Your Vote Counts! Doodles by Kids

Google Doodle 4 Google contest in the U.S. Google doodles are the special "dressed-up" logos that Google run on their homepage for holidays and other events, and Doodle 4 Google is an opportunity for one child to have his/her artwork displayed on their homepage as a doodle for hundreds of millions of people to see. This year's theme "What I Wish for the World," and tap into not only children's creativity but also what they want their future to look like.

You can help Google to select National Finalist from 40 regional winners. Your Vote Counts! Just click to the grades and Vote for the Best. Click to the Doodles and amazing Ideas from children. World Peace, Spread Literacy, Save Energy, Be Friendly nations, Stop War, Recycle the future, healthy world, etc are the messages through Doodles. You can even view the State Finalists. Approx 400 Doodles were chosen.

It is unfortunate that children in India cannot . Yet I guess, this will be an inspiration and let our Kids Wish for a Better World - Get them to write or paint and pin up in your School/home/club paste boards. Even you can send to Kidsfreesouls to add to Paste Board section.

Btw, here is Chief Google Doodler Dennis Hwang drawing away the Doodles...It's fun to watch! Also here's last year's Awards for Doodles.

- ilaxi

Google Color filter to Image Search

Google adds Color Filter to the Image Search recently. You can find the changes here on 'Google Images' - All content, drop down box. This means, now you have options to view the images in various colors - Red, orange, teal..and more. Find Image search of kidsfreesouls here.

Under advanced options, Google Image Search already has quite a number of interesting options, including filters for image content type, size, and format.

Several search engines seems to be coming up and I hear, the latest one is Webscaler, Allinone Search Engine. It is connected to more than 1800 search engines in 200 countries and eventually to built a metasearch engine that would integrate all the one million small search engines into a single system which provide instant answers. Webscaler distinguish different from metasearch engines as they focus on smaller search engines as opposed to google, msn or yahoo.

Well, the biggest challenge on web is to stay tuned to the search - and finally, here is Kosmix - you might find it interesting!

- ilaxi

Twouble with Twitters

An Interesting Video! How much do you Twitter? How much you hang on Facebook? My Space, Orkut?

Set up your Time Management before it's Addiction or tooo Late! Follow http://tinyurl.com/5roann on Twitter and stay tuned here http://tinyurl.com/2z6env - Enjoy Life! Keep the Faith.

- ilaxi

Top Blogs 2009

Since quite years, I am quite familiar with many Top Blogs and been randomly visiting some of them while space made way inbetween my workload. Blogs related to Tech are on my top list, followed by Politics and related to my Blog posts.

Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish is a lovely meal and as Time says, can be appointed as 'Country's Blogger in Chief.' The Daily Dish sub head says, 'No Party, no clique'. Andrew's post on 'Why Blog' pose as an Inspiration to many a souls like me and nevertheless, I agree to what he says. "We blog as news reaches us, as facts emerge." For Bloggers, deadline is always now - spontaneous and just not like the Reporters or the Novelist who can pick time and wait for final selection. Blogging is more a free form, you even end up writing personal or share, speak loud your ideas and opinions - no barriers but dedicated daily journal posts and comitted to self. Read the post and maybe you are inspired to Blog if you're not doing so. A blogger has no limits - you Blog or enjoy real life - no hassles.

The Huffington Post , Mashable , Official Google Blog, TechCrunch, Daily Kos: State of the Nation, Gawker are my random visited Blogs but I am surprize I cannot find ProBlogger and I would add this to Best Blog on the web too! Do let me know what you read and like in the comments and maybe, I can find more resources to list here.

Here are 25 Best Blogs 2009 as per the Time Magazine:

Talking Points Memo
The Huffington Post
Lifehacker
Metafilter
The Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan
Freakonomics
BoingBoing
Got2BeGreen
Zen Habits
The Conscience of a Liberal: Paul Krugman
Crooks and Liars
Generación Y
Mashable
Slashfood
Official Google Blog
synthesis
bleat
/Film
Seth Godin's Blog
Deadspin: Sports News without Access, Favor, or Discretion
Dooce
Confessions of a Pioneer Woman
Said the Gramophone
Detention Slip
Bad Astronomy

You can find the 2008 Web Log Awards here. The Best Asian Blogs list Indiauncut and there's more over here.

Follow the winners and find your interests, learning curve and above all, keep informed. Btw, here's my Ed Blog and other blogs. Maybe, you'd like to follow them. Enjoy.

- ilaxi

Twitter Phishing strikes!!!

A big phishing attack hit Twitter users worldwide, forcing the micro-blogging service to advise its users to change their passwords. Phishers are now targeting the microblogging service Twitter to promote a widespread phishing campaign tricking celebrities and other users into submitting their personal information for identity theft and other illegal activities.

On 3rd Jan, it was noticed that many users got direct messages to follow a link but for me, it was a strange way to know Twitter phishing as I noticed the backgrounds of my site changed to Twitter profile background. On finding the source, it read:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitter_production/profile_background_images/3080822/tweetila.jpg
As I checked on this, it is a surprize as to how my Twitter image reached Amazon Developer site! I changed my Twitter bg and my site bg with twitter bg was gone!

http://s3.amazonaws.com/

http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitter_production/

On following Chris Pirillo's Tweet, I realised Twitter Phishing. Could this be a marketing gimmick of Amazon Simple storage service as found in my twitter image url? Or is Amazon (AWS) lack in security? How do they have the Twitter production RSS jpgs of twitter profiles?

All questions are confusing! Maybe the Blogger and Wordpress blogs have good security which is otherwise not in the case of Websites hosted by hosts! in the last 3 days, it is learnt, 33 high profile Twitter users had their accounts hacked. These accounts included President Elect Barack Obama, Rick Sanchez, Britney Spears and other high profile/celebrity Twitter users. And one is Mine! Maybe, these hi profile user list feature in list of http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitter_production/

Read more in Google News on Kidsfreesouls and even follow my twitter.

Twitter has advised all users to change passwords but here's a tip from me, Change your backgrounds too!!!

- ilaxi

Friend Sense - Friend Connect

I was exploring the Developer's Applications and came across Connect Facebook. However, much easier made me pick up Friend Connect as Googlers call in 'Friend Sense' and truly, it is! Google's new product launched recently, is the new social product with it's goal to facilitate an open social web.

All you do is:
Sign in
Interact with others by making friends,
sharing media,
posting comments,
playing games,
more...Invite other friends

You can now Join Kidsfreesouls and Be Social! Join my mission to spread the message of Love, faith, peace and unity among Human beings.

You can watch the video on You Tube here.




Websites that use Friend Connect will have a new option : add Adsense-like advertising within the Friend Connect and Open Social widgets that they’ve added to their websites. Publishers will get a percentage of the revenue generated from the advertising. The users have the profile Information, Friends Information and Activities. You can read more on this post here too on Tech Crunch.

Unlike Facebook Connect, best part is No programming codes for Google's Friend Connect! Just a few snippets of code into the site and there it goes live. But, of course, surfers need to be Open Social and Join. Especially website users and website visitors - coz a lot goes behind joining Google's Friend Connect - Join, experience and Enjoy!

- ilaxi

Google Zeitgeist - The toppers List

Just watched the NDTV show with Mr. Vinay Goel, the Head of Products, Google answering the questions. As I gather, Google has announced its India Zeitgeist, a look at 2008 through the collective eyes of the Indian users on the web.

The 2008 year-end India Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on the year's major events and hottest trends based on searches conducted by users in India.

Mahatama Gandhi is still the number one politician followed by Raj Thakeray , Sonia Gandhi, Indira Gandhi , Rahul Gandhi , Abdul Kalam , Manmohan Singh and Mayawati. It is a surprise, not a single BJP leader’s name figures among top ten political celebrities during 2008. Moreover, Indians have searched more for Sarah Palin and Barrack Obama rathar than any other Indian politician.

Katrina Kaif is the most searched Bollywood celebrity during 2008 followed by Aishwarya Rai , Salman Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Kareena Kapoor, Shahid Kapur, Deepika Padukone ,Shahrukh Khan ,Mallika Sherawat and Genelia D’souza.

Vinay Goel hopes to see Amir Khan among the Khans in the year 2009.

The Internet seems to be the one stop shop for all personal searches like love-beauty-money and romance. Among top 10 popular ‘how to do stuff’ queries are about :

How to lose weight reduction

How to kiss

How to earn money

How to get pregnant

How to learn English
How to gain weight
How to play guitar
How to create a website
How to impress a girl
how to tie a tie.

In sports, Sania Mirza by get first position with Sachin Tendulkar as second , Cristiano Ronaldo third, John Cena fourth, M.S.Dhoni fifth , David Beckham sixth and so on.

Most Popular searches have remained:

1. orkut

2. gmail
3. yahoo

4. google
5. youtube

6. yahoomail
7. indian railways
8. rediff
9. cricket
10. katrina kaif

Fastest rising is You Tube, orkut, Katrina Kaif, cricket, irctc, facebook, genelia d'souza, etc. Mobile optimized websites like Waptrick and mobile games are becoming very popular too.
Facebook login is fastes rising to No.3 among the social networking sites in global list.

In the social networking list categories comes:

1.facebook
2.myspace
3.hi5
4.orkut
5.linkedin
6.nasza klasa

7.netlog
8.mixi
9.meetup
10.odnoklassniki

And on Top of mind comes 'Economy' :

financial crisis

depression
bailout
mortgage crisis
wall street
oil stock market
subprime
credit crisis
housing crisis

You can find more in the Google Zeitgeist 2008 website for detailed list.

So much to go by all these years but who knows what Google show search results for 2009. Could it be Terrorism, war? or Peace! whatever..whatever...

- ilaxi