Little Helpers

We become a bunch of happy computer users once we have all the essentials installed-Office (or OpenOffice.org), Firefox / Opera, and you know the rest. Not too many get into looking for programs-specifically little, unobtrusive ones-that help with everyday tasks. For instance: a program that kept all your programs (including itself!) up-to-date… now that would save you the trouble of looking for updates online. Then… something that lets you type in your native tongue (assuming you're familiar with it)? Useful indeed.



We've done some digging for you, and here's what we came up with. Give these programs a shot and see if they're worth the money you spend on them (which is Rs 0.00 each). We're guessing you'll be a happier computer user thereon.

Launchy's in-line search capabilities in action Launchy www.launchy.net Here's a lightweight open source program to quickly open any file on your computer. It's as unobtrusive as possible: it's invisible. Press [Alt] + [Space] and it pops up. So here's the  idea: say you want to open an Excel file buried where no mouse has gone before, begin entering the name of your desired file in the Launchy window, and possible matches will come up. Home in on your file and launch it right from the Launchy window-hence the name! The program learns from past keystrokes, so as you keep using it, you'll find you need to press fewer keys before you find your file. Even if Launchy doesn't find a matching file, it will show you a list of all files that somewhat match what you've typed. Now Launchy doesn't do black magic (or, to be racially neutral, blue magic). It indexes files, of course. To be able to find files of a certain extension, you need to first index those: for example, if you add the .EXE extension, programs will be indexed. In addition, stuff in the Start Menu is indexed by default. If you're using this popular program at your workplace, you can index files on your intranet as well. Find Launchy on our March 2007 DVD.

Texter http://tinyurl.com/2ww36b Those things in Word like "December (Press Enter to Insert)" are more of a pain in the behind than anything else. What you need is Texter to enter oft-used text (hence the name). So just assign a word like "addr" to a block of text-like your address-and when you type in "addr", your address is all typed out for you. This saves time, and more importantly, relieves the frustration of doing mindless things. Adding Hoststrings in Texter For the programmers out there: apart from basic text replacement, Texter has a set of predefined variables you can use to generate dynamic content (like the current date). For example, %| will assign the place to where the cursor should return to after text is replaced, as in, if you create a macro with the text block "Digit %| Is The Coolest", the cursor will position itself between "Digit" and "Is". Typing "{Tab}" will insert a tab where you need it. You can even combine variables. Just to give you an idea of what Texter can do, you can highlight text and paste it elsewhere without having to do a copy-paste operation. You'd have to construct a simple macro: "^c %c {Space}". Here, "%c" is a predefined variable that means "paste clipboard contents along with a pre-defined block of text" to Texter. Find Texter on our August 2007 CD.

AutoHotkey www.autohotkey.com Now if you need macros for just about any action, you need AutoHotkey. You could use it to replace blocks of text, but going beyond, you could do things like open your browser and several sites under tabs, make multiple directories, and shut down your computer after a download or copy action-in the blink of an eye. AutoHotkey, as you can see, takes macros to a new level. Looks dificult,but is very easy to use The program incorporates another one called AutoScriptWriter, which allows you to record macros. These can then be replayed. So you start up this program, press Record, do various actions, and press Stop. Then, playing back the macro will do all those various actions. We created a macro to capture screenshots and save them with IrfanView, in the .TIFF format, on the Desktop. Behind the scenes, AutoScriptWriter creates a macro file that contains the code for what is to be done. Find that macro-and the program itself-on our May 2007 CD. Naturally, you can write your own macros. Learn about it at www.autohotkey.com/wiki/index.php?title=AHK_Tutorial.

Update Checker www.filehippo.com/updatechecker The fastest way to find program updates If you like to have all your software updated down to the last decimal, this little tool is most certainly for you. Update Checker runs a quick scan on all the programs on your computer, then opens up a Web page and tells you which ones can be upgraded. It's not magic: the Update Checker Web site maintains a version number database of programs along with download information, which registered users can update. Upon a scan, Update Checker compares the version numbers there to those of the programs it finds. Next, a Web page with the download information for the new version is opened. Find Update Checker on this month's CD. Update Checker runs on even Windows 98, provided you have .NET 2.0 framework installed.

Steganography Tools                            The wizard mode is easiest to use      The flowchart mode of wbStego4open Steganography software is the digital equivalent of invisible ink. It lets you embed data inside other files. Secret data, of course. So why use steganography-why not just ZIP your files with password-protection? Well, when you have a password-protected file of any sort, there's something to be explained if and when someone (like your mom or boss!) notices it. ("Hmm. So you're using passwords these days, are you? Tell me more…") Besides, passwords aren't completely safe. With steganography, no-one will even know there's something hidden! Using the technique, you hide your file inside another, known as the carrier file. Hide In Picture is once such tool: you can embed files into GIF and BMP images. You retrieve your data from the carrier file just by clicking Extract in the program. You can also password-protect the carrier file if you're so paranoid you think only you'll survive, and then embed that into another file… Find Hide In Picture on this month's CD or download it from http://sourceforge. net/projects/hide-in-picture. A similar program is wbStego4open. This open-source, cross-platform tool allows you to embed data in BMP, text, HTML, and PDF files! Get this one from http://wbstego.wbailer.com. There are stego programs that allow you to embed data in zipped archives too. wbStego4open has two modes-Wizard and Flowchart. The latter allows users we call "advanced" to embed / extract data, password-protect files, and compress the carrier file, all in one window. Steganography opens up a cool one top-corporate-boss-to-another way of exchanging secret messages via e-mail. The sender and receiver need to have the same software installed, of course.

Tranparent Rainlender skins are also available Rainlendar www.rainlendar.net A cross-platform calendar software, Rainlendar is chock-full of all those much-needed everyday features like to-do lists, alarms, search capabilities, and printing support, apart from the expected calendar. The software uses the official standard for calendar data exchange set by the Internet Engineering Task Force Calendaring and Scheduling Working Group, called iCalendar, so you can easily import and export entries between calendars. You can set up recurrent alarms, to-do entries, and calendar entries to record recurring events like birthdays, anniversaries, or the signing of an attendance register at work. The Lite version is free; Pro costs €15 (Rs 850). The difference is that in the Lite version, there is no support for Outlook, Google Calendar, or calendars shared on a network. Both versions support the Lua scripting language, thereby allowing you to extend the calendar's functionality.  Eye-candy comes in the form of the tons of skins available. Find Rainlendar Lite on our May 2007 DVD.

DivXMachine www.divxmachine.com                               Change any video in any format using DivXMachine If your work involves managing many video files and changing their properties, DivXMachine will be downright useful. It integrates into the Explorer shell; when you right-click on an image or video file, it lists a host of formats and resolutions to which you can convert the file. You can select multiple files of the same file-type to be converted at once. Head to http://www. climachine.com/?lang=en&page=featdmsi to see what media formats are supported. The common filters like MP3 to OGG converters, AVI to DIVX are all bundleded with the software. You can select which filters you want to display in the Explorer shell. There are filters available to enhance the clarity of video called Avisynth filters. You can add these to enhance video clarity. DivXMachine lets you build custom Explorer shell menus from scratch using the bundled DMSI Menu Editor. Find DivXMachine on this month's CD.

 

An example of using Baraha Baraha www.baraha.com If you blog at Blogger.com, you've noticed that they now let you type Indian words in their native script by spelling them in English. This is called transliteration. For example, typing in "Aap Kaise Ho?" in English will display the words in the Devanagri script. Actually, there's a simple tool that lets you use transliteration technology to type out documents in Word, chat with friends on IM, and so on-in your language. It's called Baraha With Baraha, you don't need to remember complex keystrokes to get the correct matra or letter in place. Just type the words as you would pronounce them in your native language, and they will be reproduced in the correct script on-screen. Baraha supports many Indian languages, and can work with Unicode as well as TrueType fonts. Unicode fonts allow programs to change their shape, size, and rendering; these are the "weird Chinese-looking character" fonts. TrueType fonts are the ones we generally use; they allow designers to define how their font should be rendered in any program, and they look the same on-screen and when printed. Baraha Direct, bundled with the software, allows you to enter Indian text directly into MS Office applications and PageMaker. It's convenient-an icon in the system tray indicates the language to which the text is being transliterated. You can change the transliteration speed, change the language and change the format of the transliterated text between Unicode and TrueType. Baraha features "learning" capabilities: it learns the spellings you use for words. For example, if you spell the Hindi word "Ma" as "Maa", Baraha can learn that-so it gets better over time at spelling your words correctly. Note, however, that Baraha isn't quite perfect. It'll take some getting used to on your part, and some learning on the software's part.

Windows Explorer on steroids Free Commander www.freecommander.com A Windows Explorer alternative that packs a punch, FreeCommander is a portable application that can be used from a CD or USB stick (or from your hard disk, of course). Copy the installation directory to the media and use the program on any computer... just like that! FreeCommander features a dual-panel window which, divides your screen into two halves. You can open folders in both these panels. If you choose to open more windows in the panel, they are displayed under tabs. You toggle between viewing folders in a column with sub-menus, or in rows. The software can handle archives to open ZIP, CAB, and RAR files. You can also preview images just like in the Explorer shell. Apart from the usual copy, paste, rename, move, and delete functions, FreeCommander also allows you to delete files for good (shred them). It allows you to change the attributes of any file. While running a search, the software can even look inside compressed archives. You can assign other programs to FreeCommander for opening specific filetypes. For example, freeware like ATViewer, which opens image files, can be downloaded from http://www.freecommander.com/fc_utilities _en.htm. A list of hotkeys you can use with FreeCommander can be found at http://www.freecommander.com/fc_ShortCuts_en.htm. Find FreeCommander on our March 2007 DVD.

WinSplit Revolution http://reptils.free.fr Select "Hotkey Settings" from the system tray icon to edit shortcuts So you have this seventeen inch screen you are very happy with and you are constantly multi-tasking, opening up all those windows on the screen can be a tad confusing. WinSplit Revolution helps you align all those windows on the screen at the click of a button. Of course, you can do this manually too but using the software is much simpler! If you still want to align your windows manually, the software allows you to snap them into place. Having said that, the auto-alignment ensures that your windows are aligned to the edge of the screen rather than "almost at the edge". To auto align all windows, you press [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [M]. To save any open program, [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [0]. A few other options include Windows Fusion, which splits the screen horizontally with the last two opened windows when the [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [F] shortcut is used. Pressing [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [M], to use the Mosaic function, you can split the screen in nine parts and have windows in all of them. If you have less than nine windows open, some will be larger and if you have more than nine windows open, the first nine will be tiled. You can also close all windows with the shortcut [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [C]. These shortcut keys can be changed too!

Get Noticed, Get Clicked

 

There are no shortcuts to currying favour with search engines, it seems







With more than 135 million Web sites out there, you’ve got your job cut out to get your Web site in front of surfers. Search engines have long been recognised as a good source of visitor traffic, and over the years, Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO as its popularly called) has developed into an active, dynamic industry in its own right.



A Little History

If you still think stuffing keywords into the meta tags of your Web pages are what will push you up the rankings in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), this is a wake-up call. You’ve been sleeping and “keyword stuffing” is about as dead as it can get. The Net has moved on, and how! The practice of keyword stuffing originated in the ‘90s when Webmasters found that search engines gave special weightage to the META tag of HTML pages (right-click on a Web page and view its source, and inspect the <meta> HTML tag near the top). This was in the days when bandwidth and hardware were still at a premium. Canny Webmasters began stuffing keywords into their meta tags, which pushed them up in the SERP rankings. Search engines quickly caught on, compensating for the skew in the results, and ever since it has been a game of tag between the search engines and the SEO industry. SEO consultants discover a way to gain an edge in the rankings; the search engines move in and plug the hole.

 

What Search Engines Do

These days, most search engines look at multiple factors in determining a Web site’s ranking in the search results. Some are known, most are unknown. The search algorithm is the secret sauce that drives the accuracy of the search results, and is therefore one of the most closely-guarded secrets. Each search engine has a different set of factors to determine rankings. Google, it is rumoured, uses more than 200 data points! The others (Yahoo! and Windows Live are the main ones which matter these days) are not far behind.



One of the known factors that play a role in determining the rankings in Google is PageRank. This is a score that Google assigns to a Web site on a scale of 1 to 10. A higher PageRank gives you higher weightage. PageRank itself is determined using “…more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms.” (http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html). And like PageRank, there are other hundreds of other factors that go into determining the ranking in the SERP.



Black Hat Vs. White Hat

Even with these many factors to juggle around with, some Webmasters resort to using deceptive practices in an attempt to fool the search engines and push up their ranking. This using of deception—and techniques that attempt to fool the search algorithm—is known as Black Hat SEO, and search engines have special filters that monitor for known Black Hat techniques. If you are looking for long-term recognition and are building a quality Web site, Black Hat SEO is just not the way to go! Search engines penalise sites that knowingly or unknowingly use Black Hat techniques, and this can include suspension or even complete removal from the search engine’s listings.



Case in point: the German Web sites of BMW and RICOH were removed temporarily from the search listings for using deceptive techniques. They were only restored after they addressed the issue.



                                                  ...search engines not only monitor the search results page,

                                     but also monitor user behaviour for a given search term.



Deceptive techniques can be broadly classified into two types: those that try to fool the search engines, and those that try to fool human searchers. For example, the title of a page may read “Free Software Download.” This will be displayed in the search results if the Black Hat SEO for this page is successful. However, when the user clicks on the link, it takes them to a page where they are served more ads to click on—and with absolutely nothing to download. Search engines are aware of such techniques and compensate for them. They have become increasingly efficient—though not perfect—at detecting Black Hat SEO. As time progresses, the cost of Black Hat SEO is going to far outweigh the cost of following legitimate practices in making your Web site search-engine-friendly.









White Hat SEO, on the other hand, employs—or at least tries to use—only non-deceptive techniques. The qualification “tries to” stems from the fact that there is a certain amount of grey area in what Webmasters and SEO consultants consider legitimate optimisation and what the search engines agree on. Early on this year, there was a spate of sites that sprang up offering paid reviews from bloggers. This seemed a good idea, especially for little-known sites who wanted to piggyback on the popularity of an established blogger. That’s until Google declared paid reviews (and their links) might get penalised or removed from search listings.



Black Hat works on the assumption that they will eventually be caught by the search engines and are ready to move on. There is a law of diminishing returns in operation, as search engines get increasingly efficient in proactively detecting Black Hat sites. Eventually, we expect to see the practice minimised to only those die-hard tech criminals with enough resources (time, money, and determination) to use Black Hat as a part of a larger scam operation.



White Hat works with the sole objective of creating a sustainable ranking in the search engine results. Again, this is not bullet-proof: search engines are constantly refining their algorithms to keep up with the latest developments that impact what users want to search for. These days, search engines not only monitor the search results page, but also monitor user behaviour for a given search term. That is, if site A was ranked number 1 on the SERP but users regularly clicked on site B, the number 2 link, then site B would move to the number 1 position. Add to this the fact that search is getting more and more personalised. Google, according to what can be inferred from patent filings, will customise the SERPs based on geographic location, similarity of search patterns with other users, membership on certain Web sites or forums that are discoverable by the Googlebot (the search engine spider software that crawls and indexes Web pages), and other factors that would, in aggregate, group you with a specific set of users who have similar interests.



For example, if you start using Google Finance, Google will start serving financial information in the SERPs. If you are, say, a regular participant at Digit’s forum (http://www.thinkdigit. com/forum/) and you run a search, Google will look at similar searches from other users in the Digit forum and try to guess what will interest you. Of course, this is a simplified example. Your actual profile will be much more complex, and grouping you with users with similar tastes will involve much more. This is, of course, very good for the user: relevance improves.



But this kind of complexity is a nightmare for SEO practitioners. You can be forgiven for thinking that even White Hat SEO is more voodoo than an art or a science. Fortunately, there are some published guidelines, and over the years, the SEO industry has matured enough to be aware of some basic best practices that can help you in achieving the rankings that you feel you deserve.



SEO Basics

Determining a specific SEO strategy for your Web site will depend on a number of factors that are beyond our scope here. These include things like at what stage your Web site is—whether it’s a startup or an established site, what your industry is, your target audience, as well as what type of content you have on your site. If you are an e-commerce site, you might need to follow certain optimisation techniques like exposing your product catalogue and making it easy for the search spiders to index the product pages. Here, we look at the basics that will give you a general idea of what you need to do stay on the good side of the search engines. Even if you are not interested in SEO, you might still want to pay attention to these guidelines which, at the very minimum, will ensure that you don’t accidentally get blacklisted.



                                            Nothing increases your search engine rankings

                               like relevant, on-topic, in-context content.



While all these techniques are applicable to some degree to the Big Three (Google, Yahoo!, and Windows Live), the emphasis given by each will vary. To a large extent we have kept Google in mind, considering that they hold the largest market share.



Content Relevance

Content is still king. Nothing increases your search engine rankings like relevant, on-topic, in-context content. All the other factors you need to pay attention to will carry no weight if you do not have relevant content. Even if you have a poorly-designed site, but with content that is useful to your visitors, search engines can be very forgiving and push you up the rankings, especially if a lot of other Web sites link to your site referring to it as an authority in the specific subject area.



Linking

Link Popularity is one of the main criteria in judging the relevance of a site. This is based on the assumption that if you have good, high-quality, authoritative content, more people will link to you. This might give some the idea that many dummy sites linking to your site can artificially inflate your rankings. Not any more. Search engines have wised up to this technique—known as link farming—and will actually penalise you if they detect that you’re using link farms. What counts are organic links, that is, links to your sites by other sites that are in context.



Search engines not only count the links to your site but also look at the surrounding words to identify the context in which the link is placed. For example, if you are running a motorbike forum and you are linked to from a tech blog, a plain link to your Web site in the links section will carry less weight than if you were mentioned in a blog post. Of course, the exception is if a number of bloggers link to your forum, and a large percentage of them are passionate bikers with posts on biking. Secondly, the “anchor text” for the link also plays a part in determining the value of the link. “Check this out” will have less weightage than “Check out Rajesh’s Motorcycle Forum”. The link anchor text “this” is less descriptive and of insignificant context when compared to “Rajesh’s Motorcycle Forum”, and hence will have lesser value.



Of course, you have no control over how a blogger or another Web site will link to you, but you can at least do some groundwork (run a search for link:yourdomain_dot_domain _extension in Google) and politely request the Webmasters or bloggers you can reach if they would be so kind as to edit the anchor text.



While link farming is dead, there is still some life left in “reciprocal linking.” This is where you agree with another Web site to show their links on your Web site in exchange for linking to your site. Note, however, that this should be done intelligently, or you might run foul of the search engines and get blacklisted. Stick to sites and blogs that are in topic and context with your site. Linking from a site on, say, Ayurvedic medicine will have no value, and links from many such non-relevant sites may end up getting treated as link spam, attracting penalties and even blacklisting.



One other technique is to participate in other forums, write articles for other Web sites, and/or leave comments on blogs. You may use these to provide links to your site, but ensure that the links are in context and provide value to the conversation. If you simply pop into a comment thread and say “Hey, check out my motorcycle forum” and leave a link, you will quickly get flagged for comment spam. Look for articles or blogs on motorcycles (our example) and leave an intelligent comment linking to a thread in your forum where they discussed the same issue—or something similar.



Links (and therefore the site it is linked to) gain value in other ways too:

 

• the older they are,


• if they are located higher up on a page than towards the bottom,
  
  


• if its part of the content (higher value) as against it being in a collection of other links like in a business directory listing (lower value), and
  
  


• if the link is from an authority site on the subject.
  
  

While all these links are something you have no direct control over, what you can ensure is that you have relevant on-topic content that creates the environment that will influence others to link to your content.



W3C Compliance And Site Structure

The one cardinal rule that all search engines insist on is that your Web site be primarily designed for humans and not search engines. The easiest way to do this is to bring your site into W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) compliance. The W3C is the standards body that defines development standards for Web technologies, and making your site W3C-compliant will give you a boost in the rankings with at least one of the search engines (Yahoo!). There are many validation tools that you can use to find out how compliant (or non-compliant) your Web site is. A basic “validator” for individual Web pages is available at http://validator.w3.org.



Bringing your site into W3C compliance is hard. The upside, though, is that when used in combination with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), you can get a much cleaner and better-performing site. In addition, from an SEO perspective, the actual content will move up higher in the page code and hence be treated as more valuable by the search engines.



From a pure SEO perspective, compliance is not the holy grail to climbing up the SERP. The objective behind attempting to become compliant is that it ensures that the copy is marked up so that it is “clear” to search engines. Achieving compliance also ensures better compatibility with mobile devices, with less chances of the the code not working in mobile browsers. In any case, the point is to minimise errors rather than seek to achieve full compliance overnight.



Often, search engines do not crawl very deep into your site; you can remedy this by submitting your site and the deeper pages in your site directly. Go to http://google.com/ Webmasters/tools for Google, http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com for Yahoo!, and to http://search.msn.com.sg/docs/submit.aspx for Windows Live. Also, create a site map based on the XML Site Map standard—which is supported by the Big Three and others. There are many free tools that can quickly generate an XML sitemap of your site (search for “XML Sitemap Generator”). Create a folder called “public_ html” in the root folder of your Web site, put the sitemap xml file there, and submit the URL of the xml file to the search engines. This way, the spider will crawl the entire site and index all the pages. One added benefit is that when your site does come up as the first result in SERPs, it will automatically show the internal links under the main result heading, making it easier for users to quickly reach your internal pages faster.



Formatting And Keyword Density

While we did imply at the outset that META tags are no longer relevant, it still carries a little weight. The meta tag of a page indicates some basic information about your page. For example...

<meta name=”Description” content=”Website for Indian Motorcycle Fans.” />

<meta name=”Keywords” content=”india,motorcycles,hero honda, bajaj, bullet, royal enfield “ />

...is an example of a good meta tag. The keywords can, of course, be expanded, but ideally should be kept to the bare minimum and only include those important words that appear in the content. In addition, ensure that the Title tag of your page corresponds to the title of the content of the page. This informs the search engine that your Web page is what it claims to be.

You can also use different fonts and formatting for specific keywords. Search engines will give different weightage for words that are bolded or underlined, and will give different weightage for bolded or underlined links. Needless to say, this has to be in context. You can’t bold all the text! The search engine will take this as the standard formatting for the page.



The formatting you apply should be primarily designed to inform the human reader of different levels of emphasis that you wish to apply. Also, for images, include anchor text (alt text) that gives a description for the image rather than just the image name.

In addition to applying formatting that can help increase the weightage of your pages, you should also keep keyword density in mind. The keyword density is the ratio of the total number of keywords to the total number of words. There is no magic number for this; it keeps changing constantly and may be different for different industries. One way is to run a search with the keywords and look at the density in the top 10 sites in the SERP and determine a density somewhat midway between the highest and lowest values. You might want to do the same for the keywords themselves—see what the competition is using!



Now for the bad news. While optimum keyword density may not be given a great deal of weight by the search engine, too high a figure for keyword density can attract penalties—search engines may rightly or wrongly suspect you of keyword stuffing.

Keep your keywords focused. If you are a packer and mover in India, keep your words limited to “packer mover India”; Google, in any case, clumps words with similar meanings together. You might consider using related keywords like “point-to-point shipping”, “door delivery”, etc.



Site And Page Age

This is a simple but important metric. The longer the site has been running and the longer the page has been up, search engines give it a better ranking on the assumption that you are not a fly-by-night operator and have really something useful to say. The same can be said for links. The longer someone links to your page, the more it gains in value.

The search engines apply, to varying degrees, an aging delay on new Web sites. This is based on the assumption that sites are trying to game the search algorithm, and they are progressively removed over a period of time. From an optimization perspective there is nothing you can do about it but wait. So if your pages do not start appearing in the search results straightaway and you are a fairly new site, you know why!



Going To The Professionals

The SEO industry being what it is, there are as many con artists as there are genuine practitioners of the craft. In most cases, by simply focusing on delivering great content and by following the basic rules to prevent you from get blacklisted—along with some light PR linking activity in relevant blogs and forums—will enable your site to gradually rise up the rankings. However, if you need results, and fast, you should turn to an SEO Professional. A true SEO consultant can deliver superior results to what you could achieve on your own. However, given the prevalence of so many con artists who make your contract contingent on specific benchmarks, you need to define the search keywords that you wish to rank in, specify the ranking range that you want to appear in (if they promise to deliver number 1 ranking, politely thank them and slam the door in their face), and specify the time period that this must happen in. Only after you define at least these three metrics should you even consider inking a deal.

ASUS Launches P320 PDA Phone

Following the recent launch of the Lamborghini ZX1, ASUSTek Computer Incorporated (ASUS) Taiwan announced the launch of their P320 PDA phone in India, on June 24, 2008 .The ASUS P320 runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, which is an OS known for its reliability and user-friendly interface. The phone also features the company's proprietary ASUS Today interface for a better look and feel. Add to this the fact that the phone features GPS navigation with an inbuilt SiRF Star III chipset, EDGE/GPRS class10, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, USB connectivity, 3G capabilities, and more, and all of it accessible easily thanks to its 2.4-inch screen.

What's really great though is the fact that the PDA phone incorporates every function you'd need or want, and does throws it all into a small, light and user-friendly package.

Edward Wang, Head Mobile Communications ASUS, said "India is growing as a big market for PDA's and Smartphone's, and that is the reason why the ASUS P320 is designed stylishly and is by far the smallest ASUS PDA—economically priced at Rs 12,900 so that more people can get to use a PDA. The future is smart phones"

As far as the future is concerned, Wang said that ASUS is very keen on equipping their PDA's with their second generation interface called ASUS Glide. Future plans also include its own chain of ASUS Experience stores, and dedicated service centres, which will be launched in the metros soon. ASUS is clear about sticking with Windows mobile for future products as well, so those looking for alternate OSes are out of luck.

ASUS Launches P320 PDA Phone By: Team Digit Jun 25,2008

Following the recent launch of the Lamborghini ZX1, ASUSTek Computer Incorporated (ASUS) Taiwan announced the launch of their P320 PDA phone in India, on June 24, 2008 .The ASUS P320 runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, which is an OS known for its reliability and user-friendly interface. The phone also features the company's proprietary ASUS Today interface for a better look and feel. Add to this the fact that the phone features GPS navigation with an inbuilt SiRF Star III chipset, EDGE/GPRS class10, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, USB connectivity, 3G capabilities, and more, and all of it accessible easily thanks to its 2.4-inch screen.

What's really great though is the fact that the PDA phone incorporates every function you'd need or want, and does throws it all into a small, light and user-friendly package.

Edward Wang, Head Mobile Communications ASUS, said "India is growing as a big market for PDA's and Smartphone's, and that is the reason why the ASUS P320 is designed stylishly and is by far the smallest ASUS PDA—economically priced at Rs 12,900 so that more people can get to use a PDA. The future is smart phones"

As far as the future is concerned, Wang said that ASUS is very keen on equipping their PDA's with their second generation interface called ASUS Glide. Future plans also include its own chain of ASUS Experience stores, and dedicated service centres, which will be launched in the metros soon. ASUS is clear about sticking with Windows mobile for future products as well, so those looking for alternate OSes are out of luck.

ASUS Launches P320 PDA Phone By: Team Digit Jun 25,2008

Following the recent launch of the Lamborghini ZX1, ASUSTek Computer Incorporated (ASUS) Taiwan announced the launch of their P320 PDA phone in India, on June 24, 2008 .The ASUS P320 runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, which is an OS known for its reliability and user-friendly interface. The phone also features the company's proprietary ASUS Today interface for a better look and feel. Add to this the fact that the phone features GPS navigation with an inbuilt SiRF Star III chipset, EDGE/GPRS class10, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, USB connectivity, 3G capabilities, and more, and all of it accessible easily thanks to its 2.4-inch screen.

What's really great though is the fact that the PDA phone incorporates every function you'd need or want, and does throws it all into a small, light and user-friendly package.

Edward Wang, Head Mobile Communications ASUS, said "India is growing as a big market for PDA's and Smartphone's, and that is the reason why the ASUS P320 is designed stylishly and is by far the smallest ASUS PDA—economically priced at Rs 12,900 so that more people can get to use a PDA. The future is smart phones"

As far as the future is concerned, Wang said that ASUS is very keen on equipping their PDA's with their second generation interface called ASUS Glide. Future plans also include its own chain of ASUS Experience stores, and dedicated service centres, which will be launched in the metros soon. ASUS is clear about sticking with Windows mobile for future products as well, so those looking for alternate OSes are out of luck.

ASUS Launches P320 PDA PhoneBy: Team Digit Jun 25,2008

Following the recent launch of the Lamborghini ZX1, ASUSTek Computer Incorporated (ASUS) Taiwan announced the launch of their P320 PDA phone in India, on June 24, 2008 .The ASUS P320 runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, which is an OS known for its reliability and user-friendly interface. The phone also features the company's proprietary ASUS Today interface for a better look and feel. Add to this the fact that the phone features GPS navigation with an inbuilt SiRF Star III chipset, EDGE/GPRS class10, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, USB connectivity, 3G capabilities, and more, and all of it accessible easily thanks to its 2.4-inch screen.

What's really great though is the fact that the PDA phone incorporates every function you'd need or want, and does throws it all into a small, light and user-friendly package.

Edward Wang, Head Mobile Communications ASUS, said "India is growing as a big market for PDA's and Smartphone's, and that is the reason why the ASUS P320 is designed stylishly and is by far the smallest ASUS PDA—economically priced at Rs 12,900 so that more people can get to use a PDA. The future is smart phones"

As far as the future is concerned, Wang said that ASUS is very keen on equipping their PDA's with their second generation interface called ASUS Glide. Future plans also include its own chain of ASUS Experience stores, and dedicated service centres, which will be launched in the metros soon. ASUS is clear about sticking with Windows mobile for future products as well, so those looking for alternate OSes are out of luck.

NLP

NLP

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) undertaking. It aims to process sentences written in a language such as English so as to extract meaning from them and represent this meaning in a manner that a computer can understand. If you want to portray yourself as an AI practitioner, simply say that amongst all AI disciplines, you like NLP best and then go on to describe how you do it.

• How do you make a computer understand English?
  
  To this, you reply, “That’s what NLP is for. You break up the sentences into parts of speech, and then parse it just as you would any other string, of course, ellipsis is one major hurdle.” (‘Ellipsis’ means an instance where the context is not available.)


• What is ellipsis? Intimidate your audience here. “You don’t know what ellipsis is? Say you reply to a question about your name with ‘John Smith’. Here, you haven’t specified what John Smith is and that’s ellipsis.”


• Your audience will probably ask you at this point, “So that’s all there is to NLP? Parts of speech and parsing?”
  
  Since you don’t know too much yourself, you launch off into unfamiliar words— “No, no, there’s actually much more. You have got to consider things like failure of substitutivity, you have to learn to use the FOPC and HMMs, construct working grammars and much more.”


• What is FOPC and HMM?
  
  Remember to learn the full form—First Order Predicate Calculus. It sounds nice and AIish. Of course, you deliberately use the abbreviations in the first instance, so you can expand them later. HMM stands for ‘Hidden Markov Model’.


• Finish off with: “Like I said, it’s basically the manipulation of the parse tree. You construct the tree and do all sorts of things with it. I can direct you to a tutorial if you like.”
  
  

tree and do all sorts of

things with it. I can direct you

to a tutorial if you like.”