Google toolbar is a plug-in developed by Google for the most popular web browser Mozilla Firefox. It’s providing set of comprehensive features for the user to give them beyond traditional browsing experience. It will appear below the bookmark tool bar and will contain quick access to various features including quick access buttons, social media sharing, Google Sidewiki, Google Bookmarks, Google translate, AutoFill and many others. In addition to that it provides a search box which is highly customizable according to the user’s requirement. It help the users to manage the web history is an easy way and those features will appear once the new browser tab opens.

Getting Started

Install

Google Toolbar is proving highly user-friendly installation process which is totally automated. Visit this URL using your Firefox browser to install the Google Toolbar. In order to install you have to have Firefox 2+ version and Windows XP Service pack 2+ version. Click the button ‘Install Google Toolbar’ to proceed with the installation process. In the next page click ‘Agree and Install’. As a security measure Firefox blocks third party installation script. Due to that you might have to ‘Allow’ the installation explicitly. In the next pop-up window click install and then Firefox will do the rest for you. Finally click ‘Restart Firefox’ to make the Google toolbar activated.

Configure

After you restart Firefox Google tool bar will be displayed just below the bookmark toolbar with default configuration. To get the maximum result out of the plug-in you can do some configurations. In order to do that, you can click on the ‘Adjust Google Toolbar Options’ button in the right side of the Toolbar. In the ‘Google Toolbar Options’ window you can do various changes. Most importantly you can select from where your search suggestions should come from in search tab. In the same tab you can select Gmail as your default search engine if you like. In the tab ‘Tools’ you can select what you need to appear on the toolbar according to your requirement. Google PageRank and Google bookmarks would be a good selection in here. In the sharing tab you can select the social networks where you share content while you can add quick access buttons in the next tab ‘Buttons’. The tab ‘Layout’ is giving you an option how Google toolbar should appear in Firefox. In here ‘replace Firefox search box’ would be a appropriate selection. Next tab is very important why there you can add your personal information to work with the AutoFill functionality.

Features

Search

You can sign in to Google by clicking the ‘Sign in’ button at the right side of the Google Tool bar. They you can access your configured semantic search by typing your desired keyword in the search box at the right side of the Firefox main tool bar (Assuming you selected the option ’Replace Firefox search box’). When you are typing keywords it will give you suggestions according to the geographical target you gave in the configurations. In addition to that it will give you your frequently search results from your web history and Google personalized suggestions for you according to your search interests. You can clear your search history by clicking ‘Clear Search history’ in the dropdown menu in search box. In the case you need to change the default search engine you can click the drop down button next to search box and select desired search engine out of that list. Once you enter the search query the result will appear in the Firefox tab. The list of keywords entered will be displayed on the toolbar and by clicking on them you can highlight them one by one. There is a toggle highlighting button to highlight all the keywords in the page.

Tools

In the left side of the tool bar there are set of buttons which will help you to access important web resources with just one click. You can always configure the behaviour of those buttons by accessing ‘Google toolbar options’ or directly by clicking ‘Add Buttons and Widgets’. The icon of Gmail will show you whether you have any new emails if you are logged in to Google. Using the share button you can submit the currently browsing content to your Social network or Social Bookmarking site. The list of social network can be edited by clicking ‘settings’ at the end of dropdown menu. The next button is SideWiki. It’s an interesting feature introduced by Google where users can writer wiki entries about the currently browsing page and every one will be able to read those. This will be helpful to get a idea about the quality of the page. Additionally there is a space to display ‘Google PageRank’ of the currently browsing page which is a also a page content quality rank.

Google Bookmarks

Google Bookmark is a very easy way to manage your Bookmarks and access them from anywhere in the globe. Previously there was no way to add a Google bookmark without accessing its web interface. But with Google toolbar you can bookmark currently browsing page with just one click on the button ‘Bookmark this page’ and as long as you are logged in to your Google account. By clicking the dropdown button ‘Bookmark’ you can access all your bookmarks. In the same dropdown menu you can access and manage your bookmarks in Google bookmarks web interface by clicking ‘Manage all’. In addition to that it provides facility to bookmark all the tabs with one click. If you feel like your bookmarks are not updated try clicking ‘Refresh’

Google Translate

Google translate is a exceptional web based service provided by Google. You can enter a phrase to the web interface and get it translated to various languages with one click. In order to make the process even easier Google toolbar has a translation component which can translate the currently browsing page with one click right on the same page. In order to proceed with this you can click on ‘Translate button’ and it will give dropdown message. Once you click translate in there you can select the desired language and get the page translated within few seconds. You can go back to original by clicking the button ‘Show original’. This is one of the most important and interesting feature in Google Toolbar.

AutoFill

While you browsing web there are so many data entry forms to fill specially in registrations. You can fill those forms with one click using this feature AutoFill. In order to do that you have to enter your personal details in the form in AutoFill section Google Toolbar Options. In addition you can find this from the dropdown menu in AutoFill button. In the case you need to manage different sets of information you can use profiles for that. Most importantly you can save your credit card details also in here. In order to provide security to your financial details you can add a password for that.

Additional Notes

Google toolbar is providing wonderful combination of features and facilities in order to give a wonderful browsing experience to the user. However there is no official release of Google toolbar for Google developed browser Chrome. Google chrome is the fastest browser and lots of internet users are waiting to use Google toolbar on Chrome. Let’s have a hope that Google will develop their Toolbar for Chrome as well. The Google toolbar having frequent updates and they will be notified to the user by Firefox. The updating process is totally automated and it only requires user’s conformation. Install Google toolbar now and have a nice browsing experience.

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Rich Internet Applications are internet applications which can act as software which is installed locally on your computer. Experts call this is the next trend of the business applications. But I can’t call it next, because almost every one using them everyday even without knowing. What are those really? The answer is very simple.

• Google Products
  • G Mail
  • Calender
  • Reader
  • Maps
• Yahoo Mail
• Facebook (Partially)

Normally a traditional web 2.0 web site refresh on every dynamic change. But rich internet application never refreshes the whole page. Look G mail, once you go in there, read e mail, compose or edit settings. It refreshes only the necessary section of the web page. So in there user can’t see a “Flicker” on every change on the web page. This is the main goal of creating rich internet applications. Furthermore it utilizes the bandwidth and provides smooth browsing experience to their user. In other words, user doesn’t feel that he is browsing. It acts like normal software installed locally on the PC.

To develop rich internet applications the base line technology is “JAVA Script”. When a JAVA script calls the web server to get some data from the database to update the web page dynamically, we call it AJAX (Asynchronous JAVA Script and XML). Traditional web 2.0 web page is “Synchronous” means it waits till the server response comes and can make only one response at a time. In AJAX its “Asynchronous” means only a part of the web site wait till the server response comes and many server response can be made at the same time. Whole page never waits till a server response comes. (Never refresh as whole). To make the developers life even easier there are some AJAX frameworks.

• GWT – Google web Toolkit
• Adoby Flex
• IceFaces

Using above framework the developer can make the web site is a agile manner. If someone chooses to write AJAX come manually, it will take very long time though he has the total ultimate control. The above mentioned frameworks provide IDE integration with “Drag and Drop” tools which saves lots of time.

This trend is walking toward a new era of software development. In near future there won’t be setup.exes. Instead of that there will be online software, like G mail for all the day to day needs. Furthermore this will end (almost) software piracy. All the users who need to use the software must pay the subscription fee. No installation, no cracks. And I think current speed of internet is good enough to run rich internet application. But the reliability should be improved. The last thing I need to see is, I can’t type a document because there is no internet. Smart developers will come up with smart solutions for this as well. There are already some offline versions for some Rich internet application which solve the problem up to some level. Let’s look forward.

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Posted by Malinda Alahakoon on Dec 14, 2011 | Leave a Comment

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Ranging from high school students to technology experts, Notes Of Genius has attracted a wide base of readers who are extremely passionate about future trends and evolution of modern technology. Key to the popularity of Notes Of Genius is the way our skilled team of writers, together with the editorial, present up to date technological details in a manner that is understandable by readers of any level of technical competency.

Now the Notes Of Genius team has presented you an excellent opportunity to publish your own articles at our space and share your valuable knowledge with the community. The significance of this opportunity is that you can express your OWN FREE THOUGHTS related to modern technological developments and publish them under your OWN NAME!!!

Am I Qualified to Be a Writer in Notes Of Genius?

Are you keeping your eyes open about emerging Technologies out there?? Or do you have an unquenchable thirst to try out new Technologies to create a better tomorrow??

If so, you are the ONE we are looking for..!! You need not be a professional writer. If you can convey your ideas simply and accurately, with reference to reliable sources, you are most welcome to join our team of writers. Our editorial team is always committed to moderate your articles.

Getting Started

You are free to choose any subject of your interest related to Technology. Before you start writing please take a look at the following writers’ guidelines.

Writers’ Guidelines

• Use the provided Template.
• Select a short yet descriptive Title
• Introduce the subject in the first paragraph
• Structure your writing with paragraphs and sub headings
• Add Images and embed videos as appropriate.
• Include references in APA style (Microsoft Word 2007 -> References -> Citation & Bibliography -> Style)
• Minimum word limit is 1000.
• Design  an Image (640 X 250px) to feature in the main Page (Optional)

Tip : When you are writing always put forward your original ideas and firsthand experience. Be predictive about the future implications of the technology you are addressing. Most importantly express your dreams in your writings.

Submit

Name your word document with the title of your article, attach it to an E mail (Attach images separately) and send it to writers [at] notesofgenius [dot] com.

The submitted articles will be subjected to moderation before publishing. You will be notified via an e-mail once the article is published. If you have any complaints regarding the moderated article please inform us through the same e mail address.

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HTC (High tech computers cooperation) is a leading mobile device manufacturing company based in Taiwan. Their primary focus of manufacturing is mobile phones, notebooks and tablet PCs. In the early stage of the company development they were mainly focused on Windows based mobile devices. Even back in 1999 those mobile devices were equipped with wireless connectivity and touch screen technologies. HTC always had one strong success factor in their side which was ‘Be the first’ in the market. However, no matter how advanced the technology that they were using and no matter how fast they introduce them to the market, they couldn’t dominate the mobile device market as expected. But finally HTC mobile devices became a hot topic in every nook and corner of the world, because they introduced HTC devices powered by Android mobile OS. The company made their profit jump exponentially due to the massive amount of android devices sold around the world in year 2009 and 2010.

Bit of History

The company HTC was founded in 1997 and in that time they were totally in to Note book manufacturing. As I mentioned earlier in the article they introduced many technologies to the word market.

• 1^st wireless and touch display device in 1998
• 1^st touch screen smart phone in 2000
• 1^st Microsoft Powered Smartphone in 2002
• 1^st Microsoft powered third generation smart phone in 2005
• 1^st Android phone “HTC Dream” in 2008
• 1^st fourth generation smart phone “HTC Evo 4G” in 2010

The above facts show the strength of the HTC cooperation and amount of investment they have made to technology research. The efforts they have put in to all those devices are giving maximum benefit to the company today. HTC’s revenue is exceeding 4.5 billion USD today.

Device Milestones

HTC Dream

HTC Dream is the world’s very fists android powered smart phone and it was introduced to the market in 2008. It was a slider type phone and equipped with many magical features in that time including 528 MHz processor, 192 MB RAM, 16 GB upgradable microSD, 3.2 mega pixel camera, 320X480 LCD display and HSDPA up to 7.2 Mbps. Most importantly it was having accelerometer, compass and GPS receiver. Since it was powered with android OS it inherit entire application suit provided in it including Gmail, Google maps, Google calendar and GTalk. The very first version of HTC Dream was running on Android 1.0 and with the rapid development of OS it was upgraded to 1.6 later.

HTC Hero

HTC Hero is the very first android device which came with the user interface technology ‘HTC Sense’ and Adobe Flash Lite in 2009. In order to support HTC sense capabilities it was equipped with multi point touch screen. It was having the processer and display same as HTC Dream yet RAM was upgraded to 288MB and microSD support to 32 GB. The capturing device was 5.0 megapixels and it was equipped with improved 3 axis accelerometer, GPS receiver and compass. It initially came with Android OS 1.5 and upgradable up to 2.1.

HTC Legend

The specialty of HTC Legend over HTC Hero was its Active matrix OLED display which was designed makes use of battery more efficiently. It came to market in 2010 April. It was having the same screen resolution size as the HTC hero and many almost same features including camera with geo tagging, multi point touch screen, accelerometer and compass. The improvements were 600MHz processor and 384 MB RAM. The android OS on Legend was 2.1 and upgradable to 2.2.

HTC Desire

HTC Desire was one on the most popular phone in HTC line which came to market in 2010. It was having very high resolution display which is 800X480 LCD wit multi point touch screen. The camera was improved to 5 mega pixel with advanced face recognition algorithm and geo tagging with the aid of built in GPS device. As usual Desire also was having accelerometer and digital compass. When it come to underlying hardware the processor was upgraded to 800 MHz and memory was 512MB. One of the most attractive and popular feature in Desire is its video recording capability. It could record high definition video with the quality as 720p which is almost good as professional video recording device. Additionally it was powered with lots of application required for professionals including organizers for contacts, meeting and events. The operation system was android 2.2.

HTC Evo 4G

This is the very first fourth generation android phone introduced to the market in 2010. The functionalities and hardware of the phone was almost same as desire except few upgrades including 1GHz processor, 8 Megapixel camera, 1.3 mega pixel front camera, dual microphone and WiMAX capability. Same as desire Evo also was having the super quality HD video recording capability. The android OS version on this device is 2.2.

While a few HTC devices use gorilla glass for their screen, it is still beneficial to buy cell phone covers that wrap the phone completely and protect it from scratches and liquids.

Attractive Technologies

Multimedia

Multimedia support is one the most attractive feature in HTD smart phones. It provides high quality audio and video play back with advanced accessory support. Most of the latest devices support 3.5mm audio jack so that users could use any 3^rd part hearing device with the HTC device. Additionally they come with video out jack so that users could connect the HTC device with large TV screen easily. One of the most special features I noticed was the rear jack in some of HTC phones that could be use to raise the phone in a flat surface. It could totally turn the mobile device in to a small TV screen. Latest HTC devices could record high quality videos which attracted customers to buy the phone. They were capable of recording 720p HD videos unlike any other phone. When it comes to still image display they present them in style with the aid of amazing android OS.

Internet Browsing

Android OS provide better internet surfing experience to its user unlike any other mobile device. It renders HTML, CSS and JavaScrip accurately. Further, most of the latest version supports Adobe flash as well. Most importantly the browser is specially designed to work with touch screen which is capable to capture multi point contacts gives awesome surfing experience to users. Other than on browser activities it provide off browser application like facebook client, Google maps and many more. They are designed to deliver even faster access to those web applications using installed client. Android OS support many of that client application by itself.

User Interfaces with HTC Sense

HTC sense is in house developed technology for smart phone user interfaces by HTC cooperation. The design of HTC sense is to give more space to the user by spreading user interfaces in a virtual 3D space within the screen. Additionally HTC sense provide wide set of application and display widgets to its users having the objective of delivering unmatched experience ever. Most of the popular application and widget out of those are mainly focused on social media and multimedia. To further improve the user experience it provides various pre defined color themes stimulating other popular mobile operation systems.

Multi-Point Touch Screen

This is one of the most significant technologies developed by HTC and its history going back to 1999. It allows the user to touch the device screen using many fingers at the same time. Screen reach to all the touch points at the same time and software will act accordingly. This became popular rapidly among smart phone users due to the multimedia functions it enabled. Additionally the multi point sensitivity was use to save the space in device screen by using virtual 3D space with HTC sense.

Capturing Devices

Capturing device is one of the most rapidly developed hardware in HTC devices. It started with just 1.3 Mega pixel cameras and today its more than 8 mega pixel. And it has extended its capability beyond still image capturing to video recording. Currently its further expanded to HD video recording too. If you are an owner of latest HTC smart phone, you won’t have to buy a camcorder or a separate camera. HTC device will serve the purpose as same as those. With the aid of Android OS it will be able to come up with advance image processing one you click a snap automatically as you configured.

Professional Support Features

The large part of today’s smart phone market is created due to professional needs. Previously they were catered by PDA, but today smart phones have become one stop solution for all. Therefore, HTC phones also provide many professional support features including note book management, calendar to manage events and meetings, maps to coordinate business in different locations and advance email facility with the aid of latest Android OS. Further, due to the advancement of multi point touch screen, those professional support features are developed exponentially, beyond previous expectations.

Competition and Challenges

Apple Products

The main competitor to HTC Android devices is apple smart phones. Apple has developed a separate multimedia based culture with iMAC and iPOD. So it was easier for them to extend the same experience to Smart phone world and they did an exceptional job with iOS 4.3 recently. In any mobile device ‘hook’ are multimedia capabilities for general users who represent large part of market. In the early stage Android didn’t gave much features as iOS, but today picture is changed. Today android OS provide much more features than iOS with far better multimedia features as well. With the improvement of HTC sense it could give even better multimedia rich user interfaces to its consumers. However, due to the well established multimedia culture around Apple, it will take some time and lots of effort for Android to take the lead. However, they have displayed exponential growth in year 2009 and 2010 which might be a huge challenge to Apple in near future.

Microsoft Products

Microsoft Windows mobile OS was always focused on professional support than multimedia and interfaces. It was empowered with OneNote, Outlook and other office packages which were extended to smart phones. Therefore, many users were using those windows mobile smart phones to manage their professional life. In order to make those processes even easier windows mobile provided online synchronization of content using online services. Currently Android OS is also providing almost same and sometimes better application for professional support. Yet, due to the strongly established Windows PC culture, android will face difficult challenges in this area. However, with their multimedia rich, yet professional features it will be able to overcome challenges with the aid of solid HTC hardware platform.

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ICT Business Analyst is a professional who is responsible of analyzing, specifying and proposing possible solutions for business problems in an information-centric organization. In order to perform the duty, he will have to deal with various groups of people from many different domains. Furthermore he will have to possess a wide set of skills and knowledge objects including communication, problem solving ability and understanding of System development methodologies. This role has become very important due to the need of collaboration of technology and business in evolving world.

Background

Tech World

The tech world is the place where geeky people live. They talk about JAVA, Algorithms, SQL etc. They are well capable of producing any kind of business application in any range. They have solid knowledge about information technology applications and their architecture. In most of the cases they are more comfortable with machines than people.

Business World

Business world is where thinkers live. They have great imagination. Talk in simple English. They want to implement a business idea that they have in mind. They are very good with people and know how to control them to implement ideas. In most cases they have only a general knowledge about technology and information system architecture. Therefore, in the case of ICT implementation they won’t be able to express what they really need.

Business Analyst

It’s clear that there is a huge gap between Business World and Tech World. But the collaboration of those two worlds is essential for modern businesses. That’s where Business Analyst come to the picture. He has a solid knowledge about technological applications, at the same time he has a wide knowledge about various Businesses and its requirements. He can identify the problem, specify it and make it visible to both tech world and business world in a common format. Furthermore he can be a bridge between the two worlds to enable active communication and better understanding in order to perform tasks together.

Knowledge

Business or IT Graduate

As The primary requirement the Business Analyst must have a degree in Business or IT. As long as he is going to make a communication bridge between Business world and Tech world it is essential to be an expert in one knowledge area first. If you are planning your carrier as a Business Analyst you can choose your subjects in Degree program accordingly. If you are following ICT program you can choose related Management subjects like ICT Project Management. If you are following a Business degree you can choose related ICT subjects like Management Information Systems.

Business Analysis BOK

Business Analysis Body of Knowledge is the dominant framework introduced to the process of Business Analysis. It contains some knowledge areas which explain the process of Business Analysis.

• Enterprise Analysis: This knowledge area is about how to analyze organizational context, understand its structure, policies and other boundaries for the proposed system.
• Requirement analysis: This knowledge area is about how to capture the exact requirement of the proposed system.
• Solution Assessment and Validation: All the above two knowledge areas would come to this before proceeding to the next step in order to asses and validate the information captured.
• Elicitation: This process will be applicable in all the main knowledge areas and it’s about how to elicitate the requirement correctly.
• Requirement Management and Communication: This knowledge area is about how to manage the captured requirement and maintain active communication.
• Business Analysis Planning and monitoring: In order to carry out the whole process there has to be a plan and monitoring mechanism and this knowledge area is about that.
• Underlying competencies: Analysis process is not always about knowledge. In order to perform that there has to be various competencies possessed by the professional and this knowledge area provides support to improve those.

Modeling Tools and Techniques

In order to make the requirement visible to all the stakeholders there are various representation of requirements. There are number of tools and techniques developed to serve this purpose. Business Analyst must have a good knowledge about those tools and techniques. There are various PC application that are developed to model and specify requirements using above mentioned tools and techniques and business analyst should have good knowledge about those as well.

Skills and Competencies

Interpersonal Skills

The most important skills that a Business Analyst must possess are interpersonal skills. He should be able to get on with anyone from any background. Furthermore he must have the ability to understand the untold Business requirements and make it visible to Business world as well as Tech world.

Communication

Communication is his greatest tool and it has to be very sharp. In order to communicate effectively business analyst must have up-to-date technological and business understanding, otherwise the credibility of information which are communicated will be low. Furthermore communication doesn’t end in speech and documents. To perform an effective analysis process, business analyst should be able to read the body language properly. That will be a great advantage to understand people and give what exactly is fit for them.

Gather Wisdom from Many Sources

Business Analyst will have to deal with various kinds of business professionals. In order to get in to their world and understand what they need, a Business Analyst must have knowledge about that context. This is an active learning process of capturing wisdom from many sources which is highly essential for a successful Business Analyst.

Problem Solving Ability

After the elicitation of requirement the Business Analyst will have to propose a solution supported by a solid logical background. Here, the main task is to identify the main problem and figure out where to get the solution. Then develop active communication between the person who has the problem and who can implement the solution for him. During this process the Business Analyst will have to carry out many tasks simultaneously and he has to be well capable of that.

Pending Problems in Projects

According to the statistics 2008 is the worst year of project completion for decades. The failure rate was 68% and the main reason behind that was poor requirement analysis which is the duty of Business Analyst. Furthermore 45% of the features in developed systems are never used and huge amount of money was wasted to develop those. Due to these facts this is a challenging time for all Business Analysts to focus more on those areas and never let those errors happen again.

Evolution of Business Analyst

Due to the evolving complex business requirement the duty of Business Analyst is becoming even challenging. Most of the modern businesses demand agile development when it comes to Information Systems. In most of the cases the requirement is frequently changing and Business Analyst have to put extra effort to keep the project boundaries within the limits of Cost and Time. In order to become successful in this competitive environment, a Business Analyst will have to be sharp and flexible. Completion of the project mainly would depend on Business Analyst and it’s proven since 50% of the projects failures are due to poor requirement analysis according to statistics.

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TweetDeck is a desktop and iPhone mobile application which is helps the user to manage his online life in Twitter, Facebook, My Space and Linkedln. Using this application you can access and control all your online social community accounts in all the above mentioned networks, even with multiple user accounts.

Once you install Tweetdeck you can add your entire online social network accounts in to that. In the main interface you can have many columns. Each column display selected updates from given community network. When you press the Settings button at the top right corner in the main interface you can access general settings and control the general behavior of the software.

Tip: Set Minimize button should and Close button should to Hide to notification area. When you set this TweetDeck will be always there in system tray though close it. If you really want to close right click on the system tray icon and exit.

Next section is about Twitter. It configures how many Twitter API request should send by the TweetDeck. This better to be below 100% or you will reach API requests limit means no updates after that. In Notification area you can select the notification style, enable or disable them and Sound if you need. But the sound can be annoying some times, choose it as appropriate. In the Colors/Fonts, I recommend you to choose international font if you going to use some external Unicode fonts. In the account section you can add user accounts you have as many as you need.

After this configuration done you can select what are the things you need to be displayed on the main window. For that you can click on Add column button at the left top corner. In there you can select different update streams in all your accounts in all networks. In Addition to that you can update status, comment of photos, tweet and many more in this application. When you take your mouse over a Profile picture of someone it will display various things you can do including reply, write on wall etc. The most beautiful and my favorite feature in this is you can update your status in Facebook and at the same time in Twitter as well. If you have many accounts you can do the same with just one click. This saves lot of time for me. And Tweetdeck having advance and very user-friendly imageviewer.

Download the application and have fun. There is a special version of TweetDeck for iPhone as well.  Share your comment about new stuff you discover in there.

References

• (n.d.). Retrieved from http://rgptechblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/TweetDeck-v0.32-1024×607.png

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Stumble-Upon is an upcoming web browsing paradigm where it users can browse the web randomly according to their interests. It provides comprehensive mechanism to users to add pages and vote them by themselves. According to the number of votes the visibility of the pages to other stumbles would be decided algorithmically. This can be identified as a good way to browse web in a area where you can’t do a keyword search at the same time it’s a good way to expose your web page rapidly to highly targeted set of users. In addition it is a community network where you can have friends and interact with them.

Background

IP Address and Domain Names

In the very early stage of web technologies the IP address of the web server was used to look up for a web page. That mechanism was not so user friendly and difficult to promote a specific brand name online. As a Solution for that the domain name service came in to action where users can type domain name and there is a middle man to map that name in to an IP address. This was user-friendly and businesses could use their brand name online very easily.

Search Engines

Even with domain name there was no way to find a specific content in the web using keyword and search engines solved that problem. Even though you don’t know a domain name you can go to a search engine and type a keyword and find a specific content as you want. In order to provide those facilities search engines are using robots or spiders to index entire World Wide Web. In addition to identify the important pages there are various ‘voting’ mechanism like Google page rank which based on back links.

Stumble-Upon

What will happen in the case you don’t know enough about the subject to type a keyword and search content? But still you know the outline of the subject area which you want to read about. That’s where Stumble-Upon comes to action. It keeps an index of user submitted pages and their information. Users can stumble across the web using stumble-upon tool bar based on given interests and stumble-upon will deliver pages randomly according to your interest. Same as in search engines Stumble-upon also using voting mechanism but its directly getting the vote from users. Due to that the accuracy of the vote considered to be higher than ‘back links’. The number of votes will be a factor to decide the visibility of a specific page to other users.

Getting Started

Register Account

The first step to use stumble-upon is creating an account. However you can stumble by just clicking stumble button in the main page, but in that case you won’t be able to use most of the advance features. Due to that it’s recommended to register before starts stumbling. You can access the registration page by clicking the link in hear of main page. It takes you to a simple registration form, you have to fill it and click sign up. You can prove that you are a human using captcha or facebook login. Then it will take you to a window where you can enter your interests. Tick then as you want and hit stumble. Then it will display a toolbar at the top of browser window and some web page according to your interest. By clicking the stumble button in the toolbar you can go to next web page.

Install Stumble-Upon Toolbar

The toolbar mentioned above is not yet installed in your browser, so there can be some malfunctioning. In order to avoid those you can install it locally as a plug in for your browser. When you go to main page of Stumble-upon it will display a link to get the add-on according to your browser.  If you are a Firefox user you will be able to get complete set of tool in your toolbar as a Firefox plug-in. Even for other browsers there are add-ons which can be downloaded and installed. However the Firefox plug-in provides most wide and accurate set of features. As long as you have the toolbar you can always click on the Stumble button there and start stumbling, submit the current page to stumble, vote for current page and share it with your friends. In addition it can give access to your saved interest, change them and stumble only in one interest too.

Web Interface

As long as you have a registered account in Stumble-upon you can control it using the web interface. Once you login you can see a settings button in the header. By clicking that you can access preferences including profile information, theme, Manage interests and profile picture. It provides facility to import your Facebook profile image to stumble-upon. Finally it creates a public profile URL for you like http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/YourUserName/. Your profile page displays your favorites and your friend’s network. You can invite your friends to Stumble-Upon or you can subscribe other stumbles too.

Start Stumbling

Now you have fully configured stumble-upon account. Click the stumble button in toolbar and stumble across the web pages according to your interests, Submit interesting pages to stumble-upon and vote of interesting pages saying ‘I like it’ using toolbar or may be writing a review. Optimize the list of topics to have a better stumbling experience. In the case you need to shout out about a page use sharing options in toolbar including Twitter and Facebook. Furthermore you can keep a track of your likes and stumbles through the web interface. If you see an interesting user you can subscribe to him and get updates. If you have your own web page, submit it to Stumble-upon saying ‘I like it’ in toolbar, so you will be able to present the page to many other stumblers. To improve that you can add a stumble-upon button in to your web page too.

Profile Authority

When you are stumbling it delivers the pages according to an algorithm. The basic factor is ‘Likes’ to increase the visibility of the page. However each like won’t be treated as same, but there will be a weight for the vote according to the profile authority of voted stumblers. It will be decided according to the below facts.

• Discoveries you have made and their popularity
• Subscribers you have and their popularity.
• Vote you have given to other pages and their popularity.
• Number of reviews you have written.

If you are a high authority Stumbler your vote will be having a high value than others and voted pages will be having an improved visibility to other Stumblers. However stumble-upon having a paid advertising program as well. Using that you can promote your page to stmblers as a Sponsored page.

User Experience

Stumble-upon is totally different experience to surfers. You can simple stumble across the web according to your personal interest without giving any specific goal. This can be really addictive as long as it identifies your likeness and deliver pages accordingly. Most importantly it identifies the values of the page based on users’ direct vote which is highly accurate. Due to that it can deliver highly target high quality content to the users. You can use stumble-upon as a new way of learning and getting news randomly. When you become a good stumbler and have many likes it will deliver even precise content for you. Join stumble-upon now and feel this new experience.

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Google Webmaster Tools is a free online service given by Google web master central. It provides facility to manage the appearance of web site in Google search result within the limits of Algorithm used. Furthermore it provides information about the appearance of your web site in Google search results. This information will be highly useful to fine tune the SEO factors of your web site. Most importantly it monitors about the Security threats and performance. Due to that this tool can be used to improve your web site to give a better browsing experience to visitors.

Getting started

In order to use Google Webmaster tools you have to have a Google account. If you have one you can visit Google Web Master Central and Sign in to Google web master tools. Once you sign in it will take you to Google Web master tools home. In there you can add your web site by simply clicking the ‘Add a site’ button and enter the URL. Once you add the site it will appear in the list below. And as the next step you have to verify the ownership of the web site. It provides various ways to do it including META tag, HTML file of DNS record. Simply follow the steps and you might take a look at the example there, finally click verify. Till you very ownership you won’t be able to access any further information about the web site. Now from the Web master tools home you can access the tools for web site by clicking it name in the list. In addition using the list you can add remove owners of the web site and at the top messages sent by Google Web master tools will be displays. These messages might contain details about security threats.

Features

Dashboard

When you click on the name of the web site out of the list it will take you to the Dashboard. It will contain the summary of all the details about your website. That will include Search queries, incoming links, crawl errors, keywords detected and site map status. By clicking on more links in each section you can go to a details view. Furthermore you can add these gadgets to iGoogle home page as well.

Site Configuration

Site configuration is one of the most important sections in Web master tools. As the first section it will allow you to add a site map of your web site. It will make it easy for Google to crawl in to the pages. Once you add a site map it will take some time to access it and after that it will display number of pages indexed and various other details. In the section crawler access you can see the status of robot.txt in your hosting space which you can use to restrict Google bot by accessing some part of the web site. There is a feature to text your pages against the current robot.txt and where various Google bots can access it. Furthermore it provides facility to generate new robot.txt according to your special requirement and remove unwanted indexed URLs. Site link section will display auto generated links which may appear in the search result, just below the main link. Change of address section provides facility to change the domain name of your web site in proper way. Finally the settings section allows you to set geographical target, select preferred domain and set a custom crawl rate if its required.

Your Site on the Web

This section displays information gathered by Google bot over a period of time. Search queries display the number of search queries which your site was on, click through rate and many other useful information to optimize your pages even better for search engines. Links to your site displays number of incoming links you have for your web site and its pages. It provides details about number of links, anchor text and originated pages. Keywords section displays keywords in your web site according to its significance. Internal link section provide information about the links between pages in your web site while subscribe state displays number of users subscribed to your RSS feeds using a Google product.

Diagnostic

Diagnostic is a very important section for web masters to identify the errors and security threats to the web site. The first section ‘Malware’ will display if there are any illegal activities in your web site may without knowing. If such a case this information will be important to remove the malware and make your site safer again. If there are such threats a message also will be generated and it will be displayed web master tools home. Crawl errors section displays any identified errors in your web site by Google bot. By correcting those you can expect a better crawling efficiency in your web site. Crawl status displays a chart about the number of pages crawled per day, bandwidth used etc. This information can be used to fine tune your hosting environment properties. HTML suggestions section gives ideas to further improve SEO factors in your web site including Title, URL and duplicate content etc.

Labs

This section contains relatively new features to Google Web master Tools which are still in experimental stage. Fetch as Google bot gives idea how the Google bot see your page. Normally what we see is Browsers interpretation of the HTML code. But What Google bot sees is raw HTML code. Using this you can identify how it is and fine tune it to gain better search engine appearance. Side wiki is a newly introduced feature which mainly comes with Google Tool bar which provide platform to write comment about the web pages by users. Those wiki notes would be a highly accurate factor to measure the quality of the web page. In here it provides facility to enter the page owner’s wiki note about the main page of the web site. Recently Google has improved the ranking algorithm to identify most useful pages to its users. During that process ‘Performance’ of the web page also considered as a quality factor. In this section ‘Site performance’ you can figure out the performance level of your web site and improve it accordingly.

Further Usage

The idea behind this tool is Google want to index more pages as possible. They don’t want to index lesser pages or omit any pages from index. At the same time they need to deliver the most useful pages to their users and that’s why they continuously improve the algorithm with various quality factors. All the web masters can use Google web master tools and identify the weaknesses in their website and help to make the World Wide Web a better place by improving those. In addition if you have Videos in your web pages you can prepare a video site map and submit it to Google web master tool. If that be the case your pages will be listed in Video search results. You can identify the popular search queries to your web site and improve the click through rate by fine tuning titles, description etc. Finally you can use the information given by this tool to come up with innovative ideas and take the competitive advantage in World Wide Web.

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Fossil fuel is the main source of power in the modern human civilization. The carbon deposits which were preserved over millions of years, has transformed in to carbon and hydrogen chemical structure called fossil fuel. There are various kind of fossil fuel categorized based on number of carbon atoms in its structure which are having various applications. Significant part of the fossil fuel engines power up transportation and generate electricity for human needs. According to the increasing need with expanding industries and population the fossil fuel deposits are reducing in a greater speed than its regeneration. Therefore the human civilization has to shift to an alternative power source by 2050 and all the fossil fuel deposits will be over by 2100. In addition to that fossil fuel engine generates harmful by products including carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. Due to that there is a serious health and environmental issues have occurred. All the above facts demand a new source of power to continue human civilization and modern technological advancement with lesser environmental impact. The big question is Can human civilization continues to have comfortable living conditions without fossil fuel? The answer is changing from NO to YES due to the latest advancement of science and results of research about alternative fuel.

Hydrogen Fuel cell

How It Works

Hydrogen fuel cell is a mechanism to convert hydrogen fuel in to electricity. It uses Hydrogen and Oxygen as input and generates electricity as the output. Most importantly the by product of this reaction is Water (H2O). This mechanism generates electricity using non-fossil fuel with much lesser environmental impact because this is not emitting harmful gases or significant noise. Unlike traditional power cells, hydrogen fuel cell is not a closed system. It generates electricity as long as there is a hydrogen and Oxygen supply.

Advantages and Applications

The next question about hydrogen fuel cell is it efficient? Can it be used to practical applications? As a perfect answer for above questions there are few successful prototypes which are power by Hydrogen fuel cell. That prototype contains house hold electricity generation, automobiles and even advanced military applications like submarines. The greater advantage of Hydrogen fuel cell is there is no moving part it or any fuel burning like in traditional internal combustion engine. Therefore it’s having much lesser energy wastage and highly improved reliability. Due to these advantages several market giants like Toyota, Chrysler and Mercedes-benz are investing huge amount of money on research on Hydrogen fuel cell power automobiles and there are various working prototypes also been introduced as a result. Furthermore some cities already have Hydrogen filling stations and Hydrogen fuel cell powered public transportation.

Future of Hydrogen Fuel Cell

Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. This advanced usage of Hydrogen as a fuel to generate electricity will become the main source of power in human civilization in near future. In addition to that this fuel will provide electricity as same as fossil fuel and with much lesser environmental impact. When it comes to the automobiles there will be much lesser engine vibrations and noise which lead to even comfortable driving experience.

Nuclear Power

How It Works

Nuclear power generation is control the nuclear reaction by preventing it lead to an explosion and use its heat to generate electricity. There are two types of nuclear reaction that can be used which are nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. The most common type that can be found in current application is nuclear fission. It generates power by slitting Uranium 235. Nuclear fusion generates power using Hydrogen isotopes same as the way which sun generate its heat. There is no proper mechanism to control nuclear fusion yet. Therefore its practical usages are limited.

Advantages and Disadvantages

The main application of nuclear power is fusion and its fuel is Uranium. Most of the developed countries use this technology to generate electricity. The process can be controlled using reactors. The power generate process is safe, yet in the case of malfunction the consequence can be severe. Furthermore it generates radioactive by products which is very costly to dispose. This technology cannot be used to power up automobiles or air craft due to radioactive fuel used.

The nuclear fusion is still in lab testing level and the reaction is totally modelled by scientists. It generates massive amount of energy with very lesser amount of fuel. But the main problem faced is there are no stable hydrogen isotopes to continue the fusion reaction in a controlled manner. Once it started it will continue to a explosion till the reaction completes. However there are no radioactive fuel used, due to that once the researches manage to stabilise the reaction it can be used to power up automobiles as well as domestic off grid power generation. Furthermore in this case fuel can be included in the automobile in its production and that will be sufficient for its whole life time.

Future of Nuclear Power

Even in Nuclear fission it uses non renewable fuel which is radioactive metal like Uranium. In order to use nuclear power as a long term energy source, the winner is nuclear fusion. Even at this moment many scientists are working to stabilize the reaction and billions of dollars are invested on it. The success of that research will lead to renewable source of pure energy. The fuel which will be use to those reactors will be Hydrogen isotopes which are very common all over the universe.

Sustainable Energy

Considering environmental factors most of the countries are trying to transform natural energy to electricity with very much lesser environmental impact. The most prominent sources used are wing, solar and tidal power. The solar power is widely used in many tropical countries. Those solar panels are available for domestic deployment as well. Due to that is becoming a secondary source of power in tropical countries already. In addition to generation electricity it can be used to heat water and for cooking purposes as well. When it comes to wind power it is widely used in countries which has plan land with lesser geographical details where they can find continues flow of wind throughout the year. There are so many researches done in order to design an efficient wind turbine and it gave successful results. Compared to others tidal wave power generation is in primitive stage yet developing. According to the current situation those sustainable energy can be used a secondary spruces of energy with above mentioned hydrogen fuel cell and nuclear power.

Conclusion

The above facts giving the answer to the big question ‘Can human civilization continues to have comfortable living conditions without fossil fuel?’ and the answer is YES. Future automobiles will be powered by Hydrogen fuel cell and it will give even comfortable driving experience to passengers with much lesser environment impact. In far future the automobiles will be powered by nuclear fusion reactors and passengers won’t even have to worry about the fuel since it’s filled in production and that would be sufficient for its life time. Main grid power will be generated by nuclear fusion and various sustainable sources including solar and wind. Furthermore there will be off grid domestic power generators contain Hydrogen fuel cell or nuclear fusion reactors and those will be portable as well. All the above energy sources are renewable and having minimum environment impact. Therefore mankind will be able to continue a even better comfortable life in a world without fossil fuel.

References

• eportfolio. (2010). Retrieved August, 2010, from www.eportfolio.lagcc.cuny.edu: http://www.eportfolio.lagcc.cuny.edu/scholars/doc_fa08/eP_Fa08/Farhana.Khonkodar/images/hydrogen-fuel-cell.jpg

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