Are you lieing to a buddy of yours on skype?I am sure we all have said some things that were not entirely true at some point, just for the heck of it.Well, there is news for you, as skype has announced an addition of a new feature called lie dectector.

This will be an add-on for skype users called KishKish Lie Dectector,which is made by a company called BATM.Basically, it analyzes audio streams over a skype call in real time and illustrates the stress levels of the other person.Users have the ability to even record calls over skype and then later analyze it using the lie dectector as well.

Kishkish is responsible for designing many of skpe’s current features including voice mail, book & mobile and call recorder. BATM says it hopes to be able to provide Skype users with further additions in the near future like the lie detector.

Many argue that the lie dectector is only capable of detecting variations in sound frequency and thus providing flase results.Thats almost a given since lie detectors used by law officials are not even capable of providing accurate results.

This add-on will certainly provide for a greater communication experience, but not one of importance.Hopefully this technology will increase the popularity skype currently holds which is 126 million users. 

Download Skype | Watch Lie Detector in Action | Download Kishkish

Images indexed by google can be a great source of traffic for bloggers.Although this fact is known among many SEO experts, your average blogger would not be aware of this.

I am sure all of you are aware of google image search which retrieves pictures relating to a query you provide. Well, the rules involved in indexing images in google are irrelevant to the ranking method used for your text. Since image results are based on assumptions, even the smallest of websites can stay ahead of large corporations in this area.

In the past, Google was  hesitant in disclosing information about the method in which they rank images, much like the way they keep their search algorithms a secret. However during a SES convention in chicago, a group of analyists provided some insights into optimizing your images for Google Image search.

» Place text around images not inside image files. Search engines for the most part are not capable of reading text inside of images. If the image is directly related to the text you are using, then google should be able to display your image more accuratly.

» Take advantage of alt tags for all of your images. Make sure the alt text is descriptive and unique. For instance, alt text such as “picture1″ or “logo” doesn’t provide much information about the image. “Charting the path of stock x” and “Company Y” give more details.

» Don’t overload your alt text. Be descriptive, but don’t stuff it with extra keywords.

» It’s important to use alt text for any image on your pages, but if your company name, navigation, or other major elements of your pages are in images, alt text becomes especially important. Consider moving vital details to text to ensure all visitors can view them.

» Look at the image-to-text ratio on your page. How much text do you have? One way of looking at this is to look at your site with images turned off in your browser. What content can you see? Is the intent of your site obvious? Do the pages convey your message effectively?

» Opt into Enhanced Image Search in Web Master Tools. This allows google to ensure that all your images are indexed accuratly by adding metadata to your images.

» An additional tip to keep in mind is to use descriptive filenames for your images. For the most part, avoid using commonly used filenames for that image. For example, if your site provides pictures detailing the release of the new Iphone, then try using “IPhone-launch-day.jpg” instead of just “IPhone.jpg”.

These are some of the small but effective measures your can take to ensure better ranking for your images in google. Although, getting your images listed in google image search can be a great source of traffic, be aware people who will try to steal your bandwidth by hotlinking images on your webserver.

It is no secret that Google has been busy with acquisitions of new software and updating their current list of services.Their latest addition to their services is the ability to search a full list of patents currently available in the government database.

For sometime, the general public has been complaining about the difficulty in actually finding a certain patent for a product in the government database.This new search feature allows users to find and view full text of U.S patents.You may search according to patent number, inventor, filing date, or by providing a term relating to the invention in the search box.

The detailed text and images truly make it a wonderful experience. Google patent search basically uses the same technology used in google book search.To a rather negative note,International Patents are not supported, but you may want to try Delphion for Patents outside of U.S.A.

Google Patent Search | Interesting Patents: Underwear / Boxing Glove / Popcorn Machine / Merry-Go-Round

Adobe today launched a website called CSS advisor to help web developers find solutions to browser incompatibilties among the many browsers.

The Website aims to solve problems many developers will come across while trying to make their website appear functional across multiple browsers such as Firefox,Internet Explorer,Opera and such forth.

Microsoft has taken a leap towards a more CSS compliant browser with the release of Internet Explorer 7.0. However,their previous version IE 6.0 was a nightmare in which developers must still deal with.

Even with automatic updates from Microsoft to IE 7.0,many if not most still use the previous version.With the release of windows vista coming in January,we can be sure that most web users will be using the newest version of IE.

This big question many of you are asking is,”How would adobe benefit from offering such a service?”.Lets just say,Adobe doesn’t make moves just for your appreciation.In fact they have stated that they will intergrate the CSS advisor database along with Dreamwaver.Dreamweaver is Adobe’s HTML-based tool for building rich Internet applications that do not use the company’s Flash technology.

Few days after the launch of Internet Explorer 7.0,Yahoo stragically launched a promotion page consisting of a costumized version of Internet Explorer packed with yahoo tools.This was a effective method to get yahoo users to try out tools that were created by them.

Recently Google has decided to take into consideration the same idea to promote Google’s enormous set of tools and services.Unfortunately the designer responsible of the page did not take into consideration the resemblence between their promotion page and yahoo’s interface.Jeremy Zawodny was first to post his reaction when first coming across theis newly designed page promoting a costumized google version of IE 7.0. 

However,it hasn’t been proven if the designer was aware of yahoo’s interface when designing google’s costumized internet explorer page.Matt Cutts of google has even apologized about this matter in his personal blog.

I can only speak for me personally on this. If Jeremy looked into it and says that it wasn’t a template from Microsoft, I believe him. That would mean that the Yahoo! page was used as a template for Google’s IE7 promo page. I can’t say why someone at Google would decide to do that, but to the Yahoo! UI designer whose page was copied: my apologies. In my personal opinion, it sucks when someone else copies a page layout without attribution.

In my opinion,I am rather suprised at the fact that google would ever consider copying a layout designed by their sole competitor.This would give many of it’s fans a negative view of the company’s value towards intellectual property.

Resources: Yahoo IE 7.0 Promotion Page | Google IE 7.0 Promotion Page [updated]

Social Media sites such as digg.com,reddit.com,and delicious are facing threats concerning their credibility.Recently there has been news of companies paying top digg users to promote articles.

The problem behind this idea is that digg was intially founded on the basic idea that general users should have the power to promote content of their liking without any outside influence.This model has proved to be successful for digg.com as it is one of most popular websites on the web.Its even regarded as one of the symbols when speaking of Web 2.0.

Top digg users spend anywhere from 3-4 hours daily looking for interesting and useful content on the web.It’s not a suprise that many of these users feel they should be payed for all their hard work.

Since digg does not pay them for their work,they are now taking pay from companies whose sole purpose is to generate higher search ranking.Higher search rankings help these companies generate higher revenue by the increased traffic digg brings about.

Infact Jason Calacanis,founder of weblogs inc. reported of proof concerning the issue.In his entry he states:

A PR/marketing firm confirmed with me that they had a number of the top 50 users on digg now on the payroll–and this wasn’t a totally insignificant firm.

The problems that digg is facing now is that a portion–certainly not all–of the top users feel like they should be getting paid for the 3-4 hours they spend on the site each day. Since digg will not pay them for their work they are finding other ways to get compensated.

Digg certainly does have a feature currently in place to deal with this threat.Users have the ability to bury items they feel is unworthy.Anyhow the possibilty that digg might consider using paid editors to clean up content seems closer to reality.

I am suprised to find such a fast and convenient e-mail service that is completely free.Gmail offered a service with 2GB storage space which caught many of us by suprise and just think of the reaction when considering 5GB of online storage space.

Inbox.com does just that with some great additional features that will make you think twice about your current email.Your Mail in inbox.com can be accessed by either the web or a POP enabled mail client such as Microsoft Outlook.Their web interface is designed to be fast and reliable.Also the text editor offers all the capabilities found in many of the popular services currently out there.

You can organize mail using stars, custom folders and automatic filters.Remote images in emails can be blocked from automatic download in Inbox.com to protect your privacy.Inbox.com lets you view mail in threads and supports rich HTML formatting in outgoing messages.You can send messages up to a size of 30 MB from Inbox.com.

In addition to a very useful email service,inbox.com offers services such as free photosharing.Your photos can be stored in their server to share with your friends and family.Those photos can be even be organized into albums.

There are a few drawbacks to be considered before you decide to use it.For one,this service does not allow the use of IMAP access .Also labels and smart folders found in services such as gmail are not visible in inbox.com.They should certainly improve on those aspects and so could become even more appealing than it is now.