Here I shall be enlightening my readers with some Google advanced search operators that would help them in using Google search more efficiently and in a fast manner

define: phrase

Shows a list of definition for phrase

cache: www.website.com

Google’s cache for website.com

link: www.website.com

List of web pages that link to website.com

related: www.website.com

List web pages similar to website.com

info: www.website.com

Show the info that Google has about website.com

site: www.website.com

List of all web pages hosted at website.com

allintitle: query

Restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the title

intitle: query

Restrict the results to the documents containing that word in the title

allinurl: query

Restrict the result to those with all of the query words in the URL

inurl: query

Restrict the results to the documents containing that word in the URL

world * warcraft

The words world and warcraft separated by exactly one word

Nokia Phone $100…300

Search withing a range of numbers for a Nokia Phone between $100…300

safesearch: sex education

Search for sex education material without returning adult sites

Special Thanx to Google Cheat Sheet

But today’s highlight is the all new Voice and Video chat capabilities that Google added to its popular web mail application. The official Gmail blog announced today that it has added the new features which would be instantly available to everyone. All that you need is a plugin which could be installed from within Gmail.

The Gmail team preferred to have interoperability in their new service, that’s why they developed this technology on popular web protocols like the XMPP and the legacy RTP. The videos are encoded with H.264, which mean some old computers may have problems decoding and running a smooth stream. Nevertheless, if you are on an Intel Pentium 4 or higher, then there is nothing to worry about.

You can view the videos in the small fly-out panel or pop-em out to a large PIP view. You can even blow them up to full screen and have a smooth chatting experience at the same time. The plug-in developers were nice enough to make a tutorial video for us, highlighting some of the features of this new service along with instructions on how to use them. You can find the video on the official Google Channel on YouTube.

Voice and Video Plugin Direct Download

Almost every Web 2.0 service now has some sort of SMS flavor incorporated in them. And Gmail isn’t far behind the rest of pack.

SMS communication was already possible through a number of social networks including Twitter and Facebook. You can even send SMS from Yahoo! Mail or Windows Live Messenger. Now Google has also come up with its own SMS utility, that lets you send email as an SMS.

The new Gmail Labs feature scheduled to be released soon would allow you to send messages as texts if your friends are not on their computers. They can even reply back to you via the SMS carrier but its unclear at the moment if it would involve sending SMS to international numbers.

The feature was released and then subsequently pulled out due to some bugs that were discovered latter. The Gmail team promises to re-release the labs project within two weeks after the bugs have been resolved. It is safe to assume that it would be one of the most anticipated lab features of all time, because there are a lot text fanatics out there including me. I usually send 4000 to 5000 SMS per month, but if this process involves sending messages with international SMS rates then I would like to pass. It would be a lot cheaper to just get your email pushed to you on your handset with standard packet data services.

But today’s highlight is the all new Voice and Video chat capabilities that Google added to its popular web mail application. The official Gmail blog announced today that it has added the new features which would be instantly available to everyone. All that you need is a plugin which could be installed from within Gmail.

The Gmail team preferred to have interoperability in their new service, that’s why they developed this technology on popular web protocols like the XMPP and the legacy RTP. The videos are encoded with H.264, which mean some old computers may have problems decoding and running a smooth stream. Nevertheless, if you are on an Intel Pentium 4 or higher, then there is nothing to worry about.

You can view the videos in the small fly-out panel or pop-em out to a large PIP view. You can even blow them up to full screen and have a smooth chatting experience at the same time. The plug-in developers were nice enough to make a tutorial video for us, highlighting some of the features of this new service along with instructions on how to use them. You can find the video on the official Google Channel on YouTube.

Voice and Video Plugin Direct Download

While some users are frustrated by the bugs, others are annoyed why Google does not provide a direct installer for Google Chrome.

To help users run Google Chrome out of the box, the folks at Portable Freeware have already come up with a  new portable version of Google Chrome.

It behaves as though it is a natively installed program (i.e. it saves history and cache in the default Local Settings path) and can be run on Windows without any need for installation. Just download the ZIP, extract and run.

Download Portable Google Chrome

My favorite feature so far is the Incognito window which enables the user to surf and browse in a private mode. The feature is much similar to that in Internet Explorer 8 called InPrivate browsing.

To enable private browsing mode in Google Chrome, just click on the file menu and select New Incognito Window or simply use the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+N.

Once the new Incognito window opens, all your surfing activities (history, cache, other data etc) is kept hidden in a bubble and is cleared as soon as you leave the window.

To open a link directly in a private mode, right click it and select Open link in Incognito window. Enjoy private surfing!

As I have explained already, Google Chrome is an experimental browser by Google based on the WebKit engine which introduces a new tab concept and is meant for fast browsing.

Some very noticeable features of Google Chrome BETA are.

• The address bar, called omnibox, gives you suggestion for both searches and web pages.
• Access your favorite pages instantly with lightning speed.
• Make desktop shortcuts for your favorite web applications.
• Enjoy safe and private browsing using Incognito tabs.

Web Developers shouldn’t worry about making their sites compatible with Google Chrome as long as they render fine in Safari 3.1+. As both use the same rendering engine, so there won’t be any compatibility issues. It is however recommended for webmasters to give a read to the Google Chrome FAQ.

Users can head over to the Google Chrome website and download it. Please don’t forget to share your views on this new browser. It is currently available to Windows users only.

http://www.google.com/chrome

Recently Google published a comic at Google Books highlighting some features of this new browser. For all we know so far is that Google Chrome will be based on WebKit engine and will feature special tabs (not like the ones you see in Firefox).

According to Googe, the browser will feature tabs which run as separate processes to ensure security and stability. This way if one of the tab crashes accidently, it won’t influence your work in other tabs.

Apart from featuring a new tabs concept, it will boast some of the following features:

• An address bar with auto-completion features called omnibox.
• An InPrivate privacy mode like IE8, called Incognito.
• Google Gears Integration.
• Stand-alone support for Web Apps.
• Default homepage with Opera SpeedDial-like feature.

Google Chrome will be released in some hours in its early BETA for Windows users. As it evolves, Mac and Linux versions will be available too.

Keep checking out for the following link, it will be updated as soon as the browser is made public.

http://www.google.com/chrome

Google this weekend accidentaly leaked details — via an online comic book — on its upcoming cross-platform open-source browser: Google Chrome — which it claims will deliver a streamlined and improved interface along with performance improvements and security enhancements; the new browser is based on both Apple’s Webkit, the core of the Safari browser, and Firefox, the rapidly growing alternative browser, but will square off against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which dominates the internet, but continues to play catch up with security flaws and compatibility. The beta version of Google Chrome, only for for PCs initially, is expected to ship on Tuesday in more than 100 countries, while Mac and Linux versions are in development.

“On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff — the pages, sites and applications that make up the web,” the company wrote in its blog. “Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.”

The company claims that it separates each tab or visited website in its own “sandbox,” a private secure environment that keeps information from other sites: it not only protects privacy, but also offers better stability and performance, the search giant claimed. The user interface will allow a tab to be created “incognito,” a privacy mode that will not log any of the activity onto the computer, cookies are wiped out and history is not saved when it is closed.

The company will “sandbox” plugins into their own process and also focus on improving JavaScript, which is used to build and deploy a variety of advanced features on. Google plans on using a separate JavaScript virtual machine that generates machine code, directly using the capabilities of the CPU for optimal performance.

Another benefit of sandboxing, according to the comic, is that the rights for each process are reduced, not allowing malware to install itself on a computer or affect what is happening in another tab. According to the engineers, the processes “can compute but they can’t write files to your hard drive or read files from sensitive areas like your documents or desktop.” The user must give explicit permission for high level access.

“We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers,” Google said.

Google’s comic pointed out that current browsers can be affected by fragmented memory, pushing the browser closer to a crash as the user opens new tabs and closes old tabs, even though they might only have a few open at one time. Without the ability to separate the processes, if one thing goes wrong, the whole browser is liable to crash. Chrome’s multi-process approach will allow each tab to run individual independent processes- if one tab fails, the browser recognizes the problem, ends the process in that tab, but the others retain function.

Even within one tab, when the user switches from site to site, Chrome will completely switch the process and reclaim the memory. If a slow-down occurs, a task manager can be opened to see exactly what pages or even what plugins are hogging memory, CPU power, or bandwidth.

Google also hoped that its efforts will begin to address the lingering performance and compatibility issues that face a wide variety of cross-platform browsers by using an automatic testing — an internet “bot” — to check and test millions of the most popular pages each week (based on Google PageRank).

During the testing thus far, Google has used Webkit to run page layout tests. When the project began it was only passing 23 percent of the tests. “Moving from there to 99 percent has been a fun challenge and an interesting example of test-driven design” said Pam Greene, one of the project software engineers.

The choice of Apple’s Webkit was no coincidence. Google claimed they were attracted to the speed potential. When the Chrome team consulted the Android engineers and asked them why they chose Webkit, they responded “it uses memory efficiently, was easily adapted to embedded devices, and it was easy for new browser developers to learn to make the code base work.”

Much like Apple did with Safari on the iPhone, Google will use Chrome as part of its Android mobile platform and hopes that its use of Google Gears, a plug-in that extends the standard browser experience, will help developers deliver native-app like performance over the Web with cross-platform compatibility.

Android’s gaining a head of steam as it heads towards release — Google just posted up some details on the upstart OS’s app distribution system, Android Market. Just like Apple’s iPhone App Store, Android Market will run on Android phones like the HTC Dream and allow users to browse and install apps, as well as comment on and rate apps they’ve already purchased. (Somewhat terrifyingly, Google describes the rating and comment-system as “similar to YouTube,” but we’re hoping the reference is to user-generated ratings in general and not the grammar and language catastrophe that is YouTube comments.) Unlike Apple’s store, however, Android Market will be open to all — Google wants devs to “have an open and unobstructed environment” for their apps, and it’ll only take three steps (register, upload, describe) to put content on the service. The first Android handsets will come with a beta version of Market that supports free downloads only, but a version that has app sales, versioning, and other features will arrive soon after launch — given the number of mediocre apps that have somehow passed Apple’s vetting process, it’ll be interesting to see what shows up in Google’s store with no filters at all. More screenshots after the break.

[Via Mobile Burn]