Is Google+ Better than Facebook?

Google has again entered into the social networking game with new strategies. Google’s new social networking platform Google plus has been released as an “Invite only” release and this is a popular marketing techniques nowadays to intensify the users’ urge to join while doing the beta testing with a limited number of users. I got an invite from one of my International business peer and explored it for a while and all I can say is Google+ is really cool. However, at this stage it’s very hard to predict if the Google plus vs Facebook competition will make sense. Because, social networking is a market that closely works on peoples’ psychology giving them a virtual world with an environment that they want. Google already has it’s social network Orkut, which has almost been ignored by many and it does not have any potential to grow. It’s still bit popular in India and a few other countries and it speaks all about it. Forget Orkut, even google has forgotten it now.

Facebook is the most successful social network in the internet history, unlike the other social networks facebook’s growth is solid and it keeps the platform changing frequently so as to give the people something new and keeping them busy with them so that they will not feel bored and think of going outside facebook (not for all all but for the majority it works). Moreover facebook started challenging the other Internet giants who are/were not at all into the social networking business. Though google is still the largest Internet company it has been affected a lot by the growth of facebook. How? Because google’s main income is coming from advertising (Google Ads) and after facebook started it’s advertising game (Facebook Ads) the advertisers got another choice and the growth of facebook grabbed some advertising areas from google as the social network allows some kind of unique demographic targeting that a search engine or content network can’t provide. Still Google is bigger than facebook and the Advertising market google has is much higher than Facebook but the things can change in future and it’s likely in come context.

Why google wants to get into the social networking business?

Search engines can’t expand it’s user-base in a bigger way like social networking.  If a person wants to search something on the Internet he will use google – that’s all (forget other search engines since they are too small compared to google). But the social network, on the other hand has a highly expanding user-base. The social networks drag the people into the virtual world and do the necessary things to keep the person inside that virtual world for a long possible time while making him drag some other people too into this virtual world. The more a user spends his time on facebook the greater the money facebook makes. Today facebook has set many new standards to social networking and now facebook’s standards has become the current definitions of social networking. Thus, google can not go away from the current social networking standards and eventually the Google+ looks like a facebook clone. However, one of the nature of the business world is “Copying from other successful businesses”. Facebook copied some core concepts of twitter too in their later releases and those features helped facebook to expand it’s boundaries even more. Due to these issues I don’t see the copying some features of facebook and any other social networks is not going to make google looks bad. It’s just business and as a user what I only want is a social networking environment that gives me the environment I want. Still I don’t want to bring joindiaspora here as it has not proved itself in the real market yet though some features of google+ reminds the joindiaspora (still it’s a beta) too.

The best way to describe an unknown is comparing it with a well known, let me compare Google+ and Facebook!

Google plus vs Facebook:

The pluses of Google+ over Facebook:

1. Google+ provides better privacy and well layered grouping – circles
2. Google+ does not have annoying applications like facebook (may be yet)
3. Google+ combines facebook and twitter together when the main features are concerned
4. Google+ is simple and sweet – May be just because it new
5. Google+ uses the google chat for chatting. It is much better than facebook chat

The minuses of Google+ over Facebook:

1. Google+ lacks some features that facebook has (Since it’s new and beta)
2. Google+ does not have anything special for a typical facebook freak who does not care much about privacy
3. Google+ does not have the own powerful branding as a social network (It’s a sub-product of google and not a mere social network brand like “facebook”) However, this is how it could be released because a unique branding is too weeker to compete facebook

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Posted in: Computer,Technology

Convert Your Scanned Images or PDFs into Editable Text Format.

Do you have PDF documents or images (e.g. JPG, PNG, TIFF) that were created using a scanner, and that you wish you could convert to editable text? Free Online OCR is a web service that can perform optical character recognition (OCR) on your scanned images and/or image based PDF documents, in order to generate a “normal” text that can be subsequently edited or used in other applications.

What is OCR?

OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is a technology that extracts the text from an image or a scanned document so that it can be edited, formatted, searched, indexed, automatically translated or converted to speech. OCR can be used to convert books and documents into electronic format and to automate various business processes.

Features of Free Online OCR:

• Precise image to text conversion
• Keeps the layout and formatting
• Scanned PDF to DOC conversion
• Supports PDF, GIF, BMP, JPEG, TIFF or PNG as input
• Supports DOC, PDF, TXT or RTF as output
• Automatically rotates pages
• Supports low resolution images
• Keeps the image layer of a scanned PDF
• Works online - no installation
• Keeps your data confidential and secure

 Go to the Free Online OCR home page.

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Posted in: Technology

Run Any Software in your Browser.

The technology is called Roozz. It can take most programs and recast them as web apps in a matter of hours; the only requirement for the user to be able to use the browser-based apps is to install a browser plugin. Although this might seem like a disadvantage compared to other web app technologies, Roozz professes to have a significant edge in performance/speed as well as the fact that the conversion process itself is quick and does not require re-programming.

To see this in action, install the Roozz plugin first (found on this page), then check out their web based version of free image editing app PhotoScape, or take a look at the web version of freeware favorite IrfanView. If you’re a gamer, try their rendition of Serious Sam or Duke Nukem 3D (You will agree, I am certain, that the transformation is quite amazing).

What is Roozz ?

Roozz is a very sophisticated middleware technology that can convert the vast majority of existing software applications  and PC games to run directly in the browser as well allows the owner of the title to set up payment exactly how they wish to.
Converting a title typically takes 48 hours where the only work involved for the publisher is to send the title on a CD or as download .zip package file and Roozz.com will take care of the rest. Very easy and entirely risk-free for the publisher to get started.

How does it work ?

The Roozz Platform consists of 3 components: The Roozz Plugin, the Roozz server components and the Roozz conversion tools. The Roozz server components are a database plus some additional modules that take care of payment, security, updates etc. The Roozz conversion tools are only for internal use in the company to convert games and applications to run on the Roozz Platform.
The end-user must install the Roozz Plugin in order to run software and games released on the platform which are then hosted on our cloud server.
The Roozz Plugin is a small 2 Mb plugin which typically downloads and installs in less than 15 seconds. It has built-in mechanisms to ensure that we only run secure software on the Roozz Platform and that allows us to pause the game while the end-user accept payment terms.

Platforms and payment module

The Roozz plugin is already finished for the Windows platform with the payment module expected to be fully up and running in April  2011, making it possible for our customers to apply pay-per-use for games and applications running on the Roozz platform.
There are as well plans to make the Roozz Plugin available on a number of platforms and a preview version is already available on Linux and a Mac version will be ready during first half 2011.

Automatic updates

Roozz allows automatic updates and copyright protections.

When the end-user uses software and PC games on the Roozz Platform, the files are downloaded and cached on the local computer. It works the same way as when you view web graphics and videos on your computer where those are also downloaded and cached in the temp folder on the end-user´s computer which means that the game is also running on the CPU on the user´s computer.  Using software or games on the Roozz platform offers the exact same performance as when you use the same title from a CD or from download.

Compatibility

Windows, Linux apps on ALL browsers (including IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera).

Go to the Roozz home page to check out the service.

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Posted in: Technology

Is Your Computer Part of a BotNet?

What is BotNet?

A BotNet, also known as a zombie army, is a computer connected to the Internet that has been set up to forward transmissions (including spam or viruses) to other computers on the Internet, without the knowledge of the computer owner.

Malware has a few different intentions when it infects your computer. It could want to:

• show you ads to make money (adware)
• Watch where you go on the web and steal your passwords to either use your accounts for sending out spam or access your bank/credit card account
• Make you think you have a virus so you pay them to fix it (scareware)
• Make your computer part of a botnet

Joining your computer to the botnet might not actually give you any symptoms like the other options would and sometimes it’s just one of the many side effects of becoming infected with malware. By your computer being part of a botnet, you are giving somebody else access to your computing and network resources. Computers in a botnet are used to pass along data so that it is untraceable or is used in Dynamic Denial Of Service attacks, where a large number of computers send so many requests to a server that it crashes. Computers running botnets might also be running hidden browsers in the background and submit spam comments to every page you visit.
Some try to identify bots and other unauthorized access by setting up bait for the bots to take. These traps are called Honeypots and a network of them are called a Honeynet. Taking the identifying information about where infected computers are, you can check to see if your computer has been detected in a honeynet at www.botnetchecker.com.

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Posted in: Computer