last week we launched Gmail Labs, a way for you to test out experimental Gmail features before they're ready for prime time. This week, we want to show you what the most popular Labs features can do for your inbox. To use any Gmail Labs feature* visit the Labs tab under Settings, and select "Enable" next to each one you want to turn on. When you're finished picking features, click "Save changes" to apply the new settings. Here's a mini guide to the most popular ones:

Superstars: Adds new star designs to better differentiate important email.

After enabling Superstars, simply click on the star icon repeatedly to rotate through new star options. If you have shortcuts enabled, hitting the "s" key consecutively will do the same. There are more star designs then the ones set as default -- to select different variations, click Settings and look for the Superstars section under the General tab. Drag the icons listed as "not in use" to "in use" to make changes to your star lineup. Once enabled, you can use Superstars to help prioritize and manage emails. For example, you can add a "!" icon star on emails that have critical or timely information, such as bank information, or you can add a "✓" icon star to emails associated with a task you've completed, such as paying a bill online.

Pictures in chat: Adds your friends' photos to the chat window.



Make Gmail chat a little more personal. Now you can view a picture of your friends when you chat with them. (Tip: If your friend doesn't have a picture, you can suggest one by clicking on the placeholder picture in Contacts under your friend's name).

Quick Links: Bookmarks common Gmail views.



Quick Links allows you to create a shortcut to any bookmarkable URL in Gmail. Just click "Add Quick Link" to save a link to the page you are currently viewing. You can then jump to that page any time with one click. For example, you can add a link to a draft email where you keep your to do list, or an email with your frequent flyer information. You can also save a common Gmail search by conducting the search (let's say for "is:unread" -- which brings up all your unread mail) and then clicking "Add Quick Link."

If you have suggestions for ways we can improve any of the Labs features, or want to suggest a new one, please visit our Labs discussion forum. The engineers who built Gmail Labs features keep an eye on discussions, and your feedback will help them make the features great

Quikmaps Draws Directly onto Google Maps [Google Maps]

Quikmaps Draws Directly onto Google Maps [Google Maps]

via Lifehacker by Kevin Purdy on 6/18/08

Go beyond simple place markers and draw directly onto a Google Map with Quikmaps, a free mashup service. The site offers tons of distinct icons you can drag and drop onto road or satellite maps, along with scribbling, line tracing (great for giving custom directions when Google's aren't convenient), text labels, and other tools. Drawing and saving a map to your desktop or web site is free, but registering with just a username lets you post edit-ready copies anywhere.

Quikmaps [via Lifehacker AU

Great tip for MP3 searching on google

Great tip for MP3 searching on google

Go to google copy and paste in

?intitle:index.of? mp3
and after mp3 put in an artist or album or whatever and hit enter… what you get is lists of downloadable mp3s

eg:
?intitle:index.of? mp3 shakira

enjoy downloading…………

@VHNG
-- Vihang Shah
Web Developer / Designer
Silicon Valley Info Media Pvt. Ltd.
@: vihangshah.it@gmail.com
Blog: www.technoledge.co.nr

Tip: Edit contacts right from your chat list

Tip: Edit contacts right from your chat list

via Official Gmail Blog by Robby Stein on 4/30/08

Posted by Robby Stein, Associate Product Marketing Manager

When I add a new friend to Gmail chat, sometimes my friend's email address is added as their contact name, such as hikingfan@gmail.com. I personally like to have the name of all my chat friends in my chat list so I don't get too confused as to who's who. To change this, I used to go into contacts, select the contact profile, add the name of my friend, and then save it.

But now with the new version of Gmail (launched for Firefox 2 and IE7) you can make edits to Gmail contacts directly from the chat list. I find it to be a great time saver. All you have to do is hover your mouse over one of your contacts to prompt a pop-up with contact details. If you just click on the contact name, it will automatically become an editable field. Simply type in the desired name and hit "enter." Your changes will save the name in your chat list as well as in your contacts.

Use Google Calculator

goto google.com
type 3+2
click on search & see what happens



Google’s calculator tries to understand the problem you are attempting to solve without requiring you to use special syntax. However, it may be helpful to know the most direct way to pose a question to get the best results. Listed below are a few suggestions for the most common type of expressions (and a few more esoteric ones).

Most operators come between the two numbers they combine, such as the plus sign in the expression 1+1.

Operator Function Example
+ addition 3+44
- subtraction 13-5
* multiplication 7*8
/ division 12/3
^ exponentiation (raise to a power of) 8^2
% modulo (finds the remainder after division) 8%7
choose X choose Y determines the number of ways of choosing a set of Y elements from a set of X elements 18 choose 4
th root of calculates the nth root of a number 5th root of 32
% of X % of Y computes X percent of Y 20% of 150


Some operators work on only one number and should come before that number. In these cases, it often helps to put the number in parentheses.

Operator Function Example
sqrt square root sqrt(9)
sin, cos, etc. trigonometric functions (numbers are assumed to be radians) sin(pi/3)
tan(45 degrees)
ln logarithm base e ln(17)
log logarithm base 10 log(1,000)


A few operators come after the number.

Operator Function Example
! factorial 5!


Other good things to know

You can force the calculator to try and evaluate an expression by putting an equals sign (=) after it. This only works if the expression is mathematically resolvable. For example, 1-800-555-1234= will return a result, but 1/0= will not.

Parentheses can be used to enclose the parts of your expression that you want evaluated first. For example, (1+2)*3 causes the addition to happen before the multiplication.

The in operator is used to specify what units you want used to express the answer. Put the word in followed by the name of a unit at the end of your expression. This works well for unit conversions such as: 5 kilometers in miles.

You can use hexadecimal, octal and binary numbers. Prefix hexadecimal numbers with 0x, octal numbers with 0o and binary numbers with 0b. For example: 0x7f + 0b10010101.

The calculator understands many different units, as well as many physical and mathematical constants. These can be used in your expression. Many of these constants and units have both long and short names. You can use either name in most cases. For example, km and kilometer both work, as do c and the speed of light.

Feel free to experiment with the calculator as not all of its capabilities are listed here. To get you started, we’ve included a few expressions linked to their results.

1 a.u./c
56*78
1.21 GW / 88 mph
e^(i pi)+1
100 miles in kilometers
sine(30 degrees)
G*(6e24 kg)/(4000 miles)^2
0x7d3 in roman numerals
0b1100101*0b1001

Knowing E-mail ID of any Orkut Profile

•Ignore the person of whom you want to know the Email id.
•Open your Gtalk of the same account as Orkut.
•Go to Settings -> Blocked
•You can see the ignored person's email id.