Google Birthday Story and logos

Google is celebrating its 10th birthday, not actually a day as Google itself isn’t sure about the exact day of its launch.In fact, knowing exactly when Google’s birthday is depends on your point of view. Some milestones to consider below, which make Google as old as 12 and as young as 9. Plus, more special Google birthday logos.

Google The 12 Year Old
January 1996

This is when Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin started working on BackRub, what later become Google. Use this month, and Google is 12 years old.

Google The 10 Year Old
Sept. 15, 1997

This is when Google registered google.com because they both( Larry Page and Sergery Brin)  felt that BackRub needs a new name, and Google was derived from Googol which means a mathematical term with 1 followed by 100 zeros(A geeky decision right?)

Google The 9 Year Old
Sept. 7, 1998

This is when Google may have officially incorporated.

Google The 9 Year Old
Sept. 27, 1998 (Current Official Date)

Back in 2005, Google declared that Sept. 27 was its birthday. But wait — what happened with that Sept. 7 date? Well, in 2005, Yahoo came along and freaked Google out by announcing an index that was larger than Google’s. It had been ages since anyone did that.

Things got resolved by Google doing some PR. They announced that for their “birthday,” they’d gotten bigger — but were also dropping the count of pages from the home page, which helped (thankfully) defuse the size wars that often meant nothing about search quality.

It’s Their Party, They’ll Party When They Want To!

Google Birthday Logos

Google’s been putting them up consistently since 2002. The first year, it happened on September 27, then shifted to September 7, then back to September 27 from 2005 onward.

4th Birthday: 2002

Celebrated on September 27th, 2002.

5th Birthday: 2003

Celebrated on September 7th, 2003.

6th Birthday: 2004

Celebrated on September 7th, 2004.

7th Birthday: 2005

Celebrated on September 27th, 2005.

8th Birthday: 2006

Celebrated on September 27th, 2006.

9th Birthday: 2007:

10th Birthday 2008

Google offers $10 Million for world’s best ideas

Google is offering $10 million as prize money in a competition aimed at transforming the world’s best ideas into useful products.

The competition is open to anyone. The seven categories include sustainable energy use, environment, health, education, shelter, encouraging communities, and building opportunities to help people better provide for themselves and their families. An eighth category is simply titled “everything else”.

Categories:

• Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
• Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
• Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
• Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
• Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
• Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
• Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
• Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don’t fit into any category at all.

Ideas can be submitted through a form available on the Project 10 to the 100th website  ,  which poses questions including, “If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?” and “Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented”.

Members of the public have until 20th October to submit their ideas by completing a simple form and answering a few short questions about their idea. Entrants can also include a link to a 30 second video either demonstrating their idea in action or giving a more detailed explanation.

Entries will be accepted in 25 languages and Google have placed no limit on the number of ideas any one individual can share.

An advisory board will work with Google employees to narrow the entrants down to the top 100, with the results to be announced on 27th January, 2009. It will then be up to the public to vote for their favourites before 2nd February when the top 20 ideas will be passed on to a panel of judges to whittle down.

All the best my friends!! I hope atleast one idea in top 20 from OUR INDIANS

Google Updated Chrome version to 0.2.149.30 – Build 2200

Google has updated Chrome to version 0.2.149.30 – Build 2200.  After its initial release, Google has finally released the next updated version to patch its bugs and security fixes.  The previous version of Google Chrome was 0.2.149.29 Build 1798.

Here is how to get the latest update:

1. Go to Tools (wrench icon) located at the upper right hand corner of browser.
2. Click “About Google Chrome” .
3. Click “Update Now”.
4. Restart the browser and now it should say 0.2.149.30 Build 2200.

Security Updates

• [r2042] Fix a potential denial of service with very long title attributes on tags. The title attribute sets the tooltip text when you hover the mouse over an element.
  Security Rating: Low risk. This can lead to 100% CPU usage or a tab crash.
  More information: http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/30975

Other Changes

• [r1927] Stop adding content from HTTPS sites to the searchable index.
  Google Chrome keeps a searchable history of pages you visit. This history is only stored locally on your computer. Previously, this searchable history included the text from secure sites, such as your online bank (any sites using SSL for security). Google Chrome no longer saves text from secure pages in its local history. The address bar and local history search page will no longer find data from secure sites you have visited.If you are concerned about data that might have been indexed for searching before this release, you can follow the

  Google Chrome Help Center instructions for clearing your browsing history.

• [r1978] Don’t send sensitive URLs to search suggest services. Google Chrome stops sending data to a suggest service if the typed URL:
  • contains a username:password field (http://username:password@example.com/)
  • has query parameters (the trailing ?param=data following the URL)
  • is an https URL with any path component (any part following the hostname, such as /path in https://www.example.com/path)

• [r1848, r1943, r2003] Fixes to the Google Chrome updater to make updates more reliable.

• [r1859] Fix problems with Flash not playing video if too many connections are opened. For example, using the slider to advance video on YouTube could cause video to stop playing.

• [r2059] Allow JavaScript to communicate with Java applets. Fixes bug 580.

• [r1299] JavaScript: Dispatch contextmenu events after mouseup events. This fixes the right-click menu not working on Google Spreadsheets. Fixes bug 745.

• [r1692] Fix crashes with some plugins –3dvia was the most widely reported– when they return an error for NPN_GetValue. Fixes bug 493.

Multiple Google Accounts Simultaneously in Google Chrome

Google Chrome’s incognito mode is less sophisticated than IE8’s InPrivate browsing, but it has a feature that will be useful for those who have more than one Google account.

When you open a window in incognito mode (Ctrl+Shift+N), your cookies from the standard session are no longer available and you can easily log in to a new Google account.

Chrome’s help center has more details about this feature. “Webpages that you open and files downloaded while you are incognito won’t be logged in your browsing and download histories; all new cookies are deleted after you close the incognito window. You can browse normally and in incognito mode at the same time by using separate windows.” Michael Jeffrey explains that “incognito mode is a window-level mode – all pages viewed within this window are not persisted to the user’s history, and incognito pages use a temporary cookie store that is blank at the start of the incognito session”.

When you close the incognito window, all the cookies are deleted so you need to log in again the next time you browse in incognito mode. This trick can be used for any other services that allow multiple accounts, but you can only use two accounts at the same time: one in a standard window and the other one in incognito mode.

Waiting for Google browser – Google Chrome

May be by tomorrow i.e 2nd of Sept 2008, Google is going to announce its Web browser called as Google Chrome – a direct competitor to Mozilla Firefox. Google Chrome is an open source browser based on Webkit and powered by Google Gears. The browser, which should be available for download sometime today night( In India), offers a tab bar above the address bar. It lets you fire up Web apps without the toolbar and menus. And, there are thumbnails that show recently visited sites.The scree shots of Google Chrome are available at blogoscoped. Two of the them are

Features of Google Chrome includes…

• Tabbed browsing where each tab gets its own process, leading to faster and more stable browsing. If one tab crashes, the whole browser doesn’t go down with it
• A distinct user interface that places tabs on top of the browser window instead of right below the address bar
• An “incognito” mode that lets you browse the web in complete privacy because it doesn’t record any of your activity
• A new JavaScript engine built from the ground up for speed
• Malware and phishing lists that automatically update themselves and warn you of bad websites
• A default homepage that displays your most commonly used sites and other personalized information

To know more information about this, Google released a Comicbook.Check it

This shows that Google is serious about dethroning Microsoft for consumer and business productivity.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Released – Looks more powerfull

Microsoft new browser IE 8 Beta 2 version which was released on 27th of August 2008 looks more elegant and easier to use, while adding many of the missing features.

“The brand-new implementation of Standards mode in Internet Explorer 8 offers the best viewing experience of web pages created according to the latest web standards.” That means many of the web pages that include code custom tailored for IE won’t look very good, so you need to enable a compatibility view (for some reason, intranet sites are rendered in the compatibility mode by default). A post from March has more information about Microsoft’s decision to apply the standards mode by default.

IE brings CSS improvements, support for data URIs, AJAX enhancements and support for DOM storage. There’s a new tool for developers that includes a DOM inspector, a JavaScript profiler, a color picker and ruler, options to outline objects, disable CSS and validate web pages.

IE8 adds support for suggestions in the search box and this is not restricted to Live Search. Microsoft lists many search providers that can be added: Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia and others. The new interface makes it easy to switch between search providers by clicking on the icons displayed at the bottom.

New feature that was added to IE7 is Inline search that can search inside a page from an elegant bar similar to the one from Safari.can search inside a page from an elegant bar similar to the one from Safari.  IE8 includes a simple text viewer with syntax highlighting to view source.Microsift IE8 has a new feature called “Accelerator” which is similar to  “Send to” option from Google toolbar which enables to send the selected to text to google services.”Tired of cutting and pasting information from one website to another for everyday tasks? Now there’s a better way. Accelerators give you ready access to the online services you use everyday—from any page you visit.”

The bookmarks placed in a folder are treated as a group: the advantage is that all the bookmarks can be opened with one click, the tabs have a new color and there’s also an option to close the entire group. IE8 automatically creates groups from links opened in new tabs. It’s easy to duplicate a tab and its history, to reopen recently closed tabs and to reopen the last browsing session.

Overall, this is a highly recommended update for IE7, even though you’ll find some sites aren’t displayed properly.

Links

Download IE 8 Beta

Notes on IE 8

Windows IE8 Screenshots

More about Beta 2: IE Team Blog

Link Cloaking Video

As Web surfers become more knowledgeable of how affiliate programs work, more people will omit your affiliate ID or use someone else’s ID when ordering. Either way, you lose commissions you’re supposed to get.

A complete tutorial on cloaking your affiliate links. Learn how to do cloak your links and protect yourself from commission hijacking

Rare fotos of Bill Gates

Young CEO

Bill Gates, about 27, in his Microsoft office in 1982.

Bill Gates: The Early Years2 of 9 Geniuses at Work

Gates watches his friend and future Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen typing on a teletype terminal at the Lakeside School in Seattle in 1968. Gates was 13 when he entered the exclusive prep school, which was around the time this photo was taken.

Slacker?

Much of the computer equipment at Lakeside was bought with proceeds from a rummage sale organized by the students’ mothers. Gates was drawn to programming the machines and was excused from math classes to pursue his interest.


Graduate

Gates during Commencement at the Lakeside School in 1973.

Partners

Gates and Allen in Microsoft’s offices in 1982. Started initially in New Mexico, the company moved to Bellevue, Wash., in January 1979.


The Staff

The early team at Microsoft paused for a group portrait in 1978. Gates is at the bottom left.


Lots of Memory

Gates demonstrates the memory power of a CD in 1987.

Bill Introducing Microsoft

Bill and Melinda Gates

Gates’ 40,000 sq. ft. “ecology house” in Seattle – 7 years to built at estimated cost of $97 million (1998.)

Bill Gates gets knighthood from Queen Elizabeth (2005)

Bill Gates playing video games at CES (2005)

Bill Gates hands over beta 2 of Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Longhorn Server at WinHEC 2006 in Seattle (2006)

Bill Gates launches Windows Vista and Office 2007 at New York’s Times Square (2007 )

“Our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become!!!

Google Acquired Services

Here is the  list of acquisitions by Google.

A total of 51 companies have been acquired as of March 2008.

Google’s largest acquisition as of March 2008 is the purchase of DoubleClick, an online advertising company, for US$3.1 billion.

Acquisition date	Company	Derived services
12-Feb-01	Deja	Google Groups
20-Sep-01	Outride	Google Personalized Search
Feb-03	Pyra Labs	Blogger
Apr-03	Neotonic Software	Google Groups, Gmail
Apr-03	Applied Semantics	AdSense, AdWords
30-Sep-03	Kaltix	iGoogle
Oct-03	Sprinks(a division of Primedia)	AdSense, AdWords
10-Oct-03	Genius Labs	Blogger
10-May-04	Ignite Logic	Google Page Creator
23-Jun-04	BaiduA
13-Jul-04	Picasa	Picasa, Blogger
Sep-04	ZipDash	Google Ride Finder
Oct-04	Where2	Google Maps
27-Oct-04	Keyhole, Inc	Google Maps, Google Earth
28-Mar-05	Urchin Software Corporation	Google Analytics
12-May-05	Dodgeball	Google Mobile, Google SMS
Jul-05	Reqwireless	Google Mobile
7-Jul-05	Current Communications Group	Internet backbone
17-Aug-05	Android	Google Mobile, Google SMS
Nov-05	Skia	Picasa
17-Nov-05	Akwan Information Technologies	Internet backbone
20-Dec-05	AOLB
27-Dec-05	Phatbits	Google Desktop
31-Dec-05	allPAY GmbH	Google Mobile
31-Dec-05	bruNET GmbH	Google Mobile
17-Jan-06	dMarc Broadcasting	AdSense
14-Feb-06	Measure Map	Google Analytics
9-Mar-06	Upstartle	Google Documents
14-Mar-06	@Last Software	Google Sketchup
9-Apr-06	Orion	Google Search
1-Jun-06	2Web Technologies	Google Spreadsheet
15-Aug-06	Neven Vision	Google Maps
9-Oct-06	YouTube	Google Video
31-Oct-06	JotSpot	Google Sites
18-Dec-06	Endoxon	Google Maps
4-Jan-07	XunleiC
16-Feb-07	Adscape	AdSense
16-Mar-07	Trendalyzer	Google Analytics
17-Apr-07	Tonic Systems	Google Documents
19-Apr-07	Marratech	Google Talk
13-Apr-07	DoubleClick	AdSense
11-May-07	GreenBorder	Internal use
1-Jun-07	Panoramio	Blogger
Maps
3-Jun-07	FeedBurner	Google Reader
5-Jun-07	PeakStream	Server (computing)
19-Jun-07	Zenter	Google Documents
2-Jul-07	GrandCentral	Google Mobile
20-Jul-07	Image America	Google Maps
9-Jul-07	Postini	Gmail
27-Sep-07	Zingku	Google Mobile
9-Oct-07	Jaiku	Google Mobile

Firefox 3 launch a success

Firefox 3 launch a success: 8 million downloads in 24 hours

 

 

Mozilla’s Firefox 3 release event on June 18th was an epic success. The servers logged over 8 million downloads during the 24-hour download day, and Mozilla has declared victory after exceeding its initial goal of 5 million downloads.

 

 Number of Pledges per region

 

Country	Pledges
Afghanistan	194
Aland Islands	206
Albania	614
Algeria	4,826
Andorra	517
Angola	340
Anguilla	0
Antigua And Barbuda	324
Argentina	83,902
Armenia	714
Aruba	430
Australia	179,928
Austria	94,266
Azerbaijan	975
Bahamas	578
Bahrain	1,519
Bangladesh	3,008
Barbados	1,199
Belarus	6,845
Belgium	70,447
Belize	321
Benin	105
Bermuda	438
Bhutan	70
Bolivia	3,593
Bosnia And Herzegovina	5,119
Botswana	282
Brazil	233,804
Brunei Darussalam	934
Bulgaria	63,347
Burkina Faso	133
Burundi	38
Cambodia	528
Cameroon	426
Canada	297,606
Cape Verde	59
Central African Republic	0
Chad	7
Chile	77,136
China	227,918
Colombia	40,233
Comoros	0
Costa Rica	11,273
Croatia	19,589
Cuba	1,637
Cyprus	2,797
Czech Republic	75,156
Côte d’Ivoire	657
Denmark	55,007
Djibouti	56
Dominica	149
Dominican Republic	7,503
Ecuador	5,726
Egypt	9,453
El Salvador	3,022
Equatorial Guinea	34
Eritrea	17
Estonia	14,988
Ethiopia	277
Faeroe Islands	598
Falkland Islands	0
Fiji	408
Finland	67,673
France	366,714
French Guiana	0
Gabon	136
Gambia, The	56
Georgia	1,170
Germany	906,572
Ghana	1,080
Greece	42,650
Greenland	170
Grenada	203
Guadeloupe	0
Guatemala	5,174
Guinea	19
Guinea-bissau	0
Guyana	313
Haiti	174
Honduras	1,367
Hong Kong	52,497
Hungary	112,322
Iceland	6,566
India	118,144
Indonesia	31,801
Iran	266,615
Iraq	443
Ireland	43,278
Israel	44,773
Italy	308,980
Jamaica	2,395
Japan	581,698
Jordan	2,017
Kazakhstan	3,440
Kenya	1,877
Kuwait	3,318
Kyrgyzstan	282
Lao People’s Democratic Republic	215
Latvia	14,059
Lebanon	1,452
Lesotho	40
Liberia	0
Libya	415
Liechtenstein	465
Lithuania	337,575
Luxembourg	6,803
Madagascar	353
Malawi	161
Malaysia	41,253
Maldives	890
Mali	129
Malta	2,304
Martinique	20
Mauritania	63
Mauritius	1,304
Mexico	112,348
Moldova	3,219
Mongolia	1,358
Montenegro	421
Montserrat	0
Morocco	6,577
Mozambique	335
Myanmar	680
Namibia	381
Nepal	3,777
Netherlands	193,093
New Caledonia	749
New Zealand	29,239
Nicaragua	1,439
Niger	33
Nigeria	2,613
North Korea	0
Norway	65,708
Oman	812
Pakistan	7,518
Palau	0
Palestinian Territories	635
Panama	3,481
Papua New Guinea	88
Paraguay	3,618
Peru	24,135
Philippines	40,702
Poland	259,577
Portugal	50,234
Puerto Rico	7,938
Qatar	2,312
Republic Of Congo	17
Republic of Macedonia	3,934
Reunion	245
Romania	134,563
Russia	135,823
Rwanda	130
Saint Kitts And Nevis	140
Saint Lucia	279
Samoa	0
Sao Tome And Principe	3
Saudi Arabia	11,562
Senegal	1,041
Serbia	15,319
Sierra Leone	11
Singapore	40,279
Slovakia	27,198
Slovenia	29,110
Solomon Islands	0
Somalia	0
South Africa	25,312
South Georgia And The South Sandwich Islands	0
South Korea	63,166
Spain	376,126
Sri Lanka	3,632
Sudan	515
Suriname	239
Svalbard And Jan Mayen	0
Swaziland	40
Sweden	84,131
Switzerland	103,057
Syrian Arab Republic	868
Taiwan	95,099
Tajikistan	84
Tanzania	365
Thailand	37,849
The Democratic Republic Of The Congo	90
Timor-leste	0
Togo	80
Tonga	24
Trinidad And Tobago	2,337
Tunisia	4,918
Turkey	104,308
Turkmenistan	27
Turks And Caicos Islands	67
Uganda	314
Ukraine	37,713
United Arab Emirates	9,627
United Kingdom	392,405
United States	3,286,549
Uruguay	3,794
Uzbekistan	754
Vanuatu	39
Venezuela	27,384
Vietnam	59,557
Virgin Islands, British	50
Western Sahara	0
Yemen	257
Zambia	227
Zimbabwe	281

 

 

 

Google released the Google toolbar for Firefox 3. This new version adds support for custom buttons, which is one of everyone’s favorite features for the IE Google Toolbar. The toolbar also adds a “Send To” feature. The Send To feature lets you share web pages via email.