Take a look at Google.com! Notice the change? No? Well, they’ve uploaded a brand new favicon for all of us to enjoy.

For those that do not know what a favicon is, wikipedia lists favicon as “an icon associated with a particular website or webpage.” Head over to the Google.com website and notice close to your address bar, a new icon. This icon sports the small g in the Google logo, with a semi-transparent background. Here’s a screenshot:

Enjoy! Let us know what you think of it via the comments below!

Yep, it’s that time again. Google have uploaded another puzzle for you to try out!

Below is a diagram of a computer network. The nodes are hosts on the network, and the lines between them are links. A packet is sent out from host G with a destination of xxx.xx.x.xxx. Which nodes does the packet pass through on its way to the destination? (include start and final node in your answer)

Google’s treasure hunt continues to test the community with a range of puzzles to complete, with the second puzzle.

Once again, head over to http://treasurehunt.appspot.com and as before login with your name and email address. You will be presented with a similar question as follows:

Here is a random zip archive for you to download:
GoogleTreasureHunt08_XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.zip

Unzip the archive, then process the resulting files to obtain a numeric result. You’ll be taking the sum of lines from files matching a certain description, and multiplying those sums together to obtain a final result. Note that files have many different extensions, like ‘.pdf’ and ‘.js’, but all are plain text files containing a small number of lines of text.

Sum of line X for all files with path or name containing XXX and ending in .XXX
Sum of line X for all files with path or name containing XXX and ending in .XXX
Hint: If the requested line does not exist, do not increment the sum.

Multiply all the above sums together and enter the product below.
(Note: Answer must be an exact, decimal representation of the number.)

Ahoy, good luck! Keep watch via the RSS Feed or Sign up for notifications via Windows Live Messenger and/or Email

Ok, I posted about the Google AU Treasure Hunt, and I’m happy to report that the first puzzle is up!

Go to http://treasurehunt.appspot.com and enter your name and email address. You will be presented with a question similar to below:

A robot is located at the top-left corner of a XX x XX grid (marked ‘Start’ in the diagram below)*.

The robot can only move either down or right at any point in time. The robot is trying to reach the bottom-right corner of the grid (marked ‘Finish’ in the diagram below)*.

*Image not to scale.

How many possible unique paths are there?
(Note: Answer must be an exact, decimal representation of the number.)

Let us know via a comment if you find out how to work this puzzle out.. and, lastly - GOOD LUCK!

Update #1 - 15/5/2008 10:55PM GMT +10

Well, there certainly are some smart people out there. Adrian, a member of the Whirlpool online community had this solution for the above mentioned puzzle!

Basically: for a grid with x.y cells on each side, the number of paths
= C(x-1 + y-1, x-1)
= (x-1 + y-1)! / ( (x-1)! (x-1 + y-1 -(x-1))! )
= (x+y-2)! / ((x-1)! (y-1)!)

C = combination formula
x! = x * (x-1) * (x-2) etc…
e.g. 5! = 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1 = 120

Adrian went on to say “The problem occurs with big numbers which quickly exceed a computers 32-bit integer limit.” Of course, there is no better solution to this than to use Google as your Calculator!

Today, users of the widely used Windows Live Messenger network expressed fustrations when they attempted to send youtube links through the network, however being shown an error - an error that has previously been noted by Microsoft to be shown when users try to send a link that Microsoft have blocked.

Users were shown the following message when attempting to send a link:

.:: MiCCAS.net ::. says (3:18 PM):
www.youtube.com
  The following message could not be delivered to all recipients:
www.youtube.com

Could this be due to the recent attempt at a sale of Yahoo? We’re not sure - however we are sure that we’ll let you know when we find out more.

UPDATE 10/5/08 8:50pm AEST: It has just been brought to my attention that if you use www.youtube.info instead, you will be able to bypass the system.