Tricks 2 Trick(T2T) finally gets its page rank.The page rank of T2T is 2/10.This has certainly been possible with all the efforts that I have put into this blog.I have always concentrated on writing quality content.My focus was always on producing some real, genuine, valuable content.I guess,the visitors of my blogs and their valuable comments helped me a lot.Their suggestions inspired me not to loose focus.So, i would like to thank all those who were directly or indirectly connect to T2T.Your views,suggestions and views would be heartly welcomed.

Contact me here

Now for those of you who have no idea on what Page rank is,here is something (everything) to help you out.

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E).

The name PageRank is a trademark of Google. The PageRank process has been patented (U.S. Patent 6,285,999 ). The patent is not assigned to Google but to Stanford University.

Google describes PageRank as:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important".

In other words, a PageRank results from a "ballot" among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. A hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support. The PageRank of a page is defined recursively and depends on the number and PageRank metric of all pages that link to it ("incoming links"). A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page there is no support for that page.

Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 for each webpage on the Internet; this PageRank denotes a site’s importance in the eyes of Google. The PageRank is derived from a theoretical probability value on a logarithmic scale like the Richter Scale. The PageRank of a particular page is roughly based upon the quantity of inbound links as well as the PageRank of the pages providing the links. It is known that other factors, e.g. relevance of search words on the page and actual visits to the page reported by the Google toolbar also influence the PageRank. In order to prevent manipulation, spoofing and spamdexing, Google provides no specific details about how other factors influence PageRank.

Numerous academic papers concerning PageRank have been published since Page and Brin's original paper.In practice, the PageRank concept has proven to be vulnerable to manipulation, and extensive research has been devoted to identifying falsely inflated PageRank and ways to ignore links from documents with falsely inflated PageRank.

History of page rank

PageRank was developed at Stanford University by Larry Page (hence the name Page-Rank) and later Sergey Brin as part of a research project about a new kind of search engine. The project started in 1995 and led to a functional prototype, named Google, in 1998. Shortly after, Page and Brin founded Google Inc., the company behind the Google search engine. While just one of many factors which determine the ranking of Google search results, PageRank continues to provide the basis for all of Google's web search tools.

PageRank is based on citation analysis that was developed in the 1950s by Eugene Garfield at the University of Pennsylvania, and Google's founders cite Garfield's work in their original paper. By following links from one page to another, virtual communities of webpages are found. Web link analysis was first developed by Jon Kleinberg and his team while working on the CLEVER project at IBM's Almaden Research Center.




Google Toolbar

The Google Toolbar's PageRank feature displays a visited page's PageRank as a whole number between 0 and 10. The most popular websites have a PageRank of 10. The least have a PageRank of 0. Google has not disclosed the precise method for determining a Toolbar PageRank value. Google representative Matt Cutts has publicly indicated that the Toolbar PageRank values are republished about once every three months, indicating that the Toolbar PageRank values are historical rather than real-time values


Download Google toolbar here(Firefox)

Source:Wikipedia

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Now my blog is no longer a 'nofollow' blog.I have joined the 'do follow' movement by removing the 'nofollow' tag from my blog.
For those of you who have no idea what 'nofollow' is just continue reading.
Apart from making my blog 'nofollow',I actually did some research as to how to make my own blog a “dofollow” blog. I’d love to get a barrage of comments. (Come on, who doesn’t like attention? Even if it is virtual.)

Let’s see what Wikipedia says about “nofollow” and what it is exactly:

“nofollow is an HTML attribute value used to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring in the first place. The concept for the specification of the attribute value nofollow was designed by Google’s head of webspam team Matt Cutts and Jason Shellen from Blogger.com in 2005.”

“Nofollow” was initiated to fight spam, yet it has affected decent backlinkers and blog commentors as well. Luckily for us we have a choice, as there are more “dofollow” sites emerging, where you can actually be rewarded for your linking efforts.

Well the obvious question now is, apart from making my blog a do follow blog, how do I find dofollow blogs, forums and etcetera to link from? Where is dofollow web 2.0? A little skittle around the web for dofollow resources actually proved to be very productive. I actually posted a question on digitalpoint forums and asked how to get high PR links without spending a lot? Apparently, I end up answering my own question.Well,the answer is Do follow search engines. Type your keyword and find only dofollow results.

One personal favorite is W3ec . The interface is very revolutionary. (If you check it out you’ll see what I mean.)

Here are some more great links:

21 Dofollow Social Bookmarking Sites. :Bookmark your way to the Pagerank you’ve always dreamed of!

Sites that really do follow. : Dofollow directory.
Do follow blog community. :Like blogcatalog or technorati, only these is exclusively for bloggers who follow. Did you follow me?
Do Follow Blogs. :Another do follow blog directory.
List of forums that allow “do follow” signature links :Sign your way to link juice.

Backlinking has never been so rewarding, and having too many comments never so accepted. If they say you have something to say about everything, maybe you should be saying what you say in do follow blogs.

Hope this helps you. Spread the virus.

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UPDATE: I removed it from my blog since google may penalize us for backlink spamming!!If you run more than one website and the Google penalty hits all sites at the same time, check the interlinking (cross linking) between those sites. The risks are even higher where site A site wide links to site B and site B site wide links back to site A. If you must use site wide links, make sure they are not reciprocal links. Link schemes built around links in the footer of each webpage are particularly risky. The reality is that site wide links do little to increase site visibility in the Google SERPS, nor do they improve Page Rank more than a single link, as Google only counts one link from a site to another. KSL Consulting also believe that Yahoo! now applies a similar policy. There is some evidence that the extensive use of site wide links can lower website Google trust value, which can subsequently reduce ranking.I have joined the Back Links Project or BLP as they call it.Most of you would be guessing what BLP is??BRP is a project started by a guy who had his blog's Page Rank jumped from PR=0 to PR=5 just in less than 2 months.Now let me explain how it works.
You will get a high number of back links for free and by this your page rank will be high in search engines.If your PR is high in Search engines, your blog will get a high amount of Traffic..

Now if you are interested (I'm DAMN sure that you will be interested) here are the steps you have to follow to get Back links.

1. Write about the Backlinks Project in your blog in the same way as I did here along with the Domains List given below.
2. After publishing the blog post, you have to comment to the Backlinks Project program post at Techodia with your published post's permalink.

The guy will verify the link to ensure that you've written about this project and copy/pasted the domains list in your blog. After that he will add your blog's URL to the domains list. All those who've joined this project will frequently update their domains list. By this you will get a backlink from all those who've joined this project.

• World of Tech & Fun


• Pusat Lowongan Kerja


• Graphics & Web Design


• 1st Class Information


• Suriyadi
• i,Suman
• Tech 2 Check
  

So what are you waiting for just join it.......

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An intriguing technology morsel has been offered up by chipmaker Intel Corporation today after it revealed an innovative recharging method that could potentially provide operational power for portable electronic devices without requiring a wired connection.
Speaking at this week’s Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Intel CTO Justin Rattner unveiled “Wireless Resonant Energy Link (WREL)” technology, which relies on strongly coupled resonators to wirelessly deliver energy and is built on a similar principle to that of a trained singer who can shatter glass with their voice.

“At the receiving resonator’s natural frequency, energy is absorbed efficiently, just as a glass absorbs acoustic energy at its natural frequency,” explains Intel. “With this technology enabled in a laptop, for example, batteries could be recharged when the laptop gets within several feet of the transmit resonator.”

Evolving from principles proposed by MIT physicists, WREL promises safe and efficient power and is considerably closer to reality than you might think.

For example, during his keynote speech, Rattner demonstrated the possibilities of WREL by wirelessly powering a 60-watt light bulb -- which is noteworthy insofar is it equates to more operational juice than would be required to power a typical laptop computer.

Intel sees the technology eventually being utilised through airports and other public hotspot venues, where device owners would actually receive a local charge boost to their portable equipment rather than suffer a decrease in operational longevity.

Despite WREL’s obvious application potential, Intel has said the technology is still in development but its researchers are looking for a way to “cut the last cord in mobile devices” and hope to someday enable Intel customers to enjoy the advantages associated with wireless power.

Other futuristic technology revealed by Rattner included programmable matter called “catoms,” which consist of millions of micro-robots that could be used to build shape-shifting materials.

While described by Rattner as part of Intel’s "difficult exploratory research agenda," if utilised through a computer’s case, display and keyboard, catoms could make it possible for devices to physically change their shape depending on how they are actually used.

Intel explains that a mobile computer, for example, could be tiny when in a pocket, change to the shape of an earpiece when used as a mobile phone, and be large and flat with a keyboard for browsing the Internet or watching a movie.

And, pushing the evolution of modern robotics, Rattner also outlined Intel’s drive to bring industrial robot technology into the home by imbuing robots with cognisant attributes that will render them aware of their surroundings in order to navigate through and manipulate objects in cluttered and dynamic human environments.

“The industry has taken much greater strides than anyone ever imagined 40 years ago,” said Rattner. “There is speculation that we may be approaching an inflection point where the rate of technology advancements is accelerating at an exponential rate, and machines could even overtake humans in their ability to reason, in the not so distant future.”

To show this principle in action, Rattner demonstrated two working personal robot prototypes developed by Intel’s research lab facilities.

One demo showcased electric field pre-touch technology built into a robotic hand, a sensing modality applied by fish (but not humans), which allows them to “feel” objects before physically touching them.

The other demo revealed a complete autonomous mobile manipulation robot capable of recognising faces and also interpreting and executing basic commands such as “please clean this mess” by using cutting-edge motion planning, manipulation, perception and artificial intelligence.

Source : The Tech Herald

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Launched in August 2007, the Phoenix Mars Mission is the first in NASA's Scout Program. Phoenix is designed to study the history of water and habitability potential in the Martian arctic's ice-rich soil.
The Phoenix Mars Mission has a collaborative approach to space exploration. As the very first of NASA's Mars Scout class, Phoenix combines legacy and innovation in a framework of a true partnership: government, academia, and industry. Scout class missions are led by a scientist, known as a Principal Investigator (PI). Peter Smith of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory serves as Phoenix's PI and is responsible for all aspects of the mission.

The Phoenix Mission has a three-vertebrate backbone: the PI at the University of Arizona, the project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the flight system manager at Lockheed Martin Space Systems (LMSS). These three frequently communicate and ensure that decisions are understood and quickly implemented by the team.

PI Smith has delegated project management responsibility to JPL. Barry Goldstein serves as the project manager and leads an experienced team of JPL engineers and scientists. Under Goldstein, the JPL team conducts vital functions of payload management, and flight systems and mission operations. These functions are supported by system engineering, mission assurance, and a business office. JPL also provides the interface to the Deep Space Network, sending command sequences and receiving data. During the 10-month cruise phase to Mars, JPL maintains the proper cruise trajectory to get the spacecraft to Mars by performing correcting maneuvers. Finally, JPL will lead the Phoenix spacecraft through the highly risky entry-descent-landing process. No team surpasses JPL in its ability to land spacecraft safely on the Martian surface.

Ed Sedivy leads the Lockheed Martin engineering team in designing, constructing, and testing the Phoenix spacecraft. Sedivy was Lockheed Martin's chief engineer for developing the Mars Surveyor 2001 lander, the highly capable spacecraft that the Phoenix Mission is inheriting. The Lockheed Martin engineering team is restoring the 2001 lander to a flight-ready Phoenix spacecraft and developing enhanced spacecraft reliability through extensive testing. Throughout all phases of the mission, the Lockheed Martin team will closely monitor Phoenix's health by linking their spacecraft operations centers with those at JPL and the University of Arizona.

From the University of Arizona, PI Smith works closely with Leslie Tamppari, project scientist at JPL, to lead an international assembly of scientists from a wide variety of academic, private, and government research institutions. This science team has experience in all previous landed Mars missions. The team's scientific background includes experience in hydrology, geology, chemistry, biology, and atmospheric science. For operations, the team is conceptually divided into four instrument groupings, each with a lead co-investigator (Co-I) scientist. The groups are not intended to be restrictive: Co-Is are expected to have a broad, cross-instrument participation driven by scientific objectives. The science team will co-locate for the first three months of the mission, to operate all the instruments and to perform the first analysis on data that may provide important answers to the following questions: (1) can the Martian arctic support life, (2) what is the history of water at the landing site, and (3) how is the Martian climate affected by polar dynamics?

To answer these questions, Phoenix uses some of the most sophisticated and advanced technology ever sent to Mars. A robust robotic arm built by JPL digs through the soil to the water ice layer underneath, and delivers soil and ice samples to the mission's experiments. On the deck, miniature ovens and a mass spectrometer, built by the University of Arizona and University of Texas-Dallas, will provide chemical analysis of trace matter. A chemistry lab-in-a-box, assembled by JPL, will characterize the soil and ice chemistry. Imaging systems, designed by the University of Arizona, University of Neuchatel (Switzerland) (providing an atomic force microscope), Max Planck Institute (Germany) and Malin Space Science Systems, will provide an unprecedented view of Mars—spanning 12 powers of 10 in scale. The Canadian Space Agency will deliver a meteorological station, marking the first significant involvement of Canada in a mission to Mars.

The University of Arizona will also host the Phoenix Mission's Science Operations Center (SOC) in its Tucson facility. From the SOC, the Phoenix science and engineering teams will command the lander once it is safely landed on Mars, and also, receive data as it is transmitted directly to Earth. A payload interoperability test bed (PIT) will be located with the SOC to verify an optimal integration of Phoenix's complex scientific instruments. Working together, the SOC and PIT will ensure a seamless scientific and engineering process—from science goal to instrument commands to down-linked and analyzed data.

As with all major NASA missions, Phoenix has a comprehensive education and public outreach program. PI Smith leads the program, which is managed by the University of Arizona, and connects to outstanding educational resources in the desert southwest region, and throughout the U.S.

This powerful team is the cornerstone to the Phoenix mission, which has high hopes to be the first mission to "touch" and examine water on Mars—ultimately, to pave the way for future robotic missions, and possibly, human exploration.

For latest news and events visit

Phoniex Mars Mission

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Have you heard the latest doomsday scenario? In thirty years, the internet will stop working! Apparently, a bug similar to the millennium bug will affect Unix-based systems, like those that run the tubes, in the year 2038. The bug, being dubbed the "2038 bug," arises because Unix-based systems store the time as a signed 32-bit integer, in seconds, from midnight on January 1 1970. And the latest time that can be represented in that format, by the Posix standard, is 3:14 AM on January 19, 2038. After that, times will wrap around and be represented as a negative number.

And then what happens?

Programs will fail, of course. Since they will see times not as being in 2038 but rather in 1901, erroneous calculations and decisions will occur. (It's true, check Wikipedia!)

Demo

Example showing how the date would reset (at 03:14:08 UTC on 19 January 2038).

We've actually seen fallout from the 2038 bug already, back in May of 2006 when the AOLserver web server software crashed. The software was designed so that database requests would "never" time out. Instead of assigning a "0" to the timeout, the software specified a timeout date one billion seconds in the future. One billion seconds (just over 31 years 251 days and 12 hours) after 21:27:28 on 12 May 2006 is beyond the 2038 cutoff date. The system calculated a timeout date that was actually in the past, got confused, and crashed.

The bug even affected the Mars Rover!

Want More Proof?

Check out the archived outputs from test scripts here:

• http://www.lugmen.org.ar/pipermail/lug-list/2005-May/035318.html
• http://www.sec.org.il/coverages.php?c=53
• http://unix.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/AIX-L/2004-01/0011.html

What's Affected?

By 2038, it's likely that many of the susceptible machines will have been decommissioned before the critical date occurs. However, legacy systems and embedded systems could still be affected. These may include process control computers, space probe computers, embedded systems in traffic light controllers, navigation systems, routers, gas pumps, etc. It may not be possible to upgrade many of these systems, so they will need to be replaced.

I'm a Programmer - What Can I Do?

• Test your code or use utilities such as the FakeTime Preload Library.
• See the programming recommendations from The Open Group (formerly X/Open), which maintains the Unix specification and trademark.
• If you're working with Open Source code, this free library may be a useful reference for patching existing code for high-accuracy longterm time calculation.
• Read the Solutions to the Year 2000 Problem by Steve Manley. Many of his suggestions can be applied to the 2038 problem, too.
• Keep tabs on any recent updates on the 2038 Bug web site

(Source: the 2038 FAQ)

The End?

Before mass hysteria sets in, let's all remember that we have years, decades even, to deal with this latest programming glitch.

And as for the internet?

Well, I'm pretty sure that self-improving Artificial Intelligences will be running the world by then, so we probably don't need to worry too much about this.

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Here are a list of technologies that created a fuss in 2007 and now in 2008 they are certainly going to create headlines.A point to note is that most of these are related to Open Source.

1. Android

Can you say, “Open source standard Linux for devices powered by Google”? Can you say, “gPhone”? Almost five thousand developers signed up in the first week. This might be the iPhone that everyone really wants. If you look at what Linux and open source have provided over the last ten years, I can’t imagine what mobile devices will look like with a platform like Android in the next five years. One blogger said that, if you write code for a living, you need to learn about Android. Android might be what Java was supposed to be.

See also...

Five things you might want to know about Android?

How to Program Google Android

Android (mobile phone platform)

Verizon to announce “Any Apps-Any Device”

2. Drupal

Drupal is an open source content management system (CMS). Open source CMS’s in general are going to be big plays in 2008. CMS systems make so much sense for managing data. They provide solutions for the simplest web sites all the way up to the most complex e-business sites. Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, has a new startup called Acquia, and, literally a few weeks after he started his new company, Acquia received $7 million in funding.

See also...

Drupal Founder’s New Startup Gets Funding

IBM Picks Drupal

Sun and Drupal Getting Cozy

Drupal and Second Life Integration …

Yahoo Uses Drupal

3. Alice

Alice was developed at Carnegie Mellon as a way to get students excited about computer science and to make learning programming fun. Over 100 universities and 100 high schools now use Alice as their introductory computer sciences class. After a few hours of using Alice or StoryTellingAlice, students have already learned looping, multi-threading, and method encapsulation, and they will think that all they are doing is creating stories. My nine -year-old is already addicted to StoryTellingAlice. The next release called Alice 3.0 should be out next year. Alice 3.0 will include contributions from Electronic Arts’ Sims2. The story will only get better.

See also...

Uber Virtual World Guru’s Final Accomplishment

The Center for Visualization

EA’s Hit Game ‘The Sims’ Will Help Make Computer Science Education Fun

Learning to Program with Alice

4. Hadoop

Cloud computing in 2008 will be white hot. Hadoop is the dirty little secret behind a good portion of cloud computing. Google, IBM, Yahoo, and Amazon are doing the Hadoop. In 2008, a lot more companies will be following their lead. Last year, Google sponsored an initiative to introduce Google 101 at the University of Washington (see Business Week article). IBM has also jumped into the game by teaming with Google to address Internet-scale computing initiatives at a small number of universities. IBM has also announced a competitive solution to Amazon’s web services (AWS) called “Blue Cloud” that will also be based on Hadoop. All indications are that clear skies are ahead for Hadoop in 2008.

See also...

May a “Blue Cloud” rain good fortunes upon you

I seem to have my head in a cloud today .. yuk yuk yuk

Hadoop

Great Post on Cloud Computing Concerns

5.Kaneva

Kaneva has almost a million subscribers, and it is still in Beta. Predictions are that it will have 3 million subscribers in 2008. The founder, Christopher Klaus, sold his last venture ISS to IBM for $1.3 billion last year. Christopher Klaus might have an inside track to a technology that IBM is obviously gaga over. Kaneva might also be hedging its bets as well by using IBM System x servers as its infrastructure architecture.

See also...

A Beta with 700k Users!

Kaneva Game Platform

Kaneva Takes Virtual World Mainstream With IBM

Kaneva

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Do you have a blog, online profile, or some other personal web page? Would you like to communicate more with your visitors? Today we're launching a new Google Talk feature that lets visitors to your web site chat with you. We call it "chatback" because instead of you doing all the talking on your blog, your visitors can talk back to you. Sure, they could leave comments, but those are public and hard to use for a real conversation. With chatback, it's a real instant message session.

To use chatback, you must have a Google Talk account ... but your visitors don't have to! They don't even need to have an email address, or to have ever used instant messaging.

When they visit your site, they'll see a badge like the one on the right showing your online status (available, busy, offline) and, if you're available, they can just click and start chatting. Chatback uses the web-based Google Talk Gadget so your visitors don't need to download anything. It opens in a new window so they can keep chatting with you even if they browse to other pages.

Of course, chatback isn't just for blogs. You can use it on any web page that you can add HTML content to. To get started, visit the chatback start page. (This is also linked from the Google Talk homepage.) Then just copy the provided HTML snippet to your web site. Visitors will then see a badge on your site indicating your availability, and can click to start a chat with you. If there's a time when you don't want to be distracted, just set your online status to "busy" and visitors won't be able to chat with you until you change your status back to "available."

If you're not already a Google Talk user, it's easy to become one. If you've got a Gmail account, then you already have a Google Talk account. If not, just go to www.google.com/talk or www.gmail.com to get started.

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A CAPTCHA is a program that protects websites against bots by generating and grading tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot.

A CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether the user is human. The process involves one computer (a server) asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade. Because other computers are unable to solve the CAPTCHA, any user entering a correct solution is presumed to be human. A common type of CAPTCHA requires that the user type the letters of a distorted image, sometimes with the addition of an obscured sequence of letters or digits that appears on the screen.

The term "CAPTCHA" was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas J. Hopper (all of Carnegie Mellon University), and John Langford (then of IBM). It is a contrived acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart", trademarked by Carnegie Mellon University.

A CAPTCHA is sometimes described as a reverse Turing test, because it is administered by a machine and targeted to a human, in contrast to the standard Turing test that is typically administered by a human and targeted to a machine.

For example, humans can read distorted text as the one shown below, but current computer programs can't:

Google
Hotmail
Yahoo

Applications of CAPTCHAs

CAPTCHAs have several applications for practical security, including (but not limited to):

• Preventing Comment Spam in Blogs. Most bloggers are familiar with programs that submit bogus comments, usually for the purpose of raising search engine ranks of some website (e.g., "buy penny stocks here"). This is called comment spam. By using a CAPTCHA, only humans can enter comments on a blog. There is no need to make users sign up before they enter a comment, and no legitimate comments are ever lost!

• Protecting Website Registration. Several companies (Yahoo!, Microsoft, etc.) offer free email services. Up until a few years ago, most of these services suffered from a specific type of attack: "bots" that would sign up for thousands of email accounts every minute. The solution to this problem was to use CAPTCHAs to ensure that only humans obtain free accounts. In general, free services should be protected with a CAPTCHA in order to prevent abuse by automated scripts.

• Protecting Email Addresses From Scrapers. Spammers crawl the Web in search of email addresses posted in clear text. CAPTCHAs provide an effective mechanism to hide your email address from Web scrapers. The idea is to require users to solve a CAPTCHA before showing your email address. A free and secure implementation that uses CAPTCHAs to obfuscate an email address can be found at reCAPTCHA MailHide.

• Online Polls. In November 1999, http://www.slashdot.org released an online poll asking which was the best graduate school in computer science (a dangerous question to ask over the web!). As is the case with most online polls, IP addresses of voters were recorded in order to prevent single users from voting more than once. However, students at Carnegie Mellon found a way to stuff the ballots using programs that voted for CMU thousands of times. CMU's score started growing rapidly. The next day, students at MIT wrote their own program and the poll became a contest between voting "bots." MIT finished with 21,156 votes, Carnegie Mellon with 21,032 and every other school with less than 1,000. Can the result of any online poll be trusted? Not unless the poll ensures that only humans can vote.

• Preventing Dictionary Attacks. CAPTCHAs can also be used to prevent dictionary attacks in password systems. The idea is simple: prevent a computer from being able to iterate through the entire space of passwords by requiring it to solve a CAPTCHA after a certain number of unsuccessful logins. This is better than the classic approach of locking an account after a sequence of unsuccessful logins, since doing so allows an attacker to lock accounts at will.

• Search Engine Bots. It is sometimes desirable to keep webpages unindexed to prevent others from finding them easily. There is an html tag to prevent search engine bots from reading web pages. The tag, however, doesn't guarantee that bots won't read a web page; it only serves to say "no bots, please." Search engine bots, since they usually belong to large companies, respect web pages that don't want to allow them in. However, in order to truly guarantee that bots won't enter a web site, CAPTCHAs are needed.

• Worms and Spam. CAPTCHAs also offer a plausible solution against email worms and spam: "I will only accept an email if I know there is a human behind the other computer." A few companies are already marketing this idea.

Further readings..
The Official CAPTCHA site
Wikipedia

Click Here to Read More..

Ask anyone which search engine they use to find information on the Internet and they will almost certainly reply: "Google." Look a little further, and market research shows that people actually use four main search engines for 99.99% of their searches: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com (in that order)But,in that .01% lies a vast multitude of the most innovative and creative search engines you have never seen.

The Search Homepage

In order to address their claims systematically, it helps to group them into categories and then compare them to their Google counterparts. For example, let's look at the first thing that almost everyone sees when they go to search the Internet - the ubiquitous Google homepage. That famously sparse, clean sheet of paper with the colorful Google logo is the most popular Web page in the entire World Wide Web. For millions and millions of Internet users, that Spartan white page IS the Internet.

Google has successfully made their site the front door through which everyone passes in order to access the Internet. But staring at an almost blank sheet of paper has become, well, boring.

A second example comes from Simply Google. Instead of squeezing through the keyhole in order to reach Google's 37 search options, Simply Google places all of those choices and many, many more all on the very first page; neatly arranged in columns.

Artificial Intelligence

A second arena is sometimes referred to as Natural Language Processing (NLP), or Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is the desire we all have of wanting to ask a search engine questions in everyday sentences, and receive a human-like answer.
Google's approach, Google Answers, was to enlist a cadre of "experts." The concept was that you would pose a question to one of these experts, negotiate a price for an answer, and then pay up when it was found and delivered. It was such a failure, Google had to cancel the whole program. Enter ChaCha. With ChaCha, you can pose any question that you wish, click on the "Search With Guide" button, and a ChaCha Guide appears in a Chat box and dialogues with you until you find what you are looking for. There's no time limit, and no fee.

Clustering Engines

Perhaps Google's most glaring and egregious shortcoming is their insistence on displaying the outcome of a search in an impossibly long, one-dimensional list of results. We all intuitively know that the World Wide Web is just that, a three dimensional (or "3-D") web of interconnected Web pages. Several search engines, known as clustering engines, routinely present their search results on a two-dimensional map that one can navigate through in search of the best answer. Search engines like KartOO and Quintura are excellent examples.

Recommendation Search Engines

Another promising category is the recommendation search engines. While Google essentially helps you to find what you already know (you just can't find it), recommendation engines show you a whole world of things that you didn't even know existed. Check out What to Rent, Music Map, or the stunning Live Plasma display. When you input a favorite movie, book, or artist, they recommend to you a world of titles or similar artists that you may never have heard of, but would most likely enjoy.

Metasearch Engines

When you perform a search on Google, the results that you get are all from, well, Google! But metasearch engines have been around for years. They allow you to search not only Google, but a variety of other search engines too - in one fell swoop. There are many search engines that can do this, Dogpile, for instance, searches all of the "big four" mentioned above (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask) simultaneously. You could also try Zuula or PlanetSearch - which plows through 16 search engines at a time for you. A very interesting site to watch is GoshMe. Instead of searching an incredible number of Web pages, like conventional search engines, GoshMe searches for search engines (or databases) that each tap into an incredible number of Web pages. As I perceive it, GoshMe is a meta-metasearch engine (still in Beta)!

Other Alt Search Engines

And so it goes, feature after feature after feature. TheFind is a better shopping experience than Google's Froogle, IMHO. Like is a true visual search engine, unlike Google's Images, which just matches your keywords into images that have been tagged with those same keywords. Coming soon is Mobot (see the Demo at www.mobot.com). Google Mobile does let you perform a search on your mobile phone, but check out the Slifter Mobile Demo when you get a chance!

Finally, almost prophetically, Google is silent. Silent! At least Speeglebot talks to you, and Nayio listens! But of course, why should Google worry about these upstarts (all 100 of them)? Aren't they just like flies buzzing around an elephant? Can't Google just ignore them, as their share of the search market continues to creep upwards towards 100%, or perhaps just buy them? Perhaps.

The Top 100....

• A9
• AOL
• AURA!
• blinkx
• boing
• bookmach.com
• BOXXET
• ChaCha
• ClipBlast!
• Clusty
• collarity
• CometQ
• CONGOO
• d e c i p h o
• del.icio.us
• digg
• digg labs swarm
• Ditto
• dumbfind
• exalead
• factbites
• fazzle
• FEEDS|2.0
• Feedster
• FindSounds
• GIGABLAST
• girafa
• gnn o d
• GoDefy
• goshme
• GoYams
• grokker
• ICEROCKET
• ixquick
• KartOO
• last.fm
• Lexxealpha
• like
• LiveDeal
• liveplasma
• Local.com
• lurpo
• MetaGlossary
• mnemomap
• Mojeek
• Mooter
• MrSAPO
• MS. DEWEY
• nayio
• Octora
• OiHoi Search
• Pagebull
• PlanetSearch
• pluggd
• PODZINGER
• Previewseek
• pronto.com
• QTsearch
• Quintura
• Releton
• retrevo gamma
• riya
• ROLLYO O
• SearchTheWeb2
• SEEQPOD
• sidekiq
• Simply Google
• Singing FISH
• Slideshow
• Slifter
• soople
• Speegle
• Sphider
• SPURL.net
• S R C H R
• SurfWax
• Swoogle
• TagJag!
• thefind.com
• Trexy
• turboscout
• UJIKO
• url.com
• VMGO.com
• Web 2.0
• Webaroo
• WEBBRAIN
• What to RENT?
• whonu?
• WIKIO
• WiseNut
• Yahoo! MINDSET
• yoono
• yoople
• yubnub
• YuFind
• ZABASEARCH
• zapmeta
• Zippy
• ZUULA

For an Excel spreadsheet of the entire Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, go to: http://charlesknightseo.com/list.aspx or email the author at Charles@CharlesKnightSEO.com.

Feel free to share this list, but please retain Charles' name and email.

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