Just Google It!

Google has become a part of our vocabulary; people use it as a verb interchangeably with the word search. If you want to find out about something you “Google it”. How did Google become such a big influence? Why didn’t Yahoo get there? I’m not sure I have an answer to this, but I do find this company fascinating.

Some interesting facts about Google

•  Google started as a project of two Stanford Computer Science grad students back in 1996.
• Their original project was called BackRub, but was quickly changed to Google - a play on the word googol – a mathematical term.
• By Feb 1999 they outgrew their garage office and moved to a real office with their 8 employees
• April 1 2000 started with the tradition of April fool’s day hoaxes, by announcing a tool that can read your mind and visualize the search results.
• By September of 2000, Google was offering search in 15 languages, it grows to 72 less than 2 years later
• By October of 2000, AdWords is introduced with 350 customers
• By March of 2009, even the white house becomes a major user, holding an online town hall to answer questions submitted by Google Moderator

Google has evolved to be more than just a search engine, you can do so much with all the different tools that Google offers these days, from email (Gmail) to Instant message (gtalk), through cheap international phone calls (Google Voice), sharing your photos (Picasa), sharing documents (Google Docs), finding directions (Google Maps), Blogging (Blogger), Monitoring your health (Google Health) and so much more. Google is everywhere in your web experience and now also with its own operating system (Android) who knows where it would take us. 

In the Gartner’ Magic Quadrant, Google is a strong leader, it has a complete vision with the ability to keep growing and the power to execute all of those. The competitors do not seem to be able to keep up with the pace.

Do you know how to tweet?

If someone asks me about tweeter I can say that I have a tweeter account and I use it randomly, do I really know what I'm doing there? Probably not so much. It may sound silly but the reason I even started using tweeter is because my favorite singer started using it frequently and I felt left out when I wasn't part of the conversation. Since then I have learned to follow my friends, family and some celebrities and radio stations I like. I have followers, I check it daily on my mobile phone or the home computer, but I still feel lost in there sometimes.

 

Am I a newbie? not so much anymore, but I still try to learn how to do it better. I recently found some interesting advices that I would like to share.

Size matters

Although the character limit is 140, you should think about limiting your messages to 120. Why? if you think your messages are important and some may want to re-tweet them (meaning forwarding your messages to their followers), re tweeting automatically added RT and your uses name to your message and if your user name is not very short that may add up and get your message cut off.

How much is too much?

Some tweet more than others, but what is the right amount for your messages to be effective? This blog suggests that 12-14 messages a day are just right. I'm not sure about the exact number, but I do know I tend to skim through messages of some of my friends who tend to tweet about every little thing they do all day.

Reply or Direct message?

When you reply you send a public message addressed to a person, when you direct message - it is private. Since replies do not have the history in then, it may be hard to follow a conversation. If you have something to say to someone, even if the information is not sensitive it may be a better approach to use direct messages

Quantity or quality?

It does not matter how many people you follow, it is about the quality of the people or companies you follow

Identify yourself

You don’t have to use a real photo of yourself, but do use an avatar and have your profile set with some basic information. Having nothing there says "I'm new and I don’t know what I'm doing, I'm just following the trend."

Additional good advice can be found at these articles that I read lately:

• Twitter mistakes that can destroy your twitter reputation
• Top 7 mistakes new twitter users make
• Twitter mistakes made by ad agencies for new business

Know your Domains and URLs

One of the great inventions that made the Internet so accessible to the masses is the domain names and URLs, if addresses to where we needed to go stayed at their basic form of numbers I don't believe we would be using it as broadly as we do. URLs gave meaning to the links we use and made them easier to remember. I doubt anyone knows the real IP address of amazon.com, but we all know how to get there by using the domain name.

Since URLs are used by everyone on the Internet to take them to the desired location, it is important to know how to identify real and safe domains and how to identify fake domains that may pretend to be real and maybe used for phishing information.

An interesting article I found from the Information Technology Services department at Yale University, refers to this subject and stresses the importance of knowing where you click to ensure you are taken to the real amazon site for example and not some website that pretends to be amazon and will use the information you provide for identify theft and credit card frauds.

The article brings three good points that will help identify a fake URL :

• The end of the URL is what matters the most
• Accounts.amazon.com = Valid
• Amazon.accounts.com = Fake
• Beware of Internet IP addresses in URLs - criminals may use a raw IP address such as 122.334.2.18
• Fake URL maybe disguise in a email link or a web page link - always hover about the link and look at the status bar to see where it really takes you

Avinash Rana, an independent blogger that writes mostly about Internet and technology wrote a recent blog about the very same topic. In his post he says it is pretty easy for a talented web-developer to make it seems like you are in a real website, therefore we all must pay attention to where we enter in the virtual world, especially if we plan to disclose any personal information that may be used to harm us.