5 Beautiful Uses of Google Search Box

In this post, I am going to reveal some little known uses of Google search box. These uses can increase your productivity at office and will save your time as well.

What You Know:

Google is a search engine and can find any information for you.  And the results are quite accurate and fast as well. All we need to provide the keyword or text and Google will do the rest.

You May Not Know: 

Google search box is like our brain which can do a variety of things. The search box can be used as a calculator, spellchecker, dictionary and so on.

1. Calculator: The box can used to perform some simple mathematical calculations. For ex.

2. Currency Converter:

The box can be used for currency conversions. For ex: Let’s say we want to convert 50 USD into GBP then we need to use the following syntax.

3. Dictionary Definitions:

You can find the dictionary meaning of a particular word by using the following syntax.

4. Fill in The Blank:

Sometimes you don’t know the exact or complete phrase to be searched. So you can do it by placing an * at the end of the phrase.

5. Spell Checker:

The search box can also be used for checking the spelling of a word. All you need to type the keyword in the box and Google’s built in spell checker will tell you if the spelling is correct or not.

 

These are the few uses of Google search box that I discovered. There are many other uses of search box, I guess.

All you need to explore and discover!

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See How Your Site Looked in The Past

Want to see how your site looked in the past? Now you can go back in time and can see how your site looked in the past. Often a site goes a lot of changes over a period of time. And it's quite amazing and interesting if we could see the site back in time. The Alexa website has a link at the bottom which will take you back in time and show you different snapshots of your site at different times.

Click here to go back in time.

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Gmail: The Story of Send

What happens when you send an Email?

I guess you  do'nt know and never tried to know. Google has released story where you will take a journey into Gmail and find out how an Email complete it's journey to reach it's final destination. The story is official now.

It Starts with Send

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Learn PHP on the Fly

Learn PHP on the Fly! This is the title of my Ebook.

I am writing an Ebook on PHP. The book provides you a quick tour of PHP and how to start your career in PHP. The objective of the book is to provide all the information about PHP in a nutshell. The book is especially written for those who want to make make a career in PHP but don't know from where to start. It guides you through the whole process of seeking a job in PHP.

I am hoping to complete the book by next week. And I guess it will be launched in next week as well.

I hope you will all like this Ebook.

Some Excerpts From My Ebook:

"The good thing about making a career in PHP is that you can do it on the fly. And you need not required to have a formal degree in information technology. All you need to have some programing skills and a go getter attitude."

"Forms are very important part of a website and often used to collect data from the user. A very simple form example is Login Form. Login form is used to provide access to a website.

A form contains different type of items to collect data. So it’s important to understand different elements of a form."

"There is no need to declare a variable in PHP. They are automatically declared as soon as you assign a value to it."

Regards,
Subodh Raghav

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What is SEO and How it Works

The phrase SEO is buzzing all around on the web. And it inspired me to explain it for you in my language (Simple and Exclusive).

 

The web is expanding at a fast pace and so as the need for web services. And one of the essential web service is SEO. The most common SEO and link building services are Meta tags optimization, social bookmarking, directory listing etc. SEO is a some kind of process that helps online businesses to create an online presence and buzz. You can upload your videos on you tube and optimize it to get you tube views.

SEO is Search Engine Optimization. The phrase SEO in itself seems to be a misnomer because it is not the search engine which is being optimized. It is the process of applying techniques to a website in order to achieve high rankings in search engine results pages. The techniques may be applied on the site or off the site.

How SEO Works?

As you may know web is a collection of millions of web pages. The web pages contains information in the form of text, graphics, video etc. There are 2 ways to find the information on the web.

1. You know the URL of the page that contains this information. This is virtually impossible to know about all the pages on the web.

2. To find it through the search engines which are there for you to find the desired information.

I guess you may have used Google for finding some kind of information. When you type some word in Google then it looks for it in it's database for the pages that are most relevant to your word and displays them for  you.

Now the question is how Search Engines do it all?

And so accurate and fast!

Search engines crawls the web to find all the pages for it's database. This is done with the help of a software called Spider or Crawler. The process is known as spidering.

And unlike human beings search engines has an affinity for text content. The like it in Title tag of pages, header tags and off the site in link's anchor text.

They do'nt like images, Flash movies, JavaScript, frames, password-protected pages and directories.

So text is the key to rank well in search engines.

Search engines uses an algorithm to rank pages. It is a kind of formula to find the relevant pages corresponding to some keywords.

You must thinking that I know about SEO and how it can benefit my online business. So I should have SEO done for my site.

But wait before you make your decision?

Here is the real truth...

SEO is not as esay as most SEO companies explains it to you. I try to explain it by taking an analogy. Imagine SEO as a competition where you have to constantly fight with:

1. Your competitors as they are also doing SEO on their site to improve ranking and traffic. So you need to be better than what they are doing.

2. The changing search engine alogirthms and constanly making it more complex. And you have to keep on guessing the search engine criteria to do well.

For example take an analogy of any entrance exam ( For ex. IIT entrance exam if you live in India) where millions of students appear in the eam but only few of them are selected. They all prepare at reputed coaching centres but still could not get selected because they rank lower than others.

In search engines too, same analogy applies. Generally top 10 results are considered to be better in SEO. So you need to be better than the top 10 competitors in order to push them down.

5 Factors That Search Engines Uses to Rank Your Sites:

1. Words: In technical terms they are called keywords and are the main ingredient for search engine algorithm. So use the keyword rich fresh and original content in order to do well in search engines.

2. Title: Each web page has a tItle and it is in the coding. Search engines gives weightage to title because they often summarise the content of a web page.

3. Links: Links are like the recommendation for your site. More the better.

4. Anchor Text: Google puts value to the word used in links. A link with keyword in anchor puts your site up in rankings for that keyword.

5. Reputation: The sites having good quality and fresh content will have a higher rankings in search engines.

SEO is not a science because the search engines algorithms are updated regularly.

It's like a competition where only the consistent performer wins the race.

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Read Today's Newspaper Online

Want to read today's newspaper online on the web. It is possible now. With the start of ePaper service by all the major media houses like Hindustan Times, Times of India and many others, it is possible to read your news paper's digital copy on your laptop or mobile phone.

This is the screenshot of my screen while reading ePaper Hindustan Times. And it is the exact replica of the hard copy of the same news paper.

Learn More About ePaper:

The service is available in India and is free of cost until now. You can also subscribe to this service in India. While outside India, there are little subscription charges.

To read the first copy of of your newspaper, you will need to go to particular site and find the ePaper. Here is the preview of famous ePaper Hindustan Times.

You can also choose the edition of your city. For example if you want to read Delhi edition then you can read it by clicking on the Delhi edition. However, you need to check if the particular ePaper service is offered for your city.

You can also download and save the ePaper for offline reading, using PressReader. And can also be read on  your mobile device by following some simple steps.

Who are Offering ePaper Service:

At present there are quite a few media houses who are offering this service in India. Some of them are:

1. Hindustan Times
2. Times of India
3. Amar Ujala
4. Indian Express
5. Deccan Chronicle

Advantages:

1. You can read it while on the go and it will save your time too.
2. You can do more with the epaper. You can voice your opinion on a particular article rightaway by leaving comments.
3. You can download , print an bookmark an article for reading later. You will have a faster access when you need it.

I like it.

What's your eThoughts!

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PHP: In a Nutshell

What is PHP?

Let’s start with the basics!

PHP stands for “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor”, initially known as PHP Tools / Personal Home Page. It was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995.

It is a programming language for developing interactive websites and web applications. The language syntax is very similar to C. It’s easy to learn and can run on different platforms like Windows, Mac, Linux and many more.

And it’s Free to download and use!

A PHP Program looks very similar to a C program. 

<?PHP
      Echo "Hello World";
?>

Applications of PHP:

I would like to learn PHP and want to make a career in PHP.

But I have a question here!

What are the applications that can be developed using PHP?

Depends on what you would like it to do. Possibilities with PHP are unlimited for a good PHP programmer.

Following is the brief list of applications that can be developed using PHP. It could be from an E commerce website to Facebook applications and more. Some common applications of PHP are:

• Ecommerce Sites
• Desktop Applications:
• Facebook Applications
• PDF Files
• Mailing Lists
• Image Processing
• CMS based sites
• Word Press Plugins
• And many more

You may also like:

How to create a Captcha enabled Contact Form in PHP

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How to Create a Captcha enabled Web Form in 5 Minutes

In this tutorial, you will learn about how to create a contact form with captcha verification using PHP / HTML. I assume you have the prior knowledge of HTML and PHP to understand this tutorial.

Let's understand Captcha first:

It's a kind of test to know if the response is generated by a human or generated by a software / bot.

Common Captcha Test:

The user needs to enter the letters from a distorted image in the text box. This text is difficult to read / decode by softwares / bots but can be easily read by humans.

Here is the step by step procedure:

Step 1: This requires you to create a PHP file for creating captcha image with text. Create a PHP file Captcha.php and save it in your local folder. Copy and paste the code below in this file.

<?php

session_start();

//To generate 5 digit random number
$text = rand(10000,99999);

//To assign this number to session variable
$_SESSION["captchacode"] = $text;

//To set image height and width
$height = 25;
$width = 65;

//To create image using imagecreate function 
$cimage = imagecreate($width, $height);
$bg_color = imagecolorallocate($cimage, 0, 0, 0);
$text_color = imagecolorallocate($cimage, 255, 255, 255);

$font_size = 14;//To set the fint size of teh captcha text
 
imagestring($cimage, $font_size, 5, 5, $text, $text_color);//Create captcha text on image
imagepng($cimage);

?>

Step 2: This requires you to create a PHP file for creating a contact form. Create a PHP file Captcha_Form.php and save it in your local folder. Copy and paste the code below in this file.

<table width="300" align="left" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1">

<form action="submit_form.php" method="post">

<tr>
    <td>Name: </td>
    <td><input type="text" name="name" size="10" maxlength="10" tabindex="1"></td>
</tr>

<tr>
    <td>Email:</td>
    <td><input type="text" name="email" size="20" maxlength="20" tabindex="2"></td>
</tr>

<tr>
    <td>Enter Code:  </td>
    <td><input type="text" name="captchacode" size="5" maxlength="5" tabindex="3" />
    <span style= "margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 0px;">
        <img src="captcha.php"></span>
    </td>
</tr>

<tr>
    <td/>
     <td><input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit"/></td>
</tr>

</form>

</table>

Step 3: This requires you to create a PHP file to verify the cpatcha code with the code in captcha image. Create a PHP file Submit_Form.php and save it in your local folder. Copy and paste the code below in this file.

<?php

session_start();

if ($_POST["captchacode"] != $_SESSION["captchacode"] OR $_SESSION["captchacode"]=='') 
     echo  '<strong>You are not Human.</strong>';
else
{
     // add form data processing code here
     echo  '<strong>You are Human.</strong>';
}

?>

Final Output:

You need to test the captcha in a browser. Open Captcha_Form.php in your browser. The form will look like this:

How to Test:

You can test the this form by entering captcha code from the image in the Enter Code text box. If the captcha code matches with the code in captcha image it will display You are Human else it will display You are not Human.

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