The PhDs at Google labs used to produce us some of the most interesting stuff on the web. Google News and Google Desktop Search are two good examples. However, the wildest ideas for Google come from a secret army of hackers who work on the API to make some smart, weird and sometimes useless apps. Here are my favorites.

Cookin’ With Google

Many leftovers in your fridge and you don’t know what to do with them? Type ’em all in the search box and Google will bring you all the possible recipes!

Banana Slug

Google is great. But sometimes, just like any other search engine, it could disappoint you and give you no results to your inquiry. Banana Slug adds a random word to your search from one of nine categories to obtain some results hoping to make you less frustrated.

CapeMail

Web pages look ugly in most of mobile phones screens. A faster and easier way to search the web from your phone is sending an email to google[at]capeclear.com with your query in the subject line. Few seconds and you receive the results in your inbox.

When I started reading blogs I had a short list of blogs to check on every once in a while. Few months later, and the list is longer and the time needed is much more than I have. What to do? Turn to feeds reader.

As I’m using different PCs at different places at different times, I thought a web-based feeds reader would be perfect. So, I started using Kinja, from the nanopublishing pioneers Gawker Media. It has a cool design, but it has a major problem. It is not supported by most of the blogs I read. It is a shame that Kinja can’t read the more popular forms of feeds.

I gave up Kinja. I started using Feedster. Unlike Kinja, it supports the popular feeds, but it has a poor design, and it may refuse the addition of new feeds with no obvious reasons. I decided to give up all the web-based feed readers and turn to something else.

I read that Firefox 0.9.3+ could run as a newsreader. I already have 0.9.2 and I was not intending to update it until the release of version 1.0. Because Firefox has a weird problem. Whenever you update the browser, you have to reinstall all the extensions and themes, which is something boring and time-consuming.

As I had no more choices, I clicked to Google to look for a free feeds reader. And as usual, Google has the answer. FeedReader is an open-source lightweight feeds reader, and it’s free. However, I liked the way of Kinja that shows the latest posts of different blogs at the same page.

I’m now waiting for the release of Firefox 1.0 at November to try out its newsreader. If I did not like it, I think I’ll stick to FeedReader.

It has been more than two weeks since I watched TV for the last time. Before that, I was watching some promotions on MBC for a new series called The Road to Kabul starting in Ramadan. I was not so interested until I read this week that MBC, in addition to four other channels, stopped the show.

MBC said the reason was that the producer of the series, Qatar TV, refused to deliver the rest of the episodes to MBC. Qatar TV told the press that the work at the series was not completely finished. However, Talal Awamleh, the executive producer said the complete series was delivered to Qatar TV.

Nobody knows the exact reasons for such a decision by Qatar TV, and they did not made any statement about it. Talal Awamleh told the press he received some threats from some unknown groups through the internet, but he did not take any of them seriously.

The Road to Kabul is about the Afghani jihad against the Soviets, and the role of Arabs in that war. Who do you think is behind this? Is it Taliban fans in Arab World, or some Arab governments? Or is it somebody else? What do you think?

Can you guess who’s who form this 8-bit celebrities collection? Want to know more about it? Read this.

To all Americans,

Next week, you are not voting only to choose between Bush and Kerry, but also to choose between Saudi Arabia and France! What’s your choice?!

(via Kuwait Unplugged)

While all rumors were talking about a GBrowser, Google rolled out a preliminary version of its new desktop search tool. Microsoft should be afraid, they should be really afraid.

In other anti-Microsoft news, my very favourite Firefox will be taken to major U.S. newspapers by its fans. Firefox fans will be buying a full page advert in the New York Times for the launch of Firefox 1.0 in November.

Saudis would like to do everything their own way. Even when they practice a universal religion such as Islam, they want to do it the Saudi Way.