Are you a jerk on the phone? You might want to be a bit nicer the next time you take that call.
That’s because there’s new technology coming out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology called the “Jerk-O-Meter.” The software measures stress levels in your voice and rates you on a scale of zero to 100 to let you know just how annoying you might be sounding.

Project leader Anmol Madan, a Ph.D. candidate at the MIT Media Lab, said his wife came up with the product name as they were discussing his research on using speech patterns to measure interest in conversations.

The result is speech software that measures vocal activity and stress during a call and then translates that into a couple of actions. The group is also working on better reading empathy.

“The value that comes from this technology that you can build machines and computers that gauge when people are….

source: news.com

More…

• link:url Shows other pages with links to that url.
• related:url same as “what’s related” on serps.
• site:domain restricts search results to the given domain.
• allinurl: shows only pages with all terms in the url.
• inurl: like allinurl, but only for the next query word.
• allintitle: shows only results with terms in title.
• intitle: similar to allintitle, but only for the next word. “intitle:webmasterworld google” finds only pages with webmasterworld in the title, and google anywhere on the page.
• cache:url will show the Google version of the passed url.
• info:url will show a page containing links to related searches, backlinks, and pages containing the url. This is the same as typing the url into the search box.
• spell: will spell check your query and search for it.
• stocks: will lookup the search query in a stock index.
• filetype: will restrict searches to that filetype. “-filetype:doc” to remove Microsoft word files.
• daterange: is supported in Julian date format only. 2452384 is an example of a Julian date.
• maps: If you enter a street address, a link to Yahoo Maps and to MapBlast will be presented.
• phone: enter anything that looks like a phone number to have a name and address displayed. Same is true for something that looks like an address (include a name and zip code)
• site:www.somesite.net “+www.somesite.+net” (tells you how many pages of your site are indexed by google)
• allintext: searches only within text of pages, but not in the links or page title
• allinlinks: searches only within links, not text or title

Indian authorities say the lives of more than 20 million people have been disrupted by the heavy monsoon rains in Mumbai (Bombay) and surrounding areas.

Meteorologists warn of heavy rain and strong winds in the next 24 hours.

Repairing the damage could cost the city up to $10bn (£5.7bn), a senior Indian official told the BBC.

A third of the city is said to be completely paralysed. Its centre is under water and the local transport system has been badly hit.

Indian officials have also warned that the number of people who have died could soon rise to 1,000, as rescue workers are still trying to recover bodies from flooded areas.

more…

Source: BBC