Techipedia

Family. Larry Page’s brother, Carl, helped start eGroups, a dot-com company in the 90s that was acquired for almost half a billion dollars in 2000 by Yahoo. So even if this Google thing hadn’t worked out for Larry, he probably could’ve done alright being part of his brother’s entourage.

   

Backrub. The original name of Google was Backrub. They called it that because the algorithm ranked pages based on how many “back links” a page had.

(screen short of the first version of Backrub)

Stanford. The Google algorithm is called PageRank. You would think it was named after its ability to rank pages but Google claims its named after Larry Page. But that’s not the interesting thing. The interesting thing is that Stanford holds the patent. They were given 1.8mm shares which they sold in 2005 for $336 million. Basically, colleges should encourage the actual developers of their patents to start companies. It pays off.

Extinction. The PageRank algorithm can not only rank pages for search engines but the exact same algorithm can be used to determine which species are about to go extinct. This paper describes it in detail. But basically, a “back link” is similar to “species that another species can eat to survive”. The more “back links” in this sense that a species has, the more likely it is to NOT go extinct. Interesting.

Politics. Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the two richest guys in the country to not make any political contributions. The 20 or so billionaires richer than them all make political contributions. I guess they don’t want to get anyone upset. Google spent more on lobbying last year than Yahoo, Facebook, and Apple combined.

Yahoo. Larry Page and Sergey Brin originally wanted to be academics. They didn’t want to build a business. They developed their initial search engine and then tried to shop it around. They were actually willing to sell it for $1 million in 1997. They went all over Silicon Valley to try and sell their search engine. They went to Yahoo, who turned them down. Later, in 2002, Yahoo tried to buy them for $3 billion but at that point Google turned them down. Now Google is worth $150 billion.

Luck. The “I’m Feeling Lucky” button probably costs Google about $110 million a year. When you click on that button it just takes you to the top search result. In other words, you skip all the ads that Google makes money on. So why don’t they just take that button off? Focus groups apparently show that people feel more comfortable with the button on there. Worth noting that @Google’s first tweet on twitter was: “I’m 01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 01111001 00001010” which means “I’m feeling lucky” in binary.

 

Employee #1. Google’s first employee was a guy I never heard of until today. Craig Silverstein. Apparently he’s still there as Director of Technology. I don’t know what his salary is but he’s worth about $950 million according to various sites. While researching him I came across a weird anti-semitic site that I’m not going to link to. It referred to him as “the jew Craig Silverstein” (it also referred to Sergey Brin’s wedding as “jewgle” wedding) and it was about how the jews control Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc. The funny thing about this particular site is that it had Google Ads all over it.

Beauty. Beautiful Google Earth photos. This is not necessarily an unusual thing but I find Google Earth to be a work of art. Here’s a site that has a collection of amazing photos taken by Google Earth.

Facebook recently launched a new question-and-answer feature that helps supply answers to important questions such as "Where's the best burger in New York City?" or "Which smartphone do you use?" The new feature lets you ask questions of your friends, set up a poll with a limited number of responses, and follow interesting questions asked by others. Questions is now rolling out to all users, but if you want to get started right away you can activate Facebook Questions here. Facebook's new question service has been in limited beta testing since July. 

Facebook Question (click to enlarge)Once it's activated, the new tool shows up at the top of your News Feed as a share option along with status updates, links, photos, and video. There is also an option in the left navigation column so you can see your friends' activity along with results from questions you have asked and answered.

If you want to ask a question, just click on "Question" at the top of your News Feed and ask away.

Facebook Poll (click to enlarge)Let's say you wanted to ask your friends "Which sandwich chain do you prefer?" Just type in the question and then you have the option to set specific answers such as Jimmy John's, Subway, Pita Pit, and so on. You can also decide whether you want to let people add more possible answers or restrict them to a specific set of responses.

When you set your poll responses, Facebook searches for fan pages related to the answers you are supplying. Typing in Subway, for example, connects that answer to Subway's fan page. It's not clear if fan pages will have access to the data generated from answers supplied by Facebook users. Once you're satisfied with your question, just hit the "Ask Question" button and your query will show up in your friends' News Feeds.

Any time someone responds to your questions, you will get a Facebook notification letting you know.

The first time you ask a question using Facebook's new feature, a warning shows up letting you know that Facebook Questions are not private. Questions are visible to your friends, who can also share them with their friends, and so on. In other words, anyone on Facebook could potentially see and respond to questions asked by you. In my tests, my questions did not appear on my publicly available Facebook profile; however, your experience may differ depending on your privacy settings.

Facebook Privacy (click to enlarge)To see how much of your profile is visible to people who are not your friends, Click on "Account" in the upper right corner and select "Privacy Settings." On the next page, click on "View Settings" underneath the heading "Connecting on Facebook." At the top of the next page, you should see a button that says "Preview My Profile." This will let you see how your profile looks to people on Facebook who aren't your friends.

Just keep in mind that even though Questions may not show up on your publicly available profile, the feature is never private.

When you see a question in your News Feed that you want to answer, clicking on the question will cause a window to pop up. You can then choose to select a specific answer or simply write a response as if you were responding to a status update.

Answers (click to enlarge)By default, the response window will also show you how your friends answered the question. But you can also see how everyone else on Facebook answered the question by clicking on the "Others" link at the bottom of the window. To see responses to poll questions, click on the small window with three dots next to each answer. This will show you the answers of people who aren't your Facebook friends.

Again, Facebook Questions is not a private feature, so all actions you take using this service can be seen by others. Do not use Facebook Questions if don't want the world to see your responses.

If you want to follow a particularly interesting question you can click on the "Follow" link underneath the question. Whenever someone else answers the question you will be alerted.

Questions (click to enlarge)You do not have to answer a question to follow it. You can also ask specific friends a question created by you or by others by clicking on the "Ask Friends" link underneath each question.

My question (click to enlarge)To get the most out of Facebook Questions, it's best to be specific in your questions and not ask something generic such as "Am I A Jerk?" As you can see in the included image, generic questions can get passed around very quickly among people who don't even know you. Then again, asking random things of the whole world could end up being half the fun of Facebook Questions.

Yahoo is launching “Search Direct,” and if you know what “Google Instant” does, you'll understand the two concepts instantly. Very similar to the Google service, Yahoo's Search Direct will return an instant, real-time answer to a search query before you can even hit “Enter.”

The feature is already live at search.yahoo.com, but is not currently activated on Yahoo's main page. It can be used to search for around 15 types of data, from shopping and movies to celebrities and sports. Right off the bat, it's possible to use Search Direct to look up weather updates all the way up to basketball stats.

Yahoo claims that it differs from what Google Instant does. The company says, “They're very different products. We're focused on providing answers, not links. Google Instant is focused on providing more links, faster. Not answers.”

The search engine company eventually plans to release the feature on the iPad, and says they eventually want to incorporate Facebook results sometime in the future.

Cisco has released a new report, titled Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2010–2015 (PDF), that explains what happened in mobile traffic during 2010 and tries to predict what will happen in 2015. Cisco is the largest provider of computer networking gear, so the company has an ongoing initiative to track and forecast the impact of visual networking applications on global networks.

Global mobile data traffic grew 2.6-fold in 2010, nearly tripling for the third year in a row. Last year’s forecast projected that the growth rate would be 149 percent, while this year’s estimate is that global mobile data traffic grew 159 percent in 2010.

2010′s mobile data traffic (237 petabytes per month) was three times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000 (75 petabytes per month). Mobile video traffic was at 49.8 percent of total mobile data traffic at the end of 2010. The average mobile network downstream speed more than doubled, from 101 kilobits per second (kbps) in 2009 to 215kbps in 2010. The average mobile network connection speed for smartphones increased from 625kbps in 2009 to 1040kbps in 2010.

The average amount of traffic per smartphone more than doubled from 35MB per month in 2009 to 79MB per month in 2010. Smartphones represent only 13 percent of total global handsets in use today, but they represent over 78 percent of total global handset traffic. In 2010, the typical smartphone generated 24 times more mobile data traffic (79MB per month) than the typical basic-feature cell phone (3.3MB per month).

In 2010, 3 million tablets were connected to the mobile network, and each tablet generated five times more traffic than the average smartphone (405MB per month). 94 million laptops were on the mobile network in 2010, and each laptop generated 22 times more traffic than the average smartphone (1.7GB per month).

The ILOVEYOU virus comes in an e-mail note with “I LOVE YOU” in the subject line and contains an attachment that, when opened, results in the message being re-sent to everyone in the recipient’s Microsoft Outlook address book and, perhaps more seriously, the loss of every JPEG, MP3, and certain other files on the recipient’s hard disk. Because Microsoft Outlook is widely installed as the e-mail handler in corporate networks, the ILOVEYOUvirus can spread rapidly from user to user within a corporation. On May 4, 2000, the virus spread so quickly that e-mail had to be shut down in a number of major enterprises such as the Ford Motor Company. The virus reached an estimated 45 million users in a single day.

The attachment in the ILOVEYOU virus is a VBScript program that, when opened (for example, by double-clicking on it with your mouse), finds the recipient’s Outlook address book and re-sends the note to everyone in it. It then overwrites (and thus destroys) all files of the following file types: JPEG, MP3, VPOS, JS, JSE, CSS, WSH, SCT and HTA. Users who don’t have a backup copy will have lost these files. (In March 1999, a virus named Melissa virus also replicated itself by using Outlook address books, but was less harmful in destroying user files.) The ILOVEYOU virus also resets the recipient’s Internet Explorer start page in a way that may cause further trouble, resets certain Windows registry settings, and also acts to spread itself through Internet Relay Chat (Internet Relay Chat).

One of the first steps companies used to ward off the ILOVEYOU virus was to screen out notes with ILOVEYOU in the subject line. However, hackers quickly introduced copycat variations with subject lines variously identifying “JOKE” and “Mother’s Day!” as the content, but containing the same or similar VBScript code. At least 12 variations have been identified. The most sinister mutation is undoubtedly the one with the subject line containing “VIRUS ALERT!!!” Posing as a virus fix from Symantec, the note starts out with “Dear Symantec Customer.” The attachment (which should not be opened) is “protect.vbs.”

Companies and users are advised to get or update anti-virus software that can help screen for the virus and remove it for users whose systems have been infected. Users are always advised never to open an e-mail attachment without screening it with anti-virus software or knowing exactly who sent it and what it is.

 

Check out more official snapshots of Ipad 2 here.

Facebook has made a subtle but important change to the functionality of its Like button that will transform the way you share on the site and on the Web as a whole.

 

Now when you click the Like button on a third-party site, a more detailed news story link--replete with image--is published with higher prominence on your feed. Previously, your friends only saw a one-sentence link that was easily lost in bustling social feeds.

That means the Like button has the same functionality as the Share button, but Facebook isn't giving up on the latter. Facebook spokeswoman Malorie Lucich told Mashable that the Share button will continue to live, but Like is the "recommended solution moving forward."

While this enhancement simplifies link-sharing, it may present some annoyances. For instance, if you're in the habit of Liking a lot of things, you run the risk of bloating your content stream and irritating your e-friends. Also, certain iterations of the Like button don't allow you to comment on what you favor, so you may be blasting out information sans context.

Since Facebook launched the Like button at last year's f8 conference, over 2.5 million Websites have integrated them, according to Inside Facebook.

Love it or loathe it, the updated Like button gives mo re eminence to third-party links, which should increase referral traffic and boost awareness--great news for marketers.