Scattered Thoughts » google

Google Chrome

Kunaal Ramchandani — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:25:04 +0000

Google announced it’s own entry into the browser wars with the release (tomorrow) of Chrome.

I realise that they(Google) will be making sure that google and google related sites render very well, and their talk of getting it to multithread make things sound interesting, but how well will it perform when it comes to the more important (to me atleast) topics of web standards, also, how will this affect Google’s relationship with Firefox?

Chrome on Wiki.

Automating File Upload in Google Docs

Kunaal Ramchandani — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00:50 +0000

Google Operating System had an interesting writeup on automating file uploads into google docs. Also shows you how to write a batch script to back up your documents in bulk.

Another reason to like Gmail

Kunaal Ramchandani — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 11:11:32 +0000

Came across this great post on getting more out of your Gmail address.

Append a plus (“+”) sign and any combination of words or numbers after your email address. For example, if your name was hikingfan@gmail.com, you could send mail to hikingfan+friends@gmail.com or hikingfan+mailinglists@gmail.com.

How cool is this? I normally use Gmail’s filters to sort the email I get, but with this new trick, filtering becomes so much easier.
myEmail+subscription@gmail.com for when I subscribe to a newsletter, myEmail+social@gmail.com for the social networking sites, myEmail+bank@gmail.com for banking purposes and on and on the list goes.

Its the small things that make the difference

Kunaal Ramchandani — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 10:06:09 +0000

I have always had family scattered in different corners of the globe, and being as forgetful as I am, I can never remember the time difference. Needless to say that this has resulted in a few cases of “Oh, I’m sorry were you sleeping?”
As a result I always use the humble search engine to find me a site with the correct time. But now, Google has eliminated that extra click by giving me the answer in the search results itself!
Type in “time india” to get the current time displayed in india or “time canada” to get a list of times in a various zones in canada. It is pretty nifty, you can also go as far as typing a major cities name, “time mumbai“!
A couple of other things I noticed:

1. The small clock had a orange dial if the sun has risen in the queried place and a grayish dial if the sun has set.

2. The arms on the clock are pointing at the right time!

Its always the little touches that make the difference.

Here are some other cool things Google search acts as

Calculator: type in an equation and out pops the answer, type “10654 * 8764”

Converter: this is another invaluable tool I always use, conversion be it “miles to km” or “feet to inches”

Currency conversion: Try “3 USD to AUD”

Q&A: Google attempts to answer questions as well, try “height of mount everest” or “population of australia“, this does not work for everything but is pretty good for fact based questions

and one of my favourites, for the cricket fans type in “cricket India” and it will give you the score from the last match played by that team!

Here are a few more links which have information on more features in the google search and tips on advanced search.