The Equation to Google’s Heart!

Just enter the following equation into Google Search and hit the search button.

sqrt(cos(x))*cos(300x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.7)*(4-x*x)^0.01, sqrt(6-x^2), -sqrt(6-x^2) from -4.5 to 4.5

The equation is translated into a Graph which shows up in the shape of a heart. This feature is not a very well known feature of Google. You can check out more such Google search features here.

Google does have some weird Easter eggs, but this was probably not the doing of a Google programmer. If you play around the values in the equation, the output starts to change. So someone must have figured out a way to create this hear shaped design with the right values.

If you liked this post, you might also like reading Google Search for Hackers, Pirates and Klingons. Do you know of any other Google queries which give interesting results? Do drop in your comments.

(via Mashable )

-- This Post Google Search Query Results in Heart Shaped Valentine’s Day Surprise! is Published on Devils Workshop .

When an online tool like Wunderlist suggests, that it is a one stop solution to organize your life in a better way, I tend to take it with a pinch of salt. But I got me curious enough to try it out check how useful it would be.

Wunderkit is a online tool that allows users to organize their life and also get their friends from Twitter and Facebook involved. It is currently by invitation only and it certainly seems to be neat and interesting online tool.

Wunderkit Features

• The webapp allows users to register with their Twitter or Facebook account. One can also add friends via email to a specific work-space.
• Creating a work-space allows users to create notes and tasks separately.
• I could also check and make some of my work-spaces as public if I chose to do so. That means I can invite people to view it thanks to a URL.

Why Wunderkit holds promise?

Most things I could do with Wunderkit, I could with Evernote. So why would users want to try Wunderkit. The reason lies in being social. The focus of Wunderkit is on allowing friends from Facebook or Twitter to create projects. Thanks to Twitter integration, Wunderkit can also be used by people who are anonymous.

I would not recommend a complete move to Wunderkit at the moment as it still is a beta product. Also unlike Evernote, it does not have a desktop app but I guess that will happen very soon.

Video Walkthrough of Wunderkit

Try out Wunderkit and drop in your comments. Also special thanks to R@xit for the tip.

Link: Wunderkit

-- This Post Task Management With Facebook and Twitter Contacts – Wunderkit is Published on Devils Workshop .

According to this report by Medianama, Flipkart is acquiring LetsBuy.com for $15 to $20 million. This will make Flipkart the undisputed leader of online retailing in India.

This announcement gains another perspective in the backdrop of Amazon making plans to move into the online retailing business. It has already launched Junglee.com, a price comparison website.

Will it drive up prices on Flipkart?

LetsBuy has the reputation of being aggressive about pricing while Flipkart concentrates on delivery. Usually with no competition in sight, Flipkart might be tempted to drive up prices. But it can hardly afford to do that as Amazon’s entry into the market might be around the corner.

Here is a graph from Google Trends comparing interest from India in Amazon, Flipkart and LetsBuy.

The graph clearly shows that even if Amazon is not yet in India, there is immense interest about it which almost matched Flipkart at times in the last 12 months. So Flipkart will have its work cut out to keep improving its portfoilio and infrastructure.

Flipkart’s Ace

Flipkart has done something that most online retailers did not do before them. This was to take a leap of faith with the ‘Cash on Delivery’ payment model. Most Indian users are not comfortable putting out personal data like bank details and credit card details online to buy things. Flipkart also leverages ‘Cash on Delivery’ model in its advertisements. Any new entrant in India, even if it is Amazon, will have to get into the Indian online buyers psyche before hoping for success.

What are your views on the state of online retailing in India? Do drop in your comments.

No related posts.

-- This Post Flipkart to Acquire LetsBuy.com is Published on Devils Workshop .

Finally there is a one-stop solution for tweaking Windows 8 Metro UI and other features on Windows 8 explorer. In fact it can be called as a ‘live’ replacement for the old Start menu and the taskbar. The following screenshot gives us an idea of how the Metro UI looks like.

For this all you have to do is to run the Metro UI Tweaker ( portable EXE file in Download link at the bottom) and select the applicable options.

How to Customize Metro UI

• Disable Metro Start menu to get back Windows 7 like Start Menu( screenshot below)

Windows 7 start menu in Windows 8

• Disable the Explorer Ribbons to get back normal Windows 7 like explorer (screenshot below)

• Add Log Off / Sleep / ShutDown / Lock / All application shortcuts to Metro UI (screenshot below)
• Add any file or application to the Metro Start Menu.

Hope the tutorial answers all questions about partially or completely customizing the Windows 8 Metro UI, Windows 8 explorer. Do drop in your comments.

Links: Download Windows 8 Metro UI Tweaker

-- This Post Customize Windows 8 Metro UI with Metro UI Tweaker is Published on Devils Workshop .

Yesterday Chrome announced that it was progressing from the computer onto the mobile phones and tablets. Yup, Chrome is now available as a browser on Android.

Chrome Beta on Android OS

• Visit the Android Marketplace and download the Chrome browser on your Android phone. Chrome for Android only works on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) platform.
• The big advantage is that Chrome on Android can show your sync your tabs and also bookmarks from your browser on your laptop to your mobile.
• Your extensions are not synced but then I guess, you can independently install them from Android marketplace anyways.
• There is also support for privacy options like incognito mode and also other privacy options.

Why Chrome needed to be on Android

Android might be a open-source project but it is heavily run by Google. Google has recently bought over Motorola. This means now they will also be more proactively getting into the hardware part of mobiles and tablets. We might even see a Nexus Tablet.

These gadgets by Google will actually need Chrome to streamline the experience of using Google services from computer to mobile. It has also probably ended the argument of possibly having Chrome OS on tablets.

What would be interesting is how would Chrome makes life difficult for Safari and Internet Explorer if it available on iOS and Windows 8 for mobile phones.

Do drop in your comments.

Link: Chrome on Android Marketplace

-- This Post Chrome Browser Is Now Available on Android Phones is Published on Devils Workshop .

As some of you might have noticed, our Devils’ workshop got a new logo & design.

Last time we redesigned DW was almost 2 years back. In 2 years, WordPress has evolved so much that  we couldn’t keep updating DW theme at faster pace. We have too many sites in our network and separately updating each for latest WordPress features was a tough job.

But with this new theme, we are moving all our sites to our new open-source theme framework – rtPanel. This and all future themes will be developed as a rtPanel’s child theme. This means if we add a new feature into rtPanel framework, it will be available into all rtPanel’s child themes (unless somebody abused child-theme development guidelines!)

New Design, New Goals!

With this new design, we have some new goals. A lot is changing about the way we operate DW. Some of changes might be shocking!

LESS Advertising:

DW will use Google-AdSense only for now onwards. If we decide to consider other ad-network, it will be BuySellAds. Apart from AdSense, we will only consider direct Banner-Ads sales.

We have made some decent money from Technorati, Kontera and some more networks, but these networks uses blocking-javascript which degrades performance of our pages. So we are bidding adieu to all of them!

LESS Social (networking):

We have decided to show social icons on single-posts only. No more cluttering archive pages with literally 10′s of social-icons!

For small-social stuff we decided to keep here, we will use our own rtSocial plugin. rtSocial is very low on resources and while developing this theme, we found few more ways to optimize it in future release!

Going anti-social will personally help me focus more on content-part and also community of guest-bloggers & readers here.

MORE (Quality) Content:

The moment we removed ad-networks which were bloating this site, I realized that we no longer run DW to make money only!

Once slow-loading ads were thrown out, next target is poor content!  We are working on streamlining work-flow for guest-bloggers to make it easy for them to contribute to DW. This will raise quality-bar of posts here IMHO.

MORE Community Oriented:

We will be bringing back long-abandoned DW support forum back. Support forum will help us answer reader questions as well as questions from guest-bloggers. We will continue to answer questions on twitter and our facebook page but support forum will have highest priority.

We are also experimenting with some WordPress comments enhancement plugins. Integrating with third-party system like Disqus/IntenseDebate is also into consideration. The goal is to make it easy to comment here!

Credits!

I already received few emails praising new DW logo. The credit for same goes to our design team lead Sneha Mutha. Sneha created a nice new design also, which is slightly different than what you are seeing here.

We coded many things on live DW server so that we can have first-hand experience of issues that other developers might be facing while working on rtPanel theme framework. Our senior developer Joshua with Prakash and Nitun will keep optimizing this new design till we don’t get it right!

As always, we love to hear your feedback & criticism via comment form below.

-- This Post Devils’ Workshop Gets New Logo & New Design! is Published on Devils Workshop .

According to TechCrunch, Facebook is testing out something that pretty much copies the way Google+ displays its photos.

The current photo-viewer on Facebook is not exactly something I was happy with. That is why I like using this Chrome extension that removes theatre effects from Facebook’s photo viewer.

Is it okay for Google+ and Facebook to copy each other?

Though every time someone copies a feature from its competitor fans and expert lament or criticism. For instance Google introduced +1 buttons which were clearly inspired from the ‘Like’ buttons. I feel it is sometimes good to copy a really useful and good feature rather than to try to reinvent the wheel.

By copying, I do not mean copying codes or copyrighted content. If Google+ copied elements from Facebook, then Facebook did the same from MySpace. But I do wonder how users will feel if Facebook and Google+ both end up beings clones rather than competitors.

What are your views on Facebook’s new photo viewer being tested? Do drop in your comments.

-- This Post Facebook testing Photo Viewer which looks just like Google+ is Published on Devils Workshop .

This infographic by SoMobile is full of such interesting stats. It also shows how mobiles phone ownership across the world vary from country to country.

Another surprising stat is that 53% of Indian users have lost their phones at some point of time or the other. That is a huge number of lost phones.

You might also want to look up another infographic on how do people use apps on their mobile phones.

What are your views? Do drop in your comments.

-- This Post Mobile Phone Ownership by Country [Infographic] is Published on Devils Workshop .

According to Marketing Land, Yahoo has laid off it apparently 12% of Flickr staff. This includes much of the customer service team.

What exactly is killing Flickr?

Picasa from Google was hardly used by people to upload photos, especially when compared to Flickr. Flickr kept growing and has more than 5 billion images on it. But social media websites like Facebook were a challenge as people probably found it a lot more convenient for sharing personal photos. Picasa has seen a spurt in growth only after it has become integrated with Google+.

In general, the lack of innovation on Flickr over the past two or three years has made its usage quite stagnated.

Will it join the Yahoo casualty list?

I am not sure about this as yet, but it is obvious that there are big problems ahead for Flickr. Yahoo did sell off Delicious, which ended up being a good idea. Yahoo itself as a company has an uncertain future while it has gone from being a $100 billion dollar company to $22 billion over the past few years.

Hopefully Yahoo offloads Flickr to a better company and not close it down like it did with Geocities. What are your views on Flickr’s fate? Do drop in your comments.

-- This Post Is this the Beginning of the End for Flickr ? is Published on Devils Workshop .

But not everyone wants to customize everything about their browser, just like not every browser users is a geek. So I think apart from web designers and certain power users, most people have started using Chrome.

This screenshot shared by ExtremeTech, shows a new plan by Mozilla to make the Home Tab for Firefox extremely user-friendly.

As you can see in the image above it looks a handy page.

Expected Features with Firefox 12′s default home tab

• With social apps, links visible as thumbnails (borrowed from Chrome) and the option to sign-in to Google Chat, it would probably make Firefox’s home tab page the best default page on any browser.
• Mozilla has secured its financial future for a while with a deal with Google, so it should now get down to innovate and make it a really good competitor to Chrome.
• Mozilla needs to figure a way to get developers create great add-ons for Firefox along with being extremely use-friendly.

Firefox needs a boost!

Chrome’s growth has been pretty much at the expense of Internet Explorer but recently it has also meant that Firefox is stagnating.  Even here in India, Chrome is now the most used browser while it is the second-most used browser in the world.

I think it is good for internet users to see competition in the browser market. We all know what happened when Internet Explorer dominated the browser market. Microsoft took users for granted and stopped innovating on its browser. Because of its large user-base it also sort of capped the creative space for web designers to an extent.

At the moment, users will have to wait till possibly April 2012 for this Firefox 12, which is rumoured to feature this new Home Tab feature.

What are your views on Firefox’s New Home Tab page? Will it be enough to get people off the Chrome addiction? Do drop in your comments.

-- This Post Will Firefox’s New Tab Features Revive it’s Fortunes? is Published on Devils Workshop .