Avyaya - Tech Rants

Google took part in Earth Hour quite responsibly.

What is ‘Earth Hour’?

On March 31 2007, for one hour, Sydney made a powerful statement about the greatest contributor to global warming – coal-fired electricity – by turning off its lights. Over 2.2 million Sydney residents and over 2,100 businesses switched off, leading to a 10.2% energy reduction across the city. What began as one city taking a stand against global warming caught the attention of the world.

In 2008, 24 global cities participated in Earth Hour at 8pm on March 29. Earth Hour is the highlight of a major campaign to encourage businesses, communities and individuals to take the simple steps needed to cut their emissions on an ongoing basis. It is about simple changes that will collectively make a difference – from businesses turning off their lights when their offices are empty, to households turning off appliances rather than leaving them on standby.

Images:

Participation Percentage of the Countries in Earth Hour:

How?

In a recent post on How Google enables to search-within-search there hadbeen some key points mentioned on how this works.

The brand named sites like ebay.com and amazon.com and nike.com and a plethora of similar sites are worried that the users will be dragged away through the ad sales to their competitors. As Google offers a secondary search within the results, it offers an option for the users to refine their searches entirely, not using the Google search, but that particular site’s search engine and displaying the ads of their competitors.

Here is an excerpt from a Technical Consultant : “Analysts generally praise the feature as helping users save steps, but for Web publishers and retailers, there are trade-offs… ‘Google is showing a level of aggressiveness with this that’s just not needed,’ said [one Internet consultant]… Take, for instance, a [test where] users of Google searched The Washington Post and were given a secondary search box. Those who typed ‘jobs’ into that second box saw related results for The Post’s employment pages, but the results were bordered by ads for competing employment sites like CareerBuilder or Monster.com. So even though users began the process by stating their intention to reach The Post, Google’s ads steered at least some of them to competitors. Similar situations arose when users relied on Google to search nytimes.com.”

Interesting, huh. Share with me how you would be possibly be benefitted with this slick feature.

Nanaimo, is the Most Possible Answer. Reason???

Here’s an excerpt from Slashdot:

Time.com has up a story on Nanaimo, a British Columbia coal mining town of about 78,000 that has had everything conceivable mapped into a Google database. Citizens can track fire trucks real time. The results also include Google Earth data for Nanaimo. ‘The Google fire service allows people to avoid accident sites by tuning electronic devices to automatic updates from the city’s RSS news feed, says fire captain Dean Ford. Eventually, Nanaimo plans to equip its grass-cutting machines with GPS devices, so residents piqued by the apparent shabbiness of a particular park or grass verge can use Google to find out when last it was groomed by the city’s gardening staff. And the city’s cemeteries will soon be mapped to allow Internet users to find out who is buried in each plot, says Kristensen. A new multi-million-dollar conference center, opening in June, will have 72 wireless access points to allow out-of-towners to use their laptops to navigate the Google Earth version of the city.’”

Amazing, isn’t it?

Google is the Master Blaster in Search Engines!!!

For more related news: ZDNet