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Vertical Search Engines »

With number of websites, blogs and microblogging sites increasing, how effective are broad search engines like Google and Bing? Even with great page ranking algorithms, over time, I believe search results will become diluted. For example, if you type, “Hospitals in Bangalore”, you will probably see results from Google Local first, followed by Google web search results. In fact, you will see almost all the results duplicated. In order for me to get more effective results like hospitals by their speciality or even by reputation, I will probably have to give more keywords to Google. Now let us move to the mobile world, where typing is a pain in the bottom. What I foresee is that more and more vertical search engines will come up in the future, focussing on a particular domain and region. Searching at WebMD will most likely give better search results about a particular medical problem than doing a similar thing on typical search engines.

Another challenge to search engines are “content farms”. You can read more about content farms here. Here is an interesting article on the impact of content farms to search engines.

Google Wave – What is it? »

You must have heard about Google Wave, but you most likely, you are not using it. Like me, you too are probably clueless as to what it does. If so, here is an introductory article on Google Wave, from TechRadar.com. The last question in that article gives you few more links to Wave. Time to make Unosoft start using it

Updated on 12/19/09:

Here is another article on Mashable regarding, “Google Wave’s Massive Potential for Business Users”.

Google URL Shortener »

Google URL Shortener at goo.gl is a service that takes long URLs and squeezes them into fewer characters to make a link that is easier to share, tweet, or email to friends. However, Google URL Shortener is currently available for Google products and not for broader consumer use.

Google Public DNS – OpenDNS »

Google, on 12/3/2009, announced a new DNS resolving service for the public. DNS (Domain Name System) helps in resolving the URL (website address) you type into a IP address. There are other players in this market, like OpenDNS, which is really cool. Google says that because of its infrastructure, its service is faster and more secure.

Google is also in the Advertisement business. So I am not sure what kind of data Google collects whenever we use Google DNS. I am sure it would be tempting for Google to log information related to user usage of the web, like what websites they are visiting etc. But I am hoping that Google will continue to follow its ”Don’t be evil” approach.

You can read more about Google Public DNS here.

New OS from Google – Google Chrome OS »

The web is the platform! Google is introducing a new OS based on the Linux kernel, primarily “designed for the web”. And you are wrong, if you think that we are talking about Android here.

Google is launching a new OS, called Google Chrome OS and this is not targeted at the mobile market. Well, we all know that Google is pretty obsessed in moving our applications to the web. And what else could be a better way than building an OS, that is specifically designed for the web?

Google Chrome OS, from ground up, is built to be secure and fast. Aren’t there times where checking for new emails is quicker and easier on a mobile phone than booting up your laptop? Well, that’s what Google seems to be addressing with Google Chrome OS. It wants to keep the OS lightweighted, so that the boot process does not take too much time.

Before you start wondering on where to download, note that it is not yet PC ready. Google plans to open source the OS later in this year and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.

Well…I do like this development. I am sure I will set up a boot loader, which will boot the Google Chrome OS as the default option. This will make all web based things easy and quick to load. If I really want to load Windows, I could do that too, but it would then be as often as I go to the BIOS…only when I really need to go there!