26 January 2014

Google Answers Complicated Questions



Google used to only answer simple questions like "who's the prime minister of Canada?" or "what's the population of China?". Thanks to the Knowledge Graph project, Google can answer more complicated questions like "who played Batman?", "what's the latest album of Celine Dion?", "what are the main attractions in Spain?".



Now Google shows direct answers for even more complex questions. Here's an example of question that doesn't have a definitive answer: "what's the distance between Earth and Mars?". I picked a shorter version of the query: "distance to the Mars." Google shows a snippet from a page that answers the question and highlights the distances.






Google also answers: "how many work days in a year?", "who owns Lancia?", "who ended world war 2?", "who celebrates presidents day?", "how many countries are there?".








The answers aren't always accurate and sometimes they're incomplete (Will Smith has three kids):








Adobe Photoshop Express Gets A Powerful Makeover For Android KitKat



photoshop-express-android

Adobe has released a new version of the free Photoshop Express for Android. The updated app has been designed from scratch with enhanced performance in tune with the new KitKat version of the operating system. Adobe’s new and faster image rendering engine powers the app in Android’s latest version. The face of the app also gets a more user-friendly refresh. Users might notice the more powerful image rendering engine under the hood. Accessing and processing images saved on the SD card is now faster than before. The added power also makes handling larger file sizes easier. On the design front...


Read the full article: Adobe Photoshop Express Gets A Powerful Makeover For Android KitKat



Keep It Simple, Stupid: 7 No-Fuss Online Tools For The Lazy Blogger



blogging-logos

Blogging can be a pain in the butt when it comes to management. Hosting your own blog has its perks — flexibility and customization — but it could prove troublesome if you don’t have much technical knowledge. Plus, self-hosting a blog requires renting server space. What if you don’t want to deal with any of that? For a while, if you wanted to blog for free you were stuck between WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, and a few other alternatives that weren’t so good. Nowadays, you have an ocean of free blogging platforms that will serve you well depending on what you...


Read the full article: Keep It Simple, Stupid: 7 No-Fuss Online Tools For The Lazy Blogger



Keep It Simple, Stupid: 7 No-Fuss Online Tools For The Lazy Blogger



blogging-logos

Blogging can be a pain in the butt when it comes to management. Hosting your own blog has its perks — flexibility and customization — but it could prove troublesome if you don’t have much technical knowledge. Plus, self-hosting a blog requires renting server space. What if you don’t want to deal with any of that? For a while, if you wanted to blog for free you were stuck between WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, and a few other alternatives that weren’t so good. Nowadays, you have an ocean of free blogging platforms that will serve you well depending on what you...


Read the full article: Keep It Simple, Stupid: 7 No-Fuss Online Tools For The Lazy Blogger



Have You Upgraded To Windows 8.1? [MakeUseOf Poll]



windows-poll

Last week we wanted to know how much free space you’ve managed to get on your Dropbox account. Through referrals, games, and various promotions, it seems that most of you did a pretty good job at going over the minimum 2 GB allotted by Dropbox. But if you thought 50 GB was a huge amount of free space to have, you’re in for a surprise. A total of 1,032 readers voted in this poll. These were the results: 1% of you have a paid Dropbox account, while 2% don’t use Dropbox at all. That means 98% of the readers who...


Read the full article: Have You Upgraded To Windows 8.1? [MakeUseOf Poll]



A Google Experiment Hides Knowledge Graph Sidebar



Google has an experiment that hides the Knowledge Graph sidebar, so it no longer shows information about famous people, companies, plants, cars, movies, books and more.






To try this experiment, install a cookie manager extension like "Edit This Cookie" for Chrome or Cookies Manager+ for Firefox, go to google.com and change the value of the NID cookie to:



67=Pj2b01uyf7hJnPvNoPECEnzlbCoXch_13GxuSVeSSyRdm_irfKzVaizXIE5svj3Qw1985iU4waenQh_Qy-BrE4WOtZ5Zoz9T4Kl1e1DtwJL4Xy0-JBcW_Z9IOKdd1H5Z






If you use "Edit This Cookie", don't forget to click "Submit changes". Delete the NID cookie to opt-out from the experiment.






{ Thanks, Rubén. }

Google Hides Too Many Search Results



This is a strange bug. For many navigational queries, Google only returns about 100 search results and shows a message like this: "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 117 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included." If you click the link, you'll be sent back to the first page of results and you'll be able to see more than 100 results (but not 1000). You can also add "&filter=0" to the search URL.






While the duplicate filter is not new, it was used to hide results that were redundant (for example: the same press release published by multiple sites). It's hard to believe that Google can't find more than 117 relevant results for [Google], 120 results for [Facebook] or 75 results for [Yahoo].






When you search for [Yahoo], Google returns a lot of results from yahoo.com and Google's duplication filter stops showing results because they appear to be redundant. There's a conflict between two opposite principles: showing diverse results and showing many results from the most relevant sites.



Here's a page of almost identical search results that probably triggered the filter:






Another issue is that there are many spam pages, irellevant results and pages in foreign languages. Here are some examples for [Amazon]:









Google needs to fix this bug and show more diverse results.



{ Thanks, Joren. }

25 January 2014

For Visual Thinkers: 2 Different Ways To Look At Your Evernote Notes



visual-thinking

Evernote is the closest (or at least, the most popular) digital relative of the old moleskin notebook. There’s just one slight hitch – Evernote organizes all the notes and notebooks in a flat, linear structure. Usually, it isn’t a problem at all if you are anything other than a visual thinker. Visual thinkers lean more towards free-flowing methods like sketchnoting and mindmaping. Visual thinking helps to break down the complexity of information and gives you another angle to look at it from. When it comes to working with information, a more visual approach also helps to re-organize the structure of...


Read the full article: For Visual Thinkers: 2 Different Ways To Look At Your Evernote Notes



24 January 2014

The Only Chrome Extension You Need For Gmail: mxHero Toolbox



gmail-extension

Gmail is our favourite email service here at MakeUseOf, but admittedly, it has a few shortcomings. For one, the inability to schedule emails to send them later is quite frustrating. Plus, it would be nice to be able to know when someone has checked your message, and maybe even get reminded to follow-up with those who haven’t. I’d never have guessed that someone would come up with an extension that solves all of these problems for free. And mxHero Toolbox not only does that, but also adds the ability to send self-destructing messages right from your Gmail! How To Send...


Read the full article: The Only Chrome Extension You Need For Gmail: mxHero Toolbox



The Only Chrome Extension You Need For Gmail: mxHero Toolbox



gmail-extension

Gmail is our favourite email service here at MakeUseOf, but admittedly, it has a few shortcomings. For one, the inability to schedule emails to send them later is quite frustrating. Plus, it would be nice to be able to know when someone has checked your message, and maybe even get reminded to follow-up with those who haven’t. I’d never have guessed that someone would come up with an extension that solves all of these problems for free. And mxHero Toolbox not only does that, but also adds the ability to send self-destructing messages right from your Gmail! How To Send...


Read the full article: The Only Chrome Extension You Need For Gmail: mxHero Toolbox



SkyDrive For Windows 8: The Cloud Storage And Modern File Explorer App



SkyDrive-Featured

With Windows 8, Microsoft included SkyDrive integration with every PC, and with Windows 8.1, they have pushed that integration even further. Now, the SkyDrive for Windows 8 app is a must-use for any Windows 8 user. Every person with a Microsoft account is given 7GB of storage for free, which is notably better than many alternative cloud storage services like Dropbox. Filling up that space is whatever you choose to put in your SkyDrive folder, as well as your PC’s personalization settings, and the app even works as a modern file explorer. Cloud Storage There used to be a desktop...


Read the full article: SkyDrive For Windows 8: The Cloud Storage And Modern File Explorer App



Google Search Uses Dropdown To Reveal More Information On Relevant Websites



google-search

The Knowledge Graph was a significant addition to the search results page. Google now integrates a bit more from it under each individual search result. A little dropdown menu just below the search results tells you more about the websites you see in the search results page. By including information on notable websites, Google gives searchers an opportunity to learn more about a website without needing to click through and searching for the information on their own. At a glance, it will help users source the relevant search information from an authoritative website. As you can see in the screenshot...


Read the full article: Google Search Uses Dropdown To Reveal More Information On Relevant Websites



Illegal NSA, Mac At 30, Facebook Vs Princeton, Top Gear Street View [Tech News Digest]



stop-spying-sunglasses

Today in Tech News Digest, the activities of the NSA are branded “illegal,” Microsoft posts record revenues, Apple celebrates the Mac turning 30, Hunter Moore is arrested, Facebook and Princeton argue over who will survive the longest, Twitter celebrates ‘A Year On Vine’, and the Top Gear test track is added to Google Street View. NSA Phone Data Collection Branded “Illegal” Now even internal federal watch dogs within the U.S. government know the #NSA needs to stop: http://t.co/vYO0bcbmvn — Restore The 4th! (@Restore_the4th) January 24, 2014 The program which saw the NSA (National Security Agency) collecting data from millions of...


Read the full article: Illegal NSA, Mac At 30, Facebook Vs Princeton, Top Gear Street View [Tech News Digest]



Live Calendar Tile App Adds Live Calendar To Start Screen In Windows 8/8.1



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Ever since the first public preview release of Windows 8 back in 2011, we have been reviewing programs that help you customize look and feel of operating system and Start screen. We have already covered over 15 free tools to customize Windows 8/8.1 UI, including 6 tools to customize the default look of the Start […]

How To Use Your Downloaded Gmail Data



gmail-download

Google Takeout finally allows you to easily download a copy of your Gmail data. But Google gives you an MBOX file — and what can you do with that? It turns out you can do a lot with an MBOX file. It’s ideal for keeping an offline backup or moving all your emails to a new email service or Gmail account. Previously, getting an offline copy of your Gmail required downloading your entire Gmail archive over IMAP in Thunderbird. Now it just takes a few clicks on the Google Takeout website and you’re good to go. Import Your Gmail MBOX...


Read the full article: How To Use Your Downloaded Gmail Data



How To Use Your Downloaded Gmail Data



gmail-download

Google Takeout finally allows you to easily download a copy of your Gmail data. But Google gives you an MBOX file — and what can you do with that? It turns out you can do a lot with an MBOX file. It’s ideal for keeping an offline backup or moving all your emails to a new email service or Gmail account. Previously, getting an offline copy of your Gmail required downloading your entire Gmail archive over IMAP in Thunderbird. Now it just takes a few clicks on the Google Takeout website and you’re good to go. Import Your Gmail MBOX...


Read the full article: How To Use Your Downloaded Gmail Data



23 January 2014

Google Launches “Video Quality Report” To Benchmark ISPs With YouTube HD Streaming



youtube-video-quality

There are speed tests to compare bandwidths from ISP services, and then there’s the newly launched “Video Quality Report” from Google which subscribers and ISP providers can use to benchmark video streaming performance. It is only available in Canada for now, but expect it to be rolled out to the world gradually. The Google-powered yardstick uses YouTube HD playback to measure not only the speed of video delivery but also its quality. Google has servers around the world, and it usually picks the shortest route to deliver the YouTube video to a screen. The ISPs own network capacity is one...


Read the full article: Google Launches “Video Quality Report” To Benchmark ISPs With YouTube HD Streaming



Google Streamlines Search Options



Google removed a few specialized search options that were usually displayed in the "more" drop-down: recipes, patents, discussions, blogs, places. The list of links to services like Maps, Images, News, Flights, Shopping is reordered based on your query. This isn't a new idea, it was implemented a long time ago by Google, but now it's used more often.












{ Thanks, Rubén and Max. }

Make Gnome Shell Usable With These 12 Extensions



gnome_extensions_intro

With the creation of Gnome Shell, the Gnome team introduced a new paradigm to the desktop that was greeted with mixed reviews. While I agree that a new idea of what a desktop should be is necessary for innovation, what Gnome accomplished isn’t quite complete. But there’s a way to fix it. Gnome 3 came with an extension framework, which allows other developers to fix little usability issues users may have. After looking through the list of available extensions for Gnome Shell, I’ve found several that have made my Gnome desktop very nice to use – so much so that...


Read the full article: Make Gnome Shell Usable With These 12 Extensions



Beats Music Reviews, DoD BlackBerry Love, Winning Windows Phone [Tech News Digest]



beats-music-devices

Today in Tech News Digest, we compile a smattering of Beats Music reviews, Yahoo Search is made secure, the Department of Defense chooses BlackBerry, the saga of Banned Bluebook is revealed, Twitter expands its targeted ads, and Windows Phone is found to be beating the iPhone… in a handful of countries. Beats Music Reviews Beats Music has launched, with the maker of the overly expensive headphones and speakers now adding a music streaming service to its repertoire. Unlike its rivals Spotify and Rdio, Beats Music doesn’t have a free, ad-supported option. So, is the new kid on the block worth...


Read the full article: Beats Music Reviews, DoD BlackBerry Love, Winning Windows Phone [Tech News Digest]