Earlier this week Google launched an exciting product called Google Latitude. What is Google Latitude? Before that let us see Google Map “my location”. Couple of months back Google introduced a feature in Google Map for mobile called “My Location”. Selecting that option will pin point your exact location(Your mobile) in Google Map. If your mobile is GPS (Global Positioning System) enabled it will show your exact location in map. If your mobile is not GPS enables still they were able to point you in map with blue circle around for 5KM for your approximate location.
It really helped me many times when I go to other towns. I used it to find where I am , the places near by and the way to reach my target place. Now coming to Google Latitude. When we are able to find our exact location in Google map would not it be cool if we could track the location of friends and family in Google maps. Yes what is impossible for Google? They named it as Google latitude and launched the revolutionary thought. Look at the below demonstration video for Google Latitude.
What do I need to activate Google Latitude?
A high end Mobile with latest Google Maps installed on it and of course data connection on it. By this way you share your location with your friends. If you are on a computer you can add igoogle widget and still follow your friends who are all on mobile. Additionally you can share your desktop/laptop location if you have installed Google Gears.
I’ve tried this Google Latitude with our friend circle and I was able to track the location of one my friend in minute by minute when he was traveling long distance in car. Though his mobile does not have GPS, Google was able to track his latitude using the cellphone tower range and pointed his move in Google Map.
We can also see that Google take care of the privacy very well. You can share or disable the contacts who can see your Geo location. You can also select city level location option if you just want to share your current city and not the exact place on that city. Interestingly you can also chose the locational manually so you can be in Mumbai and show your friends as you are in Chennai.
Another important thing we should think about is, Google the internet legend already collected the data of what we search, what we do on internet. Each and every thing we do in the internet is being collected by Google. The next, they started collecting the sensitive data like where we go and what we do physically!. Already there are lot of hot discussions going in internet regarding the privacy issue. People say that you can be spied if some one installs this software in your mobile. Does Google have to answer for this?
Everybody enjoyed exploring landscape using Google Earth, how about diving into the ocean? Yes get ready… Google has added the ocean on the version 5 of Google Earth. Using this feature one can go beneath the water surface, explore 3D underwater terrain and browse ocean-related content.
In the new ocean layer, you can plunge all the way to the floor of the sea, view exclusive content from partners like BBC and National Geographic, and explore 3D shipwrecks like the Titanic.
Here is the video of the Google Earth new version which you will be interested to view before you download it.
Google launched Google Bus Project to educate the power of the Internet to common people. It is a Internet connected bus specially designed with many computers installed inside the bus. According to this project, Google bus will travel to the major cities all over Tamil Nadu. They will explain the benefits of Internet to create awareness among the common people. This is really a great initiative in India and many will be benefited through this.
The bus is designed to make a simple introduction to the Internet for a new user. So you may ask your friends and relatives to visit this bus when it comes to your city and let them get benefited.
Their focus will be on the four themes of education, information, communication, and entertainment, the Internet Bus will be loaded with useful and informative content in English and Tamil. They will also showcase how the Internet can make everyday life simple through services like search, email, social networking, maps and others.
Google the internet giant warned their visitors that all the website in internet are harmful. Yes, this happened on Saturday evening when every one searched in Google. You might be aware of that normally Google will warn the visitors if any suspicious sites are displayed in Google search results. This is to protect their visitors from any malicious attacks on their computer.
But due to an human error, all the web sites were marked as harmful websites in Google search results. This was including Google sites. This happened only for few hours before google found it and fix.
Google announcedthe reason is “Unfortunately (and here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.”
There are lot of anti virus programs available in the market which confuses the people to choose the best. The most important thing to consider at this point is to check how effective is their anti virus program against the virus. Does it captures the virus correctly or just scans the system and leaves the infection?
How to check the anti virus program works effectively in your PC? Practically, you would need to wait until your system gets infected or you would need to download an infected file. But what if your system is already infected and your anti virus program fails to find it. You might also be thinking that way and need to test your anti virus program before you fully rely on that.
Here is the Eicar test string which you can use safely to test the effectiveness of your anti virus program.
This string was developed by European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research as an alternative to virus file instead of having real virus file to risk. All you need to do is to copy the above string and save it as a text file using notepad. When you scan the system you anti virus program should find this as file as a threat.
