To take advantage of the potential of Google's Search engine, it's important to know some of its basic tricks

• Keywords: Quality of the responses depends on the quality of the words chosen. For example, "computer" does not give the same results as "PC".
• Typing words in lowercase give you every opportunity not to miss any important reference.
• Quotation marks (" ") make sure that the search engine takes into account all the words.
• Signs "+" and "-" add constraints to your search.
  For example, you can search for documents on George Lucas who only speak of Star Wars (george lucas + star wars) or on the contrary who do not speak of the film (george lucas star wars)
• Wildcards: Google accepts the use of a wildcard (*) for the location of a missing word in a phrase.
• The tilde (~) allows Google to display not only a word but also its synonyms, in a broad sense, that is to say, beyond the true grammatical synonyms, related terms.

More searching options:

• "site: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx". Returned results will be only from the selected site.
• "author: xxxxx xxxxxx". Identifies latest articles published by the author in question.
• "insubject: xxxxx" Results show the articles on related requested subjet.
• "location: xxxxx" Displays information bearing to the specified eyes.
• "source: xxxxxx" Results extracted from any source.
• "allintitle: xxxxxx" Results show the articles where all searched keywords are available in the title

The search bar includes also a calculator. Type the calculation directly in your search bar and press enter to have the result displayed.

More about Google seach engine: Google Help

Tags: 2007, account, arc, art, blog, card, computer, engine, example, google, how to, ia, im, lan, location, nomadcom.net, press, search, term, tips, train, tricks, wp, www

Last week Lenovo (certainly among others) announced to its customers that owners of "qualified systems" can, if they wish, downgrade their Vista O/S to Windows XP. The offer is valid till 31st of July 2008.

Now, Microsoft announces that Windows XP operating system will remain available for sales to OEM and retail till June 2008, which is five month more than previously announced. System builder partners will be able to offer Windows XP until end of January 2009.

Windows XP Starter Edition in emerging markets where it is currently available for the rapidly growing class of hardware-constrained ultra-low cost PCs until June 30, 2010.

Long waited Microsoft Vista SP1 has not been yet officially announced and its release is not expected before 2008.

Tags: 2007, 2008, api, art, blog, ces, customer, downgrade, ia, ibm, im, IT World, lan, microsoft, nomadcom.net, press, release, train, vista, windows, wp, www, XP

Since few days now, iMinR is tracking what's going on this website.

This new service of “measurement of personalized audience” as its creator, Stéphane Guérin, indicates it on his Internet site. The iMinR statistics service makes possible to discover more about visitors of a site in general and, as from now on, this one in particular.

Among statistics provided on the free account version of iMinR we can find :

• Visitors (IP address)
• Visits (per hour, per day,)
• Pages viewed (url, title)Pages vues (url & titre)
• Geographical information (Country, Region, City)
• Web Origin (domain and url)
• Search Engine
• Query String
• Keywords
• Incoming and Outgoing points
• Global duration of the visit
• Time duration per page
• Click stream
• Frequent paths
• Client configuration(browser, operating system, resolution, language, etc..)

About the installation, well it's definitively too easy. You either have to add the provided line of code in your footer's page (also available for secured pages) or, if you are using Wordpress, to install, activate and configure the iMinr plugin and that's it.

No update, no maintenance and training required. iMinR is adapted to sites using AJAX and the 100% javascript invisible (free account users are requested to add iMinR logo on their web site) marker works with any HTML pages (PHP, ASP, etc..).

Real time reports can be personalized according your needs and are accessible either on a web page;  using a javascript function or simply from the iMinR web site.

Today the beta 2 version has been released but so far the interface is exclusively available in French. I have not asked, but the English version should follow no ?

To know more about, check the demonstration page.

Tags: 2007, access, account, Ajax, analysis, arc, art, blog, ces, configuration, dress, engine, find, free, Fun, global, HP, im, iminR, install, internet, King, lan, language, nomadcom.net, pda, plugin, press, real time, release, resolution, sco, search, space, statistics, stats, traffic, train, update, user, web, web mining, website, wordpress, wp, www, XP