Still number 1 on gooogle!

Search for "Chicago Snaps" on google images brings up my blogsite even now with the the top two images being from my post on June 27, 2010. Interestingly, it does not show the original Chicago photos posted on April 12, 2012.

Finally resolved issue with synchronizing gmail Contacts with my Android phone

I finally figured out the link between my Nexus S mobile phone contacts and my gmail contacts. Ever since I synced my cell phone and my gmail contacts, I had been bewildered by disappearing contacts! I would create and save a contact on my cell phone, and it would just disappear. I wouldn't show up on my contacts after I saved it. I was miffed at the way Contacts app on my cell phone was behaving. I had to open my gmail contacts on my computer and the Contacts on my cell phone, and check them side-by-side to finally figure out the link. Whatever contacts I add to my cell phone get saved to "My Contacts" contact list in gmail. So to make cell phone Contacts app work correctly, I have to display "My Contacts" contact list on my cell phone. That setting can be done from Contacts -> Display Options -> Gmail account -> My Contacts menu path.

It was a huge relief to resolve the problem with Contacts function on my Android phone. This was the only issue with my otherwise lovely phone that was bothering me.

Top link on Google - a pleasant surprise!

To be displayed among top three links on a Google search - isn't that something! If you search "Chicago snaps" on Google images, the top three images displayed are from my blogsite!

A few days back I noticed that my blog is getting increasing number of hits from Chicago. That piqued me. I wondered whether it was due to new friends I made on my visit to Chicago in April. But I wasn't convinced. Then I speculated whether Google is directing people from Chicago to my site. That sounded intriguing. I scrolled down my blog to see what could be causing it. When saw my blog entry on April 12th, titled Some Chicago Snaps, it clicked. Immediately, I opened another tab and searched for "Chicago snaps" on Google. Bang! Right there, I could see that the top 3 images were from my blogsite!

A walk down the memory lane

Today, I landed on Spring road in Ipswich, UK, and walked up and down the street until I reached the front of the house we stayed in 2006-07.

Hey, no! I am not on a tour of England. I am sitting at my house in Seattle! I am just looking at Google maps. Google maps is getting better every day.

Sitting at home, I could virtually walk on a road in UK. I could zoom in on the house, and see the the "For Sale" board in front of the house. Frasers Estate Agents Ltd, Queen Street, Ipswich, have put it up from sale. It seems they took it over from Paul West, the estate agent who dealt with the property when we were there. One fine guy he was - Paul West, unlike most of the real estate agents we met during our stay in Ipswich.

The house might have already been sold off, because what we see on Google maps is not a real-time image. We don't know when the photo was taken. Only thing we can tell is that the photo was taken on a Wednesday - it is evident from the the black garbage bin brought out from the backyard to the front of the house.

I wished I could walk up to the house and knock on the door, or take a peek inside! :-)

Customizing Google News

I am a great fan of Google. Google comes up with great products. However, in some instances they seem to be refusing adding simple features that people really need.

I use Google News to read news from different sources. Google news is a decent news aggregator. However there is one feature that readers across the world are craving for. The feature is to exclude news from a specific news sources in search results. If you google something like "google news exclude source", you'll find this issue being discussed in hundreds of forums. There is even a place where you can recommend this feature to google. I am sure hundreds of thousands of people would have recommended this feature. And it's a feature easy to implement. I don't know what's keeping Google from implementing it.

There are roundabout ways to achieve it. Someone suggested making changes to some Windows OS hidden files to block content from specific websites. Other simpler suggestions are like creating custom section with search string containing '-, for e.g. '-indiatimes.com'. I am trying that out. Let me see how effective it is. But it is really annoying that Google doesn't provide a easy way of doing it. For instance, why doesn't it allow customizing standard sections to filter out news from bogus sources, such as Times of India. Seeing news from from Times of India on my Google News page makes me sick.

Google Chrome, Google Buzz & Google Desktop

I have installed Google Chrome on my laptop. After getting used to Chrome, I find IE extremely awkward to work with.

Google, however, seem to have made a faux pas, the way they rolled out Buzz. There are several privacy issues that gmail users are facing due to not knowing enough about the features of Buzz and default settings decided by Google for Buzz.

Some years back Google had launched Google Desktop - a tool that allowed users to search the contents of their PCs, the way they search content on internet. Google desktop died because of privacy issues with it. (I had installed Google Desktop on my laptop, but uninstalled it when I realized that it searched and displayed contents of password protected file to anybody having access to my laptop).

Impressive Super Bowl Ads

Interesting Google SuperBowl ad.

And here's one from Coca Cola

Google Chrome

I have installed Google Chrome on one of my laptops. It seems to be a good browser. Like all other Google products it's designed to spare the user of the pain of being bombarded by pop-ups, flash and other attention-sucking bombardments.

There is one issue I have observed. When you press Esc key while watching videos in full-screen mode on youtube, Chrome hangs. However, you can recover from that, and it doesn't get stuck so badly that you have to kill it.