Gmail’s Social Initiative – Don’t Drink And Mail

“It’s Saturday night and I am sitting alone at home, surfing aimlessly on the World Wide Web. This week hasn’t been so good. My girlfriend broke up with me, cause she didn’t trust me anymore. All thanks to a couple of pictures that I sent to her by mistake after a wild night at Havana and Pure. How much I wish there was a way I could take that e-mail back. I wonder if someone can develop a technology, that wouldn’t allow a drunk guy to send e-mail”.

If you’re the kind of person who types tipsy and regrets it in the morning, Google’s “Mail Goggles,” a new test-phase feature in the free Gmail service, might save you some angst, regret and potential break-ups. As Gmail engineer and Mail Goggle’s creator John Perlow writes, “Sometimes I send messages I shouldn’t send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can’t always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we’re launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.”

The Goggles can kick in late at night on weekends. The feature requires you to solve a few easy math problems in short order before hitting “send.” If your logical thinking skills are intact, Google is betting you’re sober enough to work out the repercussions of sending that screed you just drafted. And if you can’t multiply two times five, you’ll probably thank Google in the morning. To activate Goggles, Gmail users should click the “Settings” link at the top of a Gmail page, then go to the “Labs” section.

While the concept does appears to be interesting and useful it seems to have been implemented as more of a gag, as pointed out by Brennon Slattery on his pcworld blog, read here. Anyways, the nice thing about Google is that it keeps innovating and at times even implements features suggested by it’s users (a look at the Labs feature in Gmail shows the number of cool Gmail apps that are available ), maybe that’s one of the reasons why no google product ever comes out of beta.

Hear It, Record It and SHAZAM, You Got It

Imagine yourself in the following situations and just try to think what is common to all of them :

• On the way to or from work you hear an amazing track on the radio that you’ve heard many times before and you really liked. You would love to get hold of this track for your iPod but you just don’t know the name of track or the artist.
• You are at a club or at a bar having a good time with your friends and you hear a track that catches your fancy, it would be great if you could catch hold of that track to add it to your collection but again “How do you find out the track information ? “

The above are just a few scenarios where you just wished that there was a way you could find out the track information of the song you were hearing. Well, if you’re still wishing then it’s get ready to rejoice cause your prayers have just been answered. Shazam ID, Music ID or Track ID are the latest technologies that allow people to find out the track information of any song just by recording the first few seconds of that song. Pioneered and developed by Shazam Entertainment, a privately held company headquartered in London, this technology is designed for mobile handsets which have access to the internet.

So how does one use Music Id. Simple, the Music Id application resides on your phone which has access to the internet either via GPRS, 3G or Wi-Fi. As soon as you hear a song that you like, you turn on the application and choose the option to find the music id of the song. As soon as you do this the application records the song for 5 seconds, sends the data to a database and within the next 5 seconds you have the information about the song that you were looking for. So basically in just 10 seconds one can find out all the information about a particular track. Shazam uses a patented fingerprinting technology that recognizes practically any audio that is within the recognition database very quickly and with a very small amount of audio even under heavy noise. Shazam’s internals are, no doubt, “commercially confidential“, however there is some information on possible algorithms available on the web.

The basic game is to compute a spectrogram at points of peak intensity in the music; the argument here is that a piece of music is, roughly speaking, characterized by how the loudest bits sound. At each peak in each piece of music, the spectrogram is divided into 180 buckets with frequencies between 200 and 2000Hz, and an entire piece of music is described by a sequence of such 180-value spectrograms, stored with their time position in the song. Matching is done by computing a similar sequence of spectrograms from the query (as recorded from your telephone or whatever) and searching for similar spectrograms in the database of known songs (sure, all this is not so easy to understand for the layman, but see here if you wish to know more technical details).

Shazam ID or Music ID is now available for a number of different phone models and was recently also introduced for the iPhone. It’s a really cool application and is great way to impress your friends or even win over people that you may like. The video below shows a practical use case of Music Id as well as a demonstration.

Looks great doesn’t it. So now the next time you need to find something about a track that you hear, just relax and Shazam it.

DP Travel : Madrid, The Capital That Rocks

The Madrid City Travelogue, Brought To You By DelhiPlanet Travel

Country: Capital Of Spain as well as the capital of the autonomous community of the same name (Comunidad de Madrid). It is Spain’s largest city, with a population (city) of 3.228 million (July 2005) and 5.843 million (metropolitan area).

National Carrier: Iberia. Other Spanish Airlines are SpanAir and Vueling.

Local Language: Spanish is the official language of Madrid and the whole of Spain. Spanish is the second most spoken language by native speakers however there are mild differences in the spanish spoken in Spain and other Latin American countries.

Time Zone: Spain is in the Central European Time Zone. Central European Standard Time (CET) is 1 hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT+1). Like most countries in Europe, Summer (Daylight-Saving) Time is observed in Spain, where the time is shifted forward by 1 hour; 2 hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT+2).

Best Time To Visit: The best time to visit Madrid is from March to June, that is spring time. Summers in Spain are hot and sultry while winters are very cold. Another good time to visit Madrid is between September through early November when the weather is nice and cool.

Best Place To Stay For Youths:

Los Amigos Backpackers Hostel, is the main hostel in Madrid dedicated exclusively to the backpack travellers and 100% oriented towards their specific needs. It is quite centrally located and offers most of the facilities needed by backpackers. If you’re travelling during backpacking season, i.e between May to August then do book in advance.

Cat’s Hostel has an old palace like setting and the entrance to the hostel is situated in a road that runs parallel to the most important and best known street in terms of the Madrid night scene. The hostel has a Cave Bar and is quite lively in the nights.

Description:

Madrid can be described as a city that is always bustling with energy. The culture of Madrid is dominated by its religious and royal history. Enormous, monolithic cathedrals and churches are plentiful in Madrid, as well as medieval architecture, although nowadays Madrid is just as much a cosmopolitan city as Berlin or London, and it’s bustling nightlife is proof of this fact.

There exists a famous adage known as “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”. Well, in the city of Madrid it is possible to spend the night hopping from one club to another, and end up drunk with a bunch of people while partying on the street. All this without spending a single penny. Many clubs in Madrid invite club goers in for a free drink after which one has the option of staying on or leaving. So if you’re low on cash then just keep hopping from one club to another while enjoying all the free drinks. Madrid has a very active nightlife and possibly it also has the largest number of bars per capita of any European city.

Must See: Madrid has some amazing places which are definetly worth checking out, the most popular amongst these are:

• Palacio Real: The Royal Palace of Madrid (Spanish: Palacio Real de Madrid) is the official residence of the King of Spain. King Juan Carlos and the royal family do not actually reside in this palace, instead choosing the smaller Palacio de la Zarzuela, on the outskirts of Madrid. However, the Palacio Real de Madrid is still used for state occasions. The palace is owned by the Spanish state and administered by the Patrimonio Nacional agency. The palace also has the distinction of being the largest royal palace in Western Europe in size, with over a combined area of over 135,000 m² and more than 2,800 rooms. The Palace is a major tourist attraction although most of the areas of the palace are cordoned off and there is always a lot of security here ( Catch a glimpse of the palace in our video below).
• The Real Madrid Football Stadium: If you are a football fan then Madrid is the place to be in. It is well-known for it’s famous club Real Madrid and the football stadium of the club is definetly worth a visit. In the off-season the stadium is like a museum and visitors can check out the history of the club, the stadium, the trophies, player potraits and even buy some authentic stuff at the store. The tour costs around 10 euros and includes the chance to walk around the field, visit the player dugouts, dorms and press rooms (Catch a glimpse of this ground in our video below ).
• Gran Via: Gran Vía (literally “Great Way”) is an ornate and upscale shopping street located in central Madrid. Literally, “Broadway“, Gran Via is one of the busiest avenues in Madrid, and is what you could call “Downtown” or the heart of the city. It is in a way very similar to Times Square in New York City and is definetly worth a visit at any time of the day.

Must Do: Well, now that you’ve seen the cool places it’s time to get involved and enjoy the spirit of the city. When in Madrid make sure to do the following:

• Watch Flamenco: Flamenco is a Spanish dance form, which involves a lot of body movement, extreme foot tapping as well as intricate hand and footwork. There are many clubs in Madrid, where you can get a chance to watch some Flamenco. At most places an entry fee is charged which covers one complimentary drink and around 30-45 minutes of dance. Although you might get a chance to see some flamenco action in Mexico and other Latin American countries it won’t be anything like it would be in Madrid, as the dance form originates from Spain (Watch some flamenco action in our video below ).
• Go Club Hopping: As described earlier, Madrid has an amazing night life and unless you’re coming to Madrid from Ibiza or Barcelona you wouldn’t want to miss the action. One must visit the Palacio Gaviria which is a club that was earlier a palace (Checkout some hot club action in our video below ).
• Get Your Potrait Done: Have your portrait drawn in the Plaza Mayor. Generally very good quality and the prices are very reasonable.

Madrid in Pictures: Catch our exclusive video of this amazing city.