Monday, November 30, 2009

Add Microsoft Bing Translator Widget to Blogs or Websites



Select your preferred language from the Drop-Down box and check the live demo of this cool translator from Microsoft.  Microsoft Bing translator, Microsoft's response to Google Translate.

Recently I had a shared a detailed post on How to Add Google Translate Widget to Blogger Blog. Considering, the bitter rivalry of the two technology giants Microsoft & Google (Yes, now it’s more exciting & bigger than the traditional Coke vs. Pepsi war) I was just wondering what’s the Microsoft’s answer to Google Translate? I was not disappointed by Microsoft, and now I must say the rivalry has definitely served as the fuel for cutting edge innovations.
Google provided a tool Google Translate in 50 languages for translating website or blog content. Microsoft has come up with Microsoft Bing Translator. It’s yet to match Google translate in number of languages supported, but considering it’s a new product, I hope it soon catches up with Google Translate.

Currently, it supports the following 20 languages:
  • Arabic
  • Chinese Simplified
  • Chinese Traditional
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hebrew
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Thai
As you must have checked the live demo of Microsoft Bing Translator at the beginning of this post, You may agree, look and feel is excellent (Of course no one can beat Microsoft in packaging). Color & Width of the widget is customizable. It’s a simple dropdown box where you can choose your preferred language to translate. They may enhance the number of languages supported in near future. Regarding the quality of translation I can’t comment as I don’t speak any of the supported languages. You can give me a comparative feedback on quality of translation of Google & Bing Translate.
I recommend every blog and website should use one of the two translators as it enhances your website/blog’s reach. You may not notice, But It’ll definitely help you in building a good traffic in the long run. Here’s a Click once fully automated installation of Microsoft Bing Translator to your Blogger blog.

How to auto-install Microsoft Bing Translator to blog / website

Google translate definitely scores better when it comes to ease of installation, unlike Bing Translator it doesn’t require any registration. But Bing is still in Beta, perhaps they require registration for testing and feedback. Here are the steps to install Microsoft Bing Translator:
  • Visit Microsoft Translator.
  • Provide your website/blog URL and language in Site info section
  • In Options section you can customize the Color & Width of the widget.
  • Click checkbox to Agree to terms of use.
  • Click Generate Code.
  • Copy the generated code.
This code can be used in any Blog or Website hosted on any platform. Website’s webmasters  can simply paste this code in their respective homepage. WordPress, TypePad and Blogger platform users can paste this as HTML/JavaScript Widget in their respective blog editing tool. 

How to add Microsoft Bing Translator to Blogger blog

Log into Blogger account > Go to Layout > Page Elements > Add a Gadget > Basics > HTML/JavaScript > In Content section paste the code which you have copied from Microsoft Translator website. Here, you can provide a Title in the Title section if you wish.

How to Remove / Uninstall Microsoft Bing Translator

In case you didn’t like it, remove it in the same way as you would remove any other code/widget. For Websites simply remove the code. For Blogs you need to remove the Widget/Gadget.
For Blogger, You can remove it as follows:
Log into Blogger account > Go to Layout > Page Elements > Click Widget’s Edit > Click Remove.
Play around with the free online translation service Powered by Microsoft! Contact Techno-Pulse for any query…

References

Friday, November 27, 2009

Get a Google Wave Invite

Finally, Google has opened the flood gates of invitation. May be by year end every one of us will be surfing the wave. Allowing participating by invitation is one of the most innovative, out of the box, marketing bait by Google. Everyone (including me!) who has got an invitation is spreading the word about it in some way or the other. Till few weeks back there were reports that a few wannabe entrepreneurs were selling Google Wave invitation for a price. Even now few of them are sending invites in return of some favor like promoting their blog or website.

I’ve received an invite from one of my blogger friend, who was kind enough to invite me without asking anything in return. I am on the wave now and I must say Google Wave did make an impression, the so called first impression. Let me explore a bit to check out if it is up to the great hype it has generated during the last few weeks. This is how it looks like:-

Google-Wave-Invite

Want to know more about Google Wave: Read Google Wave: The e-Mail Killer

Need a Google Wave invite/nomination?

Please let me know. You can post a comment with your e-Mail Id. I’ll send a mail to verify if the e-Mail Id is valid. The invitation will be send immediately after receiving your e-Mail confirmation reply. One invitation will make you eligible to invite 8 of your friends on the wave. The number of invitation will increase, once you are exhausted with your 8 invitations.

Happy Waving~~~

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Thursday, November 26, 2009

The Simplest way to Display Subtitles in VLC Media Player

Last week end one of my friends called me to ask a simple query:

I’ve an English movie video (.avi file). I am finding it difficult to follow the movie due to not so familiar accent. How can I display the subtitles/captioning in English or in any other language of my choice in my laptop computer?

He also informed me that he searched but couldn’t follow the instructions as there were so much information presented in a not so user friendly manner. Almost all of them were talking about some unfamiliar terms such as downloading third party codecs, framerates & strange file extension types.

I personally don’t prefer to watch a movie with subtitles until there are compelling reasons as it takes more than half of our focus from the subject of the movie to the subtitles. Yes, we miss the finer expressions and most of the background while trying to keep up with the subtitles. Definitely we enjoy it best when the most important sense organs i.e. eyes & ears are functioning simultaneously! Unfortunately, in case of subtitles only our eyes work. That’s the reason it was primarily meant to help viewers who were deaf and hard-of-hearing to follow the dialog. Same Language Subtitling (SLS) is extensively used in India by national television broadcaster, Doordarshan, with the primary aim to shore up literacy rates in India!

There are at least 100s of ways to watch a movie with subtitles/captioning in different players and in different devices. But for the scenario given above, what’s the simplest way to watch a movie with subtitles?

Here, I assume the following:-

  • No statistics to support, but I wildly guess that most of us have installed VLC media player in our laptop or desktop computers. Its one of my favorite media players and definitely NOT for the sole reason that it’s free.
  • One more wild guess, most of the movies circulated today (though unethical, it’s socially acceptable; it seems!) in public domain are avi / divx files.

Display the subtitles for avi / divx movie in only 4 Steps

    1. Google search for the following keywords: download [your movie name].srt. For example to download srt for Titanic type: Download Titanic.srt. Most popular subtitle provider is OpenSubtitles.
    2. Download the .srt file of your movie from the website of your choice.
    3. Click & play the avi/divx file of your movie in VLC media player (Preferably in the latest version: VLC media player 1.0.2 Goldeneye)
    4. Now simply *drag & drop the .srt file you’ve just downloaded into your VLC media player screen. The subtitles are there. Simple; isn’t it!

If you are finding it difficult to follow the step # 4, here’s a more formal way of doing it:-

    • In VLC media player go to Video > Subtitles Track > Open File > A dialog box named Open Subtitles will appear > Select the .srt file > Click on button Open of dialog box. You’ve successfully attached your chosen language subtitles to your movie.

How to Disable the Subtitles

  • Play the movie in VLC media player > go to Video > Subtitles Track > Disable.

How to solve Out of Sync Subtitles issue

  • Out of Sync Subtitles are a headache. The simplest way to solve any synchronization issue is to find a suitable .srt file for your copy of the movie. It may happen that a single movie is released in multiple flavors based on geographical location. For e.g. Life is Beautiful had 6 releases in 3 different languages. If your .srt file is out of sync with the movie, most often it means that you are NOT using the appropriate .srt file for your copy of the release.
  • The more sophisticated & efficient way to solve .srt file synchronization issue is by using free subtitle editing tool Subtitle Workshop.
  • Provided you’ve enough patience and you love to mess around with the settings of your software, you can explore VLC media player & change settings such as delay/timing, framerate etc to fix the Out of Sync Subtitles issue.

Subtitles support in some other popular Media Players

I am not so sure but it seems whatever is described above can be achieved using WIndows Media Player, RealPlayer, Quicktime as well. In case of Windows Media Player Subtitles means Captioning. The subtitles file format supported may be different for these players. You can drill down for more about these using the following keyword combinations in Google / Bing search to display subtitles in your corresponding media player.

  • Windows media player + SAMI
  • RealPlayer + SMIL + .rt
  • Quicktime + SMIL + .mov [or .txt] `

Optional Info.

.SRT (Speech recognition Technology) files extensions are basically text file containing subtitles used by various media players; supported by AVI, DivX, DVD & other video formats. Apart from the subtitle text they also include the time each subtitle should be displayed. They do not contain any video data. They are very small file of usually less than 100KB. It’s relatively easy to find English subtitles srt file for almost any Hollywood movie. You can also try for French, German, Spanish, Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, Dutch & Russian and few other languages from various websites. For major Indian languages viz. Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi, Guajarati, Assamese and Oriya you can explore the Internet. If you don’t find, why not become an entrepreneur and create subtitle for these languages, makes biz-sense, as the demand for these will be exponentially accelerated considering the furious pace with which Hollywood & Indian movies are transcending the geographical boundaries.

*Drag & Drop: Left click the mouse button on .srt file, then without releasing the left click button pull the file into the VLC player and then release the left click button. In a similar fashion, you can Drag & Drop using Right click as well.

Play your favorite movie in your favorite language subtitle. Let me know of any other simple tip to display subtitles/captioning in other media player. Now enable and disable subtitles as per your need…

Other Interesting Articles

3D TV: Latest Technology Innovation
Funny Images & Contexts to Make You Smile
Wireless Electricity: A Game-changing innovation
World in ‘Word Clouds’: The Story of a Decade

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Add Google Translate Widget to Blogger Blog

Few days back I stumbled up on Matt Cutts’s Blog. If you are into blogging you may have heard/read: “Matt Cutts is a God”. True, Matt Cutts is like a God for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and online marketers. This Google Engineer has the final say in any of the SEO debates about Google search. I found a Google Translate plug in in his WordPress powered blog.
Off-the-track observation: Unfortunate for the Blogger platform as even Google’s crème-de-la-crème is not using his own product!
I liked the features provided by Google Translate. I started looking for a widget/gadgets, So that I can easily add it to my Blogger powered blog. After few hours of search I found that there’s no easy plug-in for Google translator. Indeed there are loads of information on adding Google Translator with respective country’s flag thumbnail but I stayed away from them as it may have significantly increased the loading time of my blog post. I also found many posts prompting me to manually Copy/Paste various HTML/JavaScript code, even a seasoned blogger will mess up his layout.
I wanted a simple dropdown which looked just like what I had seen in Matt’s blog. May be WordPress has it by default as a plug-in. I’ve no clue.
Update: Now you can also use Microsoft's Bing Translator Widget to your Blog

I browsed through Google’s advanced use documentation and assembled the code to create a single click fully automated installation of the Google Translate, directly from this post to your Blogger’s blog. The impatient ones can directly scroll to the end of this post to click and install it.
What Google Translate can do?
It can translate a web page into your chosen language with a single click within a few seconds!
How many languages are supported by Google Translate?
As of now 50 languages.The list of supported languages follows:
  • Afrikaans
  • Albanian
  • Arabic
  • Belarusian
  • Bulgarian
  • Catalan
  • Chinese (Simplified)
  • Chinese (Traditional)
  • Croatian
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English Estonian
  • Filipino
  • Finnish
  • French
  • Galician
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Hungarian
  • Icelandic
  • Indonesian
  • Irish Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Latvian
  • Lithuanian
  • Macedonian
  • Malay
  • Maltese
  • Norwegian
  • Persian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Serbian
  • Slovak
  • Slovenian
  • Spanish
  • Swahili
  • Swedish
  • Thai
  • Turkish
  • Ukrainian
  • Vietnamese
  • Welsh
  • Yiddish
Why you need Google Translate?
I was thinking I’ll never need it. Cause, English is the only global lingua franca. What percentage of World population speaks English?
If statistics are to be believed the number of people who can understand or speak English is not more than *20%. In India it’s at a meager *8%, if Wikipedia & Indian census data is to be believed. Today the Internet is yet to gain the popularity but it’s at a threshold of becoming the single largest mass medium of the world (Overtaking TV). Perhaps this is the time when the language of the masses will be mandatory for any successful Internet venture. Of course, Google has sensed this opportunity!
*[Statistics Source mentioned in Reference at the end of the post]
How it looks like?
You may’ve seen it in some of the Blogger and WordPress blogs. You can check my blog’s top right hand side column for a look & feel as well as a practical demo. Select any language from the dropdown box and the translated page is instantly available for you. I agree it has some limitations and some of the translations will definitely make you roll on floor laughing but still it’s the best option available for on the fly online translation for your blog or website. May be in due course Google will come up with a close to perfect translator.
How to auto-install Google Translator to your Blogger blog
  • It’ll take 2 mouse clicks and 10 seconds or so to install.
  • Click on the [+Add to Blogger] image button below at the end of the post before References
  • If you’re not logged into your Blogger account, it will prompt you to log into your account. After logging in you’ll find the following interface:
    Add Google Translate Widget Blogger
  1. You can select any of your blog from the dropdown list (if you’ve multiple blogs)
  2. You can addedit the Title of the widget / gadget.
  3. Click the ADD WIDGET button as shown in screen shot above.
  4. You will find the widget added in your Layout > Page Elements > somewhere at the top in side column
  5. View your blog and translate it to the language of your choice.
Note: In above screen shot in Edit Content link, No need to change. But if you are comfortable enough, you can experiment a bit with it. This is the place where customization is needed if you don’t want all the languages to be displayed in the dropdown list.
How to remove Google translator
In case you didn’t like it, remove it in the same way as you would remove any other widget.
Go to Layout > Page Elements > Click Widget’s Edit > Click Remove.
Enjoy playing around with world languages and Online translation, Powered by Google! Contact me for any query…
Now click the following [+Add to Blogger] and proceed for auto-installation of Google Translate to your Blogger blog. Do give me your feedback.

References
Update
Now you can also install Microsoft Bing Translator to your blogger blog. Visit the following link for a click once fully automated installation of Microsoft Bing Translator. Check the following Link:
Add Microsoft Bing Translator Widget to your Blog/Website

Friday, November 6, 2009

Web 3.0: The Intelligent Web

Working in software development has its pros and cons. Many of my colleagues may differ, but I personally feel that of late the cons have outnumbered the pros. Perhaps I am suffering from the grass is greener on the other side syndrome. Something that mitigates my pain, though, is that Search Engines (read Google) are an integral part of any development project. At any given point in time, during different phases of project execution, my myriad searches on Google take me through some unknown territories and very often I stumble upon something fresh and exciting enough to keep me going.

A few months back, in one of these Google expeditions, I came across the term Web 3.0 (or Semantic Web)! Here, I’ll share my understanding of Web 3.0 in simple sentences sans web jargon. Before we proceed further, let me describe the precursors of Web 3.0:

Web 1.0: Perhaps the term was coined after the term Web 2.0 became a popular buzzword in the media and public domain. Web experts now call the hotmail and fully static website era Web 1.0. You and I - and any other commoner for that matter- could only read whatever was presented to us. It was a one way information flow, similar to a school library. For simplicity’s sake, let’s call Web 1.0 the Read-Only Era.

Web 2.0: This newer version of the Web has empowered commoners like you and me as never before. The transition from Web1.0 to Web2.0 was so subtle that many of us didn’t notice the change taking place. Now we can read, write, edit and publish. The power of sharing with the rest of the world is already shaking the foundations of archaic states who try to impose everything but freedom. It has liberated us in a big way. The simplest example of Web 2.0 is this blog, Techno-Pulse. (Other good examples of Web 2.0 are Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, Flickr etc.) Putting aside the time I spend writing, it hardly takes me a hassle-free ten seconds to publish this. l remember the days when to make even a simple change on the web it took loads of genuine effort and co-ordination among the designer, developer and administrator. Let’s call Web 2.0 the ‘Read-Write-Publish’ era.

The best example of the power of Web 2.0 is social media. Though hotly debated, who can forget the role of Facebook and Twitter in the successful execution of Egypt’s revolution of February 2011. [Updated on March 29, 2011]

So, with Web 2.0 we have achieved almost everything on the web, why on earth do we need something more? Read on…

Web 3.0: A week or so back, while going through my Google Analytics account (a handy tool to analyze blog or website traffic), I was surprised to find that someone (probably in the USA) had Google searched for ‘witricity corporation share price’ and my blog had appeared at the #1 position out of 104,000 results. Check out the following screen shot for reference:

Why Web 3.0 Technology? 

(P.S.: The page listing and position keeps changing, dumb/smart Google Algorithm!).

I felt immensely delighted that without investing a single penny on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultants, I managed to break into the number one position in Google search results with my first blog post! (For information to my non-techie readers, apart from scores of dos and don’ts, Google considers more than a few dozen criteria while displaying the page results and their respective positions. )

In the late 90’s, Google saw an opportunity in a niche domain called search and filled the existing gap there, but how much has Google evolved from its early days? The answer is: not much. Consequently, it has become the best example of information overload. Why? Because the above mentioned searcher will most likely click through the first result in the list for his search ‘witricity corporation share price’ and be hugely disappointed because there’s no information at all about his query on that page. The keywords are used in totally different contexts in the two posts. My post has nothing to do, not even remotely, with the share price of Witricity Corporation. Yet there it sat, an irrelevant and meaningless result, right at the top!

  • Ever wondered why Google or any Search Engine, throws at least a million search results for a simple search though may be more than 95% of the results are irrelevant & meaningless?
  • Who clicks for some result page buried down say in 5th or 6th page?
  • Why can’t we have 100, or may be less, precise results?

I shared this story to let you know that Web 3.0 is going to change all that and a lot more. It will lead to a gradual transformation of web from a bit dumb to an intelligent medium. Maybe search engines will say good bye to the keyword search and will embrace the intelligent contextual search. What else does Web 3.0 have in store for us?

Tailor made search: Web 3.0 will make our task of searching easier and faster by not drowning us in a zillion meaningless results. It will provide direct answers to your queries, as if they were put to a consultant who is a thorough professional in his domain. Imagine an Australian tourist lands in Mumbai, India. Something like the following list might go through his or her mind:“I want to go to the nearest hill station that is safe and secure without any bomb blast history (we all want security, why mock them for their security obsession), stay in a budget hotel (thanks to the recession!), have some Chinese food (nearby)in a good restaurant, and, finally, end my day watching a newly released Hollywood block buster. What are my options?”

This is a simple daily-life query. Isn’t it? But present days search engines would require you to break this query into six or seven sub queries and explore each of them one by one, thus drowning you in an ocean of links. Our Australian tourist may need to invest more than two hours of valuable time exploring his or her options.

Web 3.0 will lessen our Australian tourist’s woes. There will be no need to separately type and review multiple queries. Instead, he or she can type the whole query of the above example into one search. The Web 3.0 Info Agents will then ensure that our tourist gets the answers in an organized way.

Contextual Search: This type of search will be more or less same as the tailor made search with a small difference. In above example of the Australian tourist query there are few keywords to note to explain the contextual search. These are without any bomb blast history, budget hotel. Current search engines will interpret these words by exactly matching them in their search.

Yet here’s a gap you may have noticed: For a human brain, the words without any bomb blast could also mean good law and order. Similarly budget hotel could also mean a relatively inexpensive hotel. The Web 3.0 Info Agents will fill the gaps and interpret your query more like an evolved human brain. The Info Agents will collaborate to deduce the best possible answer for your query, i.e., deductive reasoning will be employed at the machine level.

Personalized Search: The Web 3.0 technologies will be intelligent enough to read and understand your personal preferences. Every web user will have her or his Unique Web Profile based on her or his browsing history. What does this mean? Suppose you are a vegetarian and you’ve queried “Which restaurant should I visit for lunch”. Your colleague sitting beside you, who loves mutton biryani, has queried the same.

What will happen? Each of you will get different search results based on your respective Web Profiles (i.e. preferences). This is personalization. (Critics may claim it’s also an attack on your privacy!)

Interoperability: Web 3.0 applications attempt to be easy to customize and device independent, i.e., they can run on all sort of computers, hand-held devices, TVs, automobiles, microwaves, cloths or whatever. Pervasive Web is the term used to describe this phenomenon, where the web is reaching a wide range of devices.

Transforming the Web into One Big Database: Experts believe data records can be published in a [remotely query able design], which means they will be openly available and linkable as web pages. This may lead to application integration. I am not sure about its implementation, but I assume it might be something like if you’ve an Orkut account, you can safely access the Facebook database to find your friend and view his details. Perhaps there will be no need to register with dozens of social networking web sites to keep up with your friends. Or is my assumption too optimistic and unattainable?

Evolution of 3D Web

After the massive application of 3D in gaming softwares, the 3D technology will be heavily integrated in future applications to let you experience the virtual world, be it a visit to Agra to virtually and calmly contemplate the world famous Taj-Mahal, or be it experiencing the mad rush hour traffic of Mumbai local trains. Welcome to the virtual world, right at your desk!

Web 3.0 will also perhaps lead to an explosive growth in number of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) applications. The W3C defines SOA as “A set of components which can be invoked and whose interface descriptions can be discovered and published”. Let me simplify it: Suppose I develop an application to convert meter to centimeter. I’ll call this application conversion-service and host it somewhere on the web. Another programmer sitting in some corner of the world can easily discover and consume my service by just writing a simple client application. No need to write the conversion logic again. A Plug-and-Play environment!

Some Web 3.0 Jargons if you want to dig deeper:

Semantic Web (almost same as Web 3.0), Ontologies, Inference Engines, Info Agents, Artificial Intelligence (AI) etc.

How much time before the proposed marriage of Web 3.0 and Artificial Intelligence occurs?

This marriage has already begun. Yet, if we compare what was promised and what has been delivered, the match has not been so impressive. May be we need to wait and watch for a year or so to experience some of the truly wow features of Web 3.0 technologies.  But I think the transition has already begun:

There’s a search engine (they call it Computational Knowledge Engine) named WolframAlpha which can answer your queries precisely. Check the following examples:

  • Which is the longest river in the world?
  • How many states are there in the USA?
  • Who is the PM of India?
  • What is the distance of the Taj Mahal from New Delhi? (Below image)

Distance-Taj-Mahal-New-Delhi 

It can compare people, universities, companies etc. For instance, you can have quick facts about Mahatma Gandhi, Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela in a tabular format, as shown in the following screen shot: Compare-People

You can compare Companies:

  Google-vs-Microsoft-vs-Apple-Amazon

Those averse to math, take heart! It can also solve a Polynomial Equation (Mathematics) for you.

Simply enter the following in search box:

Solve x^3 - 4x^2 + 6x -24 = 0

The following screen shot shows the solution:

Solve-Mathematical-Equations-Online

WolframAlpha can also answer a few of your Physics, Chemistry, Music and Sports questions. But it is still, of course, evolving.

Do you like this article? Feel free to promote it on Facebook and Twitter. Spread the word about it. Do you know about any other web 3.0 service? Please do share it in the comment section.

References:

Zimbio - Interactive Magazine

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Funny Images & Contexts to Make You Smile

I compiled my list of the top 11 latest funny images & contexts to make you smile. It’s a countdown starting from Smile # 11. It simply means, as you go down your smile should get wider to transform itself into an LOL, provided you’ve that subtle sense of humor though! #11 & #1 are conceived by me. Excuse my shallowness, Rest in the list are borrowed but due credits have been provided where ever applicable. Smile Please …

#11.

Funny Images Contexts to Make You Smile Nobel Peace Prize 2009

For the records: The 20th century legend who was undoubtedly the synonym of non-violence was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1937, 1947 & 1948. Unfortunately, he was never awarded. The Nobel Foundation has dedicated a web page explaining why History's most famous pacifist is probably the peace prize's most famous omission.

#10.

Funny Images you laugh out loud

#9.

Funny Images Contexts Make You Smile Social Media

#8.

Funny Images Contexts Make You Smile Cellphone population

#7.

Funny Images Contexts Make You Smile Ringtone

#6. Govt. of India Unique Identity Project

Funny Images Contexts Make You Smile UID India

#5.

Funny Images Contexts Make You Smile Celebrity Blogging

#4.

Funny Images Contexts Smile microsoft vs Google rivalry

#3.

Funny Images & Contexts to Make You Smile blogger vs layoffs

[#3. Credit: Time to look busy by Jessica Hagy]

#2. As per Dictionary the word ‘LOSER’ means:

1. Someone who has never or seldom been successful at a job, personal relationship, etc.
2. A person, team, nation, etc., that loses
3. Someone or something that is marked by consistently or thoroughly bad quality, performance.

Now, type (or Copy/Paste) www.loser.com  in your browser address bar. Don’t try it in this page, try it in a new window.

[#2. Credit: Harsh]

#1. I feel this is the ultimate one as it’s related to one of the most admired global brands. Once upon a time having a Gmail Id was a sort of ‘status symbol’. Now everyone is having it. You can do a simple exercise in your spare time. Log into any of your e-Mail accounts (viz. Yahoo, Hotmail, Rediff, Live or Gmail) Now, suppose your Gmail ID is abcxyz@gmail.com then send an e-Mail to abc.xyz@gmail.com.

Who will receive this e-Mail?

Not you. So, simple.

Right?

Un/fortunately, You’ll receive the e-Mail in your Gmail Inbox.

But, you may need to do it practically to believe me.

Now Let’s do one more simple Gmail hack

1. Open www.gmail.com.

2. If your Gmail account USERNAME is abc.xyz then type it as abcxyz. (If it’s abcxyz then type it as abc.xyz) in the USERNAME textbox.

3. Type your Password.

Surprised!

Cause, You’ve safely landed into your Gmail account.

The Bottom-line: Gmail doesn't recognize dot ( . ) as character within usernames, you can add or remove the dots from a Gmail address without changing the actual destination address. You add or remove any number of dots anywhere in the address, it doesn’t care at all. I found this accidently as I was receiving someone else’s mail. I dig further and got ‘enlightened’ with this chanced discovery :-) May be I’ll share the whole story in some other post.

Now you must have known for yourself why www.loser.com is redirected to www.google.com.

Keep Smiling…

And do share any of your smile & ‘Laugh out Loud’ moments or any funny context you came across. Also let me know which one is your favorite among the listed 11 here.