One of the patent wars, in particular, has attracted a lot of public attention – the one between Google and Oracle, namely Oracle’s claims regarding certain Java patents, allegedly infringed by Android. Although this struggle started back in 2010, the court’s verdict has received much wider coverage, than the formerly ongoing trial. The official court’s decision states that the mentioned patents haven’t been infringed, yet that doesn’t, perhaps, mean that the whole war has been already won by Google like this very battle.

Are there others on the battlefield?

Undoubtedly, the most widely-discussed patent wars are those between Motorola Mobility (again, owned by Google now) and Apple, or Samsung and Apple, for instance. The latter case, as you might have heard, includes not just the technical aspects of creating mobile devices, but the design peculiarities as well. Obviously, the functional side of Galaxy Tabs and iPads happen to differ, at least as far as the OS and the included default apps are concerned (e.g. there’re 4shared featured apps in Samsung tablets). At the same time, it would be really wrong to say that the devices’ design isn’t similar at all.

In a whole, not all patent wars on the IT market are well-known to the open public, and one will certainly be shocked, how many of them are in process today. In this respect, the most curious experts working with Visual.ly have created an infographic, which clearly displays the whole patent-war picture. As it turns out, the fight for either users, or money, or both is at full swing and will, apparently, stay so until the profitability of IT industry isn’t as high as it is now.

Currently it is available for Windows, Mac and Android and soon will be launched for iPhone and iPad. Initially you have 5GB of free storage but you can purchase more up to 25 GB. The monthly cost is way less than other providers. Here are the plan details -

According to Google,

Drive is built to work seamlessly with your overall Google experience. You can attach photos from Drive to posts in Google+, and soon you’ll be able to attach stuff from Drive directly to emails in Gmail. Drive is also an open platform, so we’re working with many third-party developers so you can do things like send faxes, edit videos and create website mockups directly from Drive.

Google Drive will be definitely a game changer because it differs from Dropbox and windows SkyDrive in many ways like -

• It will be integrated with all Google products like Gmail, Gplus and Gdocs.
• It can scan images and documents to give extraordinary search results.
• It can handle and view 30 file types right in your browser—including HD video, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
• It will be not just file sharing but easy collaborating and editing document platform.

These unique features make it incomparable to other cloud file storages and possibly this will play a major role in Chromium operating system which is supposed to rely on cloud for all basic capabilities.
It seems like Google is trying to build an ecosystem where all the Google services will be interconnected and you will be left with no other option but to use them. It will be interesting to see if Apple or Facebook now acquire Dropbox to give head on head competition.

Visit now – drive.google.com.

This article, Google Drive is Live! was originally published on © Gtricks.com.

Just like last year, this year also individual Google teams from various regions had pranks on different products. Let us see all 22 of them them one by one –

YouTube offered all its videos in DVD form for offline viewing. Once you place an order, they will deliver each one of video ever uploaded in a fleet of 175 trucks. For commenting, you can fill out paper forms and mail them to the uploader address. Check it out here.

Google search makes to an all-new level with Really Advance Search where you can find sites with words that “almost, but not quite entirely unlike” or “rhyming slang for” or “this exact word or phrase, whose sum of unicode code points is a mersenne prime” the word you have entered. You can also narrow down search by font, background texture and all impossible options. Though, this prank page in now taken off, you can still view its cached copy from here.

Google Chine team has come up with underwater image search which is an excellent example of HTML5 and JS interactivity. Clicking on “I’m feeling lucky” button drops Google gold coins and other treasure in the ocean. Don’t forget to play with waves and search results here.

When searched for Qingming in Google China, you will notice a beautiful animated background. [note: it works only in Chrome]

The low resolution graphics version of Google Maps for NES is the funniest of all jokes. These 8-bit maps also have some hidden monsters. Check them out here.

Japan team also came up with an IME prank which uses only a single key to input in Morse code for transliteration. Check out the below video with English subtitles by clicking cc on the player.

Inspired by the Japanese IME prank, Gmail team came up with better form of typing via Morse code through Gmail Tap. They went too far by introducing 2 sets of tap buttons to type 2 mails at once!

Google Australia came up with the unique concept of installing 360 degree cameras on heads of thousands of kangaroos to capture the street view of inlands. Read the official announcement here.

Adwords team had developed a new ad extension Click to Teleport that lets advertisers to teleport customers to business location.

Google recommends webmasters to optimize their site for smart phones as well as rotary phones.

Google Apps understand the pain of normal users that fails to comprehand the complex jargon of business world. Therefore they have introduced Jargon Bot that translates your docs, chats and emails into plain English.

On 1st April 2012, various users have noticed “Jurassic Era”, “Victorian Era”, “Enlightenment”, “Once Upon a Time”, “New Kingdom Era” in their search options depending on the queries.

Chrome team has introduced a new promising feature Multitask Mode that lets you increase productivity by letting you use multiple mice at the same time.

So for you had the ability to see the current weather conditions, now Google lets you change it.

Cloud API from the App Engine gives developers the control over the actual clouds and naturally on the rains.

Google Analytics team is all set to help webmasters by providing details of alien visitors. Currently GA provides information of site visitors from earth but now they are expanding their capabilities to the whole galaxy by offering interplanetary reports.

Google cofounder Sergey Brin nearly scared everyone by announcing that their real self-driving cars will now participate in NASCAR. They named the project as Google Racing.

Everyone was wrong. Google wasn’t laying fiber cables in Kansas city for ultra-fast internet of 1Gbps but they were actually making Fiber Bar that have 100 times more fiber than any source of fiber available today.

Now record a voice of your dog/cat directly via special voice communications collar around pet necks with Google Voice for Pets.

Google HR department revealed the details of its Canine Hiring Process and claims that it is so rigorous that it equals the processes involved in getting a human job at Google. They quote

Bloodhounds are a natural fit for Search, while Rottweilers are often drawn to our corporate security positions.

Who says you can’t control the television? Change the course of Titanic or make Neo chose the blue pill in Matrix or anything that you want with Google TV Click.

The Android team deliberately messed up with the search of the popular artists. I think Rihana will be offended by this prank.

My favorites are 8-bit maps and YouTube collection. Tell us in your comments what do you like the most.

This article, All 22 Google’s April Fools Jokes in 2012 was originally published on © Gtricks.com.

For those, who haven’t yet had a chance to check the impressive promo-video, Google’s Project Glass has been officially introduced with a creative and promising idea in its essence – making the technology work for a person; at least this is how it’s stated.

The core of Project Glass sounds ingenious: it presupposes the creation of the special monocle, presumably connected to one’s smartphone, which will enable to use all the most important functionality, e.g. Google apps, camera, video calls, browsing one’s Google+ account. What is also peculiar is that all required and acquired information is displayed in the virtual screen projected in front of the user’s eyes.

Of course, the skeptics have already uttered their attitude to Project Glass, saying that the released promo-video runs far ahead of the actual state of things in the development of such monocle. Of course, they are right to some extent. Obviously, the creation of such innovative gadgetry takes far more, than a few hours, and many months will pass till the average users can try the monocle itself and check the vast opportunities at their disposal.

At the same time, none of the most skeptical analysts really disputes the importance of Project Glass to the IT industry. The amount of possibilities the realization of this project can open to the world is, undoubtedly, incredible, like the further speed up in development of fresh future startups in the niche, related to augmented reality, for instance.

From average users’ perspective, Project Glass may also be called truly miraculous. To start with, the monocle itself would be both convenient and exciting to use. Moreover, its creation would, perhaps, boost the development of similar, but more upgraded monocles and glasses in future, which would enable us to manage all applications and online accounts, e.g. Facebook, Pinterest, or 4shared, in seconds.

Nonetheless, now only the predictions can be made, whether Project Glass will result in an innovative creation, or not. Well, let’s wait.

This article, Project Glass by Google – Realities & Perspectives was originally published on © Gtricks.com.

Consider spam filter as a funnel. This funnel is the collection of various factors and algorithms that decides whether the message is legitimate one or not. The number of factors could be typically range between 10 to 50 and an alarm from even a single factor is more than enough to mark that message as spam.

Whenever someone mails you a message, it is made to pass through a spam funnel. If the message satisfies the funnel filtering criteria, it lands in your inbox, else it is transferred to your spam folder. The funneling happens in real time i.e. just before receiving the message, Gmail applies spam filter to it. The funnel checks depend on various factors that we will study later on.

Spam filter is made of various factors which indicate the possibility of maliciousness. These factors depend on various actions/events such as –

1) Whenever Gmail system detects that the message has malicious links and trying to scam user through a phishing mail.

2) When the message is sent from unknown/unconfirmed sender who does not exist in any of your past interactions.

3) When you have already marked any such similar mail as spam beforehand.

4) When the message is in different language than the languages you will normally use.

5) When many people marked same message as spam.

6) When the message is sent from reported email id or banned server or lesser known domain.

7) When it has similarity to suspicious messages and proactive words like “Get Rich Quickly” or “Free Goodies” .

In Addition, if you are using Gmail for apps, then the admin (organization IT department) can also set policies to mark mails as spam from other organizations.

Factors written above make us think that online advertising falls under spamming. But this might not necessary be true. If you have explicitly given your email address and permission to advertise, then it doesn’t become part of spamming. When you don’t ask for it and until it’s not familiar to you, it is spam.

A very thin line differentiates both of them, and it mainly depends upon your personal preference. For example, you gladly accept 2-3 minutes of commercials during TV breaks however you get annoyed with in-program advertising. The difference lies upto the point it becomes annoying it is spam else advertising.

Online advertising is necessary evil, which offsets the cost of all the freely available information. Spam, on the other hand, increases the associated cost.

And in case you are wondering on how to reduce the number of spam messages, then the answer is very straight forward. Do not publicly divulge your email address. Do not sign up or submit your email address to any other service available. Here are some other tips to escape spammers like using picture signature -> . Also, if you want to make sure not to miss some important message, then always remember to whitelist the sender.

As reported in our forum, recently Gmail has started showing information on why that mail was considered as spam. This is an appreciated step from Gmail team for informing and education users. Tell us in your comments some more experiences with spam messages.

Yet, whereas G+ is still gaining momentum with the gradual increase of its audience and has much to do ahead to reach Facebook in its popularity among users, Google has managed to win in another aspect of competition – in its so to say “Employer Image”.

In particular, the recent research of GlassDoor, the service that conducts analysis of jobs and companies all around the world, shows that the overall impressions of Facebook employees about the enterprise are worse, than those of Google team members. Of course, this doesn’t mean that Mr. Zuckerberg offers horrible work conditions, but its major competitor has turned out better with 3.9 rating, leaving FB behind (3.7 rating).

According to GlassDoor report, the major criteria for evaluation of employees’ satisfaction with the company they are working for included the estimated approval of CEO’s work, provided meals, salary, duration of average working days, etc. In this respect, Google has beaten Facebook in almost every criterion, except for salary ratings, in which the companies are more or less equal.

Essentiality of the Matter

It’s not the first time that the large and globally popular companies with a great number of employees are estimated by third-party services. The reasons are obvious: both HR-specialists and psychologists prove the vital essentiality of healthy working atmosphere and the best possible working conditions in terms of one’s professional motivation and his/her desire to accomplish more. Here, the company’s positive “Employer Image” is, undoubtedly, one of the key factors, why it is selected by highly professional specialists most frequently.

The major benefits, which can be provided to employees in an IT company, comprise the high salary and the flexible working hours, for instance, which proves the fact that strict discipline isn’t always a key to success.

At the same time, as the research proves, the obvious drawbacks appear to include long working hours (9% of Facebook employees admit this). Again, it’s rather logical that the huge corporations, like Google, Facebook, Twitter, or even 4shared file storage with 24/7 support services can’t but pay attention to optimizing the duration of working shifts.

To sum it up

All things considered, the results of GlassDoor research don’t mean that Google has won the whole competetion with Facebook, but they have proven the essentiality of constant improvement and development of any reputable IT company not only regarding the user experience, but the employees’ impressions as well.

This article, Google Finds New Ways to Overtake Facebook was originally published on © Gtricks.com.

A good solution to speeding up web browsing is to try Google Public DNS, a free, alternative, global DNS resolution service. Being made by Google, which is now the largest public DNS service in the world, handling an average of more than 70 billion requests a day, users of the service will experience faster browsing speeds as well as improved security compared to a private DNS service. The public service accomplishes fast speeds and better performance through the implementation of large-scale, global caching infrastructure to handle a large portion of DNS queries from cache. As for security, Google has many solutions in place to prevent malicious attacks on users of the service such as denial-of-service (DoS) attacks and cache poisoning attacks with the use of security measures such as basic validity checking and randomization.

In order to configure Google Public DNS for your network, Google has detailed instructions on their website to get their DNS service up and running. For instance, to configure Google Public DNS for Windows 7, here are the following steps:

1. Go the Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Change adapter settings

2. Select the connection for which you want to configure Google Public DNS. For example:

a. To change the settings for an Ethernet connection, right-click Local Area Connection, and click Properties.
b. To change the settings for a wireless connection, right-click Wireless Network Connection, and click Properties.

3. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

Click on the image to inlarge it

4. Select the Networking tab. Under This connection uses the following items, select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) or Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6) and then click Properties.

5. Click Advanced and select the DNS tab. If there are any DNS server IP addresses listed there, write them down in case anything goes wrong, and remove them from this window.

6. Click OK.

7. Select Use the following DNS server addresses. If there are any IP addresses listed in the Preferred DNS server or Alternate DNS server, write them down in case anything goes wrong.

8. Replace those addresses with the IP addresses of the Google DNS servers:
a. For IPv4: 8.8.8.8 and/or 8.8.4.4
b. For IPv6: 2001:4860:4860::8888 and/or 2001:4860:4860::8844

9. Restart the connection you selected in step 3.

10. Test that your setup is working correctly.

Repeat the procedure for additional network connections you want to change. You can use the same settings for any other operating systems as well as modems and routers.

Tell us in comments that Do you really like this idea of Google DNS?

This article, Make Your Internet Surfing Fast and Secured with Google Public DNS was originally published on © Gtricks.com.

This post was originally shared in Gtricks Forum – Google Fans Community, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to all.

Google never fails to amuse us. We still remember it’s recursion easter egg which tricked us clicking over it multiple times. From all the possible ways it can charm us with its Easter Eggs this one comes bit geeky. Mark from our Gtricks Forum points out that when you search for Hexadecimal or Binary, then the numbers of results are displayed in that format.

Binary is a denoting number system with only two symbols 1 and 0. This is the basic language that runs inside all our computers. So, if you see the number of results 0b1101111011000111010000000 means that there are 29,200,000 web pages for that search query.

Similarly, Hexadecimal is another number system with base 16 instead of ubiquitous 10. This number sytem is mostly used in digital electronics and has alphabets from A-F in addition to numbers 0-9 as symbols. When you search for Hexadecimal from Google, it will display 0xfbc520 results meaning 16,500,000 web pages of that search string.

Is Google doing this on some purpose? What would be the use of such fun elements like do a barrel roll trick? If you have ever tried programming then you might know the complications you face with different type of user data and displaying output according to them. For Google which handles more than 1 billion search queries daily, changing the output for very few of them demonstrates the flexibility they have built over the system. A lot of workload must have undergone to change their internal code to adapt to the queries on run time basis as per their needs. Possibly, this is another effort from them making the system different that has never been thought before and extending to the future.

Hats off to Google for this approach.

This article, Binary and Hexadecimal Geeky Easter Egg for Google was originally published on © Gtricks.com.

In any case, if you are among those who like those who has the passion for new technology and love for new things, we have got some beautiful Google+ wallpapers that you can’t ignore just like best Firefox wallpapers. These wallpapers are picked from all over the internet and I have tried to put attributes from wherever I can. Most surely, they were made under CC license so use them, share them and modify them as per your will. If you are looking for more, you can always use this simple trick to search your desktop size wallpapers from Google Images.

Let us not look at simple and materialistic yet beautiful wallpapers.

initial 3 via rahul964

via source24

via rikulu

via f0xt3r

via rlyoder

via chrisringeisen

via lucifr

Tell us in your comments whether you liked them or not?

This article, 10 Beautiful Google Plus Wallpapers You Can’t Ignore was originally published on © Gtricks.com.