Searching the Web without Google

This may come as a shock to many people, but pay attention: Google is not the only search engine. I repeat: Google is not the only search engine.
Yes people, there are other search engines (there are even others, but these are the top 3 - after Google). When I started using the Web, back in '97, AltaVista was the "standard" search engine. Everybody I knew was using it. Yahoo's search was powered by AltaVista, until they invested in Google and started using its search. MSN? I don't remember what it was, if at all.

Now, it's not that I don't like Google. And it's not that this 8-minute video-flash movie had such a great effect on me. There are two good reasons to use other search engines:

• Having only one search engine is bad. I don't like a single company to control all information. Alternative engines will not exist if we don't use them.
  
• Sometimes, the other engines have better results. For example, when I searched for a PDF of an academic paper, I couldn't find it with Google. But AV did find it. People (me included) sometimes think that if Google can't find something, it does not exist. This is not true.
  

I'm not saying we should abandon Google. Not at all. I like Google, as I said, and I like Blogger and Gmail. But it's good to know and use the alternatives as well.

More Gmail Invites

I just got 6 new Gmail invitations. Since all of my friends (and their friends) already have accounts, I have no use for the invitations. If you want to be invited, add a comment to this post. Don't forget to specify your email, in a spam-protected format.

Dilbert's TTP Project

The Wikipedia articles for recursive acronym and RAS syndrome mention a Dilbert strip "in which Dilbert states that the TTP project refers to The TTP Project".
I wonder where I can find the actual strip. I added notes to the discussion pages of those articles, but no one has answered so far.

The Google Grid, EPIC 2014

This Flash video, which I found out about via InsideGoogle, is creepy. It talks about what will happen to the media in the next ten years. You have to see it, it's about 8 minutes.

sms.ac: free SMS?

Recently I got a few invitation-messages on behalf of people I know, to join the sms.ac community. It's supposed to be a site that lets you send free SMS messages.
I ignored the invitations at first, because they looked phishy. But after about 5 invitations, all from different people I know, I got curious, and decided to check it out. After all, I thought, the site already has my email address (it was a Yahoo! Mail address, but I also got one invitation to my Gmail account) - people I know gave it to them.

So I clicked the invitation link. After filling-in the standard details (as well as my mobile phone number), I was surprised to be asked for my Yahoo(!) password. Why would sms.ac want my password?
They want it, because they want to read my address book, and send invitations on my behalf to all my contacts. Then it hit me - all the people that "sent" me invitations actually gave away their mail account passwords!
Does this count as a virus? I'm not sure. The users who did it, gave their password. The site didn't steal it from them. In fact, it said it will invite their friends.
It seems like a clever way to collect confirmed email addresses. Every user that gives his/her password, gives his friends' mail addresses. What does the site do with the information? According their privacy policy, they probably sell it to "affiliates".

I am not a lawyer, but this service is probably legal, becuase they have the users' consent to do what they do. Yet, it's really annoying.

By the way - the main reason people sign up to the site is the promise to send free SMS messages. Well... I tried sending a message after signing up (I signed up without giving my password, it was not mandatory), but it didn't work. It said they don't support my cellular network - but my network is in the list of supported networks.

Beware of phishermen!

Gmail Live Bookmark

I'm not sure it's new, but I just noticed that Firefox now displays the Live Bookmarks icon when I view my Gmail inbox. The feature itself is not new - Gmail has had an Atom for a few months - but the link is new (Live Bookmarks are "discovered" through a <link> tag in the html header).
The feed has the list of unread messages in the inbox. Firefox displays only the subjects, but proper feed readers (or feed reader extensions in Firefox) can show the sender's information, as well as a snippet.

UPDATE: If you look for Gmail invites, see my other post.