Tech-bite

Google's youtube and universal music group, the world's largest music company, announced last month that they will launch a premium music video website as they bid to increase revenue from YouTube's huge usage.
"The new advertiser-supported site, featuring professional videos, will be called Vevo and is expected to launch in comin months", the companies said.
The deal is a boost for YouTube, which has been under increasing pressure from music labels and publishers who are frustrated that the popular site has been unable to pay higher fees for rights to use their music and videos.
The new site will be a music video hub wholly owned by Universal, a unit of french media group Vivendi. It will feature higher-quality videos, as opposed to the typical grainy and often user-generated videos on YouTube. "The rationale is to help make Vevo a place that brands feel more comfortable with,"said Rio Caraeff, executive vice president of Univarsal's eLabs.
YouTube and Universal Music will share advertising revenue generated by the site.
Both sides are betting that building a premium site will help increase advertising rates. Many big brand owners have avoided advertising alongside YouTube's ad hoc mix of user-generated videos.

Fitting a simple, passive, parabolic reflector around your wireless antenna can focus the signal exactly where you want it. Your network will have better coverage, and the addition can even improve your network security.
1. Download parabola calculator (mscir.tripod.com/parabola) to help you figure out the correct antenna shape.
2. Enter a diameter and depth to represent the maximum size of reflector that your router's antenna(s) can physically accomodate. The software will create a table of points for you to plot onto a graph paper.
3. Cut out the inside of the parabola shape on two pieces of cardboard.
4. Cut a smooth piece of metal to serve as the reflector.
5. Curve the metal into a U-shape around the guides, and glue it in place. Cut small holes into the guides at the focal point, and mount the reflector.

While I often remind people in my workshops that Google is not necessarily the most appropriate search tool, most of us do use Google in the course of our research day.

The following are a few of the techniques and tools I use to make my Google searching more effective or more productive.
Synonym Searching

Google has a limit of 10 words per search [since expanded to 32], which can make it difficult to include all the possible variations on a word. For example, a search for reports on childhood obesity should probably also include the words child, children, kid, kids, youth and family as well as childhood, and the words obese, overweight and fat as well as obesity. Oops! That adds up to 11 possible search terms, and doesn't give you any leeway to include filetype: limitations or other words to narrow the search down to reports. One way to circumvent this limitation is to try Google's synonym search. Add a tilde (~) at the beginning of the words child and obese (~child ~obese), and Google retrieves web sites that use any of those synonyms.




A slider bar lets you specify how much you want the search results sorted by those interests you specified.



Note that this tool works best for common words, and some of the synonyms may be broader than you wish. I needed to search for web sites of elementary school bands, music departments and choirs. I tried a search for ~music, but saw that I was also getting web sites with the words rock, MP3, radio, audio, song, sound, and records -- not really what I had in mind.
Google Personalized

Personalized Google is still in beta, but it's an interesting tool. Once you go to the Google Labs page and select Personalized, you will be sent to a new search page, that includes a link to [Create Profile]. You can specify the type of searching you typically do, ranging from biotech and pharmaceuticals to dentistry to classical music. Click [Save Preferences], and then type your search terms in the Google Personalized search box.

At the search results screen, you will now see something new -- a slider bar that lets you specify how much you want the search results sorted by those interests you specified. The default is minimal personalization; move the slider bar toward maximum, and you will see the search results change on the fly, as Google re-ranks the results based on your personal interests.

Keep in mind that this personalization is only available through the Personalized Google page. If you go to the main Google search page, the personalization option is not available.
Google Shortcuts

As with other search engines, Google has some built-in "answer" features that can sometimes come in handy.

If you type the word "define:" and a word (define:card for example), instead of the usual search results, you will get definitions of that word from a wide range of glossaries, dictionaries and lexicons.

Type a US company's name or stock symbol in the search box, and the first item in the search results page will be a link to current stock quotes for that company, provided by Yahoo Finance.

Type a US area code in the search box, and the first search result will link to a map showing the general coverage area of that area code. I find this particularly useful now that there are over 200 area codes.

See www.google.com/help/features.html for a list of Google's shortcuts.