Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Google Moves to Fix Android Leak!

While browsing the web Tej Kohli found this story about a flaw in Google's Android apps. Read on the complete story which Tej Kohli has shared here...

Google is working on fixing an issue with Android phones that could have leaked users' personal data.

It follows a warning from German security researchers that more than 99% of handsets were potentially leaking information. The flaw meant hackers could have gained access to data within the phones' calendar and contacts applications.

Such issues are likely to become more frequent, warned security experts.

Google said in a statement: "We're starting to roll out a fix which addresses a potential security flaw that could, under certain circumstances, allow a third party access to data available in calendar and contacts.

"This fix requires no action from users and will roll out globally over the next few days."

The vulnerability affected the login credentials for some applications.

The ID token that allows people to access the service without the need to keep logging could be intercepted by criminals if they were sent over unsecured wireless networks.

With this token, criminals would be able to pose as the user and get at their personal information.

Security experts have praised Google's quick response to the issue but warned that the huge range of Android smartphones on the market leaves Android devices open to security issues.

"Whereas Apple can issue a single iOS update to patch iPhones and iPads, things aren't so simple for Google's users," said Graham Cluley, a senior consultant for security firm Sophos.

He said users should upgrade to the latest version of Android and avoid using open wi-fi networks.

"Using 3G may eat into your data plan, but it is far less likely that your communications are being snooped upon," he said.

Tej Kohli is an IT enthusiast and loves to stay abreast with latest technologies. Through this blog, Tej Kohli takes opportunity to share all newsworthy technology updates with his readers.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Yahoo Launches Google Instant Like Service, Search Direct

Tej Kohli IT blog brings you latest updates in the IT world. In a counter-attack to Google's Instant Search, Yahoo has come up with its own version of predictive search. Launched several months after Google Instant, Yahoo Search Direct will help searchers find answers (not just links) faster. Tej Kohli blog brings you the detailed report:

Yahoo unveiled Search Direct yesterday, a service that retrieves instant search results to compete with Google Instant predictive search technology.

Yahoo's new search feature will get users search results as they type characters in the search bar, even before they complete a query, hit the enter or visit a search results page, just like Google Instant does.

The objective is to shorten a few seconds from all search queries, enticing users to look up more and of course, see and click on more ads.

During the launch event, Yahoo officials touted the technique as a move to fetch users 'answers' rather than the typical blue links search engine customarily generate.

Right now the technology covers top trending searches, TV, movies, sports teams and players, weather, stocks, local, travel and shopping categories on Yahoo. Other features like popular music and local listings will also be added eventually. Presently in beta for American users only, the service will be available over the range of other Yahoo products and markets later in 2011 .

Direct Search shows the Yahoo's dedication to its users' search experience despite the fact that Bingo, Microsoft's search engine powers its search results under the 10-year contract signed August last year.

Yahoo takes 88 percent of Microsoft's search engine traffic ad sales to power its rival's search engine. However, Yahoo has complete control to experiment on the front end. Tej Kohli thinks that this new feature may help Yahoo reclaim its lost ground.

Google rolled out the real time, predictive search feature for internet users in September last year, which is an improved version of the Google suggest feature that guesses users' query as they begin to type it.

Early on, Instant appeared to boost Google's search market share, but the company has returned to its usual 65 percent search share range. Yahoo, meanwhile, is hovering around the 16 percent market and is losing share as Bing gains.

For more latest updates by Tej Kohli, keep reading this blog.

Friday, December 24, 2010

Tej Kohli Talks About Google's Holiday Doodle

Thursday morning, Google released their holiday greeting doodle which consists of 17 individual interactive images replacing the letters of original Google logo. Tej Kohli gives a detailed overview of this new doodle and its significance.

On opening the Google's homepage today, you will see portraits of scenes around the world. If you click on the first image you are taken to a Google search on St. Basil's Cathedral in Russia and as you saunter through the digital photos, you will be taken on delightful journey to the Great Wall of China, the Sahara Desert, Venice Gondolas ending with “up on the housetop”, a secular Santa Song written by Benjamin Hanby in 1864. Tej Kohli found this doodle concept amazingly attractive and interesting.



Just like the Google September bouncing ball logo, Tej Kohli is speculating a secret hidden message in this logo as well. If you look at the logo carefully, you may notice the blocks roughly arranged to from the word Google. You may also notice that the order of portraits' colors are also in sync with the colors of letters in the original logo i.e. blue, red, yellow, blue green and red.

The logo has been designed by Michael Lopez who has been working on this year's holiday doodle since July, with other four artists who collectively took 250 hours to complete this logo.

In a statement to the Wall Street Journal he said, "We want to end the year with a bang." and Tej Kohli thinks they have indeed done it.

The initial idea was to display the doodle in installments but then they decided that it would be best to out them all together. The logo will be on display till the Christmas.

Looking back at all the doodle's Google has released this year, it wouldn't be wrong to say that this indeed has has been a creative year. From birthdays, holidays and interactive video games, Google has left no stone unturned to reflect its creative streak. Let's see now what they have for the users in the year ahead.

Tej Kohli's this year favorite doodle was the Pacman game, what was yours?

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Bing Surpasses Yahoo in Search!

Tej Kohli congratulates Bing on beating Yahoo! in the US internet search.

In round one of the battle of the search engines, “Bing” defeated “Yahoo”, marking a historic win!
Bing's bounce over Yahoo in the US search volume should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the horse race, but it is a iconic milestone for a small search engine whose major directive is to grab some of the Google's advertising pie.
Throwing Yahoo out of the way, Bing's dream of giving a real competition to Google becomes a little less far-fetched. Bing, together with windows Live and MSN now have 13.9 percent share of all search queries. While Yahoo's share fell to 13.1%, Google still rules the roost with whopping 65.1% share. However, by other metrics, Bing is still at the third position.
Eventually though, the competition is only interesting in the way it inspires competitors to come up with new features and services. The battle between Google and Bingo will play out in three venues:

Basic Search

The recent launch of Google Instant tool by Google, which shows and alters search results as you type, is one example of how search engines will try to trump one another in order to make themselves stand out. The ultimate search results are somewhat same when separated from their interfaces, but there no mistaking Google from the pack now. Whether bingo will follow the footsteps of Google or will do something innovative on its own, is yet to be seen!

Extra Features


It's a pain to use different search engines for different services, hence, it falls upon Google and Bingo to develop the most attractive all-encompassing service that include maps, images and other things apart from the traditional search. Of late, Google has strengthened its real-time search engine to pull better results from Facebook and Twitter. Likewise, Bing has introduced streaming music, games and movie information to its search results. Recently, Bing also updated its Maps to include Cab fare calculator and support for OpenStreetMap.

Mobile


Google has a strong foothold when it comes to mobile searches, since it's a default search engine for iPhone and of course Android. But Bing might get a boost with the launch of Windows Phone 7, along with the Bing's iphone and Android apps. Besides this, the compulsory use of Bing in the Verizon's latest Fascinate phone might not be received well by Google fans, but it will give Bing another helping hand, although forcibly.
 
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Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Google Protocol Buffers

Tej Kohli always discuss technology and enhancement which gives new roadmap and makes a substantial path for moving forward . Tej Kohli recently noticed Technology enhancement offered by Google , Suddenly find that Google now offer Protocol Buffer which having many advantages over XML and might be goggle replaced XML soon in each application , because of its simplicity and fast robustness.
Its might be possible that Google soon replaced XML use and replaced with its Protocol Buffer . Google had announced an open project for a data interchange format called Protocol Buffers. Its work well with different wide range of data format with faster speed and planned own XML application to shipped to Protocol Buffer. Since used XML as a lingua franca to send messages between its different servers, but it is very complicated , because os XML creates large files and makes application slow. Kenton Varda of Google's Software Engineering Team makes remarks over its use and told that “best alternative for exchanging data over network or storing it onto hard drive, its compactness which not in XML and easiness . Imakes developer feel free to use it.
Protocol Buffer allow to define simple data structures in a special definition language, then compile them to produce classes to represent those structures in the language of your choice.These classes come complete with heavily-optimized code to parse and serialize your message in an extremely compact format. Best of all, the classes are easy to use: each field has simple "get" and "set" methods, and once you're ready, serializing the whole thing to--or parsing it from--a byte array or an I/O stream just takes a single method call.
Matt Cutts, remarks that “ Protocol Buffers automatically generates Java, Python, or C++ code: “Basically it’s a compact way for encoding data into binary format . Programmer just right simple description of a protocol or structured data and Google code regenerate a class in C++ , Java or even Python to read, write, and parse the protocol. By the use of this protocol data can be stored in Hard Drive , sent to network and used in very tricky way . This software available with Apache Software License 2.0.
Google had also work over standardize XML compression which make application little bit faster but new invention make more faster than before.
Protocol Buffers
• are simpler
• are 3 to 10 times smaller
• are 20 to 100 times faster
• are less ambiguous
• generate data access classes that are easier to use programmatically
An example, also from the Developer Guide:
let's say you want to model a person with a name and an email. In XML, you need to do:

John Doe
jdoe@example.com

while the corresponding protocol buffer message definition (in protocol buffer text format) is:
person {
name = "John Doe"
email = "jdoe@example.com"
}
In binary format, this message would probably be 28 bytes long and take around 100-200 nanoseconds to parse. The XML version is at least 69 bytes (if you remove white space) and would take around 5,000-10,000 nanoseconds to parse.

Upon a little further reading, here's what Protocol Buffers offer:
- the message itself is a nicely compact definition of names and values
- the "proto" file defines what you expect to see in the message
- the proto is used to autogenerate parsing code in several languages (Java, C++, Python), with methods for get, set, et al.
- the autogenerated parser turns the message into a well-defined object or class
- after parsing, the data in the message is very easily accessed and manipulated
The Google developers don't assert that this is a "replacement" for XML. It's just a better data carrier in many situations. The things that XML claims to be good at are still accomplished best with XML:
- XML is better for describing a text-based document with markup, whereas PB doesn't easily interleave structure with text
- XML is human-readable, and human-editable, whereas PB is squished into binary
- XML is self-describing, whereas PB relies on a proto file to describe the content of a message
What further enhancement be expected from Google , imagine that seems like bullish. But every one have to appreciate Google to moving web technology into next generation. Google is now big giant in Search engine and now sharing near about 60percent of total.