Froogle's halloween logo was released a couple of days ago. Today, Google's main page was updated with a holiday logo as well. Here you go:



There was also a little "costume party" if I'm allowed to interpret it like that. You can look some pictures in Google's Official Weblog by clicking here.

Google chief executive officer Erich Schmidt affirmed that there will be a version of the desktop search tool for the Mac OS X. However, it was not specified how long must Mac users wait for this tool to be available. The application will probably take some time due to the differences between Mac OS X and Windows. In other words, Google will have to rebuilt from the ground up.

There is a XSS vulnerability that allows a hacker to get full access to a gmail account with simply knowing the username, Devguides has learned.

"Using a hex-encoded XSS link, the victim's cookie file can be stolen by a hacker, who can later use it to identify himself to Gmail as the original owner of an email account, regardless of whether or not the password is subsequently changed. Following up a tip from an Israeli hacker, journos from the site confirmed the attack and verified the exploit with local security firm Aladdin Knowledge Systems." Source

Obviously Google was notified about the problem and they are currently solving the issue. It remains unknown if any malicious hacker has exploited the hole.

This is an old one, it happened a couple of months ago and it was a great idea from Google. The goal here was to seek for skilled programmers and mathematicians. The solution for this problem was 7427466391, which was the first 10 digit prime in consecutive digits of e.

The second problem was actually pretty simple, but as usual, people often think something else and people simply start to solve in the complex ways. After a couple of tries and fails you realize the idea. In this case, you must know what is f(5). Actually you don't have to look for a pattern, if you see the values for f(1), f(2), f(3), f(4), the sum of the 10 digits of each of them equals 49. The digits also belong to e. We designed a program to allow you to see the answer. If you look at it, then you'll get the idea about the problem.

Click here to see the answer visually in order to understand.

F-Secure says:

" Zafi.C is a variant of the Zafi mass-mailing worm family. This worm sends email messages with infected attachments in several different languages.

The payload of Zafi.C is a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack against google.com, microsoft.com and www.miniszterelnok.hu "

There are a number of computer systems infected with Zafi.C. However, it wont be a problem for Google, because the googlers already know this type of attack. Zafi.C was discovered in less than 24 hours.

This is really important for webmasters that want their website to grow. Google recently started to update the database of 'backlinks'. The 'back links' is one of the most important factors that Google uses for anylizing the PageRank of a given website. In addition, 'back links' are considered to be the pages that link directly to you.

You can prove this by using the link operator in the search box (in order to look how many 'backlinks' do you have). If you try this in Google's main webpage, then you wont probably see any differences. However, you can see the differences if you access directly to Google's Datacenter.

Look at DevGuides 'backlinks' from the Datacenter directly.
Look at DevGuides 'backlinks' from Google's main webpage.

Obviously, not all the 'back links' of your webpage (the pages that are linking you) will show due to Google's algorithm. If you didn't see any differences, then the reason is because all the Google servers were updated succesfully.

As previously mentioned in the Google Blog:

"It turns out Keyhole brings a similarly astonishing perspective to its visual mapping software, and it's an incredibly powerful information tool besides. That's why we've acquired the company. We like the way the Keyhole folks think, and can't wait to get under the hood to see how this service might assist Google users around the world in finding the information they need."

Google acquaired the company specialized in digital maps Keyhole. This probably shows that Google plans to inject Keyhole's technology into Google Local, which is an excellent idea.

With Keyhole you can practically browse a city graphically (like flying). This is possible because Keyhole uses satellite images. The website is here. Google also reduced the price to $29.95 from the original price ($65.95). The press release is here

Google's online shopping center "Froogle" recently included the rates for any given online store. Users that try to search for any product will be able to look at the rate of the store (in a scale of 0.0 and 5.0). Viewers will be able to look comments provided by other users on the specific store too. The comments are extracted from other websites, they are not provided by Google.

Probably the majority of Google fans know practically everything about the search engine. From search tricks to search features, but as usual, people forget about simple things. For this reason, Google released the Google Cheat Sheet which includes (like a statistics formula sheet) every possible way of searching with Google. The Google cheat sheet is here

For all the girls out there, Devguides would like to remind them about the Google Anita Borg 2005 scholarship. Only four girls will be eligible. The GPA requirement must be above 3.5 in a 4.0 scale.

Good luck!

It is strange that there is a holiday logo for Froogle, Google in most cases only change the logos for Google. This is also good news whatsoever. Here is the logo

The Webmasters that are currently using the Google Adsense program. It is necessary to know the latest modifications of the Terms and Conditions to stay up to date. Click here for more information.

The modification is in point 11, and it is about fraudulent clicks and payment methods.

Google's 2004 third quarter shows an income of 806 million dollars (105% more regarding Google's 2003 3Q last year).

51% of the total income comes from Adwords, 48% from AdSense, and 1% from the Google Search appliance. If it wasn't for Overture patent problem, Google's benefits would be much more impressive.

Here are the 50 code jam finalists:

# Reid Barton, Arlington, Mass.
# Tomasz Czajka, West Lafayette, Ind.
# John Dethridge, Glen Iris, Australia
# Chuong Do, Richardson, Texas
# Tomas Dzetkulic, Michalovce, Slovakia
# Bjarke Ebert, Tranbjerg, Denmark
# Erling Ellingsen, Trondheim, Norway
# Ambrose Feinstein, Orlando, Fla.
# Batholomew Furrow, Vancouver, Canada
# Dima Germanov, Ufa, Russian Federation
# Oyvind Grotmol, Trondheim, Norway
# Alexander Grushetsky, Kiev, Ukraine
# Lars Hellsten, Toronto, Canada
# Hubert Hwang, Brookline, Mass.
# Tomasz Idziaszek, Lomianki, Poland
# Anders Jonsson, Amherst, Mass.
# JongMan Koo, Seoul, Korea
# Eryk Kopczynski, Warszawa, Poland
# Erik-Jan Krijgsman, Enschede, The Netherlands
# Jan Kuipers, Utrecht, The Netherlands
# Gilbert Lee, Victoria, Canada
# Justin Legakis, Sunnyvale, Calif.
# Po-Ru Loh, Pasadena, Calif.
# Tim Lovell-Smith, Christchurch, New Zealand
# Jimmy Mardell, Stockholm, Sweden
# Tim McDonald, Goffstown, N.H.
# Joshua Metzler, Ann Arbor, Mich.
# Tor Myklebust, Waterloo, Canada
# David Narum, Lovenstad, Norway
# Steve Newman, Portola Valley, Calif.
# Robin Nittka, Ehingen, Germany
# Pawel Parys, Kalety, Poland
# Martin Pettai, Viljandi, Estonia
# David Pritchard, Boston, Mass.
# Lovro Puzar, Zagreb, Croatia
# Xin Qi, Ithaca, NY
# Berinde Radu, Cambridge, Mass.
# Sergio Sancho, Capital Federal, Argentina
# Aleksandrs Saveljevs, Riga, Latvia
# Zheng Shuo, Urbana, Ill.
# Jeff Shute, Kitchener, Canada
# Bogdan Stanescu, Rockville, Md.
# Bolek Szewczyk, Warsaw, Poland
# Jeff Tamer, Urbana, Ill.
# Peter Tang, Hong Kong
# Joris van Rantwijk, Waddinxveen, The Netherlands
# Mathijs Vogelzang, Groningen, The Netherlands
# Brian Watkins, Salt Lake City, Utah
# Jonathan Wills, DeLand, Fla.
# You Zhou, Cambridge, Mass.

Congratulations to you all. ($10,000 for the first place winner, $7,000 for the second place winner, and $5,000 for the third place winner). The final battle will be held at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., on October 15, 2004. $50,000 dollars will be distributed within the winners.

That's right folks, Google just released a new feature for everyone. The purpose of this feature is to let you search everything through your celular phone via SMS. Please go here for further information.

Google SMS works when you send a SMS message to the number 46645 (Notice that in the phone buttons, the number "46645" means GOOGLE) with the text 'help'. If you are interested in using Google from your cell phone please go here

Blogger is paying 50 dollars (hourly) for any person older than 18 years that can test Blogger. If you happen to live in California near Google headquarters, why not go there?

It's nice to test a great web publishing tool such as Blogger in order to improve it for the World.

Click here if you are interested

The name 'Google' used to mean 'glasses' in Norway, but as we all know 'Google' is the greatest search engine (there even exist a verb for Google). This problem lasted 3 years and now Google owns full ownership of the domain name. You can check it at www.google.no.

Google also released Google Kenia and this makes Google's 103 domain name.