Not much publicity or hype has been on the new Google Knol [A unit of knowledge]. But it looks like Google prefers ranking its Knol articles in SERP better than other websites.

This favoritism has been noted by a number of publishers. Even an article originally posted in a different website with good PR many months back, if when copied and posted in Knol can give higher results than the original article. This has caused a number of concerns as Google who played the Pope all these days is now trying to promote its own website. This is not a fair game by Google which would just result in loss of reputation.

When a duplicate article is posted on Knol, Google warns that it is a duplicate content as it identifies from where the content was extracted. However, when the same duplicate content is posted, it ranks even better than the original content. Google might claim that this is based on the “Query Deserves Freshness” algorithm which it has been promoting during the recent days. But that doesn’t mean that “new duplicate content deserves more” or “we will add PR to our sites the way we want” Google algorithms are valid.

With Google falsely promoting its own new site, SEO experts have identified the potential in linking to these pages and a large number of search engine experts have already started adding articles or linking their websites to Google Knol.

When many websites experience low page views during the summer, LA Times quietly achieved a massive traffic of 127 million page views during July. This is 7 million more than its May record and 66% growth from its previous year.

LA Times credits its success to its search engine optimization it carries out. Mentioning in its press release, “Latimes.com keeps getting better at SEO (search engine optimization), which means our stories are ranking higher in Google and other search engines.” The release also added, “We are also performing better on sites like Digg.com. All that adds up to more exposure and more readership than ever before.”

The huge traffic has also helped bring up some of its top categories like the “Breaking News” and “Multimedia” to the finals of Online Journalism Awards.

Some of the most read articles in July were the Jackson’s Obama comments which went unnoticed and the earthquake in the L.A area. In addition many blogs like Top of the Ticket and The Dish Rag have hugely contributed to the traffic on July.

16 Serial Bomb Blasts in Ahmedabad

After the Bomb Blasts in IT capital of India, Bangalore two days back, its now Ahmedabad. A stunning 13 bomb blasts have taken place in Bapu anagar, Maninagar, Isanpur, Narol Circle, Narodha Patiya, Hatkeshkar and Hakar areas in 15 minutes of Ahmedabad today. Eighteen people have died in this shocking Ahmedabad bomb blast.

The bomb blasts have happened starting at 6:45 pm to 7:00 pm today. Bapu Nagar faced the first blast happened near Danmanthri Hospital. Bapu Nagar is a very crowded area anytime and is called the diamond city of India with a lot of diamond workers.

A CNG bus was blown away completely during the blast in Sarkhej. Initial reports also state other areas had blasts using cycles and tiffen boxes.

48 have been injured in the blasts and have been admitted in the hospital. Awaiting further news.

7 Bomb Blasts in Bangalore kill 1 Injure Many

Seven bomb blasts rocked the IT Capital today. The blasts made Bangalore on a stand-still today. The locations include Adugudi, Nayandahalli, Ashok Nagar, Koramangala, Madiwala bus stand, Vittal Malya Road. The blast happend subsequently within few minutes in 1:30 afternoon.

One woman and four others have been killed in the bangalore bomb blast and several injured.  Other places include Mallya hospital, Langford Road and Richmond Circle in Bangalore city. Two blasts are reported to be in Madivala.

The first blast has been reported to have taken place near Madiwala check post. This is located close to Forum Mall, an important shopping center where crowds of youngsters hang out usually on a friday evening. The second bangalore blast took place in Nayandahalli which connects Mysore Road. This has a huge number of traffic usually. Nayandhalli has been followed by Adugodi blast.

The bombs are reported to have been made using gelatin sticks. Reports state that the blasts are of low intensity as they were made similar to ones used in coal mines. The bombs had timer devices and were triggered using mobile phones.

The injured have been admitted in St. Johns Hospital in bangalore.  Bangalore City Police Commissioner Shankar Bidri has reqested bangalorians not to panic and to carry on with their normal activities. However, people have restrained from going out and have stayed back in their offices or at home.

Well the IT capital, Bangalore is not new to terrorism. There has been many incidents in the software capital of India. The recent one being a terrorist attack in IISc campus, bangalore.

On october 2007,, police arrested two pakistani nationals in Mysore for attacking the Karnataka Secretariat, Vidhan Soudha.

South India has not been spared from bomb blasts. Coimbatore in 1998 faced a series of bomb blasts followed by Hyderabad with twin bomb blasts in Mecca Masjid.

Further news awaiting on Bangalore Bomb Blasts.

Looks like all Indian companies are in a aqusition stratergy. India based tech company HCL has signed a $2 million deal to buy a U.K based back-office service firm, Liberata Financial Services.

Liberata Financial Services (LFS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Liberata Limited, provides services for pensioners and life. The company has an annual revenue of about $60 million. LFS multi-year contracts are worth $540 million.

Eyeing on the benefits and profit margin, HCL has made the move to acquire it at any cost. Chief Executive Officer for HCL Business Processing and Outsourcing, Ranjit Narasimhan stated, “This acquisition will equip HCL with a ready capability across the value chain by providing access to an existing revenue stream of policy management, actuarial and analytics,”

HCL Technoloigies has planned to invest $24 million in the next three years to increase its revenue. It should also be noted that HCL would aquire four delivery centers in UK which would be part of the deal. The employee strength would be 800, all four centers combined.

Ahead of deal, HCL Indian shares at BSE closed at 215.35 rupees

Intel would face a new anti-trust charge from European regulators with regard to the chip manufacturing giants marketing practices.

The allegation on Intel is that the chip giant gave top European retailers inducements not to sell computers that have chips from its arch rival Advanced Micro Devices.

Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy while speaking to Wall Street Journal, “We are continuing to cooperate and really don’t know what the commission will do,” and added, “We believe we operate within the law.”

Intel has been caught in anti-trust practices world wide. It has been under scrutiny and debates in South Korea, Europe, Japan and in the U.S. There has also been a recent investigation launched against Intel at the state level by the New York Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo.

The rival AMD has always been a target for Intel recently. AMD has had an increasing level of market share in the last 12 months with its competitive prices and excellent cock speeds.

The 171-year-old jewelry company Tiffany & Co lost to eBay on a suit filed by Tiffany on counterfeit auction listing on eBay. This could be a pleasant surprise for auctioneers like Amazon, Yahoo and Google.

Tiffany’s lawyer’s contacted eBay in 2003 stating that any seller who sells five or more pieces of Tiffany jewelry should be automatically deleted. eBay in turn did not consider this demand and stated that, “we are not prepared to do at this time”. This frustrated Tiffany who again approached eBay to ban all silver Tiffany jewelry. eBay again refused the request. eBay was not willing to accept this demand because it felt that considering a listing infringing just because the seller sold multiple items at the same time is not reasonable.

This long argument was finally put to an end by Judge Sullivan on Monday. He mentioned that eBay always removed listings promptly whenever Tiffany notified of any counterfeit goods. He also mentioned that eBay even delayed listings of Tiffany products by 6 to 12 hours just to do a manual check before making the products live. The judge stated, “As a factual matter, there is little support for Tiffany’s allegation that a seller listing five or more pieces of Tiffany jewelry is presumptively trafficking in counterfeit goods.”

It should be noted that eBay provides the service VeRO – Verified Rights Owner were a trademark owner can report or remove infringing listings. There are more than 14,000 companies and individual merchants participating in this program. Tiffany is one of them.

eBay spends $5 million each year on its fraud search engine identifying counterfeit listings. The search engine has 13,000 rules set to find out fraudsters through a keyword search algorithm.

The massive database system to fight crime and terrorism has been planned by UK government. Concerns have been raised whether this huge concept is realistic as there are more than 57 billion text messages and 3 billion emails sent each day in Britain. Is the government capable of handling such a huge system is still on debate.

However, the UK government is keen on taking the concept forward as the home officials have started discussions with telecommunication companies and Internet Service Providers for preparing a data communications bill in the Queen’s Speech in November.

Concerns have also been raised by the Assistant Information Commissioner, Jonathan Bamford whether there is a justification for the State to have every UK citizen’s phone and e-mail records. He also mentions that holding such large collection of important data is always risky and that the more data collected and stored, the bigger the risk of data being stolen, lost or sold.

Sounds like Microsoft would never give up fighting Google. Well not through technology or creative innovation, but through acquisition. Or is it that Microsoft feels loosing out a bid is degrading its name?

Microsoft Corporation, the Redmond based software giant has again renewed its discussions with Yahoo on a deal to overtake Google. This time Microsoft is not on a pursuit for full acquisition of Yahoo. In return, it’s planning on an alternative to search advertising partnership.

It should be noted that Google had a two week test with Yahoo having its ads displayed in Yahoo search results. Looks like MSN is alarmed at the two giants partnering up as Google and Yahoo alone have more than 80% internet search market covered.

Microsoft’s desperate plans to become a leader in internet search and advertising is not proving fruitful though MSN ranks as one of the leaders in internet technology. MSN has been offering bids with Yahoo in February 2008 and as a private bid in February 2007 which was not publicized.

Google presented a surprising factory tour which unveiled its local search, universal search, Google Ads, Google Image Search and its new offering Google Health.

Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience launched the “>event. This was followed by R.J Pittman, Director of Product Management who is also the co-founder of Web 2.0 search company Groxis. Pittman discussed about image ad experiments in Google.

Universal Search and visitors expectations was explained by Johanna Wright who is the director of search quality. The presentation also revealed that Google Universal Search is now available in 100 languages covering 150 countries around the world.

Carter Maslan discussed about local search and its complexities. “Perfect local search requires a near-perfect mirror world”, Carter mentioned when speaking about how Google search engine identify a place. Carter was a former Microsoft employee who joined Google at Mountain View, California.

Marissa Mayer also officially revealed Google Health. Google Health would help users store their medical information online and also share their records with medical service providers.

The Google factory tour presented webmasters and the press an exclusive inside view of search technologies, issues and search-related development happening in Google.  The presentation had invites which included bloggers and members of the press. The entire presentation had an excellent webcast which was relayed live on the internet.