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One Man’s Blog

Specialization is for Insects.

Google Pidgeon Rank System

Google Pigeon RankHere is the latest white paper from Google explaining the technology behind how their search engine functions.

Here is an excerpt:

“The common gray pigeon can easily distinguish among items displaying only the minutest differences, an ability that enables it to select relevant web sites from among thousands of similar pages.”

A truly fascinating read.
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Goggles the Google Flight Simulator!

GogglesThis is AWESOME! Mark Caswell-Daniels has developed a little flight sim game which uses Google Maps to allow you to fly all over the place. You can climb, dive, turn and even crash! You also have the option of shooting things on the ground.

Now, what would be GREAT would be if he could turn this into a multiplayer game so that if you see someone else you could have a dogfight online in real time.

By the way, I also started another Web site called GoogleGames.org to catalog all the Google related games out there. Check it out when you get a chance.
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Google E-mails News Alerts

Google AlertsIs there a particular topic that you’d always like to receive notification of if it hits the news wires? Well, Google has the service for you!

Just go to Google Alerts and enter the search terms, frequency and your e-mail address. After you click on the verification e-mail you’ll begin receiving notifications. So plug in your name, or Pamela Anderson, or Brangelina, or whatever turns you on!
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Google Trends Battle - Sex vs Drugs!

Google TrendsGoogle has a cool little item in the Google Labs which allows you to compare the frequency of different search terms. For example, if you want to see which term is more frequently searched for between Sex and Drugs, you can.

Or, if you want to find out who is more popular, Pamela Anderson or George Bush, you can do that too.

Also of note, the results tell you where in the world those terms are most searched for.
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Google Moon & Google Mars

Google MoonGoogle has added some fascinating footage of the moon to commemorate the anniversary of our Apollo moon landings.

This is interesting from a historical perspective, but even more fascinating is the incredible detail of the moon surface that can be seen when you zoom all the way in. I guess this definitively answers all questions regarding what the moon surface is made of.
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Digital Photo Tips

Frisco Style Photo ArticleFrisco Style magazine recently published an article that I authored, which has my top tips for digital photography.

The article is geared towards those who are getting started and need some good tips to point them in the right direction. Among those tips, I advise people to use Google’s free Picasa for image management and FastStone’s free Photo Resizer for adjusting image sizes and watermarking.

You can download Google’s Picasa separately by selecting the link above or you can download the Google Pack which includes it as well as several other Google apps that I highly recommend.

Free Google PackGoogle offers a great little download which I highly recommend. It includes several of Google’s best freeware offerings and, most importantly, an automated service to keep them all up to date.

Select the following link to download the package:


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Google NotebookI guess there is a reason for everything, though I can’t say that I am so desperate for organization that I’d actually use Google Notebook. Still, for those of you out there that would like to be able to organize and have universal access to notes on well… anything, Google has just the service for you.

I suppose this could make research projects much easier. And one really great thing about this service is that there is a little download which you can install to allow you to add things to your Notebook without having to leave the page you are actually denoting.

Google Trends Analyzes and Compares Data

Sex TrendsEver wondered about the trends for a particular search term over time? Well, for example, the search term sex seems to be pretty steady over the last few years…

Just visit http://google.com/trends and type in the search term you are curious about.


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