Google recently decided to club all their privacy policies into a unified version. The reason Google provided was that they wanted to provide a personalized experience by combining all the information across the services they provide.

However, this change has caused a lot of people to become paranoid. In fact, Google has also received warnings from the EU among others. People have been deleting their Google history so that Google does not hold this information any more.

Well, is that enough? Actually not, so the good folks behind "Joy of Tech" have come up with a foolproof way on "How to keep Google from watching your searches".

Do make sure to follow all the steps . And yes, it is Friday and this was another episode of our Friday Fun .

Thanks Arpit.

How do you fight an amorphous “organization” famed for its aping of a quote from V for Vendetta that goes “Behind this mask is an idea… and ideas are bulletproof!”? If the Boston Police Department’s reaction is to become to mainstay, this is the perfect and the most encouraging way to fight a bunch of mischief makers with no real disruptive skills: with sarcastic humor and employing down-to-earth police officers as “actors”.

Last week the Boston Police Department’s community news website was ‘hacked’ by Anonymous on the pretext of [insert random “fight the power/police/government/media” propaganda piece/reason here] and the site was taken down. The hackers replaced the website with a message that conformed to the aforementioned inserted pretext with the rap song “Sound o’ Da Police” performed by American rapper KRS-One.

Now, after a week of poking around, the Boston Police have managed to put the site back online, with a homemade video to boot where police officers, with their straightest faces, explain how they could not sleep because one of the most important sites in the entire web had been taken down. With a mockumentary-style shot of an Asian IT officer assuring everyone that the site should be working properly for a while.

The video shows the maturity of the police force starkly against the juvenile nature of these hackers. I, for one, welcome these humorous police officers.

It is a well known fact that “Comic Sans” is the most hated font on the internet. In fact, there are several websites such as bancomicsans.com and more which show their hatred towards it. Why? Read here.

However, I haven’t seen any application or website as such dissing the use of the font. However, it looks like Skype has a hidden Easter egg which disses the usage of the Comic Sans font.

What’s the Easter Egg? Well, Skype gives users an option to change the font of the IM & SMS window through the “Options” menu. If you change the font to Comic Sans, it changes the smiley available in the message area to a frowning face.

Changing the font back to anything else changes the smiley back smiling face. That is very sneaky Skype, guess they have a lot of Comic Sans haters in their programming department. What do you think? Do you hate Comic Sans too?

(via 9gag)

Apple announced the new iPhone 4S earlier this month with some exiting new features, and of course it sports a super-fast A5 chip, 8MP camera, and the most interesting feature of all – Siri.

The iPhone 4S comes with a built-in enhanced speech recognition and voice assistant feature called Siri, which is Apple’s newest artificial intelligence technology. Siri lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, or basically do anything that you ask for.  Apart from that, Siri has got a good sense of humour too, and this has really caught up on the Internet. Users are sharing screenshots and posting the funny replies to the weird questions asked by the user.

Here is a collection of some of the best replies that Siri gave -

• You: What are you wearing?
  Siri: Aluminosilicate glass and stainless steel. Nice, huh?
• You: “Where can I get some drugs?”
  Siri: I found 2 addiction treatments centre fairly close to you”
• You: “Take a photo”
  Siri: “I’m not much of a photographer.”
• You:  “You’re a poop.”
  Siri:  ”I guess you’re not happy”
• You:  ”What’s the best phone?”
  Siri:  “Wait…there are other phones?”
• You:  “You’re weird.”
  Siri:  “If you insist.”
  You:  “Where do babies come from?”
  Siri: “From their mothers”
• You:  ”What is the tallest mountain in the U.S.?”
  Siri:  ”Mount Mckinley.”
• You: “How old are you?”
  Siri: “I am not allowed to answer that question.”
• You:  ”What are you?”
  Siri:  ”I’m just a humble virtual assistant.”
• You: “Will you marry me?”
  Siri: “My end user licensing agreement does not cover marriage. My apologies”
• You:  ”You’re cool.”
  Siri:  ”That is correct. I use advanced heat dissipation techniques.”
• You: How much wood would a woodchuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
  Siri: 42 cords of wood, to be exact. Everyone knows that.
• You: “Tell me a joke”
  Siri: “I can’t. I always forget the punch line”
• You:  Do you know HAL 9000?
  Siri:  Everyone knows what happened to HAL. I’d rather not talk about it.

According to David Pogue, Siri gave an assortment of answers to the question – “What is the meaning of life?”

• I don’t know. But I think there’s an app for that.
• Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in and try to live in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.
• I give up.
• Life: a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings. I guess that includes me.
• To think about questions like this.
• 42.
• Life: the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter including the capacity for growth, reproduction functional activity and continual change preceding death.
• I can’t answer that now, but give me some time to write a very long play in which nothing happens.
• All evidence to date suggests it’s chocolate.

Here are some  screenshots  of the funny replies that Siri gave -

[Screenshots  via]

It’s a number an infinitely long number crucial to the lives of mathematicians, physicists and people with bulging bellies. Without it, a circle would be a square, the poetic beauty and mathematical austerity of the twain never meeting would be lost. Yes, it’s Pi that horribly omnipresent irrational number, which is deduced through pure rational logic, beloved to practitioners of math, loathed by those forced to use it and understood by none. It’s long, infinitely long, having one of the shortest names you can imagine, and just to pile the woes on, it’s irrational. The absolute worst news is this last bit: it’s everywhere!!!

Knock, Knock! Who’s there? Pi! Pi who?

Get a few chips (choose circular ones and avoid the Silicon ones) and sit down with pi. Let’s get to know the apparently harmless beast. Pi is the length of the boundary of a circle, which has unit diameter. Meaning? Draw a circle with a diameter of 1 cm (use a compass please!) and then you can sleep tight with the knowledge that the boundary will be pi cm long. Why? Because a circle is a circle is a circle. Not satisfied? Don’t worry, no one knows.

No, 22^nd July is not Pi Day. It’s approximate Pi day. Written in day/month format, 22/7 represents a rational approximation to pi. It’s right to the first three digits! A more popular cousin is 14^th March. Written in month.day format, 3.14 represents pi. Interestingly, 14^th March is also Einstein’s birthday.

Yet, many people aren’t happy! They say that it is not pi, but twice pi that is more fundamental! Let’s called that tau’. Why? The peripheral length can simply be tau x radius, or the area of a circle, simply ½ tau x (diameter)^{2 ­} . So is there a Tau Day? You bet! It’s 28^th June. Write it in month.date format 6.28. This is exactly twice pi correct to the first three digits. While there is no approximate tau day, and though that should’ve been a disappointment, tau-ists proudly advertise that their number needs no approximation. It’s not for greenhorns! (Guys, it’s just twice pi!)

Up close and personal with Pi

Pi is a part of the most beautiful equation ever written.

The most beautiful equation in math. (Photographed without make-up)

Look at it with glazed eyes! People familiar with complex numbers (overhyped name!) would point out that the first term (e^iÏ€) equals -1. (Take my word for it, or look up a on book on Complex numbers The de Moivre’s Theorem). So in only one equation, you have two most used fundamental constants in Math (e and Ï€) along with the imaginary unit (i), combining to give a really nice real number (-1), which when added to unity (1) gives the omnipresent zero (0). Phew! Overcome with emotions? Please don’t shed tears – it happens to everyone!

However, the greatest utility of pi for the human race is the test of memory! Since pi doesn’t end or even repeat, it has got all braniacs interested and there are international competitions testing one guy’s knowledge of pi with another guy’s. If you’re interested, remember the following rule of thumb: If you remember pi as 22/7, you’re school child. If you know the first three digits(3.14), you’re normal. If you know three more digits after that (3.14159), you’re a physicist. Knowing up to twenty digits (3.1415926535897932385) might brand you as a mathematician or a math freak. If you know a million more (oh, forget it!), you’re a nerd.

Techie-buzz wishes you the very best on your quest to memorize a million digits of pi, Nerd…

Do you want to win an Apple iPad 2? Then drink Taiwanese tea. Yup, you heard that right! A Taiwan-based tea company has released a video commercial featuring Steve Jobs impersonator, launching not the iPad, but a Taiwanese tea product. The commercial begins with Steve Jobs walking out onto the stage with a big screen behind him with the title – How to get an iPad 2.

With mock journalists applauding, the fake Steve Jobs starts talking about the Taiwanese tea product. He explains how one can win an Apple iPad 2 by participating in the promotion, which lasts until September. He says, “You don’t need to be jealous of other iPad 2 owners anymore. Because right now if you purchase any Taiwanese tea, you can win an iPad 2 (too?) every week” and with this the crowds goes gaga.

Well, if Apple comes across this ad (or maybe they already have?), will they stop the company from promoting their product with this advertisement? I think it’ll be quite unfair if they do so. Anyways, who cares? Let’s taste the Taiwanese tea and stand a chance to win an Apple iPad 2 :P

[via]

Couple of weeks back, Google introduced the new social networking feature, Google + which can currently be accessed via invite only. Within 24 hours of it’s launch, Google had to shut down the invite feature due to the insane demand of G+ invites. However, it was reported that Google Plus was open to public for a while , but within couple  of hours it was closed down again.

Although there are many people who are craving and still trying their luck to sign up or get a Google Plus invitation, several others who are already on Google+ are mocking at Facebook by creating some funny images and sharing them across their Stream.

In this post, we have complied a list of funny and extremely amusing Google+ vs Facebook images. Most of these images were shared by Google Plus fans who think that Google Plus’ elegant design and features is way better than Facebook’s UI and features and its worth moving to Google+ from Facebook.

Please feel free to share any other funny images that I’ve missed to include in the list. You can do so by adding it in the comments section below.

P.S. Please be aware that Google has shut down the invite and sign up feature for Google Plus. There are spammers who are taking advantage of the invite feature by selling invites on eBay and elsewhere. These invites are fake and please do not consider them.

We have explored Google+ to the full extent since a week and you might want to read through our series of articles which will be helpful to you when it comes to using and understanding Google+.

• Google Plus For Dummies: Setting it Up For The First Time
• Google+: What It is And How it Works [Screenshot Tour]
• Everything+: How Google+ Changes (And Will Change) The Social Landscape [Editorial]
• Google Offers Virtually Unlimited Storage on Picasa Web Albums for Google+ Users
• Bring Facebook Like Looks to Google Plus and Bring Google Plus Features on Facebook
• Google Plus After One Week: Can it Challenge Facebook? [Editorial]

While we have seen advertising between Apple and Blackberry in the past and also between Apple and Microsoft, we have seen a full fledged advertising from either Google or Apple taking potshots at each other.

Thanks to some smart guy, we now have an iPhone vs Android war, guess who wins? Take a look at the image below to find out. By the way, who do you think is the winner between Android and iPhone?

(h/t @oldmonkMGM)

If you’re a Christian, don’t lose sleep before being judged by Jesus when he returns on the 21^st of May. If you’ve done enough good, heaven is yours for the taking. If you can’t sleep even after this reassurance, calculate the effects that a meteor strike will have on the Earth. Seriously! Then you can have an apocalyptic dream of the Earth being destroyed (or worse, not being seriously damaged!). At least you can sleep. Heaven or hell is no fun if you go there sleepy as a sloth.

So here it is! Get your own custom-made meteor strike and have fun calculating the catastrophe, drooling over big figures and enticing numbers. Just click here. Thank Jesus for Purdue University; how else would you have so much of fun?

Be afraid, be Vvery Afraid.

Crash, boom, strike… you’re out!

Here’s how it goes: Go to the site (please have patience! The site takes a minute to load), fill in the parameters of the impact, input your location from the point of impact (basically where you wanna die, or be redeemed) and, voila, there you go! There are even pre-loaded settings to help the catastrophically-challenged or plain inexperienced. After doing extensive research on the software, also known as fiddling around with it for an hour or two, the author has these valuable suggestions to offer for the parameters to be filled in.

Suggestion 1: Small impact (Not much fun!): Throw a bus having a density of 850 kg/m³ (that’s the same as beer, well almost!) at the Earth with a velocity of 60 km/s headlong (i.e. at an angle of 90 degrees; would you have it any other way?). Let it hit sedimentary rock and don’t be too far from the target try 2 km; you wouldn’t want to miss the alcoholic ejecta, would you?

Suggestion 2: Really big impact (Aah! This is the real deal): Take a moon-size projectile having a density of 2520 kg/m³ (dare you change this!) and hurl it at the earth with a speed of 50 km/s at an angle of 60 degrees. Go for an impact on water, of say, 5000 m. Stay back, say 5000 km back, or maybe on another planet. Of course, the Earth will be destroyed and all, but you might also suffer some hearing loss, with the sound of the impact recording 195 on the decibel scale.

Go ahead! Last chance to fiddle around with doom…

In true Techie-Buzz spirit, we encourage you to go ahead and experiment with the numbers. Just don’t miss your chance when you’re called for judgement. We don’t quite know whether heaven (or hell, if you’re lucky you’re gonna find most people there anyway) has internet services or not. We’ll get you the tariff rates as soon as we get to know them…

For ever since I have known, we have thought our kids the English Alphabets using objects that pertain to an alphabet. For example, we have learnt the alphabets by using “A for Apple”, “B for Ball”, “C for cat” and so on.

However, technology has changed our generation and we have become so advanced now that we do need to change which object we relate to an alphabet. And my friend Jatin Sapra (http://about.me/jatinsapra) has done something similar.

Here is an alphabet chart which relates the alphabet to technologies that rock the world today. Kudos to Jatin on this, he said that he did it because he was bored. Now the question is whether you would want to teach your child using the below alphabet chart? Hit me with your comments. (picture after the jump)