Google Chrome for Mac and Linux operating system now on air

Google has released a version of its popular web browser Google Chrome on December 8, 2009 for Macintosh computers. Google’s target is to challenge Safari Web browser offered by Apple to its users. Google also released a beta version of Chrome for computers running on open-source Linux operating systems on the same day.

Google claimed its extra effort to build a fast and polished browser for Mac. The Macintosh version of Chrome is still in ‘beta’ version and yet to unveil in full swing. While using the beta version, Macintosh users do not yet have customization features such as allowing extension programs or bookmark management.
Google has also planned that Linux and Windows compatible versions of Chrome could be customized with features such as mini “extension” programs. Already the beta version of Google Chrome for windows has a lot of extensions available to download from Google Chrome Extensions (beta).

Google Chrome for Mac runs on Mac OS X and the Linux version of Chrome supports Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora & openSUSE Linux.

Google Chrome Screenshoot from Mac OS X

Google Chrome Screenshoot from Linux

Google Chrome Extensions available in beta

Here are a few fun facts from the Google Chrome for Mac team:

• 73,804 lines of Mac-specific code written
• 29 developer builds
• 1,177 Mac-specific bugs fixed
• 12 external committers and bug editors to the Google Chrome for Mac code base, 48 external code contributors
• 64 Mac Minis doing continuous builds and tests

And here are some from the Google Chrome for Linux team:

• 60,000 lines of Linux-specific code written
• 23 developer builds
• 2,713 Linux-specific bugs fixed
• 12 external committers and bug editors to the Google Chrome for Linux code base, 48 external code contributors

Download Google Chrome for Mac/Linux

Download Google Chrome for Mac
Download Google Chrome for Linux

Google product manager Brian Rakowski believes that the betas of Google Chrome for Mac, Linux and extensions will fulfill some sort of e-wishes of internet users.

New Phonetic keyboard in Gmail

Gmail is continuously surprising us with its out of the box features, enormous flexible options and outstanding super-simple user interface. Everyday so many users being fade up with yahoo are going towards gmail. Like Yahoo, Gmail also show ads but they are never that annoying as they’re just simple text ads, no funky flash or image ads, no forcing for being a paid subscriber (Gmail don’t have any paid subscription, it’s totally free! :P). All these simplicities are the main attraction of Gmail which are driving Yahoo users towards it. The recent update in Gmail themes is “Random Themes” option. It’s really boring when you have to read and reply hundreds of emails a day. The “random” gmail theme automatically rotates the eye-catching collection of themes after every 1-2h which makes “gmailing” fun! “Random theme” is my personal favorite.
The free Xoopit plugin added an extra gear to Gmail which is no more as Yahoo bought the service. Here we can feel the acute cold war between Gmail & Yahoo evidently. Yesterday I tried Google Wave and it certainly will re-shape the concept of classical email system.

This morning I was typing an email on gmail and found a new symbol on top left of the compose box editing panel (Rich formatting mode). I clicked it and saw a drop-down menu with 12 languages options including Bengali, Hindi, Arabic and so on. OMG! it’s phonetic keyboard! I tried some text with it, simply awesome!! I hope gmail will keep going on with its passion for the “ease of use”. Bravo! love you Gmail.

Get Google and Alexa rank of a domain using PHP

There are already a lot of ways to find gpr/alexa rank of a domain using php. But not all of them work on 64bit servers. Here is the code that I always use for finding the google page rank and alexa rank of a website.

Get Google Page rank

function google_page_rank($url) { // URL or domain name
    if (strlen(trim($url))>0) {
        $_url = eregi("http://",$url)? $url:"http://".$url;
        $pagerank = trim(GooglePageRank($_url));
        if (empty($pagerank)) $pagerank = 0;
        return (int)($pagerank);
    }
    return 0;
}

function GooglePageRank($url) {
    $fp = fsockopen("toolbarqueries.google.com", 80, $errno, $errstr, 30);
    if (!$fp) {
        echo "$errstr ($errno)<br />\n";
        } else {
        $out = "GET /search?client=navclient-auto&ch=".CheckHash(HashURL($url))."&features=Rank&q=info:".$url."&num=100&filter=0 HTTP/1.1\r\n";
        $out .= "Host: toolbarqueries.google.com\r\n";
        $out .= "User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; GoogleToolbar 2.0.114-big; Windows XP 5.1)\r\n";
        $out .= "Connection: Close\r\n\r\n";
        fwrite($fp, $out);

        while (!feof($fp)) {
            $data = fgets($fp, 128);
            $pos = strpos($data, "Rank_");
        if($pos === false){} else{
                $pagerank = substr($data, $pos + 9);
            }
        }
        fclose($fp);
        return $pagerank;
    }
}

function StrToNum($Str, $Check, $Magic) {
    $Int32Unit = 4294967296; // 2^32
    $length = strlen($Str);
    for ($i = 0; $i < $length; $i++) {
        $Check *= $Magic;
        if ($Check >= $Int32Unit) {
            $Check = ($Check - $Int32Unit * (int) ($Check / $Int32Unit));
            $Check = ($Check < -2147483648)? ($Check + $Int32Unit) : $Check;
        }
        $Check += ord($Str{$i});
    }
    return $Check;
}

function HashURL($String) {
    $Check1 = StrToNum($String, 0x1505, 0x21);
    $Check2 = StrToNum($String, 0, 0x1003F);
    $Check1 >>= 2;
    $Check1 = (($Check1 >> 4) & 0x3FFFFC0 ) | ($Check1 & 0x3F);
    $Check1 = (($Check1 >> 4) & 0x3FFC00 ) | ($Check1 & 0x3FF);
    $Check1 = (($Check1 >> 4) & 0x3C000 ) | ($Check1 & 0x3FFF);
    $T1 = (((($Check1 & 0x3C0) < < 4) | ($Check1 & 0x3C)) << 2 ) | ($Check2 & 0xF0F );
    $T2 = (((($Check1 & 0xFFFFC000) << 4) | ($Check1 & 0x3C00)) << 0xA) | ($Check2 & 0xF0F0000 );
    return ($T1 | $T2);
}

function CheckHash($Hashnum) {
    $CheckByte = 0;
    $Flag = 0;
    $HashStr = sprintf('%u', $Hashnum) ;
    $length = strlen($HashStr);
    for ($i = $length - 1; $i >= 0; $i --) {
        $Re = $HashStr{$i};
        if (1 === ($Flag % 2)) {
            $Re += $Re;
            $Re = (int)($Re / 10) + ($Re % 10);
        }
        $CheckByte += $Re;
        $Flag ++;
    }
    $CheckByte %= 10;
    if (0!== $CheckByte) {
        $CheckByte = 10 - $CheckByte;
        if (1 === ($Flag % 2) ) {
            if (1 === ($CheckByte % 2)) {
                $CheckByte += 9;
            }
            $CheckByte >>= 1;
        }
    }
    return '7'.$CheckByte.$HashStr;
}

Find Alexa Rank

function alexaRank($domain){
    $remote_url = 'http://data.alexa.com/data?cli=10&dat=snbamz&url='.trim($domain);
    $search_for = '<POPULARITY URL';
    if ($handle = @fopen($remote_url, "r")) {
        while (!feof($handle)) {
            $part .= fread($handle, 100);
            $pos = strpos($part, $search_for);
            if ($pos === false)
            continue;
            else
            break;
        }
        $part .= fread($handle, 100);
        fclose($handle);
    }
    $str = explode($search_for, $part);
    $str = array_shift(explode('"/>', $str[1]));
    $str = explode('TEXT="', $str);

    return $str[1];
}

Hope this will help you. If you know any better(working) solution please let me know via comments.

Google Voice coming shortly

Google is starting a new service “Google Voice” within a few weeks. This amazing new voice service will give the users a single phone number and all the calls to their existing phones will be diverted to this single number. It’ll have voice mail feature and users can access this service using any mobile phone or internet (browser). The voice messages will be converted to text and thus it’ll be easily searchable, free sms service, forward voice mails directly to email addresses, recording incoming calls only and listen / download them later from web and many more. The interface will be similar to gmail.

Google will certainly integrate it with android and it’ll support other platforms too. For details visit voice.google.com