हम बोलेगा तो बोलोगे के बोलता है |

http://www.youtube.com is throwing error.

Is it IPL effect ? Or chinese hackers ?

While using google services, I observed something interesting:

Saw the circled thing ? Instead of my normal sign in name or my first name, it shows: http://mandar.deodhar@gmail.com.

Google reader is still with old sign in .. don't know why.




What is this ? From last few days I have read little about google is becoming an Open Id provider, then later on gmail or your blog address can be your open id etc. etc. I guess this is it. Now, you are not accessing google services using your google account, you are using Open Id to use them. And this open Id is provided by google - your gmail id with http.

Sounds confusing ? Read following information about Open Id. If you still have doubts, let me know:

Google moves towards single sign-on with OpenID
Google Abandons Standards, Forks OpenID
Your Gmail Account is Now An OpenID

Why all this ? Now google or every site using this service knows what a user is doing somewhere else. Better user profiling so that they can show you 'targeted' ads :-)

But the benefits of using Open Id are many. If implemented properly, one can have their personal profile created on orkut, blog on wordpress,album on photobucket, online office documents using msn (live.com), mail on gmail etc. all with single sign in id to remember and link. Lets see when it will happen.

What a birthday gift for Jerry Yang. He is turning 40 today (6th Nov)
 
The last hope for Yahoo to keep Yahoo independent from Microsoft is over. Google announced they are moving away from the Yahoo-Google advertisement deal.

For those who are not aware of the history, Microsoft showed interest to buy Yahoo at $33 per share i.e. $47.5 billion total. At that time Yahoo was getting traded around $28. Yang responded with the price $37 and Microsoft refused.


To make the acquisition impossible, Yahoo made the ad sharing agreement with search giant Google. This deal was helpful for Yahoo in short term as they're getting more ads hence more revenue from Google. But in long term, they are doing nothing but sleeping with the enemy. All this is just to stay away from Microsoft.



But fate it seems, Yang has run out of options now. Google has said bye bye.


Many of the Yahoo senior executives left the ship already, others are going one by one. Share are now in 13-16$ range. Finally, Yang is now asking Microsoft to offer another deal for Yahoo. Another option can be merging with AOL, but it is again difficult due to AOL's relationship with Time Warner.

Balmer must be very happy with all this.



Microsoft is happy as the control is in their hands now. Beggars are not choosers. They are getting Yahoo at half the price than their previous offer. But considering the market situation few months before and now, Microsoft has also came down. Hence its not very easy for Microsoft as well. But with the power of money, they can do it.

What about Mr. Carl Ichan ?



He had plans to make great money with old Microsoft deal, but now being one of the major shareholder in Yahoo, he is also the part of the sinking ship.



Why all this happened ? Where exactly Yahoo went wrong ? As per my view, they did almost nothing in last 2 years compare to their competitors - Google and Microsoft. Both advanced with their own talent, research and acquisitions - power of money. Yahoo lacked on all these fronts. They also lost their talent, their senior management executives one by one which worsen the situation. This failure was well exploited by wall street to put immense pressure on Yahoo board. They failed to manage it well and made wrong decisions. Now the situation is not under their control. What they'll end up with ? Only time will tell ...

Have you used Google's Chrome browser ? If not you must have seen its logo at least. This is how it is created:

Mine is mandar.deodhar@gmail.com .. not just this but mandardeodhar@gmail.com, m.a.n.d.a.r.d.e.o.d.h.a.r@gmail.com and many more. Total 4096 addresses like this.

Got the trick ?

The dot in you username is redundant. You can place it anywhere (except starting and ending) or just remove it. All mails addresses are valid.

Checkout this screenshot: (open in new tab to see it zoomed)

Hence if you are having 'n' letters in your email addresses, the nyou actually own 2^(n-1) distinct email addresses on google. Isn't that interesting ? I just accidentaly discovered it. Digged it a bit and realized its a nice feature. Helpful if you have a website where you are subscribing using trial for few days and login requires a fresh valid mail address. Great.Prince.Of.Czechoslovakia@gmail.com can have 6,71,08,864 addresses. (Dont try to register it now .. its already gone .. yours truly has taken it just now ;-) )

Now the interesting question is why google is doing this ?
My answer is, google's motto is to organize the world's information. For google - mail, blogger, orkut, reader, docs is not just a service. Your user name is a 'profile' which has behavior which can be learn by machine learning algorithm to display targeted advertisements. Removing non characters is a simplest method to do string matching. Hence it gives google a chance to unify your different profiles as one. Any more suggestions are welcome.

Few off topic stuff now .. if you look closely, you can see there is no chat box or send invites box on left side of gmail. They are redundant hence I removed them using some simple hacks. Similarly, the right side advertisements are also totally useless. There is no way I am going to click on them .. Still let them be there .. thats google's bread and butter which allows them to provide great 'g' apps for free.