Google Announces Opt-Out Tool To Keep Content Out Of Its Specialized Search Engines

Google has launched a new way for sites to opt out of having their content show up in Google Shopping, Advisor, Flights, Hotels, and Google+ Local search.

Google Opt-Out Tool

Matt Cutts announced the feature in a very brief post on the Google Webmaster Central blog, saying, “Webmasters can now choose this option through our Webmaster Tools, and crawled content currently being displayed on Shopping, Advisor, Flights, Hotels, or Google+ Local search pages will be removed within 30 days.”

This is obviously not a feature that Google would want a ton of people to use, because the less content that appears in these services, the less useful they are. Perhaps that’s why Cutts hasn’t tweeted about the tool (maybe not, but perhaps). At least with the short announcement, they have something they can point to.

The feature is a direct response to an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission. When Google settled with the FTC, one of the voluntary concessions Google made was a feature that would let sites opt out of Google’s specialized search engines.

As Danny Sullivan notes, the feature doesn’t let you choose which search engines you wish to opt out of. If you use the feature, you’re opting out of all of those mentioned.

On a help page, Google says, “This opt-out option currently applies only to services hosted on google.com and won’t apply to other Google domains.”

source:- webpronews.com

Google Celebrates Google Play’s first birthday By Giving You Discounts

One year after rebranding itself and ditching the "Android Market" label, Google Play is celebrating the occasion by offering deals to Android users.

Google Play has grown rapidly in the last year, bringing you more content in more languages and places around the globe. In addition to offering more than 700,000 apps and games, they’ve partnered with all of the major music companies, movie studios and publishers to bring you the music, movies, TV shows, books and magazines you love. And They’ve added more ways for you to buy them, including paying through your phone bill and gift cards, which we're beginning to roll out in the U.K. this week. 

Since no birthday is complete without presents, Google Play celebrating with a bunch of special offers across the store on songs, TV shows, movies and books. 

As of Wednesday, the site offered: a free $15 gift card and free shipping on photo-sharing webstore, The Fancy; a free fantasy book called A Quest of Heroes by Morgan Rice; a 10% discount applicable to bookings on Hotels.com; a limited edition character of the game, Yumby Smash; 50% off the movie, Kung Fu Panda; access to a new "Mars" location on the Disney game, Gnome Village; and a variety of in-app savings for the game, Royal Revolt!

While its current offerings are not that impressive, users will have to wait and see what other deals Google Play may have in store later this week.

Google pays tribute to Miriam Makeba 'Mama Africa' with doodle

Miriam Makeba, the South African chanteuse renowned for her collaborations with Calypso king Harry Belafonte and folk legend Paul Simon on his the tours of seminal world music album Graceland in 1987, received tribute from Google in the form of a doodle on her 81st birthday.
Born in Johannesburg on March 4, 1932, Makeba gained initial fame in 1959 during a tour of the United States with South African group the Manhattan Brothers.

Makeba's was a strong voice against her home country's racist apartheid government. She ran afoul of the government in 1960 after she participated in Come Back, Africa, an anti-apartheid documentary, a year earlier.
Her subsequent exile, which lasted for nearly 30 years, did nothing to diminish her International renown though she would not return until after Nelson Mandela emerged from prison in 1990.
Five years after her exile, she would become the first woman of African heritage to have the honour of winning a Grammy Award, which she shared with Belafonte for An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba. It was the first US-produced album to feature authentic Zulu and Swahili music, a milestone in the world music genre.

With a turbulent personal life contrasting the fame she had received as Mama Africa, she was divorced four times. Her first marriage was to trumpeter Hugh Masekelaand her most controversial one was to civil rights activist/Black Panther Stokely Carmichael, which led to her moving to Guinea.
She was responsible for popularising African music in the United States. With iconic traditional flowing gowns and hairstyles, she would belt out music that was richly flavoured by her African roots and childhood Jazz influences.
In 2008, after a concert in the southern Italian town of Caserta, Makeba, the first African woman to address the United Nations (where she testified against apartheid in 1963), passed away.

To Let Go

To let go does not mean to stop caring, it means I can’t do it for someone else. 

To let go is not to cut myself off, it’s the realization that I can’t control another. 

To let go is not to enable, but to allow learning from natural consequences. 

To let go is to admit powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands. 

To let go is not to try to change or blame another, it’s to make the most of myself. 

To let go is not to care for, but to care about. 

To let go is not to fix, but to be supportive. 

To let go is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being. 

To let go is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes, but to allow others to affect their own destinies. 

To let go is not to be protective, it’s to permit another to face reality. 

To let go is not to criticize, or regulate anyone, but to try to become what I dream I can do. 

To let go is to fear less, and to love more.

You are unique!

Think what a remarkable, unduplicatable, and miraculous thing it is to be you! Of all the people who have come and gone on the earth, since the beginning of time, not ONE of them is like YOU! 

No one who has ever lived or is to come has had your combination of abilities, talents, appearance, friends, acquaintances, burdens, sorrows and opportunities. 

No one’s hair grows exactly the way yours does. No one’s finger prints are like yours. No one has the same combination of secret inside jokes and family expressions that you know. 

The few people who laugh at all the same things you do, don’t sneeze the way you do. No one prays about exactly the same concerns as you do. No one is loved by the same combination of people that love you – NO ONE! 

No one before, no one to come. YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY UNIQUE! 

Enjoy that uniqueness. You do not have to pretend in order to seem more like someone else. 

You weren’t meant to be like someone else. You do not have to lie to conceal the parts of you that are not like what you see in anyone else. You were meant to be different. Nowhere ever in all of history will the same things be going on in anyone’s mind, soul and spirit as are going on in yours right now. 

If you did not exist, there would be a hole in creation, a gap in history, something missing from the plan for humankind. 

Treasure your uniqueness. It is a gift given only to you. Enjoy it and share it! 

No one can reach out to others in the same way that you can. No one can speak your words. No one can convey your meanings. No one can comfort with your kind of comfort. No one can bring your kind of understanding to another person. 

No one can be cheerful and lighthearted and joyous in your way. No one can smile your smile. No one else can bring the whole unique impact of you to another human being. 

Share your uniqueness. Let it be free to flow out among your family and friends and people you meet in the rush and clutter of living wherever you are. That gift of yourself was given you to enjoy and share. Give yourself away! 

See it! Receive it! Let it tickle you! Let it inform you and nudge you and inspire you! YOU ARE UNIQUE!

I’ve learned

I’ve learned-
that you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is be someone who can be loved. The rest is up to them.

I’ve learned-
that no matter how much I care, some people just don’t care back.

I’ve learned-
that it takes years to build up trust, and only seconds to destroy it.

I’ve learned-
that no matter how good a friend is, they’re going to hurt you every once in a while and you must forgive them for that.

I’ve learned-
that you should never ruin an apology with an excuse.

I’ve learned-
that you shouldn’t compare yourself to the best others can do.

I’ve learned-
that you shouldn’t compare yourself to the best others can do.

I’ve learned-
that you should always leave loved ones with loving words. It may be the last time you see them.

I’ve learned-
that you can keep going long after you can’t.

I’ve learned-
that we are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel.

I’ve learned-
that regardless of how hot and steamy a relationship is at first, the passion fades and there had better be something else to take its place.

I’ve learned-
that true friendship continues to grow, even over the longest distance. Same goes for true love.

I’ve learned-
that your family won’t always be there for you. It may seem funny, but people you aren’t related to can take care of you and love you and teach you to trust people again. Families aren’t biological.

I’ve learned-
that it isn’t always enough to be forgiven by others. Sometimes you are to learn to forgive yourself.

I’ve learned-
that no matter how bad your heart is broken the world doesn’t stop for your grief.

I’ve learned-
that people will forget what you said, and people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

50 Interesting questions

When you have a little spare time to think, review these interesting and thought provoking questions! 

 Then if you still have a little more spare time, share with us your thoughts, answers, and questions!

If we learn from our mistakes, why are we always so afraid to make a mistake? 

What is the difference between being alive and truly living? 

Why do religions that support love cause so many wars? 

Have you been the kind of friend you want as a friend? 

Does love equal sex? 

If happiness was the national currency, what kind of work would make you rich? 

Are you doing what you believe in, or are you settling for what you are doing?

If the average human life span was 40 years, how would you live your life differently? 

Are you more worried about doing things right, or doing the right things? 

If you knew that everyone you know was going to die tomorrow, who would you visit today? 

If you could offer a newborn child only one piece of advice, what would it be? 

What one thing have you not done that you really want to do? 

What’s holding you back? 

Would you rather be a worried genius or a joyful simpleton? 

Has your greatest fear ever come true? 

Would you rather have less work to do, or more work you actually enjoy doing? 

When was the last time you noticed the sound of your own breathing? 

Decisions are being made right now. The question is: Are you making them for yourself, or are you letting others make them for you? 

If you had all the money in the world but still had to have some kind of job, what would you choose to do? 

When you’re 90 years old, what will matter most to you? 

What do you regret most so far in life?

If you were at heaven’s gates, and God asked you “Why should I let you in?”, what would you say? 

What small thing could you do to make someone’s day better? 

What impact do you want to leave on the world? 

When was the last time you tried something new? 

What life lesson did you learn the hard way? 

What do you wish you spent more time doing five years ago? 

What is the difference between living and existing? If not now, then when? 

Have you done anything lately worth remembering? 

If you had to teach something, what would you teach? 

What would you regret not fully doing, being or having in your life? 

Is stealing to feed a starving child wrong? 

What lifts your spirits when life gets you down? 

Have you ever regretted something you did not say or do? 

Why do we think of others the most when they’re gone? Is it more important to love or be loved? 

If a doctor gave you five years to live, what would you try to accomplish? 

Can there be happiness without sadness? 

What’s the one thing you’d like others to remember about you at the end of your life?

Is there such a thing as perfect? 

What does it mean to be human? 

Are you happy with yourself? 

Can you think of a time when impossible became possible? How do you spend the majority of your free time? 

How have you helped someone else recently? 

What did you learn recently that changed the way you live? 

What is the nicest thing someone has ever done for you? 

What will you never do? In your lifetime, what have you done that hurt someone else? 

When was the last time you were nice to someone and did NOT expect anything in return for it?