Improvement for Google Instant

Today, while using Google Instant, I noted that if the query included "site" specification, Instant does not work. Any query of the following form fails with Google Instant.

<search text> site:<site where the search text is to be looked up>

Increased spam in my gmail inbox

For about a month, I had been noticing increased spam in my gmail account. Gmail used to be known  for its spam filters. People used to advise to redirect other mails to gmail so that spam is filtered out well. However, things seem to be changing. I am posting a few spam email ids.

From	Reply-to
mabanks@ic.sunysb.edu	inf22@msn.com
elcytchandy@hotmail.com	jdetwiler1@comcast.net
info@winner.com	instantclaims@live.co.uk
ibgranny@sbcglobal.net	marutisuzukijobs2011@live.com
g-karen@sbcglobal.net	g-karen@sbcglobal.net
jilani@pasteur.fr	cox16@live.co.uk
hana.jilani@pasteur.fr	mic_04@live.com
jilani@pasteur.fr	cox16@live.co.uk
info@videocon.com	info@video-con.co.cc
rallahiq@insurebc.ca	mic_04@live.com
osirodjohnson@gmail.com	inf44@live.com
info@live.in	marutisuzuki.recruit2011@gmail.com

It is interesting to note the high frequency of "inf" and "live.com" terms in the email addresses. It is also interesting to note how most of them have their "to" email addresses pointing to "undisclosed-recipients:;" and talk about lotteries worth £500,000,00 in the United Kingdom. They also include phone numbers from United Kingdom.

Setting up a software project

Recently, I have started a software project with a few of my friends. I shall speak about how I set up communication media for the project. We started with creating a secret group in facebook. That way we are able to discuss the project even when we are at our homes. Facebook also has functionalities of creating documents for the group. However, facebook chat is not quite reliable as a group chat and it does not support voice. [It reminds me of good old yahoo chat days. :) ] Document creation feature is in no way an alternative to attachments and code sharing. So, the next step was to create a mailing list.

With a mailing list, now we can have interleaved replies, no need to refer to the line we are replying to. Moreover, with a mailing list we can share documents easily as attachments and everyone can look into the other's progress at his/her convenience. For group chat, we started an IRC channel on freenode and used skype for voice chat in group.

Now, we were all set for discussing any ideas we had at any time. We only lacked in a tool for sharing code efficiently. We opted for a code hosting site. I preferred a distributed version control system over a centralised one because we expect a lot of code merges. Moreover, due to fluctuating internet, having the ability to commit locally would be an advantage. So, we opted for mercurial(hg) hosting at www.bitbucket.org. Mercurial is a mature distributed version control system and bitbucket has a feature rich user interface. Now, we are all set for the project and hope it turns successful.

Search Engine Blacklisting extension

Recently, Jason Chen released an Chrome extension to blacklist spam websites in search engine results.

The extension is under active development and is for testers now. As far as I remember, there have been tools for this by McAfee and AVG. However, I believe that such blacklisting should be done at the server side. It is funny sometimes how search engines like Google have fake sites topping their results.