TechnoSlab

Oracle's API battle against Google is over. Oracle will have to pay Google $1,130,350 in costs for its swashbuckling lawsuit against Google, which it lost big time.

Instead of getting $6 billion, Oracle gets nothing and in addition has to pay over a million in Google's costs. The judge positively sneers at Oracle's argument that they shouldn't have to pay any costs.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120904211545683

Not using Google plus yet? Check out this interesting infographics which lists 20 reasons to switch to Google plus.

DuckDuckGo is a search engine, not as famous as Google but has it's own advantages.
Why you should use DuckDuckGo:
- No search history.
- Instant search results.
- Full and real privacy.
- Clean interface.
- No promoted ad/search results.
- No clutter of Google products.
In recent years, it has gained popularity and is frequently used by people who are very much concerned about their privacy.

Link: DuckDuckGo

These extension, userscript and application will each let you download videos off YouTube.

Extension:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hgcmdnnbdbajadichgiilfhfnenoleno

Userscript:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/62634

Userscript:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/57201

Application:
https://spoi.com/software/yto/


Out of all those, I highly recommend this:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hgcmdnnbdbajadichgiilfhfnenoleno

It's an amazing extension for Chrome that lets you download YouTube videos directly to your PC in various formats like SD, HD and even MP3.

Google drive, Google's own cloud storage solution, is expected to come out next week. Users will be offered 5GB free online space when they sign up which is more than double of what Dropbox offers to it's free users. One could also pay a certain amount to extend this quota, plans are unknown at the moment.
Google drive will be released for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS and is expected to support "desktop folders". It is already seen as a massive challenger of Dropbox. While Dropbox has been around for sometime and has gained popularity, Google has it's own advantages. Google knows how to advertise new products, promote them among it's existing userbase and integrate them into already existing services.
Are you a dropbox user who will happily migrate to Google drive? I will as I'm very excited to check it out and wouldn't mind the free 5GBs. Also I've been loyal to Google for as long as I can remember.

Google has again amazed searchers with a hidden Javascript animation that creates a wonderful snowfall effect on screen when someone searches for this particular phrase "Let it snow" but you must have a modern browser to experience this.
Snow flakes start falling gently, once the screen gets covered entirely with snow, a defrost button appears which can be clicked on to clear the screen or you can simply click and drag mouse pointer to clear specific areas on screen.
Perhaps Google keeps coming up with these Google hidden fun because they spread out pretty fast on social networking sites like twitter.

Chromebook, the notebook that runs Google Chrome OS, is expected to hit Indian markets by early 2012.

“I would be very surprised if Chromebooks are not shipped in India by early 2012. We see India as a huge potential market for us", said Sundar Pichai, senior VP, Chrome and Apps Google.

Currently, you can buy a Chromebook online for $400 ( Wi-Fi only model ) and for $450 ( 3G + Wi-Fi model ) at amazon.

(Click on image for larger view)

Google safe browsing prevents Googlers from entering malicious websites and getting infected. It is a widely used and reliable tool. I was surprised to see Google safe browsing point out Google.com as a malicious domain. The same goes from Yahoo.com.

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=google.com

It's not to be taken seriously but it is indeed very odd. One of the possible reasons for these false positives can be that these sites save some data on a user's PC. What are your views on this ?

Do you use Google all the time ? Most of us do. Chances are that Google is even set as you homepage.
All of use it use Google for searching information and stuffs but do we know everything about Google search ? 

This illustrative presentation throws light on some hidden aspects of Google search that you should be well aware of. For example, did you know that anything you search for, on Google, is stored inside their databases and these search logs can be legally requested by anyone ?

After Youtube's dedicated channel for Bollywood and regional Indian movies,
Yahoo has also launched a similar Indian movie service called Movieplex.
At Movieplex, one can enjoy full length.bollywood movies online without the need of downloading them. It doesn't has a very huge collection of movies right now but it certainly has some best ones that you can enjoy.

Movieplex streams using flash video and doesn't support rtsp streaming like youtube which makes movieplex inaccessible to non flash-enabled devices like iPad. The good thing is that movie streaming is free and all you need is a hi-speed internet connection and this link.

Post your views after trying it out. Happy watching. :)

 1.Increasing space in a text area

You can easily increase more space in a textarea or re-size the text area by dragging the lower right corner of the text area.

2.Jumping to different opened tabs
You can switch the currently opened tabs by using Ctrl + 1, Ctrl + 2, Ctrl + 3 … Ctrl + 9. Ctrl + 1 means the first tab, Ctrl+2 means the second tab and so on. Ctrl+9 takes you to the last tab. In this way, you can easily switch the tabs easily.

3.Viewing installed plug-ins
Different purposes, you download and install several types of plugins. To see what plugins are installed on your computer, just type about:plugins into the address window.Now you will see all the installed plugins in shortly.

4.Most have not seen this, This is a unique feature in Chrome. Shift + Esc is a quicker way to bring up the Google Chrome Task manager. So, use Shift + Esc to access there.
Some of the common useful shortcuts


Ctrl+N : To open a new window

Ctrl+T : To open a new tab in the current window

Ctrl+W or Ctrl+F4 : To close current tab or pop-up

Ctrl+P : To print the current open page

Ctrl+S : To save the current open page

F5 : To reload the current page

Ctrl+F5 or Shift+F5 : To reload current page, ignoring the cached contents

Google Reader Play is a fast, fun way to browse interesting stuff on the web. No more looking for blogs, feeds, or sites - we'll bring the best of the best directly to you via Reader Play. When you use Reader Play, we'll keep track of the items you star, like, or share and show you similar items the next time you visit.
Reader Play uses the same technology as the Recommended Items feed in Reader to identify and aggregate the most interesting stuff on the internet. If you sign-in, Reader Play will be personalized with other items, like stuff that people you’re following have shared in Google Reader, and items similar to things you’ve previously liked, starred, or shared.
Using Reader Play
To begin, visit http://www.google.com/reader/play and click "Get Started." Access more items by clicking the arrow on the right, or simply use the right and left arrow keys to browse. You can also click on any item in the thumbnail preview below to jump straight to that item.

A few things about Reader Play:

* Click the item's title or the associated image to view the original site content.
* Click the "read more" link to view the full feed content for that item, or click the eye icon in the bottom left to switch to always showing the full feed content.
* Tired of manually navigating Reader Play? Click the TV icon to start a slideshow of items -- simply sit back and enjoy.
* Hide the thumbnails at the bottom by clicking the thumbnail icon in the bottom left.
* To customize your experience even more, click the sliders icon and choose different categories that interest you (we'll start showing them immediately).

Reader Play and Google Reader

When signed in, your likes, stars and shares in Reader Play will transfer to your Reader account. If you've never used Reader, or you're not signed in to your account, you can still use Reader Play to browse interesting items. However, keep in mind that you won't be able to like, star, or share items unless you sign into Reader.

Remember, if you've hooked up your Reader account as a connected site in Google Buzz, anything you share from Reader Play will also automatically appear in Google Buzz.

Google might have several online properties but the single most important one it has is obviously its search engine. Almost everyone types in keywords to search for stuff they need online. So how does Google make money? They simply show relevant text ads, which might interest you while searching. Once you click on their text ad, Google makes money. This sort of simple revenue model has created a multi-billion dollar industry.

How does Google knows which advertisement to show you?

That is quite simple, all it does is track your search patterns, thanks to your browser. This allows Google to show newer and more relevant ads to you. This of course increases the chances of people clicking on the ads which subsequently makes Google billions.

If you do not want personalization of ads on your browser, use Keep My Opt Outs Chrome extension, which does not allow collecting data from your browser.

Features of Keep my Opt Outs Extension :

* Many times we get prompted for Chrome permission warnings. The extension still does not allow tracking any of our records.
* This is done by now allowing cookies to be stored from websites. This conforms to web privacy standards.
* We can do this all by tweaking Chrome preferences for cookies or even checking http://www.google.com/ads/preferences for making sure we do not get personalized ads.

Are you someone who does not mind Google tracking your information for showing preferences? Do drop in your comments.