Semantic Search is more like a component of Semantic Web, which is intended to return more meaningful result of search term. By introducing Semantic Search Google intended to redefine what search is now, which will also bring us one step closer to Artificial Intelligence (AI) in search. Well that’s the plan at least. Google’s existing search system which is based on Keywords match with searched terms. Semantic Search won’t be replacing that search anytime soon, but problem with existing search is a word can mean different things, depending on the context the author use that word. Now typical keyword search will never know the difference between “Python” – the snake and “Python” – the programming language, thus search result will be mixed with both and algorithm will obviously put the higher ranking websites first even though they might be out of the context. It’s not just the ambiguity of words that complicate the keywords search but as well the language, phrase, the context of usage etc.

By introducing Semantic Knowledge Google is trying to make the search engine think (In a way) or understand the meaning of the search term(s) rather than just comparing words with databases and contents. In short Google is trying to make its search engine smarter in answering result, where more direct answer would be returned. For example currently if you search “Where is Google” it shows scattered results instead showing a map of Google head office, which it dose when you search “where is Washington”. Similarly when you search just “Washington” it should show Washington map instead of Washington Journal at the top of the result. The upcoming Google search is trying to resolve these anomalies, so the search engine provide for condensed, contextual, to the point results. Search engine won’t be just a bunch of web links; it will be try to answer queries.

Now since Google officially didn’t announce anything everything is fuzzy and which fueling lots of debate, conspiracy theories, even a big question where Google going with this? Different web pundits thrashing different view, some saying it’s just a PR stunt by Google to redirect the attention, especially since recently Google is on hot water for several blunder/issues. Some says it’s a course changing direction, some just shrugging it off. But None the less even a small change in Google search engine, affect a lot of things- since majority of web users use Google as their search provider. And most importantly the significant of Artificial Intelligence in Search will a major milestone and a step towards Star Trek style computing.

But why do you need DNS hosting, when most of the web hosting and registrar already has that for free. Well many people justify using 3^rd party DNS for reason such as – Redundant DNS hosting by web host, uptime guarantee, TTL control (as many web host DNS lacks it), more feature than web host, failover, load balancing and many more. But ultimately the key reason being 3^rd party hosting is used more often is for better control over your Domain’s DNS. Anyway there are a lot of opinions out there on the net some advocates 3^rd party DNS hosting and some totally against the idea.

If you do opt to choose hosting your DNS after all those arguments and counter arguments, where will you host and what should be the deciding factor? Without argument Cloud based DNS hosting is on the rise and proven more efficient, so I will keep my discussion limited to cloud based DNS hosting providers. Here are the top 2 third party cloud based DNS hosting providers, according to my opinion (note: this list is not ultimate & final, just my own opinion and considered accurate at the time of writing)

CloudFlare

Though it’s primarily classified as CDN, rather than DNS hosting provider, it’s one of the best out there. What makes CloudFlare so hot? Apparently their distributed DNS service which boosts your site’s performance & speed in addition to security puts it on the top of the list. High profile organizations like Turkish Government started to use CloudFlare not just because their site looks good.

CloudFlare provides both free and paid services. Free services incudes – globally distributed network, super simplified DNS management, secure redundant DNS, Anycast routing, Static content caching, basic server & email security, threat protection and many more. Paid service provides a bit more advance security features & threat challenge control in addition to free services. Both free & paid services include detail analytics which in addition to visitor analytics also monitor threats and search engine crawlers.

To explain and describe all the goodness of CloudFlare, we will need an entire post dedicated to it, which will be a bit out of perspective for this post. In the meantime we can just draw a conclusion that CloudFlare is on the top of the list of hosted DNS providers for – feature richness, performance, security & integrity.

Amazon Route 53

Route 53 is a globally distributed and scalable DNS service which let their users have an extremely reliable service but at a low cost. It gives programmatic access to controlling the service like adding, deleting or modifying DNS records. Those of us a bit tech savvy well aware of the extensive of Amazon’s server’s global reaches, so without a doubt we can say Route 53 is highly available service.

Rout 53 is lightning fast, quite easy to use (not as easy as CloudFlare but still the learning curves are ignorable) and has seriously low latency in terms of DNS queries. What makes Route 53 completely unique to its class is ability to manage through web dashboard and as well as API. Did I mention that Route 53 is completely integrated with Amazon web services yet can be also used outside of amazon infrastructure! Another unique and remarkable feature of Route 53 is ability to use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) service along with Route 53 to control user specific DNS control rights.

In short we can summarize that Route 53 is highly scalable, simple, fast, secure and comes with Weighted Round-Robin (WRR), also known as DNS load balancing. It lacks the analytics, routing and threat challenge feature we saw in CloudFlare and you have to pay for your usage. Other than that Route 53 is totally rocking hosted DNS service provider, which makes it second best out there.

In theory grouping porn sites together under the .xxx domain for the purpose of providing simultaneously protection of porn-viewers and the protection of those who don’t want porn is certainly very welcoming. For instances it is easier to filter them out when they are under one single domain name extension, to prevent kids from accessing porn. And for porn lovers their sites will be less contaminated by malware & virus as all .XXX sites will be frequently scanned for malware & viruses. So the theory seems makes everyone happy. But alas the theory is less realistic than actual reality we face.

A lot of people did support .XXX moves, still a lot of people do support creation of .XXX. The numbers in favor s starting to diminish every minute, but why? .XXX isn’t living up to its true purpose of creation. Here are the reasons why .XXX is a failure:

• Monopoly: I strongly agree with the accusation that .XXX is creating monopoly. With a bit of scrutinizing inspection you will notice that .XXX domain cost about 10 times higher than the as usual .com domains. Yet businesses, hack even universities are spending fortunes to buy up domain names in the new .xxx red light district on the Internet in an effort to prevent pornographers from using their good name in ways that could be reputation blower. This so called “defensive registrations” putting a lot of cash on domain seller’s wallet but putting small business and individuals in embarrassing disadvantage. Like .EDU domain which are only allowed to be registered by educational institutions only after proving claim with proper documentation, .XXX should have been allowed to porn industries only which would have cease the needs for “defensive registration”. No individual or small startup wants to tarnish their name by associating themselves with porn industry yet now they are in risk, if they don’t spend 100 bucks to buy up an .XXX domain. Its kind of being extorted isn’t it? This is certainly a serious policy failure of .XXX domain name creation.
• · Lost purpose: Though the very purpose of creation of .XXX is to bring the whole porn industries under one single group, but there isn’t any strategy in place to do so. Porn sites are not obliged to switch to .XXX, which is voluntary and as well they got to keep their original .COM, .ORG, .NET etc. domains. So instead of grouping them together it seems .XXX is spreading them more. There are many reason porn sites are not willing to switch to .XXX, losing search engine ranking and index is being one of the main factors. Another top reason being fear of getting penalized or even worse excluded by search engines. ICANN failed to address these issues, before launching .XXX, which they should have. Now only a handful of porn site sites moved to .XXX and they still got their original domain, which makes double the porn and more scattered porn sites. In fact more non porn industries like bug banks, companies, universities bought .XXX domains in last couple of months than real porn site owners. So ultimately the purpose of .XXX domain creation turned into money making business for registrar rather than the reason it was intended to.

I like the way Lance Ulanoff of Mashable summarized the whole fact –

Instead of creating a solution, the ICANN’s apparently misguided efforts have spawned a new anxiety: "Your Brand Name in Porn." The fear is so strong that it’s got all these people buying up domains just so the wrong people can’t get them. As I see it, this could be quite a windfall for GoDaddy. The company should send the ICANN a thank-you note.

Without the proper strategy and solid policy in place ICANN created more problems and chaos out there by creating .XXX instead of making solution. Only people who are benefiting from .XXX are now the registries who are selling .XXX and the ICANN who’s getting their cuts for the sales.

But as we all know you can’t be good at everything, some of Google’s experiment paid off some didn’t, and some didn’t even make it to count as viable product. Well that’s the game isn’t it, keep innovating –otherwise you won’t keep up with the flow of tide of technology. So what you do when you have lots of nonproductive stuffs in the house? You either do a garage sell or through it away right? For companies such as Google they either sell their products that’s not making that much of buck (which happens not so often, as products failed to generate buzz to be considered as failed products) or just shut it down and cut your losses to make room for new products/innovation.

So now Google’s 3^rd tier of spring cleanup it shutting down few of its products, not all of them are experimental. The products that will be discontinued –

• Google Bookmarks Lists – Ending on December 19, 2011
• Google Friend Connect – Ending on March 1, 2012
• Google Gears – Ending on December 1, 2011
• Google Search Timeline – No date specified
• Google Wave – Ending on January 31, 2012
• Knol – Ending on April 30, 2012
• Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal (RE<C) – No Date specified

See the blog post by Google for more details on how to export your data from the products scheduled to be axed.

On 2nd tier of cleanup Google announced shutting down of – Google Pack, Google Desktop, Google Web Security, Aardvark (Acquired in Feb 2010),Jaiku (Acquired in2007), Fast Flip, Google Maps API for Flash, Google Notebook, Sidewiki, Subscribed Links.

On first tier of cleanup Google announced kill order for – Google labs, Boutiques.com, Like.com.

As you can see in three tiers Google planned to axe or already killed total of 19 of its products. This is a major shakeups and shift of focus from Google. Though this marathon shutting down will seriously affect existing users who jump on the bandwagon and now have to export their data but this will allow Google to focus on new innovation.

As tech enthusiast we all wants to see innovative Google with killer products, so the sooner Google kill its not so hot products the better

According to Washington University’s research scientist involved with this technology’s research says – “A new generation of contact lenses that project images in front of the eyes is a step closer after successful animal trials”.

Like real life terminator this technology will allow this special contact lenses user to read/view projected texts, emails and even augment their sight with computer-generated media. Totally fascinating stuff isn’t it? Imagine the potential & use case scenario of this- simply limitless. No doubt Law-enforcement & Military use of this technology can strengthen the chain of communication by tenfold.

Well let’s not get ahead of ourselves, like all research technology, this technology yet to be perfected and far from being production ready. Still got few things to tweak and adjust, for example- suitable power source. Currently the prototype device works only when it’s within a centimeter of its power source, a wireless battery. Second hurdle is circuit capable to support multiple pixels, as current test device uses only 1 pixel.

Nonetheless the research test case on live rabbit has been proven successful without any harmful effects. This is a major milestone towards a new era, as if the research can overcome those hurdles this could be civilization changing invention. Apart from research team at Washington University, there are few others who are into same sorts of research. For example Layar, an Amsterdam-based startup focusing on augmented reality releasing an augmented-reality browser.

Source of Data & Pictures:

Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens

Before digital gaming age, game a form of entertainment was enclosing to outdoor or indoor activities, in short (indoor & outdoor) sports were the only kind of games out there. For many centuries there was table top games as well such as overwhelm popular Chess, Chinese checkers, senet etc. Ancient Chinese & Roman generals used to use board games to develop strategy. So one way or another game started to be something more than just entertainment, it started to serve other purposes. Today many military organization around the world develops war games to train their soldiers, test strategic theory or even mission plan.

According to latest study online & offline digital gaming is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. In fact, according to most analysts, the sector will remain “one of the above-average growth segments of the global entertainment industries through 2012.” From 2005 to 2010, the industry’s real annual growth rate was more than seven times the real annual growth rate for the entire world economy. In addition, computer and video game companies posted strong overall sales in 2010 with revenues of $25 billion. The 2011 great economic depression of Europe & US did slow down game sales revenue but it continues to provide jobs to economies across the world.

Nonetheless Adobe kept investing on Flash and managed to get Apple’s Mobile & Tablet market competitors as partners who are willing to support Flash on their device in order to get an edge over Apple. So things aren’t that bad for Flash, right? Support for all vendor’s mobile device minus one, even though Apple’s device dominate the market. But the future of Flash on Mobile device gets more complicated with the evolution of “HTML5”.

The fifth generation of the HTML code that creates the Web is a leap forward, and it’s poised to jump-start the next wave of Web innovation online, offline and on the move. HLML5 allows Internet browsers to deliver game-like interactivity without installing additional software. HTML5 can easily allow audio and video playback without any plug-ins at all. We all so often ran into a message saying that we needed this plug-in or that plug-in to play this video or audio file. And now thanks to HTML5 we can finally get those memories left behind. Another remarkable feature brought by HTML5 is Canvas which is a new JavaScript graphics library that brings a lot a host of animation effects that previously were only available via Adobe’s Flash. In the past, new devices meant new browsers & new delivery method which meant a real headache for developers. With HTML5 developers can literally “Develop once. Run anywhere”. No need to port for new device, no more compatibility nightmare.

Rivals such as Apple Inc., Google Inc., and Microsoft Corp. who more often disagree about supremacy of their chosen technology at least started to agree on one thing that is “HTML5”. Though apart from Apple everybody still accommodate Flash but they started to shift their attention on HTML5. Some 34% of the 100 most popular websites used HTML5 in the quarter ended in September, according to binvisions.com, a blog that tracks Web technologies.

Even after Adobe furiously rejected Job’s criticism that Flash is backdated technology, even they started to add support for HTMl5 into their programming tools.

Technology evolve, change so frequently that producer, vendors & developers alike has to evolve around it. Flash isn’t dead just yet but a part of it, which you can say half of it the Mobile Flash is dead. The market experts are presenting different reasoning for “the why“, you can find hundreds of them across the web ever since Adobe’s announcement. But the bottom-line is very simple the major reason why Flash for mobile device has to take a bow:

1. Denied entry on iOS devices. The iPhone accounts for more than 60% of global smartphone web traffic and the iPod touch makes up more than 95% of “mobile Internet device” traffic.
2. Evolution of HTML5 which makes things so easy both for developers and Users and Flash couldn’t answer the challenge pose by HTML5
3. Unable to address accessibility concern arise by Flash contents
4. Rocky track record with security. Adobe Flash is known to prawn to vulnerability and security holes. Many major security experts recommend to either not install Flash or to block it.

They’ve separated their rentals into different areas of the region, which makes it very easy for user who is searching for rentals. It not only have the most important factors when considering what types of apartment to rent such as, neighborhood, room sizes and price but also reliable reviews from present and past residents. User can c lick through the colorful map for the area they are interested in living. Narrow options by searching for price, number of bedrooms or the type of apartment they require. The system allows finding houses by categories such as duplexes, basement studios or multiple room apartments. User can even communicate with House owner/Landlord if further information required.

Apart from all these easy to use search mechanism the site also link to suitable mortgage and give one spot advertise maintenance for house owners. When it comes to house/home search online this site stand out of the crowd making itself leading information hub for Calgary rentals.

So as you can see it’s a great time to crack on to some iOS application right about now. If you are entrepreneur might be a fine time for a child project flavored around iOS, if you are a developer very good time to start on iOS (if already haven’t done so). Why?

Apple released a fifth beta version of iOS 5 to developers last Friday, which is kind of odd as Apple usually does this over the weekdays not last day of the week. The release notes suggest this include some fixes but no major features, apart from a Hearing Aid Mode designed to improve compatibility between iOS devices and hearing aids.

Android is an awesome platform but for freelance developer just to bank on only one platform and leave the other promising one isn’t such a great move.

Today’s financial crunch requires you to be expert in multiple platforms, in order to sell your service more effectively. Freelance developers banking on only one platform is destined to be at the mercy of fate, which isn’t juicy future you want to look at.

This isn’t in anyway promoting iOS over Android, just a suggestion to all freelance developer to cultivate multiple options to give their employer more choice to hire them.

Resources to start building iOS apps

· iOS Dev center by Apple

· iOS coding basics

· iPhone SDK Examples

· teehan + lax iPhone 4 GUI PSD

· Stanford University iPhone Development Lectures

This is a real money online casino that offers online blackjack. Here you will come across with tips and tricks to online blackjack gamers, not just simple tips and tricks but those methods which professionals use to win consistently.

They offer blackjack game variations walk through, so that gamers will be aware to the rules of different types. Whether you are just a newbie or an expert they got enough food for all. They also have a chart called Blackjack Basic Strategy Chart where you can plan your strategy so that you can think about how you can gain advantage. Playing blackjack requires skill and lots of strategy; onlineblackjack.org might be not such a bad place to give your luck a bit more chance. After all “knowing is half the battle”, the more you know the more you are ready to take on.

Have fun!