Search Engine by Apple?

Rumours are floating around that Apple may be building a search engine. As per tech crunch, the rumour may not be true as they have not seen any search companies losing their employess to Apple.

Gmail with Video chat

Google has added the video chat feature to their fast growing popular Gmail application.


In order to access Gmail Video and Voice Chat, users have to install the voice and video plug-in and Google takes care of the rest.

Google and the Gmail team are in the initial stages of rolling this feature out to PC and Mac machines, which means the functionality may not appear right away. But don't worry, the Gmail team guarantees that the functionality will be available to everyone in the next couple of days.

Vonage settles dispute with Sprint

Wireless telecoms carrier Sprint Nextel and Internet phone company Vonage said on Oct. 8 they had settled a patent dispute and entered into a licensing agreement.

A federal court jury found in September that Vonage had infringed Sprint patents and ordered Vonage to pay $69.5 million in damages.

Vonage said the agreement is valued at $80 million. Sprint will license its technology, which helps connect phone calls between Internet and telecoms networks, to Vonage.

New features from Google Docs and Spreadsheets

Here are some cool features from Google for their Docs and Spreadsheets application.

They say they have focused more on the following areas.

Looking pretty
Getting organized
Search that thinks ahead


Looking Pretty - Yes, you can see the difference as soon you enter. It is a lot more easier to view the contents and looks pleasant too.

Getting organized - The much awaited folders option are available now. Interesting thing is it act as a tag too!!! I defintely love the drag & drop option.

Search that thinks ahead - The search has become more or like the Google Suggest. As you start typing you start getting the suggestions based on the file names you have saved already in your account.

All these new features defintely add value to makes life even more easier for the users.


More details here

Google Calendar gallery

A new feature has been introducced to the Google Calendar application. Using Google Calendar gallery, you create, share and save your favorite upcoming events directly in Google Calendar.A lot of popular events have already been shared by a few people or companies. NBA, Disney, TLC Channel are among those few.

Click here more details

How to improve Alexa rank?

Popular blogger Maki at doshdosh.com has come out with 20 different ways to improve one's Alexa rank.

Some of them are quite obvious and straight forward like ...

1. Install the Alexa toolbar
2. Put up an Alexa rank widget
6. Write or Blog about Alexa

While there are few, well thought innovative ones ...

9. Use Alexa redirects
10. Post in Asian social networking
18. Pay Cybercafe owners


Maki's post contains a very good introduction about Alexa Rank and why would someone be interested in it? The blogger has also explained it simple terms on how to get started with Alexa. There is also section which talks about the problems and credibility of the ranking system.

Check it out for more details

Google Page Rank is just one of the factor

Danny Sullivan of search engine land has come up with an excellent article about Google Page Rank. he starts with the basic facts about page rank.

In a nutshell, it considers links to be like votes. In addition, it considers that some votes are more important than others. PageRank is Google's system of counting link votes and determining which pages are most important based on them. These scores are then used along with many other things to determine if a page will rank well in a search.

Danny goes on to say that Google is somewhat qualifying that PageRank is important but not the sole factor in how pages are ranked.

He supports this fact by illustrating with an easy example.





In the above result, you can see that Movies.com which is listed first has a PR8 score while the Internet Movie Database listed second has a PR9. The page with a lower PageRank still got the higher search rank!


Here are some more interesting points at the end of his article.


PageRank tells how important a page is, relatively speaking, compared to other pages.

PageRank is just one of MANY ranking factors used to determine ranking in search results.

High PageRank does NOT guarantee a high search ranking for any particular term. If it did, then PR10 sites like Adobe would always show up for any search you do. They don't.

The anchor text of a link is often far more important than whether it's on a high PageRank page.

If you really want to know what are the most important, relevant pages to get links from, forget PageRank. Think search rank. Search for the words you'd like to rank for. See what pages come up tops in Google. Those are the most important and relevant pages you want to seek links from. That's because Google is explicitly telling you that on the topic you searched for, these are the best.