Google Trends and Desktop

loketyLeave a comment

The Google machine has gave birth to two new/updated services: Google Trends and Google Desktop.

Trends shows the volume of search and news of any topic over time. You could see how often you are mentioned on the web by enterting your name. So far, no one has bothered about me, but why do I still get 50+ spam mail per day?

Search concentration is also sorted city, region and language.

I did a trend comparison between Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Click here. Before Firefox 1.0 was released, interests about the browser increased tremendously. Goes to show what folks are looking for an answer to a better web experience.

Another fun search I did was this. Scroll down and click “Regions”. Yeah, we Malaysians think about it all the time. :)

Google Desktop is a cool nugget of a software that I’ve been missing. It could replace my de-facto way of local searching (Windows+F) and aggregation of news (Serene Klipfolio). On top of that, it has the fancy photo and Google Earth integration. Yeah, you can keep your Mac, I’m still not interested.

I have an idea, maybe some of you may know that it actually exists. How about a Desktop plug-in that analyzes your computer usage patterns (frequency, duration, types of files accessed, speed and pattern of typing) and helps you organize information and pop you new presentations of your data. I’ve always been impressed with the cool crap flying around computer interfaces in movies like Minority Report and I, Robot. I think I’ve read about it before and it is being developed by an upstart using some natural algorithms.

Here are the links:

<URL:http://www.google.com/trends>
<URL:http://desktop.google.com/>

Oh, while you’re fiddling with these goodies from Google, don’t forget to buy a lot or two:

<URL:http://finance.google.com/finance?q=GOOG&btnG=Search>

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Cleaning The World, One Robot At A Time

loketyLeave a comment

If you ever watched Wallace and Gromit or Inspector Gadget, you’ll remember how fun it is to build machines to help you in daily life. Something like Woof the Dog, who not only fetches your newspapers and eats your shoes, but something that can do a chore so that you can relax and rot.

Keeping the house floors clean is a tough chore. You bend down, soak in the humid sweat and dust of it all to whack a stick on the floor to clean it. Now, what if you had one of this?


Meet Roomba, from iRobot. The answer to my laziness and more time for my family and Half Life 2. Only about 2 inches tall, this humble little plastic robot scoots around using two rubber wheels and a whole lot of infrared sensors. Its butt is one sucking machine where the rubbish is stored. Can you vacuum the living room for one hour? Roomba can, and will cover places more than once and where you can’t reach easily without losing a vertebrae or two.

I ordered one American Roomba and have been using it in my 220VAC home for a few weeks. The adapter works with 110VAC, so I had to put a 220/110VAC 80W transformer between it and the wall socket. Both of these components are warm to touch and are quite a messy sight.

If your area has 220VAC, you can either use a AC transformer like me, or replace a capacitor with a higher voltage rating in the circuit board inside. For details, check out RoombaReview.

Now the schedule for Roomba (haven’t got a warm fuzzy name for him) is:

  1. Clean living room daily in the morning after the family goes out
  2. Clean entire second floor every third day in the evening when we return
  3. Clean kitchen twice a week whenever Roomba feels more free

My regular vacuuming has been reduced to keyboards, vertical corners, car upholstery and tabletops. Not too bad for USD200+ :)

Think about it. Wouldn’t life be even more sweet if we had these?

  • Toiletba
  • Showerba
  • Feedba
  • Windowba
  • Nappyba
  • Toyba
  • Moneyba

My vote goes to Toiletba. It will keep me busy as I have my snacks while I’m making the big ones.

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Firefox Into the Sky!

loketyLeave a comment

Firefox 1.5.0.3 is out. Take it and sock it to Mr Gate’s face.

I personally use these extensions. Give them a try here.

  • Adblock Plus
  • Adsense Notifier
  • Download Statusbar
  • Fasterfox
  • Google Web Accelerator
  • ReloadEvery
  • SessionSaver
  • Update Channel Selector
  • User Agent Switcher

Mozilla Firefox is a much better web browsing experience. Just like how you felt when you sit in your colleague’s bigger car.

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