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no Google

Ever imagined what’d happen if Google was not there?

In just a short time, Google has become a seamless part of our lives, ranking somewhere between Jesus and bacon in importance. The brand has joined the ranks of Kleenex and Xerox (and if you’re in the South, Coke), with its name becoming synonymous with its product and somewhat generic as we “Google” this or that. Most of the world can’t use a smartphone without using a Google product. Some people can’t even travel across their own city without using Maps. It’s hard to fathom a life without it. Google Reader users, however, got a small taste of life would be like without the Big G in our lives.

It is very difficult to say exactly how the entire world would be able to work without Google – which is the most frequently visited website in the world. Google is a huge company which employs more than 30,000 people. There are a wide range of applications offered by Google and many of them are completely free. Users have the flexibility of using e-mail or Gmail and Google Docs for the purpose of sharing different types of documents. Google offers maps for the purpose of navigation, Calendar for organizing different activities during the week. Apart from this, Google offers Analytics for the purpose of tracking statistics about a website and Blogger for setting up an attractive blog for professional as well as personal purposes. Lineup of services offered by Google also includes Google Patents, Scholar, Finance, Groups and Google+ for social networking. You also get the Image search option which enables you to get hold of the best images that you would like to use. Not to mention, Google search engine which has completely revolutionized the whole procedure of getting useful information on the internet. There are a lot of things offered by Google for accomplishing a number of tasks without putting in much effort and also without spending much money.

The use of library card catalogs would increase because people would actually visit libraries for getting required information on different topics. Carrying out a research on a particular topic would take a long time because researchers would not get the flexibility of carrying out their researches from home. This actually means that you would have to make good efforts in trying to find an answer for even some of your minutest queries. You can use other search engines but you would not get the results as fast and as accurate as Google. It would be a financial implosion for people who work for Google and the companies who carry out their advertising campaigns of Google. Almost all the websites or online stores promoting and selling their products and services online would lose web presence.

Having lost the power to find everything on search engine, people would need to talk to each other more. Forums will start to be bombarded with small queries. People would often meet up in big groups to discuss things as there was no Google to tell them stuff. Instead of Googling everything whenever they wanted, people would try and remember more stuff. As is the case with phone book in mobiles, we no longer remember phone numbers of our family or friends. Same is with Google. We don’t even make an effort to remember stuff because we know we can Google it any time we want.

But we are glad that Larry Page invented Google.


Can you think of other fun things that might happen if there was no Google? Tell us in the comments below.

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Do you know why is the keyboard not arranged in alphabetical order?

Check out why keyboard is not arranged in alphabetical order

We use keyboard every day, be it our desktop, or laptop, or tablet or smartphone. But have you ever wondered as to why the keyboard is not arranged in alphabetical order?

The reason goes back to the time of manual typewriters. These typewriters in earlier days did have the keys arranged in alphabetical order. However, it was later discovered that the people typed so fast that the mechanical character keys got jammed very easily with this arrangement.

To prevent this, the keys were randomly positioned so that the weaker fingers were needed more frequently. This meant that people typed at a speed which the machine could handle. As a result, the ‘QWERTY’ keyboard came into existence that we find and use today.

The QWERTY keyboard layout was devised and created in the 1860s by the creator of the first modern typewriter, Christopher Sholes, a newspaper editor who lived in Milwaukee. Originally, the characters on the typewriters he invented were arranged alphabetically, set on the end of a metal bar which struck the paper when its key was pressed. However, once an operator had learned to type at speed, the bars attached to letters that lay close together on the keyboard became entangled with one another, compelling the typist to manually unstick the typebars, and also regularly blotting the document. A business associate of Sholes, James Densmore, suggested splitting up keys for letters commonly used together to speed up typing by preventing common pairs of typebars from striking the platen at the same time and sticking together.

There are varied opinions on this rearrangement of letters in the keyboard. The logic of the QWERTY layout was based on letter usage in English rather than positioning of letter in the alphabet. However, some sources assert that the QWERTY layout was designed to slow down typing speed to further reduce jamming. Also, the QWERTY keyboards were made so one could type using keys from the top row of the keyboard. On the other hand, there are sources who assert the rearrangement worked by separating common sequences of letters in English. Apparently, the hammers that were likely to be used in quick succession were less likely to hinder with each other. This random arrangement eventually became standard in computers later followed by the devices made after that.
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Cylinder At The End Of Your Charger
Do You Know Why There Is a Cylinder At The End Of Your Charger?

What Is This Cylinder On Your Charger For?

While my laptop charger has never bugged me, but I always felt strange at times to see a bump in my laptop charger right after it connects to the laptop. I always use to wonder why the charger has a bump and what purpose does it serve?

You normally see these “bumps” on the mouse, keyboard and monitor cables in a typical computer system found in a home or office. You can also find them on power supply wires when a device (like a printer or scanner) uses an external transformer.

It turns out that these bumps are called ferrite bead. It may also be called blocks, core, rings, EMI (electromagnetic interference) filters, or chokes. A ferrite bead has the property of eliminating broadcast signals and prevents energy loss of the same type within the charger. This makes the charger much more effective and helps charge your computer more quickly. Their purpose is to reduce EMI and RFI (radio-frequency interference). These cylinders are responsible for stopping very large deviation of power over supply through the cable and power surges in currents that pass through the cable and prevent ‘choke’ within the wire to make it any further supply the current to the device. The blocking is most effective when it is near the source of the EMI, that’s why you will only find these ferrite beads near the end of the cables.

It also acts as a choke or inductor that blocks high frequency noise in electronic circuits. Ferrite bead employs the dissipation of high frequency currents in a ferrite ceramic to build high frequency noise suppression devices.

The bead is made up of ceramic compounds, derived from iron oxide and/or oxides of other transition metals. It helps to prevent the wire behave on over floating current like aerials. It slips over the cable when the cable is made, or it can be snapped around the cable in two pieces after the cable is made. The bead is encased in plastic — if you cut the plastic, all that you would find inside is a black metal cylinder. This metal wire can possibly serve as an antenna by absorbing or releasing any radiation while passing current around it.

The radiation released by the wires without the bead could cause interference with other electronic objects around them, which act as receivers of this radiation, for instance, causing noise in speakers. This phenomenon’s example can be seen when cell phones interfere with the signal devices such as radios and speakers, producing a recurring noise well known for electronic users.

Source: The Amazing Fact
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The really interesting reason why ATM PINs have a 4 digit code

ATM PINs
Have you ever wondered why ATM PINs have 4 digit Code? Here is why

You walk into your friendly neighborhood ATM kiosk and swipe your card. You then punch in a 4 PIN code to authenticate yourself and proceed to withdraw money. You may have been doing this mechanically since the day ATM was introduced but have you given a thought why ATM PINs have a 4 digit code?  No! Then read on..

Automated Teller Machines (ATM) were first introduced in 1967 and now have emerged as a best option to disburse cash. Instead of visiting your bank and waiting in a long queue to withdraw money, you just have to swipe your ATM card, punch in your secret 4 digit PIN and take away the money you require.

But if someone was to find or steal your card, the only barrier protecting your money is your 4-digit ATM PIN. Ever wondered why most PINs have only 4 digits? Given that an ATM dishes out money wouldnt the manufacturers of ATMS have been wiser to introduce a longish PIN say six digit or eight digit one. Isn’t that why our email passwords are also expected to be 6 letters or more?

You see there is a bit of story behind it. ATM was invented by a wellknown Scottish inventor John Adrian Shepherd-Barron, the man who pioneered the development of the ATM machine. Barron was born in Shillong and was son to a Wimbledon ladies doubles champion, Dorothy Barron. When testing out his invention, Barron had also proposed a 6-digit PIN.

However, the first person to use his invention was his wife, Caroline. We all know that behind every successful man is a woman, and Caroline apparently rejected the idea of using a six code PIN for her husband’s invention because she could only remember the numbers up to four.

When Barron came up with the idea when he realised that he could remember his six-figure army number. But he decided to check that with his wife, Caroline.

“Over the kitchen table, she said she could only remember four figures, so because of her, four figures became the world standard,” he laughs.

Reportedly, 6 numbers stringed together were too much information for her to recall.

Although, there are many banks nowadays that offer 6 digit PINs for security purposes, shouldn’t those of us using 4 digit PINs be thanking Caroline? It gets tough to recall those 4 digits at times, imagine what 6 or more would do to us?
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