Category: Nitish Kumar

Nitish Kumar, Born at Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, India on 23rd September 1982. Serving as Sr. Server Administrator in New Delhi. Hobbies include Writing, Sketching, Photography, Movies, Travelling and still Computers on the top. Interesting in blogging started with Indian Idol 2, which later on matured with time and the blog converted to host kind of different movie reviews and tech comments.

Google Transliteration

“ Dec 17, 2009, Google launched it new and improved version of Transliteration, which will remain available via labs and on http://www.google.com/transliterate. In this new version, you can select from one of seventeen supported languages: Arabic,Bengali, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Persian, Punjabi,Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. You can also compose richly formatted text and look up word definitions with our dictionary integration. If the default transliteration is not the word you wanted, you can highlight it to see a list of alternatives. For even finer-grained control, Google has provided a unicode character picker to allow character-by-character composition. ”

Google Transliteration was first introduced to me by one of my colleague Prashant Shukla few weeks back, while working over a regional requirement, then it was Google Labs feature in beta phase. For late joiners of this new technology, let me start with Introduction of Google Transliteration.

transliteration_logoIn daily life, everyone of us might have encountered with issues of regional typing as widely spread keyboards are roman script based only. Google and many other providers decided to tackle the same problem by making it very easy to type phonetically using Roman characters. Using Google Transliteration you can convert Roman characters to their phonetic equivalent in your language. Note that this is not the same as translation — it’s the sound of the words that are converted from one alphabet to the other. For example, typing "hamesha" transliterates into Hindi as: Hindi transliteration example, typing "salaam" transliterates into Persian as: Farsi transliteration exampleand typing "spasibo" transliterates into Russian as . Since the initial launch with Hindi only, Google have been hard at work on improving quality, adding more languages and new features.

“ You already seen this feature as part of your orkut or gmail experiences, if have noticed it. The same feature is just becoming full fledge and standalone now with a new effective and efficient interface. Google Transliteration is integrated into several Google properties and Google also have an API and bookmarklets to extend this capability to other websites. A solution initially built to solve a problem in India is now being used in many other parts of the world as well. “

Google has also launched an amazing offline tool based on the same technology but without using internet at all, named Google Input Method: IME. I have used it and it works in really really cool way. Check out the following snapshot

transliterate

You just need to type phonetically and it will keep on translating it in Indian Language, you might have selected, just in way, you were using the same service online. Do you really think that regional typing will ever be burden again? 🙂

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New Orkut for everyone without invite

“ Dec 17, 2009, from today Orkut has opened its new interface for everyone. Till now, it was available by invitation only basis, later they increased the number of invitations per users and now removing the need of invitations at all. ”

So, now no need for waiting for invitations, just click the button “Try New Orkut” on top of your profile and enjoy the new faster face of Orkut.

“Just wondering when the same going to be started for Google Voice and Google Wave :P”

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http://nitishkuma.wordpress.com
http://scifireviews.wordpress.com
http://nitishkumarsays.blogspot.com

Google Wave – need invites?

Look like I am again late about Google Wave. May be the reason is there are lesser known people inside and not many online on wave to talk to for the same reason. People like me might not be logging into their Google wave account just because they feel that they might get disappointed again by not getting more names in their friend list. After logging into it today, I found the situation been changed a little. Google wave has been opened up more.

wave_thumb

“ Since Dec 07, 2009, Google has not only given one more million Google Wave account to people requesting for them, but also has increased the number of invitations, one could send out for others. Although the exact count is not specified, but I think it must be 17 more invites added in your box, where it was 8 initially. ”

wave

Anyone, who is yet out of luck with Google Wave Account could get it from me by making a nice critic comment here on this post. Obviously, not everyone will get invites, but I have 24 invites in my bag to give out. May be your words get lucky.

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Get organized with Google Sync

Here comes, I am to discuss about its another feature, Google Sync; which has been launch since long back in Feb 09, but as I myself was not using the same, so wasn’t that aware of.

 google-logo  sync

“ How many times, you take backup of your phone contacts in fear of loosing your phone some day? How many times, you think that you should start taking backup of your calendar entries as well? How many times you been in a situation that you were not sure about that in which cell-phone you saved new friend’s number? How many times, you missed someone’s anniversary or some urgent appointment, just because your cell was switched off and you were much busy on internet and forgot? ”

The situations might be plenty, but the solution is the plain and basic one (probably everyone of us might have imagined): A single place to sync your contacts and calendar entries from your each cell-phone. Moreover, as per ideal Backup conception, that ‘single place’ should be far enough from your actual data like Internet itself means a place, where you could upload your contacts safely and which may be in two way sync with your phone all the time, so that any changes made at any side could be preserved and replicated to all in sync. Sure, there is such a place and such a service now: Google Sync.

Google Sync allows you to get your Gmail contacts and Google Calendar events on your phone. The sync works in two-way means any changes you make to your calendar or contacts from browser or phone will be reflected on all other devices sync with same Google account. For all these devices, synchronization happens automatically over the air without having to manually sync your phone. With the setting, Connection is always ON, your information is always up-to-date, no matter where you are and what you’re doing.

“ Sync of calendar also adds one more angle in remembering important events as from your phone, you could set it to give you alarm in every 10 mins and from your Google Calendar, you could set it to send you email in every 10 mins. Means you important event details (anniversaries, birthdays, meetings etc.) is always online with you, whether your phone is with you or not. Not to mention, the two way sync will allows any changes you make either side, get replicated on all the devices. ”

Getting started is easy. You can configure Google Sync directly from your device. The instructions and capabilities vary for different phones, so better check out for Help Center for device-specific information. Also, please keep in mind that Google Sync will replace all existing contacts and calendar information on your phone, so make sure to back up any important data before you get stated. To try Sync, visit m.google.com/sync.

“ If you have an always on GPRS connection with unlimited usages or working somewhere having wi-fi internet enabled freely for your phone, then don’t miss this feature. Its really kind of much have addition to someone’s tech life. You will never loose your contacts, your management of events will improve, you would be able to use all your phones without worrying that someone’s contact is saved in it or not, moreover, Google contacts will be available with you with their Gtalk snaps.”

Note: For Nokia S60 mobiles, you are needed to download and install an application named Mail for Exchange, which is of 1Mb around. For other devices, visit m.google.com/sync and find the instructions.

“ My blog is being updated with Google things only in now days. May be the reason, I am part of that poor community that don’t own an iPhone yet, not even a Black Berry, neither much involved with Twitter buzz. So, Layman’s Technical buzz is being centered around only Google now days and it really seems true that Google is kind of taking over the internet. At least at this point, Google really deserves. ”

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Google: The Mission 2009

Although still the year not over yet and who knows that if Google still has many things in its bag, but as my recent many articles have gone in updates from Google, I was really serious about compiling a list that what made news for Google in year 2009, but look like, I was not needed to take that pain as Lifehacker already has compiled the list for me early on.

Google’s 2009 Product Release Calendar

This has been a pretty busy year for Google and back-to-back announcement from Google really came to our life better and better. Take a ride through the last four seasons at Google in this list of 2009 product releases and updates, listed in chronological order, month by month.

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

All credits for this post goes to Life Hacker. I am just taking article from them to convey the info to readers.

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Merge Duplicate contacts in Gmail

“ Dec 15, 2009, Gmail added a new feature to its contacts module, which lets one to remove every single duplicate contact entry at once from his Gmail contacts. I means to say that if you have many email ids saved against same person name and same email IDs saved more than once, then it consolidates them at once and so saves a lot of your tedious and time consuming manual work. ”

gmail logo

Managing a big address book can be a challenge, so it’s no surprise that the top request for Google contacts is a fast, easy way to merge duplicate contacts. So, here comes Gmail again with its unique innovations with your emailing experiences. Did you remember that when you started with Gmail, then what was special about contacts? They were being added automatically once you reply to any of their mail. Its been a nice feature. There were more related to contacts, like importing addresses from contacts of other email addresses, importing contacts from csv and many other means to make your contact list grew bigger and bigger.

You are sure not that worried from the bigger size of your contacts due to innovative and efficient auto-complete feature of Gmail, but for most of us, to avoid confusion, while mailing or for people, who like to keep them organized, this is a very very welcome idea of having a one-click-merge-button, otherwise it was a just one-by-one process. The implications are more real for those, who might have started syncing their phone contacts with their Gmail account.

Gmail-merge

The basics of how it works is quite simple. This new system runs  a simple scan on your contacts and the one button solution merge the information for each duplicate contacts. It’s a non-destructive method, so you are not going to loose any contacts, but if you have organized your Contacts in some certain way, then only you have to check whether the new system suiting to your method or not.

“ This feature is sure targeting users thinking to make use of Google Sync and will be sure handy for most of tech-savy people.What’s interesting is that why such a delay in announcing such a feature, when Yahoo and Hotmail have given similar long back in 2007 only?”

photo of Nitish KumarNitish Kumar
https://nitishkumar.wordpress.com
http://scifireviews.wordpress.com
http://nitishkumarsays.blogspot.com

LinkedIn now with Faceted Search

Look like Recession really has plugged in some great innovations back on track. Scared from apparent downfall of Facebook and MySpace, almost all the social media sites are on revamping of their interface and features. Here is the another update from LinkedIn: The Giant Business Networking Site.

linkedin

“ Dec 14, 2009, Esteban Kozak from LinkedIn announced the release of another huge improvement to LinkedIn’s people search experience, “Faceted Search”. “Faceted Search” offers dynamic filters that are automatically generated based on your actual query results. These filters let you quickly and easily hone your query over 50 million LinkedIn profiles based on 8 facets: current company, past company, location, relationship, location, industry, school, and profile languages. ”

The concept is based on the fact over what all the network sites were once based upon. “Finding the people, what you exactly wanted to find”, thus improving the technique of searching people faster and efficiently.

Now, how this “Faceted Search” works: As you search for something or someone, this technique automatically generates search filters, based on your query results, which lets you quickly refine your search. Check out the snapshot attached below, find the all new “Refine By” module there. This is what we are talking about.

linked

Currently these filters are based on 8 facets: Current Company, Past Company, Location, Relationship, Industry, School, Groups and profile languages.

“ In practice, it really makes your search queries more efficient like you need to search for an engineer in NCR (Location), has great interest in .Net technologies (Groups), who speaks english and hindi (Profile Language), have working/ worked for TCS (Current/ Past Company) and either in my friend list or in friend’s friend list (relationship). As the LinkedIn implementation is, the search results adapt the filter quickly and thus makes the entire process quick and effortless. ”

As their blog says:

Faceted Search offers the following benefits to your search experience on LinkedIn:

  • Enables True Guided Navigation: A list of filters are generated dynamically for every search in order to guide you through the optimal path to find the most relevant people
  • Provides Intuitive Interface: Refining your search is easier than ever with an intuitive user interface that allows you to slice and dice search results by 8 facets
  • Improves Precision: As LinkedIn continues to grow by the millions, increasing search space requires increased precision to help you find exactly the right people
  • Increases Efficiency: Find talent, business partners, customers or a former colleague faster than ever before.
  • Reduces Need for Complex Queries: It significantly reduces the need for complex Boolean queries. This was a particular need we heard from many of our power users.

Here is the official video of the same feature :—>

While this is going to make work smoother for people, who were taking help of LinkedIn Connections for their businesses, here I am just wondering on the basis of Google’s Launch of Goggles that when this limited feature to Android only, will be released to other platforms as well and we will have capability of searching someone by his/ her face only in Google Search or Orkut search (already picasa started name tags). Its pretty possible technology and its very about time, when Google must have launched the same. Waiting for that. 🙂

Till then you enjoy video about Google’s Goggles.

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