pagesize in oracle..

Recently I came across a problem of viewing the oracle sql queries results using sqlplus. I selected for this query
"select * from mytable"
Now my table contains 3000 rows. The result contains header breaks repeated after every 14 lines. so it looked very cluttered. I wanted to have it in nice format without any headers repeated. I just googled it and found a very nice command "pagesize"
I used it as follows
set pagesize 3000.
It sets the no of records to be shown at a time on sqlplus pompt without showing headers break. so I was now able to run my same query and it ran like charm.
Voila....no more cluttered line breaks...:)

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Google releases Ad Manager

Google has launched a new product from their ad management suite, called Ad Manager. This free and currently beta service is a framework for webmasters, helping them to sell their ad space. It sounds like an interesting offering for all those who directly sell their ad space on some of their sites. Google in return would then make money simply due to the chance that you will (completely optionally) accept their AdSense ads to show whenever you don’t have advertisers yourself.

Google Ad Manager seems to have been in development at Google at least since late 2006.
If you have an AdSense account, you can sign in to Ad Manager today. If not, apply for an AdSense account now. A Google AdSense account is a technical requirement for creating an Ad Manager account.

Ad Manager can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure both directly-sold and network-based inventory. It offers an intuitive and simple user interface, Google serving speed and reliability, and significant cost savings. Best of all, Ad Manager can be optionally integrated with Google AdSense to offer you an automated way to maximize the revenue of your unsold and network-managed inventory.

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Google Suggest graduates from Labs

Today, while searching for java I found that google.com now offers google suggest feature on its home page. It means that Google suggest feature has been now available to google site after graduating from google labs. The Google Suggest feature originally started as a 20% project in 2004, and has since expanded to Google Labs, Toolbar, Firefox search box, Maps and Web Search for select countries, the iPhone and BlackBerry, YouTube, and now Google.com.

As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you're typing and offers suggestions in real time. This is similar to Google's "Did you mean?" feature that offers alternative spellings for your query after you search, except that it works in real time. For example, if you type "bass," Google Suggest might offer a list of refinements that include "bass fishing" or "bass guitar." Similarly, if you type in only part of a word, like "prog," Google Suggest might offer you refinements like "programming," "programming languages," "progesterone," or "progressive." You can choose one by scrolling up or down the list with the arrow keys or mouse.

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Google Translate OneBox

Google has a new tool for quick translations.
All you need to have to do is just search for "translate", followed by a word or an expression and the optional "into English". For example, you can search for [translate désormais] and Google shows the entry from an automatically-generated bilingual dictionary.






Unfortunately, you can't use the search box as a shortcut for Google Translate because full texts aren't yet translated. The bilingual dictionary is only available for the following language pairs: English <-> French/Italian/Spanish/Portuguese/German/Russian/Chinese/Korean/Hindi. It's interesting that Google shows results from Google Image Search next to the translations.

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sending multiple attachments using Unix mailx command

Hi, ever tried to send mail from unix command prompt that contains multiple files as attachments, here is how you can do it in just a single command.

(uuencode file1.oldname file1.newname; uuencode file2.oldname file2.newname;
uuencode file3.oldname file3.newname; uuencode file4.oldname file4.newname) |
mailx -s "Subject of the mail" xyz@abc.com

Above snippets sends the file1, file2, file3 and file4 to the xyz@abc.com as attachments in a mail with a subject "Subject of the mail".

I have used a uuencode command that takes files as input and encode them over the network. The file1.oldname appears as file1.newname to the receiver when he/she opens the attachment.

You can send single file as an attachment as follows

mail -s "Subject of the mail" xyz@abc.com < file1

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Google Releases AdPlanner

Google has recently launched a free media planning tool called AdPlanner.
It is supposed to be competitor tool of comscore's Media Metrix or Neilson's @Plan. This tool is invitation only and you have to verify your identity to google before signing up. It has some basic reports that shows you data for UV’s, Reach, Page Views and adSense related informations in case the sites contain adSense adverts. It also contains target audience feature but that is specific to US only. I think they will be enhancing it in future. As opposed to AtPlan and Media Metrix, Google's AdPlanner does not support mixing of audience data based on different demographic information. They support a higher no of demographic data as well. Also AdPlanner does not give any input on how the sites outside their own network will be catered out, especially in case if they are good target for advertising.

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Google Releases a new Beta Knol

A few months ago we announced that we were testing a new product called Knol. Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. Today, we're making Knol available to everyone.

The web contains vast amounts of information, but not everything worth knowing is on the web. An enormous amount of information resides in people's heads: millions of people know useful things and billions more could benefit from that knowledge. Knol will encourage these people to contribute their knowledge online and make it accessible to everyone.

The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It's their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good.

With Knol, we are introducing a new method for authors to work together that we call "moderated collaboration." With this feature, any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public. This allows authors to accept suggestions from everyone in the world while remaining in control of their content. After all, their name is associated with it!

Knols include strong community tools which allow for many modes of interaction between readers and authors. People can submit comments, rate, or write a review of a knol. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads from our AdSense program. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with a revenue share from the proceeds of those ad placements.

We are happy to announce an agreement with the New Yorker magazine which allows any author to add one cartoon per knol from the New Yorker's extensive cartoon repository. Cartoons are an effective (and fun) way to make your point, even on the most serious topics.

Everyone knows something. See what people are writing about, then tell the world what you know: knol.google.com

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Yahoo! Search BOSS™

BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) is Yahoo!'s open search web services platform. The goal of BOSS is simple: to foster innovation in the search industry. Developers, start-ups, and large Internet companies can use BOSS to build and launch web-scale search products that utilize the entire Yahoo! Search index. BOSS gives you access to Yahoo!'s investments in crawling and indexing, ranking and relevancy algorithms, and powerful infrastructure. By combining your unique assets and ideas with our search technology assets, BOSS is a platform for the next generation of search innovation, serving hundreds of millions of users across the Web.

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Midori from Microsoft

Midori has been reported to be a possible commercial successor to the Singularity operating system, a research project started in 2003 to build a highly-dependable operating system in managed code.

Microsoft is working on a managed-mode operating system, code-named Midori. Managed mode is a computer program code that executes under the management of a virtual machine, unlike an unmanaged code, which is executed directly by the computer's CPU.

Midori has been reported to be a possible commercial successor to the Singularity operating system, a research project started in 2003 to build a highly-dependable operating system in which the kernel, device drivers, and applications are all written in managed code.



According to Microsoft, Midori is being designed from the ground up to tackle challenges that cannot be met by simply evolving its existing technology. Midori's proposed design is Internet-centric and provides an overall "connectedness" between applications and devices. When Windows was first designed,there was no "Internet" as we understand it today, and things were added later in patches. With the Midori however, it will focus on concurrency for both distributed applications and local ones.

Eric Rudder, Senior Vice President for technical strategy at Microsoft and an alumnus of Bill Gates' technical staff, is heading up the effort.

No time frame for development has been set for Midori as its considered a 'research project' at the moment, according to Microsoft technical fellow Burton Smith. A spokesperson added that Midori is one of many projects in incubation at Microsoft Research.

Source: Techtree.com

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Google to Extend Reach With Venture-Capital Arm

Google Inc. is working on plans to start a venture-capital arm, according to several people briefed on the discussions.

The group will be led by David Drummond, Google's senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer, according to two of these people. Google has hired William Maris, a 33-year-old former entrepreneur who has worked as an investor, to help set up the venture. How the group will be structured and what sort of investments it is likely to target remain unclear.

Google executives previously have bandied about the idea of launching a venture-capital unit, and the plans could still fall through. Mr. Maris couldn't be reached for comment.

The move would make Google the latest technology giant to take on a more-formal role in seeding start-ups. Intel Corp. has had a large venture-capital arm for years, as have Motorola Inc., Comcast Corp. and many others. In the consumer-Internet area, Walt Disney Co.'s Steamboat Ventures has invested in a number of Web start-ups. So has Amazon.com Inc., which has funded a number of young companies without structuring a formal fund.

Their track records have been mixed. Corporate venture-capital arms have been hampered by challenges that traditional venture-capital businesses don't face. Venture capitalists invest in private start-ups at an early stage, usually in hopes of a big payout if the company is sold or if its stock goes public.

Many start-ups fear that taking corporate money limits their options and comes with strings that could turn away other potential investors -- such as a right to buy the company at a later date. Some funds with less competitive compensation have struggled to retain managers, and corporate venture funds often don't allow senior employees to invest personal money in their funds, while other venture funds typically do.

Corporate venture capitalists' share of overall venture-capital dollars invested in U.S. companies fell to 7% in the first half of 2008 from 8.4% in 2007, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. Corporate venture capitalists were involved in roughly 20% of the venture-capital deals signed during the first half of 2008, compared with 21% in 2007.

With an abundance of venture-capital money available today, Google will have to convince entrepreneurs that it has something to offer that other investors don't. It has several advantages, including a brand admired by start-ups and the ability to offer sizable technical resources.

The Mountain View, Calif., Web giant has long preferred to buy companies rather than invest in them, and has plenty of cash to keep doing so. But it has invested millions of dollars in companies ranging from Current Communications, which offers broadband Internet over power lines, to Meraki, a wireless-Internet-equipment manufacturer. The company said last year that it intends to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in renewable-energy projects in conjunction with its philanthropic arm, Google.org. Google also has launched a number of informal funding programs, including contests for software developers.

The new venture could help formalize those efforts and could help Google expand the footprint of some of its online-software products geared at small businesses. Other corporate venture funds have made investments as a way to gain experience in new product areas and markets.

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Yahoo Turns Yelp, Yahoo Local and LinkedIn SearchMonkey Apps On In Search

Yahoo is making a number of changes to its default search experience tonight to add more structured data to results. Yelp, Yahoo Local and LinkedIn SearchMonkey widgets are being added to search results automatically, eliminating the need for users to go into the search gallery and add them manually.

SearchMonkey is a key part of Yahoo’s attempts to embrace the semantic web and open standards in general.

With SearchMonkey, site owners create “applications” for Yahoo search that can be installed by users in the same sense that Facebook applications can be installed. Each application modifies results for a certain URL specification (for example, all reference pages on Wikipedia or product pages on Amazon). Modifications include both changes to the basic elements of a search result (the title and description) and additions such as an image, deep links, and key/value pairs.

Users can also add additional widgets via the Yahoo Search Gallery.

Here’s the Yelp search result example we used in our first post about SearchMonkey:

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Cuil - The Next "Google Killer"?

Cuil - The Next "Google Killer"?
With the recent press about Cuil, the latest "Google-Killer Search Engine", it seems that we've forgotten the lessons from the late 90s. Cuil's claim to fame appears to be:


It was founded by Ex-Googlers
They claim to have a larger web-page index than Google
The first point is somewhat interesting, but not exactly a path to success. As for the second point, I'd like to say: (1) How do you know that? (2) What does that mean? (3) So?

How Do You Know That?

Google doesn't release the size of its index.

What Does That Mean?

How did they count the size of Google's index? If two urls have identical content, are those the same page? What if the content is merely very similar? Suppose the only difference is that Google isn't indexing the duplicate pages (or, say, the spammy pages), does it matter that Cuil's index is bigger?

So?

Bigger isn't better. I thought we'd learned that back in the late 90s. For most queries, it doesn't matter if the search engine returns 30 results or 1000. You' generally don't go past the 3rd page. What really matters is the ranking of the pages. If the page you wanted is on the 15th page, it might as well not be there at all.

How Cuil Actually Stacks Up:

Interface:

Pros: Slick and pretty. The content drill down is nice - although it doesn't always display relevant things. I also like having the page numbers locked at the bottom so that I don't have to scroll.
Cons: Ranking of results is unclear. There's 3 columns and the rows don't line up with each other. When I'm trying to actually find a good page, I'm not sure where to read.

Speed, Reliability, Performance

Pros: Speedy
Cons: Searches frequently fail. I got "no results" when I tried searching for "Google Talk". I tried the same search a second time and it worked.

Search Result Quality

Selection Criteria for Sample Queries: All queries were selected from my Google Web History, and were queries in which I was attempting to answer a question.

Query #1 (an error I am getting with Google App Engine): error 403 cpu quota exceeded
Cuil: No Results
Yahoo: #1 Result is Google App Engine article about it
Google: #1 Result is a Google Group question about this. #3 (or #5) is the Google App Engine article
Winner: with Google as a close second.
Answer: Common Error. Try using python's profiling.

Query #2: send pdf to kindle
Cuil: Show articles mentioning that you can do this, but not telling me how.
Yahoo: #1 Result is a discussion about it.
Google: #1 Result is a link to Amazon explaining how to do this.
Winner: Google
Answer: Your Kindle has an email address that you email the pdf to.

Query #3: 99 luftballoons translation
Cuil: #1 Result is a translation
Yahoo: #1 Result is someone asking for a translation
Google: #1 Result is a translation
Winner: Cuil & Google (tie).
Answer: It's about war. And red balloons. :-)

Query #4: "imagine no religion" billboard seattle
Cuil: No results
Yahoo: #1 Result is blog post mentioning it. #2 Result is press release about it.
Google: #1 Result is press release about it. #2 Result is blog post mentioning it.
Winner: Google, with Yahoo as a close second
Answer: This billboard was put up by the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Query #5: percent female math majors in US
Cuil: No results
Yahoo: #1 is a seemingly-relevant but dead link. #2 also seems relevant, but not a direct answer. #3 is about carbon monoxide levels at death. Hmm...
Google: #1 is related article that contains an answer to the question. #2 is a very relevant study, and the summary (which is as far as I read) indirectly answers the question. #3 is about a particular school's gender ratio.
Winner: Google.
Answer: 48% of math majors in the US are female.
Bonus Query: cuil

Cuil: Nothing even remotely related to the search engine.
Yahoo: #1 result is the search engine.
Google: #1 result is the search engine.
Winner: Google and Yahoo. Poor Cuil...
Answer: Google and Yahoo both know what Cuil is (as well as what each other). Cuil, sadly, does not.

Conclusions

While Cuil may claim to have a larger search index, the number of "no result" searches certainly suggest lesser web coverage. The flashy interface is mostly just that - flashy. It's pretty, but the three column layout leave your eyes wandering all over the page unsure of which result is meant to be the most relevant. A more cynical person might even suggest that the three column layout helps mask the fact that Cuil may not know an appropriate ranking.

If you want to get real traction as yet-another-search-engine, you'd better attack a different market from Google (or Baidu in China, or Yahoo in Japan, etc) or you'd better be substantially better than Google. Just being better isn't good enough, and Cuil has a long way to go even on that end.

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New MySQL Version is available

Drizzle is a newly announced fork of the open source MySQL project. The developers of the project are taking MySQL back to its roots as a light-weight web application database by removing many of the features introduced in MySQL 5. The fifth version of MySQL was in development for years as some users demanded features such as views, stored procedures, transaction handling, clustering and more. The early releases were bulkier and not as stable as the ultra-popular version 4 of MySQL, and now somebody has forked the codebase into a new project to take the database server back to what it was.

For most web application developers, only a basic database system is required. The original popularity of MySQL was because of its simplicity and ease of use. Postgres was always a full-featured open source database server that offered all the enterprise features of competing commercial systems. MySQL was a lighter alternative which was easy to install and learn, but a lot of that simplicity was lost as the development of MySQL progressed towards competing in the enterprise.

Drizzle would seem to have an instant user audience and developer base amongst those longing for the old MySQL. These developers are likely low to medium-end web application developers using a scripting environment and don’t require or don’t need an advanced database system. MySQL was a key part of the default LAMP stack that pioneered simple web application development which went on to open a whole new market. While MySQL 5 can be componentized and customized, developers seeking a smaller and lighter-weight database can revert to Drizzle, at least until the MySQL team see the demand and offer something themselves.

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Facebook Responds To MySpace With Facebook Connect

Facebook will announce later today Facebook Connect, which has similar functionality to MySpace Data Availability, announced just yesterday. The actual product won’t be released for at least a few weeks, so the timing on this, coming immediately after MySpace, is somewhat suspicious.

It is essentially a new version of their API for third party websites, which was first launched in August 2006.

It will allow users to “connect” their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any website. Third party websites will be able to implement and offer more features of the Facebook Platform off of Facebook – the same features available to third party applications today on Facebook.

To make data portable, Facebook believes it’s about giving users the ability to take their identity and friends with them around the Web, while being able to trust that their information is always up to date and always protected by their privacy settings. The next iteration will be available publicly within the next several weeks.

One of their initial launch partners will be Digg.

I spoke with Ben Ling, Director Platform Product Marketing, and Ruchi Sanghai, Product Manager for Facebook Platform, this afternoon about the upcoming changes.

Facebook Connect has four primary features:


Trusted Authentication – Anywhere during the user’s experience that the developer would like to add social context, the user will be able to authenticate and connect their account in a trusted environment. The user will have total control of the permissions granted. This is a proprietary authentication mechanism, but is more streamlined than the existing method and will not require a redirect back to Facebook.

Real Identity – Users can bring their real identity information with them wherever they go on the open Web, including: basic profile information, profile picture, name, friends, photos, events, groups, and more.

Friends Access – Users will be able to take their friends with them wherever they go on the open Web. Developers will be able to add rich social context to their websites, and will be able to show which of their Facebook friends already have accounts on their sites.

Dynamic Privacy – As a user moves around the open Web, their privacy settings will follow, ensuring that users’ information and privacy rules are always up-to-date.
Facebook connect is Facebook’s first honest attempt to allow access to Facebook user data outside of Facebook itself. The company is describing it as giving third party applications access to much of the same data as Facebook applications have today. We’ll know more in a couple of weeks when it formally launches.

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Search and Replace in Oracle

Suppose you want to update String value of a column based on search and replace, you can use Replace function of Oracle. It takes 3 parameters as follows.
1. Column name you are interested in to find and replace values of
2. Search String
3. Replacement String

for example, you can update the values of all names if they contain 'Ram' in themselves by 'Shyam'.

update user_account set user_name = replace(user_name, 'Ram','Shyam');
This will first search all user_names for 'Ram' and then updates them with String 'Shyam';

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Know IP address of machine on Solaris

You can use host command to know the IP address of your host machine.

$host devzone-ajaved
devzone-ajaved has address 10.27.111.126

for further informations on name server lookup, you can use nslookup command
as follows

$nslookup devzone-ajaved
Server: 10.27.111.126
Address: 10.27.111.126#53

Name: devzone-ajaved.sfo1.us.xxx.net
Address: 10.27.111.126

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Microsoft Acquires Data Optimization Provider Zoomix

Zoomix, an Isreali-based company that provides a data optimization and acceleration layer for storage engines, has confirmed today that they have been acquired by Microsoft for an undisclosed amount. The primary product from Zoomix is the Accelerator, a data server that normalizes, links and synchronizes data without requiring user specification or input. It learns from your data sets and associates objects and records that may be related, so its primary goal is to not only clean up data but to automate the mundane tasks that often fall onto DBMs or BA’s.


Microsoft will integrate the tech and R&D team at Zoomix into their existing data team in Israel. Microsoft plan on integrating the technology from Zoomix Accelerator into SQL Server as part of a broader strategy in developing SQL Server into more than just an RDBM but rather a complete data storage and management platform. Microsoft recently confirmed that SQL Server 2008 will be released to manufacturing in August, after being available in release candidate status since January.

SQL Server 2008 integrates the new Always On technology, a clustering and failover technology aimed to increase the reliability of SQL Server and increase its penetration potential within medium and higher end enterprise customers. SQL Server now also supports multiple new data types at both the storage level (with binary BLOB’s) and higher structure level (XML sets and particular data types such as email, calendar entries, and more). The new features of SQL Server 2008, along with incorporated technologies such as those from Zoomix, are forming the foundations of a solid set of data products from Microsoft.

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which process is using a specific port

how to check which process is using a specific port on your linux server.

"lsof -i :"

For example to see which process is using port 80 simply enter

"lsof -i :80" (without the quotes of course)

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AOL to launch Platform-A

Its raining networks in India
from TechnoTrail by Rajat

AOL is all set to launch Platform-A in August or September.
In the process advertising.com, which is part of Platform-A, will make its Indian debut.

Invizi Ad Network, has been launched by Games2Win, with adSense like model for in game advertising.

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Google Ad Manager for publishers

Google has launched (in beta) hosted ad management solution for publishers-AdManager,the solution helps deliver and optimize ad inventory for both directly sold and network based inventory (including adSense) and yes its free.

Another player in the same space is OpenAds now known as OpenX ,which at the moment is not a hosted solution."

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