Humor4u

Did you know that "male lions defend the pride's territory while females do most of the hunting"? Did you know that "the name humpback whale describes the motion it makes as it arches its back out of the water in preparation for a dive"? What about this one: "ostriches have the largest eyes of any land living animal and they measure 50 mm (2 inches) in diameter"? Google now shows random facts about animals in the "did you know" section of the Knowledge Graph card. They're extracted from various sites and Google actually links to the source. Some example of queries that return random facts: [cat], [lion], [tiger], [alpaca], [giraffe], [ostrich], [duck], [elk], [raccoon], [shark]. It's worth pointing out that you can get another random fact by reloading the page or searching again for the same animal.

Google Knowledge Graph has more than one billion entities  and more than 70 billion facts  about these entities (people, places, things). It's huge and it brings a different dimension to search: understanding concepts and the relation between them. Mobile Google Search now has a section called "found in related search", which shows a few entities frequently mentioned in other related searches. For example, I searched for [ethanol molar mass] and Google showed 2 lists of organic and inorganic compounds: one of them was found in the related search [properties of alkanes] and the other was for [polar solvents]. Ethanol is a polar solvent which can be obtained from alkenes, while alkenes can be derived from alkanes, so Google's suggestions are somewhat useful. This feature is not limited to chemistry, it also works for other topics. Here's a different query: [tour eiffel design], which shows other "towers of the world" and "tourist attractions in...

I noticed an interesting Google Search experiment in the mobile/tablet interface. When searching for [alcohol with the highest boiling], Google converted my query into a question: "Which alcohol has the highest boiling point?", then it tried to answer the question using a snippet from a web page and then it added a "more results" link. Google's link sent to me to the search results page for the question inferred by Google.

When you search Google for [directions] or [get directions], you get an error message: " No results for that place. Try entering it below to get suggestions. " Google shows a special card for directions with cool features like autocomplete, but the error message is out of place because you haven't typed a location. Suggestions aren't very smart. For example, I typed "Brisbane, Australia" as the starting point and then I started to type "Mel" as the destination. Google suggested 3 places from California, strictly based on my location, while ignoring that Melbourne is a much better suggestion. Google shows directions inside the card and you can pick between driving, walking, cycling or using public transportation. To see the directions, just click the text that describes your favorite route. If there is only one route, pick that one. Another option is to click "directions" and go to the Google Maps site.

I'm not sure if this is a new feature, but it must be pretty recent. Google Maps for Android lets you add home screen shortcuts to directions directly from the app. Just search for directions, tap the menu icon and pick "add route to Home screen". This works best when you select the current location, but it's not a requirement. You may also see this message: "Go here often? Add this route. Tap here to add a Home screen shortcut to this route." Another option is to add the directions widget, which lets you pick the shortcut name, whether to start turn-by-turn navigation and more.

Join me and many other developers at Droidcon London at the end of October. "Why Droidcon London?," you ask? Great question, thanks for asking! The answer is simple. But because I wanted to write more than six sentences to justify taking up your time reading this, I'm going to take longer to explain. For one thing, there will be developers. Everywhere. Hanging from the rooftop, dangling from the balcony, occupying every seat - nothing but developers, developers, developers. None of these business-blogger types, no management consultants (well,  very few anyway ) peddling their wares; just developers. So the people you talk to are exactly the people you want to connect with; other programmers learning the same stuff to solve the same problems that you have. Also, there are always great technical talks. Developers aren't just in the seats and hanging from the fluorescents; they're up on stage talking about the stuff they know. In many conferences, the people on sta...

Based on Adele's song from her third album 25 , this  activity  can be used with Intermediate level and up. The main focus is listening to chunks, followed by discussion of the song and reviewing  the use of like/as. UPDATE (23.7.2019): After consulting Adele's official website  it does seem that the bridge of the song goes It's hard to admit that... and not "It's had to win me back" as previously believed - thank you to my wonderful teacher trainees for pointing it out. The handout and the teacher's notes have been updated accordingly. It's been a while since I posted a song-based activity, so here's one for one of my favourite songs this year. Handout Procedure Activity A (Pre-listening) Play just the second chorus - from 2.58 to 3.51 in the video embedded above. Activity B (Listening) Play the whole song (from 0.42). Students listen and tick the chunks they hear. Allow 1 min to compare the answers in pairs before taking feedback. The answer ke...