Origin of the name "Google"

Origin of the name "Google"

From time to time I read or hear stories of the origin of the search engine and company name "Google" that are incorrect, which prompts me to write this brief account, based on my understanding of the genesis of the name. The source of my information is my friends and colleagues from Wing 3B of the Gates Computer Science Building at Stanford University, where Google was born.

In 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin called their initial search engine "BackRub," named for its analysis of the web's "back links." Larry's office was in room 360 of the Gates CS Building, which he shared with several other graduate students, including Sean Anderson, Tamara Munzner, and Lucas Pereira. In 1997, Larry and his officemates discussed a number of possible new names for the rapidly improving search technology. Sean recalls the final brainstorming session as occurring one day during September of that year.

Sean and Larry were in their office, using the whiteboard, trying to think up a good name - something that related to the indexing of an immense amount of data. Sean verbally suggested the word "googolplex," and Larry responded verbally with the shortened form, "googol" (both words refer to specific large numbers). Sean was seated at his computer terminal, so he executed a search of the Internet domain name registry database to see if the newly suggested name was still available for registration and use. Sean is not an infallible speller, and he made the mistake of searching for the name spelled as "google.com," which he found to be available. Larry liked the name, and within hours he took the step of registering the name "google.com" for himself and Sergey (the domain name registration record dates from September 15, 1997).

HOW TO ACCESS A DECEASED PERSON'S E-MAIL ACCOUNT?

HOW TO ACCESS A DECEASED PERSON'S E-MAIL ACCOUNT?

Email is an extremely popular form of communication in both the business and personal communication. Today's email systems are based on a store-and-forward model. Email servers accept, forward, deliver and store messages.

While no one denies the obvious productivity gains we've realized from the efficiencies of email communication, most of us are unaware of as to how to access a deceased person's email.

How to Access a Deceased Person`s Email Account?

When a person passes away, what happens to his email account and all the messages and sensitive information that reside in it? Unlike the shoebox in the attic that any living family member can get their hands on, online accounts are password protected and hence present a problem. Web email services owned by internet giants such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have different view on this issue. The question to be considered is: is it honorable to scour through the belongings of a dead person and read his personal emails or messages? Google and Microsoft say ‘Yes’, Yahoo says ‘No’. Google and Microsoft have a policy of keeping your data after you die and letting your next of kin or the executor of your estate access it. Unfortunately, there is no way for users to avoid this from happening and no recourse under existing laws. Yahoo, on the other hand, strictly disallows access to a user’s account.

Read below the different policies and procedure of gaining access to a deceased person’s account.
Gmail (Google)

Gmail allows the next of kin to apply for access to a deceased user's email account, but the person would have to prove their own identity and supply a death certificate as well as proof of an email conversation between them and the deceased.
If you are trying to access a deceased person’s Gmail account, you have to send in the following materials:
Your full name, physical mailing address, and verifiable email address.
A photocopy of your government issued ID or driver’s license.
The Gmail address of the individual who passed away.
The full header from an email message that you have received at your verifiable email address, from the Gmail address in question. (To obtain the header from a message in Gmail, open the message, click the down arrow next to Reply, at the top-right of the message pane, and select 'Show original.') The full headers will appear in a new window. Copy everything from 'Delivered-To:' through the 'References:' line.
The entire contents of the message.
Proof of death
One of the following: a) if the decedent was 18 or older, provide a Probate- or other Court Order stating that you are the lawful representative of the deceased's estate or b) if the decedent was under the age of 18 and you are the parent of the individual, provide a copy of the decedent’s birth certificate.
These need to be mailed to:
Google Inc.
Attention: Gmail User Support- Decedents’ Accounts
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
Or faxed to: 650-644-0358
After you have sent all the information to the above address, Google will need 30 days to validate and process your submission. More information on this page.

Windows Live Hotmail (Microsoft)

Windows Live Hotmail has a policy of deleting email accounts if they are not logged into for 270 days. If you die, your next of kin would be able to access your account within that period by proving their identity and supplying a death certificate.
To claim a user’s account, you have to first send an email tomsrecord@microsoft.com. Upon receipt of the email, Microsoft will preserve the specified account for a period of six months during which you have to furnish the required documents, which are:
A photocopy of the death certificate for the user
Paperwork stating that you are the benefactor or executor to the deceased's estate and/or that you have Power of Attorney and are next-of-kin.
A photocopy of your driver's license or a government issued identification.
A document with answers to the following questions about the account, for verification purposes:
Account name
First and Last name on the account
Date of Birth
City, state and zip code
Approximate date of account creation
Approximate last date of sign in
A physical mailing address
All documentation should be faxed to 425-708-0096 or send via postal mail to:
Microsoft Corp.
Attn: Online Services Custodian of Records
1065 La Avenida, Building 4
Mountain View, CA, 94043
Once the verification is completed, Microsoft will send the requested account information on a CD-ROM via mail courier. More information on this page.

Yahoo Mail

Unlike Google and Microsoft, Yahoo’s policy is that they will not grant next of kin access to deceased users’ accounts unless there is a court order from a judge. The deceased user's next of kin, however, can ask for the account to be closed, but Yahoo will not give them access to it. I don’t know about others, but I like Yahoo’s stance on this.


From Yahoo’s terms of service:


Quote:
Terms of service #27: No Right of Survivorship and Non-Transferability.
You agree that your Yahoo! account is non-transferable and any rights to your Yahoo! ID or contents within your account terminate upon your death. Upon receipt of a copy of a death certificate, your account may be terminated and all contents therein permanently deleted.


A Yahoo spokesperson said:

Quote:
The commitment Yahoo! makes to every person who signs up for a Yahoo! Mail account is to treat their email as a private communication and to treat the content of their messages as confidential.
Internet users who want to be sure their email and other online accounts are accessible to their legal heirs may want to work with their attorneys to plan an offline process for such access as part of their estate planning process.

Facebook

Facebook has a policy similar to Yahoo’s. It believes in respecting and protecting a person’s privacy even after the person’s death. Coming from Facebook, this is quite ironic. From Facebook's Help page:

Quote:
Please note that in order to protect the privacy of the deceased user, we cannot provide login information for the account to anyone. We do honour requests from close family members to close the account completely.

Facebook also has a feature that allows friends and family members to “memorialize” the profiles of deceased users. Once the user's death is confirmed, Facebook will set the privacy settings so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search. They will also remove sensitive information such as contact information and status updates. Memorializing an account also prevents anyone from logging into it in the future, while still enabling friends and family to leave posts on the profile Wall in remembrance.
To memorialize a Facebook account, contact them through this page.

How to Plan Ahead

In the online world, there isn't a standard procedure for how to access your loved one's online accounts. The best way to ensure that your online accounts fall into the right hands once you are gone is to follow Yahoo’s advice and create a will, or assign a heir to your online accounts digitally through services such as Entrustet.
Entrustet is a free service that helps you take stock of all your digital assets and assign an heir to access them when you pass away. Just set up a free account and then add all the accounts you want to be passed on. You can then add heirs for your various online account, individually. For instance, you can pass your YouTube account to Sam while your Twitter account to Judy.

A neat service, but storing all your password information in one place is a bit unnerving. A very bad practice, actually.
The other option you have is to set up a dead man’s switch. Dead man’s switch is a form of safety feature, usually integrated into machines, which triggers itself and shuts down the machine if the human operator becomes incapacitated. They are commonly used in locomotives, aircraft, subway trains, freight elevators etc as a form of fail-safe.
You can setup a Dead Man’s Switch digitally. Just signup for the free service and compose an email for your intended heir. The emails are encrypted and stored. Dead Man's Switch will then email you often asking you to click on a link to verify you are hale and hearty. If something were to happen to you and you are unable to verify you are alive, the “switch” will activate and the stored emails will be sent to the recipients.

The service allows you to specify custom intervals per email so you can specify some emails to be sent more quickly than others or postpone the activation of the switch, which is necessary when you go on vacation without internet access.

Motorola launches Xoom tablet with Android 3.0

Motorola finally unveiled its highly anticipated tablet, the Xoom, with a 10.1-inch touchscreen with the latest version of Google's Android mobile software on board, formerly called Honeycomb.

Google worked with Motorola and chip maker Nvidia on the launch of Android 3.0 on a tablet device.

Android 3.0 is designed for tablets, not smartphones as Android was originally designed for. The Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core processor on board can deliver up to 2GHz of power, since each core runs at 1GHz, according to a joint news release from Motorola and Verizon. The tablet will be available for Verizon users.

The Motorola Xoom will launch as a 3G/Wi-Fi device by the end of March, with an upgrade to 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) in the second quarter, Motorola said. Starting in the second quarter, the Xoom will be available as a 4G LTE/ Wi-Fi device.

Motorola wasn't the first company to announce an Android tablet with Honeycomb at CES. Asustek Computer on Tuesday revealed the Eee Pad Slider. The Slider sports a 10.1-inch touchscreen with a keypad that slides out, similar to mobile phones with sliding keyboards, for laptop-like typing. The device also boasts an Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor for strong graphics performance and has dual cameras on board.

CES officially opens on Thursday, with as many as 100 new tablets on display.

Motorola will have the first Android Honeycomb tablet on the market. Asustek's, for example, won't be out until May, the company said.

Motorola's Xoom hosts a number of upgraded specifications that could see the device carry a hefty price tag. Motorola did not announce pricing.

It has two digital cameras on board: A front-facing 2.0-megapixel camera acts as a webcam for video chat, and a 5.0-megapixel camera on back is for photos and 720p high-definition video capture.

The touchscreen has a resolution of 1280-by-800 pixels, compared with the iPad's 1024 by 768 and Samsung Electronics' Galaxy Tab, at 1024 by 600.

Users will be able to watch 1080p HD video on the Xoom and output HD video to other devices via an HDMI slot. Adobe's Flash Player is also on board the Xoom, making it good for viewing Web video.

The Xoom measures 249.1 millimeters by 167.8mm and is 12.9mm thick. By way of comparison, the iPad is 13.4mm thick and the Galaxy Tab is 11.98mm thick. At 730 grams, the Xoom weighs the same as the iPad with 3G and Wi-Fi.

Google's Android software has caught up quickly with Apple's iOS, which runs on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Market researcher Ovum expects Android and Apple's iOS to take about 71% of the total market for tablets and other mobile Internet devices by 2015, while the also-rans -- the BlackBerry tablet OS, Hewlett-Packard's WebOS, Intel's and Nokia's MeeGo, and Microsoft Windows -- make up the rest.

The Xoom is designed to work with Google services, including the new 5.0 version of Google Maps with 3D interaction, as well as with the 3 million Google eBooks and thousands of apps on Android Market. The Xoom includes a built-in gyroscope, barometer, e-compass, and accelerometer, as well as adaptive lighting for different apps.

The tablet has 32GB of storage on board and can be upgraded via an SD card slot. It has 1GB of DDR2 DRAM.

Motorola Xoom Android tablet may be first iPad killer

By Wilson Rothman

Though there have been tablets running Android on the market since last year, the Motorola Xoom, debuted today at CES in Las Vegas for the very first time, represents the first real Android tablet sanctioned by Google, running an operating system designed explicitly for tablets. Forget the Samsung Galaxy Tab, forget it completely. This is Google's first attempt to take on the iPad, and it's a worthy one.

The device has a 10-inch widescreen display and is actually a hair thinner than an iPad: Xoom measures 12.9mm at the middle while the iPad measures 13.4 mm. It's a smooth black on black with a rubberized rear. It has two cameras, one in front for videoconferencing, one in back for shooting. Battery life is about 10 hours for video, which should put it in the same company as the iPad. Meanwhile, its 1280x800 display is 16:10, which means it uses almost the entire screen when playing a movie.

One interesting difference between the Xoom and the iPad: The docking port is on the bottom, so it will sit in landscape view, not in portrait view, the way the iPad does. I actually think that's the smarter orientation, at least for movie watching. Here are the full specs:

It will debut on Verizon's 3G network, but will be "capable of being upgraded to 4G," though there's no exact date or pricing just yet.

In a preview video, they zipped through many screens of Android 3.0 aka Honeycomb, the Google tablet OS. Highlights include a powerful multi-tab full-screen Chrome browser with Adobe Flash support (unlike the iPad), a full-screen Gmail with a sleek modern look and lots of space for previewing emails, and a Google Books app that lets you swipe through your books. (That last gesture was a little too much like the "Cover Flow" of album covers, found on many an Apple product, but we'll let it go for now.)

We've gotten to look it over pretty closely, but the demo models weren't exactly operational, so there's nothing to say about the feel of the interface. The look from the demo videos told me two things, however: First, this is not a blown-up Android phone experience, like the Galaxy Tab. This is a whole new environment. Second, there's a lot of Chrome DNA in here, too. I believe the Chrome tabbed browsing experience will be a key part of the Honeycomb life.

As promising as it is, I will withhold judgment for now. No matter how awesome it is, it's only going to be as good as the developers who get on board and create awesome apps for it. The iPad is a vessel for great development. I think this can be, too, but only if Google encourages it. Building their own awesome apps for the Xoom is fine, but Google needs to somehow get others to follow suit. That is the trick.

Haven't had enough? Then you, my friend, should step on over to our Motorola Xoom video walkthrough.

Photos by Matthew Rivera, except top shot from Motorola

ALSO: official Motorola Xoom promo page

Wilson is in Las Vegas all week covering the Consumer Electronics Show, culminating in a live one-hour streaming video show on Friday, co-hosted by XM Radio personality and tech commentator Mario Armstrong. For updates on all the tech news that's actually relevant to you, be sure to check technolog.msnbc.com. And don't forget to follow Wilson on Twitter, and shoot him any questions you might have about the massive barge of tech news currently headed our way.

Upcoming Phones IN 2011

Upcoming Phones IN 2011

LG STAR
It looks like 2011 will be the year when smartphone specs will break many barriers. The rumored LG Star (aka Optimus 2X) is one such smartphone with a rumored 1GHz dual core processor (either Nvidia’s Tegra 2 or the ARM Cortex A9) and a 4-inch capacitive display with a resolution of 480x800 and color output of 16M colors. While leaked info claims that the Optimus 2X will be launching with Android 2.2 (Froyo), we won’t be surprised if it actually shows up with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). Another thing that excites us about the 2X is its 8MP autofocus camera. Since LG phones have always impressed with their multimedia capabilities, it’s not hard to predict that the Optimus 2X’s camera will be very good. The LG is also supposed to have an HDMI port to output 720p videos and will most certainly support playback of XviD/DivX videos.

NOKIA E7
The Nokia E7 was announced back in September and for once we have plenty of information on it. If you are Symbian fan and want an alternative to the Nokia N8 with a focus on productivity over multimedia, then you should look forward to the E7. That doesn’t mean that the E7 skimps on multimedia features, in fact its specs sheet would put plenty of smartphones to shame. Specs such as a 4-inch AMOLED display, an 8MP camera (which is unfortunately fixed-focus like the C7) and HDMI out look really good. Add to that a huge four-row slide-out keyboard and Nokia’s traditionally excellent design and build quality and you have a contender in the E7 for one of the better smartphones to come out in 2011.
When it’s expected: Taking into consideration the time Nokia usually takes to launch a product after announcing it; the E7 should make its way into stores in January.

SUMSUNG GALAXY S2
The best Android smartphone in the market today will get a successor in 2011, if rumors are to be believed. The Samsung Galaxy S 2 is supposed to have a 2GHz dual-core processor and a Near Field Communications (NFC) chip that will make it possible to use your phone as a credit card. The Galaxy S 2 will probably run on Android 2.3 and will have a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED 2 display, 1GB of RAM, 4GB ROM, 32GB of internal support along with support for microSD cards up to 32GB, an 8MP camera that can record 720p videos and Bluetooth 3.0 support. By all accounts, the Galaxy S 2 looks like it will give netbooks a run for their money and we like that.
When it’s expected: Samsung is expected to reveal the Galaxy S 2 at the Mobile World Congress in February.

Airtel New logo worth Rs. 300 crores..Is it worth it ?

Airtel New logo worth Rs. 300 crores..Is it worth it ?

In the first look Airtel's new logo looks just perfect and catchy, but the news below have been doing the rounds now-a-days saying that a whooping 300 crore is not worth it since it has got nothing but the shape of new Videocon log and the color of Voadfone (the arch rival of Airtel)




So is this true about the Rs. 300 crore re-branding?

China unveils world's longest sea bridge

A bridge too far? China unveils world's longest sea bridge which is five miles LONGER than the Dover-Calais crossing


China has unveiled the world’s longest sea bridge, which stretches a massive 26.4 miles – five miles further than the distance between Dover and Calais and longer than a marathon.

The Qingdao Haiwan Bridge, completed earlier this week, links the main urban area of Qingdao city, East China’s Shandong province, with Huangdao district, straddling the Jiaozhou Bay sea areas.

The road bridge, which took four years and cost a cool £5.5billion to build, will be open for use in the New Year and is almost three miles longer than the previous record-holder, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana.



Longest: The Qingdao Haiwan Bridge was completed on December 27 and is 26.4 miles long - the equivalent of 174 Tower Bridges



That structure features two bridges running side by side and is 23.87 miles (38.42km) long.

The three-way Qingdao Haiwan Bridge is a staggering 174 times longer than London’s Tower Bridge, over the Thames River – and shaves 19 miles off the drive from Qingdao to Huangdao.

Two separate groups of workers have been building the different ends of the structure since 2006.



Shortcut: With an overall length of 42.58km, the route between Qingdao and Huangdao will be shortened by 30km, cutting the travel time by about 20 minutes



with Huangdao district, straddling the Jiaozhou Bay sea areas

And they were relieved when all the bridges connected properly, which they managed to do on December 22.
WORLD'S LONGEST

- Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge (rail) - China - 102 miles
- Tianjin Grand Bridge (rail) - China - 71 miles
- Weinan Weihe Grand Bridge (rail) - China - 50 miles
- Bang Na Expressway (road) - Thailand - 34 miles

One engineer commented: ‘The computer models and calculations are all very well but you can't really relax until the two sides are bolted together.

‘Even a few centimetres out would have been a disaster.’

With an overall length of 42.58km, the route between Qingdao and Huangdao will be shortened by 30km, cutting the travel time by about 20 minutes.

However, the colossal construction is set to hold the record as the longest sea bridge only for a few years – and it will be bettered by another Chinese bridge in the next decade.

Last December officials announced workers had begun constructing a bridge to link southern Guangdong province with Hong Kong and Macau.

Set to be completed in 2016, officials say the £6.5billion bridge will span nearly 50km (30 miles).

‘Through a more convenient and fast transport network, Hong Kong's financial, tourism, trade and logistics and professional services can become better integrated with the Pearl River Delta and the surrounding areas,’ said Donald Tsang, Hong Kong's Chief Executive.

The bridge will be a six-lane expressway that can handle earthquakes up to magnitude 8.0, strong typhoons and the impact of a 300,000 tonne vessel, said Zhu Yongling, one of the officials leading the project.

Even when constructed that structure will be dwarfed by the longest bridge in the world, which is also in China. The Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge, also Chinese, is an astonishing 102 miles in length.

Facebook Beats Google as Most Visited Site in 2010

Hitwise an online intelligence company has reported that the social networking site Facebook was the top visited web page and top most searched term of 2010 which beats Google search.



Top-visited Websites in 2010



Top 10 Most Searched Terms in 2010