If you have the latest version of Opera, you can try a new way to read this blog: Google OS Widget. Read the introduction of each post and decide if you want to read the rest. Next to description, there's a thumbnail that makes you feel better when reading the text.

The latest Google OS Widget includes a special feature: Google Ajax Search, that lets you search the web, find blog posts and videos directly from the widget.

Find more about Opera 9
10 features you'll find only in Opera
If you use IE, you can add a button to Google Toolbar.

Where do you read the latest tech news? Would you like to see other kinds of news than the rest of the people? I compiled a list of 10 sites where you can find the best news about technology and more.

10. Tailrank
Tailrank monitors blogs to find the most popular posts. For each subject, it shows the most probable source of the news and other blogs that talk about the same subject. Tailrank ranks news by the number of backlinks, which isn't necessarily the best decision.

Today's most important news on Tailrank is "How to tune into BlogerCon" (BlogerCon is a conference about weblogs).

Tailrank also has a politics section, a mobile version, an API and a personalization feature.

9. Spotback
Spotback lets you personalize the news by rating them. You can save the stories, see news from a restricted number of domains. Spotback lets you view the text of the news inline, so you don't have to go to the source if you don't find the news interesting. "Spotback uses sophisticated algorithms that analyze social behavior. These algorithms are designed to harness the power of the entire community for the benefit of the individual user." Unfortunately, the selection of the news is not very good, but it improves over time.

8. Findory
Greg Linden's Findory personalizes the news by looking at the headlines you click on. If you click on a headline or make search, Findory adjusts the news to let you see only relevant content. You can also view the latest posts from your favorite blog and read related posts from other blogs. Unfortunately, you'll see blog posts from last year, as well as low-quality articles.

Findory has many other categories, has sections for videos and podcasts and shows the neighborhood of a blog.

7. Google News
Google News lets you personalize the news, but tends to show mostly news from newspapers and not from blogs. You can get alerts by mail if something interesting happens in a certain domain. The subject grouping doesn't work very good, so you'll sometimes the same subject in many places.

6. Rojo
Rojo is a feed reader that tracks the most read posts and lets you vote for them. You can also tag stories and save them to your account.

Today's most important post on Rojo: "Firefox cheat sheet".

5. Del.icio.us
View the most bookmarked posts today. Most posts have already been on Digg, Slashdot or other popular sites and that's the reason for the sudden popularity.

4. Blogsnow
Blogsnow is based purely on link tracking, it's not only about technology, doesn't have any personalization features, but it's clean, fast and accurate.

3. Techmeme
Techmeme has a similar approach to Tailrank, but does a better ranking of the news. It shows less news and lets you view the archives.

Today's most important new on Techmeme is "Verizon to end service on commercial airplanes".

2. Digg
Digg is like Techmeme, except that articles are manually submitted, and instead of links we have votes. Another difference is that Digg can have on its front page news like "Top 10 strangest gadgets of the past" and tends to be sensationalist and shallow. Breaking news reach fast to the homepage, so Digg is probably the best place to find the latest news.

1. Slashdot
Digg's older relative, Slashdot is the place to see great comments on the most interesting news of the day, usually a couple of hours after you read the news on Digg. Slashdot is like a great talk-show broadcasted one or two hours after the breaking news report. So you'll not be the first to find the news, but you'll learn a lot from the discussion.

0. Popurls
If you don't have time to go to all these sites, or read their feeds, Popurls shows you the latest news from Slashdot, Digg, Google News, Del.icio.us and other sites.


Best customized news: Findory.
Best breaking news: Digg.
Best news ranking: Techmeme.

I've posted earlier that you can find all kinds of file types in Google index, including EXE files. Claudiu Spulber reports that you can find innocent-looking sites that redirect to EXE files with spyware.

If you search for ["Signature: 00004550"], you'll find 192,000 results (if Google's count is accurate), mostly executables. Google indexes the file's headers and if you look at the cache, you'll see something like this:

WINDOWS EXECUTABLE
32bit for Windows 95 and Windows NT
Technical File Information:
Image File Header
Signature: 00004550
Machine: Intel 386
Number of Sections: 0003
Time Date Stamp: 3b7dc821
Symbols Pointer: 00000000

What's interesting is that the results have addresses that make you think there's nothing wrong with them (like crcdatatech.com/help), they don't have an EXE extension and when you go to the site you're prompted to download the file. And if you click "run" instead of "save" or "cancel", prepare for the worst.

I think Google should remove all dangerous files from their index (EXE, MSI, COM, REG) and that should be an easy task, as they have a very similar pattern.

Gmail doesn't allow you to attach EXE files or ZIP archives that contain EXE files.

On Virtual Video Map you can view videos from different corners of the world. The map looks pretty crowded, so you can zoom in to focus on a country or a region. Click on a red balloon and play a video from that country: some videos are touristic, other videos are just funny. You can even find music videos.

Related:
Google Maps + Photos = Panoramia
Free premium videos on Google Video

You can't install all the operating systems out there. You don't have the time, the energy, the money or the motivation. I mean, your XP seems to work just fine. Why would you install a Linux distribution? And what Linux distribution?

There is a site called OSVids.com that has screencasts from many operating systems, including Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, Debian, OpenBSD and Vista. For some of them, you can see the setup, for others the desktop and some basic applications. It's really nice to sit down and compare all these operating systems. Maybe this way you'll decide what Linux distribution you'll install.

Missing from this party are the old versions of Windows (but you probably know them), Mac and Google Operating System (who is not yet ready to be launched).

Related:
Will Linux rule the world? (read the comments)
Partition your hard drive without Partition Magic

Google buys a lot of "dark fiber" (unused fiber-optic capacity) and many people take guesses at their reasons. Alex Lightman, CEO of IP telephony vendor Innofone.com, thinks that Google prepares for IPv6 era. IPv6 will replace IPv4 internet protocol as it will support much more internet addresses. As the number of devices connected to internet grows exponentially, IPv4 + NAT routers will not be enough.

"You know who else has a big pot of slash 20? Google," Lightman said. "Yahoo does too. It's not that service providers aren't doing it — it's the savvy service providers, with the high multiples and visionary management, that are getting ready to go into it. This is why Google bought mobile dark fiber. It's to go out and go: 'All these bozos in America aren't rolling out IPv6, so we'll do it if they aren't going to'."

Another reasons for buying dark fiber might be: Google Video's infrastructure, Google Wi-Fi and Google's data centers.

You've always wanted to see the world. Panoramio lets you see photos from all around the world on a map. You just have to select a location (like your favorite holiday destination) and you'll see pictures from there located on the map.

Panoramio lets you upload up to 2 Gb of photos in their original size and quality and label them with the place they were taken and some tags. This way, you can upload pictures from your trips and see other people's perspectives on the same places.

Panoramio photos can be viewed in Google Earth too if you download a KML file.

Also see:
Picasa Web Albums (Picasa also has geotagging)
Change the world with Google Earth 4
Google Earth reveals Iran's nuclear sites

Google will start to include ads on Google Video this week, reports InfoWorld. Google will display an image ad for the duration of a video and a video ad after the clip ends for premium videos you would normally pay to view.

The test will run for a week: only 2,000 videos from important providers will have ads and only 5 advertisers will have ads on Google Video.

It's obvious that Google will integrate ads from Video AdSense into Google Video, as they share the same interface and distribution. The good thing is that the ad will be displayed after the video ends, and not before playing it, like most other video services. The bad thing is that the video ad is not a separate video, it's part of the video you are watching.

Update: here's the link to watch premium videos for free (including Charlie Rose, Felix the Cat and wrestling videos).

Let's face it. If you google a company name, the first result, which is the company's homepage, has a boring description. Search "Yahoo" and you'll get:
"The first large scale directory of the Internet, now a major portal offering search engine results."

MSN Search is not like that. It may not be a good search engine, but when it comes to company names, MSN Search knows how to handle the situation. You'll find out insiders' information, their latest problems and their address with one search. Let's see.

Yahoo!
Yahoo!'s webservers exclusively run FreeBSD. In addition, all the non-production servers and developer workstations run FreeBSD.

AOL.com
Founded in 1985 to provide interactive services, Web brands, Internet technologies and e-commerce services. Part of AOL Time Warner. Based in Dulles, Loudoun County, Virginia.

Sun Microsystems
High-speed microprocessors, scalable systems, robust software, network storage, 901 San Antonio Road, Palo Alto, CA 94303

HP
Provides embedded ethernet controllers, embedded internet, IEEE 1451.2, thin web servers, and time synchronization for smart sensors in distributed measurement and control system architectures.

Oracle Corporation
Oracle RDBMS support on MPE/iX ends December 31, 2000.

If you go to ask.com and type some queries, you'll get this message: "This query does not comply with Ask.com Terms of Service".

Here's a list of some queries that return this message:
sexy girls
Belgium's laws on pedophilia
laws on pedophilia
sex with kids
sex of a child
pedophilia
anti-pedophilia
child sex abuse
zoophilia
blocking porn from kids
any query that contains child and sex, kids and sex

I think this is not a good idea: those who want to search for these things will go to another search engine. Besides, some people may just want to make some research on "laws on pedophilia". If you ban queries like that, you'll have to ban others: "how to make a bomb", terrorists or "suicide tips" and the list will never end.

Update: If you search for "pedaphilia", Ask suggests searches like "girl love pedophilia", "child porn", and "preteen girl virgin".

{June 27 update} Here's Gary Price's response:

It's really a legacy issue from the Ask Jeeves days. Much of it having to do with the one time licensing agreement between our company and the "Mr Jeeves" Woodhouse licensing organization. It was far from an ideal situation and far from perfect filtering.

The good news is that with Mr. Jeeves gone, these issues no longer apply. So, as Lanzone pointed out earlier, you'll see big changes beginning later this week.

Actually, changes have been developing for a few months. Here's an example.

Shortly after I started working at Ask.com (in March) a librarian colleague sent me a note asking why her organization and other info about a topic wasn't found in Ask. These terms were on what we'll call the "legacy" list of filtered terms. It was not a long list. When I was alerted to this problem I immediately contacted Ask.com management and the terms were searchable within a matter of days. Now, as we move forward, this issue is being resolved (as Jim points out).

Also see:
Google sued for promoting child pornography