An excellent source for free backgrounds, sorted by user rating. The images are available in all common resolutions, from 2560×1600 down to 1024×768, and are very diversely themed.
I was personally looking for 1280×800 resolution pics for my laptop and I found 78 pages of them! It also has section marked as PSP for wallpapers for PSP. The wallpapers I found were mostly scenic.
(The picture at bottom is that of Goowy and the one on top is that of YouOS.)
I recently came to know about goowy.com and www.youos.com. They are online operating systems. Yes, online, web-based OS. This does not mean that you will not require a OS on your computer (yet). You will need atleast an OS, a browser and of course an Internet connection to access it. They are actually web-based application mimicking the user interface of an OS. They have wordprocessor, chatting software, games and more. This is a very novel approach. Now effectively you can take the whole desktop around the world without actually carrying it. So, now you can work on your documents anywhere around the internet and you are safe from any hardware or virus infecting your precious work. What’s more, you can even work on heavy application on your an era old computer.
I must mention that they are still in development stage. Goowy in beta and youos in alpha stage. Both of them have linux like graphical interface. Goowy has a good interface and also has a chat facility for Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, etc. users. YouOS on the other hand probaly allows only IRC chatting. YouOS though have a wordprocessor which I didn’t find in Goowy. Goowy is flash based where as YouOS is javascript based, hence in YouOS you can interact like a real OS and right click on the desktop to bring up a menu to chage wallpaper, whereas in Goowy we get the Flash player’s menu.
This is indeed a good concept. They need to evolve more to be made really usefull. Go to their sites and click on ‘Try a Demo’ to launch the OS right away.
This is one of the most innovative ad sites ever on the internet. This site has nothing but advertisements, but with a twist. Advertisers are required to hire pixels on the site at $1 per pixel. There are 1 million pixels available. This very much like hiring billboard space; very innovative. Click on the small ads to goto the advertising company. See for yourself. The site is http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com. He has already sold out all his million pixels, that means, he is a millionaire! Hats off; you deserve it for this splendid idea.
Below is a small frame showing the site.
Update: I have now found that this kind of advertising has now come to known as “pixel ad”. Google for this term and you will get so many such sites. I beleive that milliondollarhompage.com is the original pixel advertising site. I read about this in a computer magazine long ago. If you have any more info on this then post a comment.
This is a comprehensive list of them. Well without any delay browse through all of them.
Key:-
(beta) -> Product still in developmental state, but is usable. Take GMail for example.
(labs) -> Product in very early stage of development. The ones I have listed, I found them usable.
(?) -> I am not sure of its usability state.
Google Trends (beta): Search how popular is a keyword. This gives a year-wise, country and region-wise break-up, of how many times a particular keyword is used for searching. Type in there “Britney Spears”, look at the graph; has her popularity has risen or plumed. A great tool for ego searching. (Look at “AppleGrew Apple Grew” for more.)
Google Voice Search Demo (beta): This is one nice thing. You can search by calling Google from your phone! This service is now available at (650) 623-6706.
Google Search: Custom : I don’t know what its use is. It looks like a minimalist Google Search site, but already there such a site which loads very fast too. Read just below.
Google Search: ie : For Irish people, this is not
Google Blog Search (beta): As the name suggests. It is for searching blogs.
Google Book Search (beta): Search from within books in Google’s archive. Google has started the project to make a cache of books by scanning them from different libraries around the world and by partnering with book marketing agencies.
Google Scholar (beta): Quoting Google – “Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.”
Google Suggest (labs): This is actually Google Search but it searches and shows the results as you search in a drop-down menu. Well you already have this feature in Google toolbar for Firefox.
Google Music Search : The name says it all. Search Music.
Google Video (beta):Search video. Now Google has started providing videos for free which are available else where for a fee; everyday. Great. Now you can post the videos from there on your Blogger.com, My Space, etc. blogs. Check this blog post for example. After you read that read this for a helpful tip on Google Video.
Google U.S. Government Search : Pretty self-explanatory. Quoting Google – “Google U.S. Government Search offers a single location for searching across
Google Maps : You heard of Google Earth? Yes it is actually that but without the fancy interface and it even shows maps (it also shows satellite image like Google Earth) which is not in Google Earth. What’s more, you can integrate this feature in your site for FREE! Have look here.
Google Ride Finder (labs): Quoting Google – “Find a taxi, limousine or shuttle using real time position of vehicles.”
Google Transit (labs): Plan trips using public transportation (currently in
Google Co-op (beta): Google Co-op is a platform which enables you to use your expertise to help other users find information. This is a work in progress. You can expect to see evolution in both the Co-op’s structure and the platform’s features.
Google Search Sponsored Links : Search within the ads provided by Google.
Inactive Cobranded Google Search (?): This one mysterious service I don’t know about. It is currently in-active.
orkut (beta): Create network of friend. Very good. I am a member of it. 🙂 You can join only by invitation. Don’t ask me for invitation. I will invite you only if I know you.
Blogger: Create your Blog Now — FREE (beta): Need I say more. This post you are raeding on is on Blogger.com itself. What’s more you can earn also. All the ads that you see around are for earning revenue to me, not to Blogger.com (directly). Why don’t you click on them and try it. 😉
Google Spreadsheets (labs): You loath MS Excel or you are on the move and have weak PDA or smart phone which can’t take the burden of today’s MS Excel? Well, Google is your saviour again! Try this new spreadsheet service from Google.
Google Reader (labs): Maintain online records of subscribed RSS and Atom feeds. BTW, did you notice the Atom feed on this page? If not then subscribe it. If you are a user of ancient Internet Explorer 6 then you may not know what I am talking of. Do yourself a favour and download Firefox. Did you see the download icon at the side?
Google Checkout : No need to repeatedly follow the same lengthy steps to buy online. Use Google Checkout. See http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/find-it-with-google-buy-it-with-google.html for more info on it.
Language Tools : Found some interesting site but could read it because it is in a language you don’t know? Let Google translate that for you.
Google Groups (beta): Like Yahoo Groups this is Google Groups; where you can make and participate in on-line communities. Take my word; avoid Google Groups if you can. Yahoo Groups is much better. Yahoo lets you upload files in communities, but Google doesn’t and the design of Google Groups is terribly confusing.
Google Alerts (beta): Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.
Google Sets : This is one crazy thing I encountered. Enter a few words in its boxes and then click on create sets then from its database it will list more words which matches the most to the class your original words belong to. Scratching your head? Take this example. You enter Limousine, BMW, Ferrari and you get Ford, Jaguar, Honda, Chevrolet, etc. You are still scratching your head?! All these are names of cars. Now you got it?
Google News : What? It gives you the news definitely.
Google Browser Sync (labs): Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions. This means you need Firefox to use it. Come on download it from the right. 🙂
Google Firefox Extensions : From here you can download 3 more plugins for Firefox.
Google Macintosh Dashboard Widgets (labs): Here you will find some widgets (small programs) for Apple Mac users (only).
SketchUp – Home : This is one good software for architects. You can build here buildings really fast. Very easy to use and intuitive. As usual, you get almost all the cool features at no cost.
Google Software Downloads : Still not satisfied by downloading all of them? Well, feast of these. Enjoy!
Google Notebook (labs): Here you will be asked to download a plugin for Firefox using which you can keep notes on your browser and these notes will be automatically synced with your online Google account.
Add your URL to Google : Made a new site? Don’t wait for Googlebot to find its way to your site, rather tell it that you are on internet now.
Customizable Google Free Search Services : Add Google Search to your site.
Google Sitemaps – Have a conversation with Google about your site : When you make a new site do register here. Here it will tell you whether you are in Google’s index or not, if yes then when Googlebot last crawled your site, and did it encounter any error while crawling your site. Very good and it is free.
Google AdSense : Earn money fellows. Signup here and rake in the mullah. Well, it may take time to pay really good depending on your site’s content. Fellow blogger of Blogger.com, you too can earn from this. All the ads around earn money for me, me, me…:). Even the Google Search at the side earns money for me when Google earns from the ads shown along the search there. You won’t earn when you use the slightly above mentioned way of adding Google Search to your site.
Welcome to AdWords : Sponsor Google and show your ads in Google.
Hello : Welcome : This an online service where you can upload your pictures and share them or keep the private. Much like Flickr.
Google Project Hosting (added on 6-Oct-06) : Google has now added a facility to let you upload and host your projects on Google, but the projects must be opensource. Also you need to have a GMail account to be able to use this. Read more on this here.
Google Code – Google’s Developer Network : Go here for many freely available SDKs from Google. Google Map API too is here which I mentioned above.
Google Labs : This is one place where new projects sprout out. When they are well received by the mass then they graduate.
Google Web Toolkit (beta): This is a very nice tool. You can program in Java and can convert that into Javascript! A boon for Java developers who are not well acquainted with web development. BTW in spite of the similar name Java and Javascript are neither similar nor it is from SUN Microsystem; it is from Netscape Communications.
Google Maps API (beta): I have mentioned it above, but I should do that again. Quoting Google – “The Google Maps API lets you embed Google Maps in your own web pages with JavaScript.”
Google Maps API Official Blog :The official Google Maps API blog .
Google SOAP Search API – Home (beta): With the Google SOAP Search API service, software developers can query billions of web pages directly from their own computer programs. Google uses the SOAP and WSDL standards so a developer can program in his or her favourite environment – such as Java, Perl, or Visual Studio .NET.
Google Competition
Google Code – Google Summer of Code – Google Summer of Code : Every year Google gives scholarships of $2500 (US) to many students. All you have to do is present a project to one of the many companies there and when selected you will have to finish that project satisfactorily in 2 months. You earn $500 as soon as your proposal is selected. Go there to get a picture of it.
Google Code Jam : Google’s coding competition. 1st prize $10,000! Keep an eye on it.
World’s first open source movie! It is named Elephants Dreams. It is a 11 mins short created by some volunteers in 9 months using only open source softwares. It created quite a stir when it was released. Half million of this has been downloaded! The 3d modelling & animation has been done entirely using the open source 3d modelling software Blender. It is open source since all its production files have been realeased! This movie has been released under Creative Common license .
Some notable features of blender (ref: wikipedia, official site):-
Blender is slightly hard to learn (like Maya). But you have many active communities where you can post your problem and you will get a helpful reply within an hour. The most active English forum is blenderartists.org(Official Blender forum). You have even lots of video tutorials. The most notable progress in this direction is the Blender Summer of Documentation 2006. For the first time Blender Foundation this summer will be granting 10 people 500 EUR for substantial contribution to documenting blender.
Quick links to important Blender related sites:-
