Kiran Upadhyay

Almost a year ago, we told you about Google's experiments to improve the speed and relevance of its searches with a new index code named Caffeine . I had forgotten all about that until this week, when Google's official blog revealed that Caffeine is finally here . Google says searches will be 50% faster now, and that Caffeine means Google's index is closer than ever to keeping pace with the live Web. Caffeine basically checks the Web for new content in smaller chunks than the old index, and it does so more frequently, meaning new content gets added to Google much more quickly. Caffeine is also more flexible than the old method of indexing, so Google can update to keep pace with new developments on the Web. Don't you just feel faster already? Wheeee!

Ruby is one of those trendy programming languages. It's supposed to be all "elegant" and stuff. 37signals uses it, and it has one of the craziest textbooks I have ever seen in my life. In other words, it's a language that's trying hard to woo my inner hipster, and I must say, it's kind of working. So, I started playing around with it. I made a simple script, modified another script and did all the stuff most people usually do when they set out to tinker with a new programming language. Then, I found the perfect complement to my learning system: TryRuby.org . It's an interactive Ruby shell that guides you through a really fun -- and somewhat offbeat -- tutorial. Rather than you following along, you might say that it follows you. You can do anything you want and play around and test stuff, but as soon as you execute the specific line that the program was waiting for, it moves on to the next screen. There's one lesson online at the mome...

ExtensionFM is arguably one of the coolest extensions you can find for Google Chrome -- it's a must-have for music lovers. But if you're browsing with Chromium or a Chromium-based browser, you may have noticed that you can't listen to MP3 files in it. What gives?! Alas, this is one of the differences between the open source Chromium browser and its semi-closed brother, Google Chrome. Many of the audio and video codecs included in Chrome aren't included in Chromium due to licensing, patents -- all that fun stuff. Fortunately, there's a workaround -- and it's pretty dang simple. All you have to do is copy over the official Google Chrome audio/video components and paste them into your Chromium browser's folder. Let's go! If you don't have both Chrome and Chromium installed, you'll need them. Grab a dev channel version of Chrome if you need to, as it's the closest thing to a Chromium snapshot build. Windows You're lo...

A couple small but noteworthy changes happened to Google Chrome this week. Two days ago, the beta channel updated to version 5.0.375.86 -- bringing an assortment of security tweaks and bugfixes. Less than a full day later, that version moved from beta to the stable channel -- and brought one more significant change. The internal Flash plug-in is now enabled by default in all versions of Google Chrome. It wasn't that long ago (about three months) that internal Flash was just a rumor . In mid-April, Google turned it on by default for dev channel users. After making the jump to the beta channel, the internal Flash plug-in had been disabled for a while -- presumably while some kinks were worked out -- but it could still be enabled via command-line switches. Google doesn't take pushing features to Chrome stable lightly, so this is a pretty clear indication that the internal Flash plug-in is here to stay. Let's hope they're right about the security benefits. ...

OK, so the Windows 7 service pack 1 beta has been leaked online and you can now download it from various torrent sites. For the sake of some of our less-experienced readers, here's a short PSA: you might not want to install it. Apart from the obvious reason that it's a beta release, there's an annoying little problem I've been fighting with on a handful of my customers' systems. It seems that they somehow managed to get their mitts on a pre-release version of SP2 for Windows Vista. One day, out of the blue, Windows suddenly told them Vista was no longer genuine and they had to re-activate. They punched the license key in multiple times, but no joy. It just wouldn't go. The solution: remove their SP2 install and replace it with the final one. It's not a complicated fix, but it is one that ties your computer up for a long time and requires several reboots. I can't say for sure that Windows 7 SP1 will behave the same way, but if you'r...

If you're a Gmail user and you receive a lot of Microsoft Word .doc and .docx file attachments, you may have noticed a new feature. If not, I'll clue you in: Gmail has added a view link for Word documents. And yes, that means that the Google Docs Viewer now supports .doc and .docx as well. Formatting looks good so far on the documents I've tested -- the TuneUp press release looks very nearly the same in Viewer as it does in Word 2010. This is a godsend for me personally -- a ton of the press releases I get sent from software companies arrive in .docx format, and I really don't enjoy downloading them first and firing up Word just to read a few paragraphs which probably could've been sent in good ol' HTML or rich text anyway .

The Download Squad staff loves their Gmail, and so do our readers (according to Sebastian's recent-but-not-at-all-scientific poll ). It's an excellent app, and I can't imagine ever changing back to a desktop email client. But Google wants to deliver a more desktop-like user experience in Gmail, and they're planning to lean on HTML5 to do it. Recently Google added drag-and-drop support via supported browsers, and it's a feature some of my less-technical friends love. Google is now working on reversing the process -- allowing us to drag files out of Gmail messages and drop them onto our local folders. Apart from making user interaction in Gmail more like our desktop apps, Google also hopes to use HTML5 tech to turn on the afterburners. In a discussion with Technology Review's Erica Naone , Adam de Boor talks about possible performance leaps with the upcoming extension app support in Google Chrome. Extension apps will further blur the divide betwe...

Say what you like about BitTorrent and the culture of piratical drugged-up junkies that it fuels, but the fact is: big businesses keep finding excellent, legitimate uses for torrents. Today, Facebook came out and admitted that BitTorrent powers the transfer of new code between each and every one of its servers . You wouldn't have thought it troublesome -- source code is fairly lightweight after all -- but when you consider that Facebook has tens of thousands of servers ... well, you can begin to imagine the logistical nightmare of rolling out code changes on a regular basis. With BitTorrent, it takes a matter of minutes to update every single Facebook Web server with new software -- awesome! As TorrentFreak points out, Facebook isn't the only large company that uses BitTorrent -- so does Twitter ! BitTorrent isn't relegated to internal uses, though: Blizzard uses it to distribute huge patches to its 12 million World of Warcraft subscribers! You only need...

If you're running several Wordpress blogs, your life just got a lot easier. Wordpress 3.0 , codenamed "Thelonious," has finally arrived, and it supports multiple Wordpress blogs. You can manage them all from a central dashboard, too, with no logging out and back in. There's also a sexy new default theme called 2010, which is highly customizable and lets you post small "asides" in addition to regular long posts. Wordpress 3.0 also features extremely convenient bulk updates of plug-ins and themes, so you don't have to do them one at a time. On the widget front, the coolest new feature is custom menus, so you can do your site navigation your way. Because Wordpress can occasionally be confusing, there's also help on every page now, to help you get a handle on all the new features. There are honestly too many improvements to Wordpress to do them justice in one post, so I suggest you check out the very useful overview video below.

Late last week Google turned on 'public sharing' in Docs . You could always share files with friends or via an obfuscated 'secret link', but the idea of public, searchable links is something new. Not only is it an issue for piracy -- I tested it with a 350MB TV show, and it worked fine! -- but this could also be the opening salvo of Google's counterattack against Dropbox and Microsoft's SkyDrive . But enough of the public sharing feature! I'm sure you don't need me to tell you about the possibilities of cheap , API-accessible cloud storage. This is actually an excuse for me to play catch-up: Google Docs now lets you upload almost any kind of file ! This functionality was originally turned on six months ago, but it's the kind of thing that most people wouldn't discover on their own. But the plot thickens... The inner scientist compelled me to try out as many file formats as possible. AVI, RAR, ZIP, BMP, EXE, MSI -- the list goe...

When they announced that extension sync had arrived in the Google Chrome dev channel , bleeding-edge users fell over themselves updating. Within mere hours (or likely minutes), the complaints started. Yes, the initial iteration of extension sync was not without its problems. It made Google Chrome a little crashy for some users, but hey -- we're talking about the first go at a brand new feature on an unstable application here. On top of that, it's opt-in and must be enabled via a command line switch. Caveat emptor, right? Still, the Chrome developer crew wasn't about to take the weekend off and let extension sync continue causing frustration. This morning, a tweak to the extension sync code has landed in the Chromium source code which will "only allow installation of extensions/apps with gallery update URL via download from gallery." This should help prevent a number of issues -- since sync will now presumably grab extensions using the same met...

If you're using Google Chrome , chances are good that you've got a Google account and use at least some of their Web apps. If Google Calendar happens to be one of those, you owe it to yourself to install the SpeedDate extension for Google Chrome . Once you've got it installed and grant permission to submit events to your Google Calendar via OAuth, SpeedDate is ready to serve. Click its icon in your Google Chrome browser actions area and you'll have the option of quick-adding an event to your Calendar or creating one using the date and time you've selected on the current Web page. During my visit to TSN, for example, I noticed their coverage for the upcoming NHL entry draft listed. I highlighted the time slot for the draft, clicked SpeedDate > Add Event, and the time was automatically filled. The quick add feature works nicely as well -- got a luncheon tomorrow from 1pm-2pm with a client? Type it in just like that, and SpeedDate and Google Calenda...

Google Docs continues to make the case for dumping your desktop work apps, this time with a useful new text recognition feature that converts PDFs or images into plain, editable text. This new OCR feature -- that's optical character recognition -- is quite accurate, and worked pretty well on some old college textbooks scans I had laying around on my hard drive. Things are a bit tricky when you've got a page with multiple columns -- your words might not end up in the right order, but they'll all be there, accurately recorded. To use OCR, look for the " Convert text from PDF or image files to Google Docs documents" checkbox when you're uploading a file. The file will show up in Google Docs as a text document instead of its original format, so if you want to share the image, you'll have to upload it again with the box unchecked. Google Operating System tested the new feature and didn't find it quite as accurate as I did. I agree with the...

It wasn't that long ago that VLC finally hit version 1.0. Since then, progress has been steady -- and today, version 1.1 is ready for download just two months after first going beta. So what's new in VLC 1.1 ? First and foremost, hardware acceleration has arrived for VLC users who run Windows Vista and Windows 7 or Linux. MKV HD support has been improved, and VLC 1.1 can now play VP-8 and MPEG-4 lossless videos. VLC 1.1 also sports a buffed-up Web plug-in which supports the WebM container and offers generally improved video streaming. VLC 1.1's code has been optimized as well, yielding big performance gains (up to 40%, according to the official site). "Tens of thousands of lines of code [were] removed," states the VLC 1.1 news page. Apart from improving VLC's ability to handle various media types, the biggest addition might just be the new add-ons and script framework. Yes, VLC is now extensible -- so expect to start seeing some awesome exte...

Google Voice, Google's very useful call-forwarding-slash-voice-mail-slash-transcription service, has finally opened to everyone ! Well, everyone in the United States, that is. I know we Americans sometimes act like we're the center of the universe, but plenty of users in other countries can't wait to get their hands on Voice. Even our intrepid editor Lee Mathews can't get it yet, and he's just a border away in Canada. Bummer! Voice has been mostly invite-only since launch, but it opened to college students and the military for a while, too. If this will be your first time using Google Voice, check out some of the features before you get started: SMS-to-Email, using Voice with your existing number and more are explained on this Google Voice help page . Does Google Voice opening up to everyone signal the upcoming launch of that new Google Voice web app Lee was predicting?

DragonHawk writes "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.4 went to general release today. The big new feature in this release is out-of-process plugins (OOPP). This means things like Flash, Java, QuickTime, etc., all run in separate processes, so when Flash decides to crash, it won't take your browser out with it. If Flash starts consuming all the CPU it can find, you can kill it without nuking your browser session. I've been using this feature since it was in the 'nightly build' stage, and it was still more stable than 3.6.3, just because Flash was isolated." And reader Trailrunner7 supplies another compelling reason to download 3.6.4: "Security researcher Michal Zalewski has identified a problem with the way Firefox handles links that are opened in a new browser window or tab, enabling attackers to inject arbitrary code into the new window or tab while still keeping a deceptive URL in the browser's address bar. The vulnerability, which Mozilla has fixed ...

Now, we've previously covered extensions for both Chrome and Safari 5 that stop Tynt from ruining your copy/paste party, but if you've got administrative rights to whatever computer you're currently using, you can put a stop to more than that. You can block services like Tynt -- or even entire ad networks -- once and for all with nothing more than a text editor and admin rights. All you have to do to block ads, Tynt, or even Facebook from ever bothering you again is to add their hostnames to your computer's hosts file. The best thing about this is that you can do it whether you're using a Windows PC, Mac, or Linux. They've all got hosts files, and power-users have been using them for years to speed up browsing or block ad networks. As an example of using the hosts file as a system-wide ad-blocker, check out this list of ad network hostnames that's ready to be pasted in. For the purposes of this short guide, we're going to use Tynt as...

We told you it was coming , and now it's here: Extension sync has landed in the Google Chrome dev channel build. Web Geek's Guide to Google Chrome It's not enabled by default, so you won't see it in your sync options menu unless you activate the feature via a command line switch. --enable-sync-extensions --sync-url=https://clients4.google.com/chrome-sync/dev turns it on (again, see our tutorial on using command line switches if you're not sure how to do this). Today's dev channel release also brings the usual assortment of bug fixes and tweaks, but extension sync is by far the biggest news. Hit up about Chrome in your wrench menu to auto-update, or head over to the download page for Google Chrome's dev channel builds to take the expanded sync feature for a test drive.

Update: it seems your mileage may vary. MP3s work -- M4A files get renamed to MP3. The built-in virus scanner doesn't work with some file types -- and results in 0-byte downloads. OGG also works! (Is this the same system that will manage the Android/Chrome OS music-in-the-cloud service...?) Update 2: MP4 and OGV work... BOOM! In one fell swoop, Google just made publicly-accessible cloud storage very, very easy. Before now you could either share documents privately, or provide access with an obfuscated URL -- now you can make your Google Docs visible and accessible to everyone . Google Docs 4 Everyone This means we're all sitting on top of 1GB of very fast and very easy-to-use cloud storage. In theory Google Docs are meant to be documents -- spreadsheets, presentations, etc. -- but... you can just upload an MP3, an AVI... and make it public! Seriously -- go try it out for yourself. Just click upload in the top left corner of Google Docs . Select any file a...

Overshadowed by the introduction of extension sync in today's Google Chrome developer channel update was another important feature which has been in the works for some time. The same Google and Adobe collaboration which led to the introduction of Chrome's internal Flash plug-in has finally resulted in an internal plug-in for displaying PDF files as well. Neither internal Flash or internal PDF rely upon the venerable old NPAPI system. The hope is that this new architecture will provide a more modern, secure way for browsers and plug-ins to interact. PDFs you view with the internal plug-in will also be safely tucked away in Chrome's sandbox, preventing any malicious activity from damaging your operating system. If you're running the dev channel, here's what you have to do to turn on the internal PDF viewer: enter chrome:plugins in your Omnibar scroll down to the entry for Chrome PDF Viewer click the enable link, and you're good to go. As the o...

If you are among the fortunate souls who run a Mac with a dual monitor setup, you'll want to check out SecondBar . Normally, you'd be stuck with the OS X menubar on just one monitor, forcing you to move your mouse back to your main screen whenever you want to access it. SecondBar solves that problem by putting a second menu bar on your other monitor. SecondBar has a few weaknesses -- it's Snow Leopard-only, and it doesn't copy your extra menubar apps onto the second bar. It does give you access to the Apple Menu and the menubar for the active application, though, which can be extremely useful. it also has keyboard shortcuts to resize and reposition windows to one half of the screen, in case you need to view documents side by side on that second monitor. Oh, and SecondBar is also completely free. Probably good, considering how pricey those delicious Apple Cinema Displays are.

When the folks at Google  posted a Happy Birthday to Wave  yesterday, it was difficult to tell whether or not they were being sarcastic or serious about it. It's now been a year since the first Wave demo wowed audiences the world over, only for those audiences to be sorely disappointed months later to find out that they not only couldn't get ahold of invites to  use  Wave, but that it offered little to no usefulness once they did. Just over a week ago, Google finally opened up Wave -- taking it out of  secret society mode  and gifting it to the general public. But despite the overwhelming enthusiasm of some Googlers, nobody's really buying it. "Can you imagine a world without Wave today?" Google's official post asked. Probably, since there's a pretty high likelihood that you've never used it. Just about everybody I know that's tried Wave has had the same experience -- which is to say that they stopped using it about half an hour after they ...

I think the need for music and rhythm is one of the most basic human needs; and as we evolve, so evolve our ways of hunting and gathering this precious commodity. In this post, I've gathered 10 great places to expand your musical horizons: free, legal ways to discover music online, which work  everywhere  (not only in the US or in Europe)! Not all of the sites below actually let you  listen  to music - they are not all players; but they can all help you find the next big thing, or just a tune to groove to. Let's get started! Uvumi Uvumi  is one of my favorite players in this space. You probably won't find much music you already know there; it's a community for budding artists, which lets them put their music online, be discovered and get direct feedback from their listeners. I've covered Uvumi in detail, but if I had to sum it up in brief, I'd have to say that what impressed me most about the site is how well-managed it is. Marshall (the guy behind the ...

Late last night news emerged that  Google is banning Microsoft Windows from its corporate offices . This is the final resolution of the  Google vs. China  cyber warfare, a conflict that began with the hacking of a Windows-based computer at Google. As of today, if you want a Microsoft machine at the Google offices, you need permission from the Chief Information Officer himself -- otherwise, Google employees are being given the choice of either a Mac or Linux desktop machine. But... I wonder if Google spoke to Microsoft before publicly decrying and defaming the state of Windows security --  this is libel . This is yet another example of Microsoft unduly paying the price for old installations of Windows and Internet Explorer 6 -- something the CIO at Google should be held accountable for, not Microsoft. All recent research and attempted hacks would suggest that Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8 is one of the most secure Web browsing platforms out there. It's...

According to Microsoft's chief security advisor in Australia, some companies refuse to upgrade to the latest versions of Internet Explorer because keeping employees on IE6 keeps them off of Facebook. As you've probably noticed if you've tried to sign into any contemporary social networking sites on IE6 ... it doesn't exactly work. Facebook shows a message telling you to upgrade your browser, and some features won't work at all. Basically, I E6 is being used as a Facebook blocker . Microsoft thinks you should upgrade your browser, too. The same security guy implied that keeping IE6 just to block Facebook is a total cop out when you could just talk to your employees about acceptable uses of company time, and then upgrade them to the faster, more secure IE8. I'll go ahead and say what Microsoft can't: this IE6 policy is asinine. I don't know who these companies are, but I feel terrible for anyone who has to work for them.

At Computex 2010, Google's VP of Product Management Sundar Pichai has been talking Chrome OS. That's a good thing, as we're keen to hear anything official Google has to say about the upcoming release of the cloud-powered operating system. Reuters is reporting  that Pichai says Chrome OS will arrive earlier than expected. Although it was originally slated for a December 2010 release, Pichai has indicated that Chrome OS will ship this fall. As I mentioned yesterday , Chrome OS already looks like something Google could push out as a beta release. Whether that happens soon remains to be seen, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the half way point (and Apple's WWDC) look like a good time for Google to strike.  Google Sites & Chrome For Dummies

Due in no small part to the popularity of Windows 7, 64-bit desktop computing is finally starting to take off. Some developers were quick to get on board, but we're still a long way away from seeing the disappearance of the 32-bit compatibility layer (if it ever disappears). Mozilla recently started making x64 builds of Firefox available to Windows users, and now the popular anti-malware tool SUPERAntiSpyware has announced that their latest version is available in a 64-bit flavor. Both the 32- and 64-bit builds are packed inside a single installer, which I like. Sometimes my clicking finger gets a little jumpy and I wind up with an incompatible binary -- then have to head back and re-download. And I never notice until after I've closed the browser, of course. Beyond mere native compatibility, and a FANTASTIC name, SUPERAntiSpyware can actually remove 64-bit infections -- something other tools might not be able to do.

Last month, we had some fun with Google's explanation of their recent redesign of search results, but it looks like Google isn't quite done yet with not copying Bing. In their quest to make their search engine sexier and more appealing to the fickle masses, Google's now begun to let users add a background image of their choosing to the main search landing page. Is this cool? Yes. Is it copying Bing? We'll let you decide, but note that the picture above is a screenshot of Bing's landing page uploaded to Picasa and set as my Google Search background image. Google's suggestion that it only looks vaguely familiar only makes it funnier. (Click image for full size.) And that's where the militant commenters will start saying that it's not copying, since Google lets the users pick their own backgrounds, while Bing just force-feeds fake Feng Shui. As much as I'm tempted to agree with them, I end up remembering the kids in school who would ...