The Google search engine has become so popular that the private company has to defend its trade mark from being used as a generic term for "search".

While Internet sites are being told by Google's lawyers to stop this dastardly practice, others like myself happily continue to use the search engine for its uncanny ability to find what you are looking for the first time, even if the word or words are misspelled.

Google was originally a Stanford University project called "BackRub" by students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. By 1998, the name had been changed to Google, and the project jumped off campus and became the private company Google. It remains privately held today. The search engine wars are continuing however, with Google continuing to set the standard, while older engines get better and new engines come on to the scene.

Search Engine Watch notes that over the past two months, there's been a move towards consolidation in the industry. Yahoo has announced an intention to buy Inktomi. Overture, a relatively new search engine, plans to buy AltaVista and AllTheWeb. The search engines that have died include Open Text, Magellan, Infoseek, Snap and Direct Hit.

The remaining engines, including Google, are Lycos, WebCrawler, Yahoo, Excite, HotBot, Ask Jeeves, AltaVista, LookSmart, Overture (formerly known as GoTo), AllTheWeb, Teoma, WiseNut and Singingfish. Singingfish is interesting as it is a search engine devoted to audio and visual files on the Internet. By the way AOL Search and MSN Search are not considered search engines in their own right.

AOL uses Google, while MSN Search uses a mixture of results from LookSmart and Inktomi according to Search Engine Watch. If you are travelling and want to find a cybercafe next to where you will be staying try www.cybercafe.com. The engine is still being built. For example it only lists one cybercafe in Montpellier, France, and I know there are at least ten in the area where I live. The engine lists the Emporium, Internet Lane and M.R. Onions in Hamilton as the places to go in Bermuda.

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Digital camera buffs and those who like manipulating graphics on their computers should check out the new products unveiled at the Photo Marketing Association Annual Show in Las Vegas. The show ended on March 5 but the product reviews are available at http://pma2003.pmai.org and www.dpreview.com.

According to Digital Photography Review the key products unveiled at the show include Adobe Album 1.0, the Canon PowerShot A70, the Canon EOS-10D, Casio Exilim EX-S3, Fujifilm FinePix F700, Kodak EasyShare LS633, Nikon Coolpix SQ, Nikon DX, and the Olympus 4/3 Digital SLR.

To see how useful digital cameras have become to professional photographers, see the March issue of National Geographic.

The front cover features a model of a Tyrannosaurus rex cracking a bone to demonstrate how the real animal may have chomped through its prey.

Photographer Robert Clark said a mechanical model was rigged so the jaws could be slammed shut by a blast of compressed air. Strobe lights were set to fire when the lower jaw broke a laser beam. He used a digital camera to snap the shop mainly because "Going digital let me see the results on my laptop soon after the exposure." The results, as can be seen by the front cover of the magazine, are excellent.

You can watch video footage of the photo shoot at www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0303. By the way National Geographic is an example of one magazine that successfully uses the Internet to boost its hard copy sales.

I am a subscriber, and when a topic interests me I go online for the additional information the magazine puts online. Just do not get diverted by their "swimsuit issue" special.

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Sign of the Times: The Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX) has launched what it is calling the first futures contract based on the price of semiconductor memory chips.

DRAMs (Dynamic Random Access Memory) are semiconductor memory chips that are used in a growing array of electronics products. They are necessary components in computers and computer-related equipment, and are increasingly needed in communication, entertainment and digital appliances.

Futures markets enable companies to enter into contracts to buy and sell goods at some time in the future, but at a price fixed at the time of signing the contract.

This allows a DRAM buyer or manufacturer to reduce the risk of price fluctuations in highly volatile market. SGX said it is setting up the DRAM futures market after gathering feedback from chip manufacturers, users and other companies in the electronics industry. In November 2001, a 256M-byte stick of SDRAM (synchronous dynamic RAM), the most common type of memory used in new personal computers, was selling for about US$17 on Asia's memory spot market, according to media reports. The price rose to US$30 by the end of 2001 and by mid-January 2002 reached about US$54. The price has since dropped to just US$2.98 this February.

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Tech Tattle deals with issues in technology. Contact Ahmed at editor@offshoreon.com.