I can't believe that came from your mouth!
Posts tagged Google
Awesome Artwork- Einstein and Jameson’s
May 11th
I can’t tell if this piece is on canvas or on a concrete wall. But I like it. The genius, the booze and the browser.
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Loading ...How to Opt Out of Google’s Privacy Policy
Apr 4th
It is very convenient and allows you to “toil on the hinterlands and die young.”
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Finally! Google Maps for the NES!
Mar 31st
Finally, the most neglected computing platform gets its own Google App.
Here’s my neighborhood in 8-Bit!
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Google Maps Sued by Looters
Feb 2nd
French cartographers are pissed that Google is giving away their maps for free. They have been unable to sell any of their own maps because they simply can’t run a business, so they went the way of Atlas Shrugs and sued under some Dog Eat Dog clause. Now Google owes these crappy cartographers and their crooked lawyers about 660 Thousand bucks.
From CNET here:
You may like that Google Maps is free, but a French court says it’s actually anticompetitive.
A Paris court earlier this week ordered Google France and its parent company Google to pay plaintiff Bottin Cartographes 500,000 euros (about $660,000) for providing its free mapping services to businesses across the country. The court also required Google to pay a 15,000 euro fine for its practice.“We proved the illegality of (Google’s) strategy to remove its competitors,” Jean-David Scemmama, attorney for Bottin Cartographes, a company that provides mapping services to businesses, told the AFP in an interview earlier this week. “The court recognized the unfair and abusive character of the methods used, and allocated Bottin Cartographes all it claimed. This is the first time Google has been convicted for its Google Maps application.”
Bottin has been arguing its case against Google for two years, claiming the search giant was engaging in anticompetitive practices by using its free service to take control over the online-mapping industry.
I can see the need for some companies to purchase professionally created maps, and Google isn’t providing those, so I really can’t see how these guys have a case. Google ought to just buy the company and start selling professional paper maps to businesses world wide.
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Pinterest Now Hogging the Internet Bandwidth
Feb 1st
I have to apply lots of filters to common internet noise on my job so that I can get down to the forensically interesting traffic. Typically I filter out facebook, netflix, software updates and lots more, but Pinterest is quickly rising up to the top of the list of things I don’t need to see.
And according to this article at Mashable, Pinterest drives more internet traffic now than YouTube, Reddit, Google+, and LinkedIn.
Pinterest is social media’s rising star — and now has the traffic stats to prove it.
The darling network of brides-to-be, fashionistas and budding bakers now beats YouTube, Reddit, Google+, LinkedIn and MySpace for percentage of total referral traffic in January, according to a Shareaholic study.
Pinterest accounted for 3.6% of referral traffic, while Twitter just barely edged ahead of the newcomer, accounting for 3.61% of referral traffic. In July 2011, Pinterest accounted for just 0.17% of referral traffic, proving the site’s blockbuster growth.
Facebook reigns king of referrals, accounting for more than one-quarter (26.4%) of traffic, 4.3% of which comes from Facebook Mobile. After Pinterest, Facebook is experiencing the most referral growth, gaining almost one percentage point in December.
This study is just about referral traffic, not total bandwidth. Netflix is still the king in that category. Don’t know what Pinterest is? Its twitter for chicks. All pictures, no words. And if you are a dude on Pinterest, I’m sure you give other guys hugs and cry at RomComs.
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Search Terms Now Being Encrypted By Google
Dec 2nd
The Web referrer logs of Belch.Com are now showing these typical stats below:
This is a result of Google encrypting their search terms for signed-in users, and it will have a lasting effect on all kinds of web services that rely on using search keywords and terms to understand what kinds of topics and content are driving traffic to a site. Google does this by providing the search results as normal to a logged-in user, but they replace the normal referrer line in the web request to a server with the “encrypted_search_terms” phrase. And yes, it violates the RFC for web referrals, but honestly, I’m surprised it took this long for this change to become a reality.
Google’s blog post here talks about this change. And you know, you can actually use this referrer term against them by using your website’s .htaccess file, a text based access control list, to redirect inbound connections with that referrer line to a specific site on your website, perhaps one with a known high clickrate for ads.
And I LOLed that everyone is searching for Anderson Cooper being gay. Gads, everyone knows he is, he should just come out of the closet already.
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Bye Bye Blogger
Jul 8th
Google is stabbing the Blogger brand name in its poorly coded heart and will be dropping the brand as it moves to remake itself as it pushes Google Plus.
From Mashable here:
Say goodbye to the Picasa and Blogger names: Google intends to retire several non-Google name brands and rename them as Google products, Mashable has learned.
The move is part of a larger effort to unify its brand for the public launch of Google+, the search giant’s social initiative.
Blogger and Picasa aren’t going away, of course — they’re two of Google’s most popular products. Instead, according to two sources familiar with the matter, Google intends to rename Picasa “Google Photos” and Blogger will become “Google Blogs.”
I’ve tried to use the blogger platform a couple of times and always hated it. Too clunky and the site has chronic uptime problems and allows your detractors to falsely flag your site to prevent visitors. Google does a few things really well. Maps, for instance. Of course, search is still the best out there. Their video site was a huge failure, and gmail to me is marginally usable. With the rebranding going on with the Google+ push, I’m holding my breath, but honestly, I’m expect it to be clunky and still not as popular as facebook. Is anyone getting excited about Google+?
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Google Plus to Take On Facebook
Jun 29th
Google Plus has some pretty cool concepts, but its biggest drawback is going to be the biggest drawback about Facebook- All your data is in the mitts of a giant corporation that just wants to mine your information for money.
I for one wont be joining the google network, but I have a feeling that others will. Do any of the readers here want to jump ship from Facebook to Google?
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Someone’s Not a Happy Farmer
Jun 7th
Some farmer spent quite a bit of effort to make this awesome crop circle. There is an airport nearby, and maybe the farmer intended his message to be read by those small aircraft using that aviation field. Click here to see this on Google Maps.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Ready for the Google Toilet?
May 15th
It will serve you ads based on its analysis of your scat.
This is old, and its from current TV, Al Gore’s abortion of a cable network. That explains why I haven’t seen it before.
But if there was a Google potty I’m sure it would target me with ads for hotwings, salad dressing and new books, and of course, huge multi-paks of air fresheners.
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No Fury Like a Woman Scorned
Feb 5th
Jack Weppler done pissed a bitch off. Look what she did with his photo, an hour on Memegenerator, and a dash of good google fu. Anyone googling his name in the future will find these:
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How the Web Browser Works
Nov 8th
A geeky cartoon here shows how a web browsers work.
Thanks to FMLFTW for the graphic.
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Google Hires Hackers as Engineers
Sep 15th
An article from Gawker shows how shocking it can be to learn that you’ve entrusted your systems to an internal hacker. David Barksdale was fired from Google for stalking and cyberbullying some children, mostly because he simply could.
From Gawker here:
A Google engineer spied on four underage teens for months before the company was notified of the abuses.
David Barksdale, a 27-year-old former Google engineer, repeatedly took advantage of his position as a member of an elite technical group at the company to access users’ accounts, violating the privacy of at least four minors during his employment. Barksdale met the kids through a technology group in the Seattle area while working as a Site Reliability Engineer at Google’s Kirkland, Wash. office. He was fired in July 2010 after his actions were reported to the company.
In at least four cases, Barksdale spied on minors’ Google accounts without their consent. In an incident this spring involving a 15-year-old boy who he’d befriended, Barksdale tapped into call logs from Google Voice, Google’s Internet phone service, after the boy refused to tell him the name of his new girlfriend. After accessing the kid’s account to retrieve her name and phone number, Barksdale then taunted the boy and threatened to call her.
In other cases involving teens of both sexes, Barksdale exhibited a similar pattern of aggressively violating others’ privacy. He accessed contact lists and chat transcripts, and in one case quoted from an IM that he’d looked up behind the person’s back. (He later apologized to one for retrieving the information without her knowledge.) In another incident, Barksdale unblocked himself from a Gtalk buddy list even though the teen in question had taken steps to cut communications with the Google engineer.
Barksdale’s harassment did not appear to be sexual in nature, although his online communication with the minors (such as inviting underage kids to attend to the movies with him) demonstrated extraordinarily questionable judgment on Barksdale’s part.
A self-described “hacker,” Barksdale seemed to get a kick out of flaunting his position at Google.
Don’t trust Google as a provider of anything sensitive, folks. I use Gmail as an online alias to subscribe to disposable internet services and to receive google alerts on news items. If Google goes away tomorrow, I’ve lost no data I care about, or if they get hacked, I am not exposed to any personal data theft or privacy breach. Remember when Google’s motto was “don’t be evil?” Now it’s “there is no evil.”
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11 AM Music: Arcade Fire – “The Wilderness Downtown”
Sep 7th
Arcade Fire teamed up with Google Maps and Chrome’s HTML5 capability to produce what may be one of the first interactive music videos. Click the logo below to go to the website in Chrome and enter the address of where you grew up. One part of the video urges you to write a quick note to your childhood self. Very creative concept and awesome music!
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The Real Reason Google is Pulling Out of China?
Mar 22nd
I had written previously here about Google’s righteous indignation at how the Chinese had hacked their Gmail accounts to scrape information on dissidents and internal corporate secrets and how Google vowed to GTFO of China. Suddenly Google was sick of China’s censorship policies even though they knew what those policies were when they began their ventures there. They vowed to shutter Google.CN.
There is a Reuters story here about how China is accusing Google of simply backing down on their own commitments in the pending shutdown of Google.CN. But is the real reason why they are shutting down simply because they got their asses kicked in the market by Baidu? And does blaming Chinese hackers allow them to back out of a market without looking like their search engine is not the best?
Joseph Evers of EncyclopediaDramatica thinks so, and I must admit his theory looks pretty good to me. He wrote on the ED blog during the Aboriginal article scandal:
The “Aboriginal” article was recently removed from Google Australia’s search engine results. This was right after Google had done a large amount of grandstanding about fighting Chinese censorship. Which proves they’re a bunch of spineless hypocrites. Really, you have to admire the shrewdness of Google. China was a gigantic business failure, and a loss leader. With a bunch of CIA and shareholder money Google went in promising that their search technology was really so much better that the Chinese market would fall in a fortnight. Years and what is likely billions later, Baidu completely dominates the Chinese search market. By spinning an obvious business failure as a failure of RED POLITICS Google was able to pull out of China without losing face. Their idiot shareholders sat there and applauded them for wasting billions of their money. For that I give Google a lot of respect. They are some of the most brilliant marketers around, but as anyone who has used Google’s ad placement can attest, the only thing they really excel at selling is themselves.
So if you hear Google touting how they are fighting censorship, remember that they are the world leader in Censorship. Maybe they are finding out that censorship is bad business, but make no mistake. Business failure in China is why Google is getting out of China.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Google Goggles Coming to iPhone
Dec 10th
This application has the potential to launch search technology to a new level. I want this on my iPhone. Its on the Droid now, but will be coming to iPhone soon.
From PCWorld Here:
Google Goggles: Android and Beyond
I confirmed with Google this morning that the Goggles app will indeed reach other platforms. You may not want to hold your breath, however, for the Android exclusivity to end.
“It is our intention to quickly develop Goggles for the most popular mobile handsets and platforms,” Google’s Katie Watson tells me. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a specific timeframe to share.”
I certainly hope they get Goggles finished up soon. Its almost Christmas and I don’t want Bruce Willis to kill that guy.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Google Street View Van Slays Bambi
Jan 30th
Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” motto apparently does not apply to the driver of the street view van. The driver didn’t even slow down when he struck this fawn pictured below from the Google Street View.
Notice how the deer bounces off the side of the truck and slides hooves-up to the ditch in the side of the road.
Oh deer. Thanks to Chris for the article from the Reg here. Other Google Street view hijinks are here.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Every Time You Google, a Polar Bear Cub Drowns
Jan 11th
The latest lunacy from moonbats features the accusation that users who perform internet searches are releasing as much polar bear-killing CO2 as making a pot of tea. And the governments of the world are pissed that Google is keeping all of their server farms a secret, because they might want to shut it down to stop the mythical global warming.
From the TimesOnline here:
Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.
While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2. Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”
Google is secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of its data centres. However, with more than 200m internet searches estimated globally daily, the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the internet is provoking concern. A recent report by Gartner, the industry analysts, said the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines – about 2% of global CO2 emissions.
When you type in a Google search for, say, “energy saving tips”, your request doesn’t go to just one server. It goes to several competing against each other.
Wissner-Gross has also calculated the CO2 emissions caused by individual use of the internet. His research indicates that viewing a simple web page generates about 0.02g of CO2 per second. This rises tenfold to about 0.2g of CO2 a second when viewing a website with complex images, animations or videos.
Maintaining a character (known as an avatar) in the Second Life virtual reality game, requires 1,752 kilowatt hours of electricity per year. That is almost as much used by the average Brazilian.
Are they saying that Brazilians should be the model for power consumption? I think this is the latest scheme for leftist eco-religionists to raise taxes on technology, and perhaps introduce an international tax on the Internet and its users.
And as soon as they figure out how to integrate Internet browsing on flights, I intend to Google my ass off from New York to Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, the Pravda newspaper in Russia ran an article saying we are entering into a new Ice Age.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Google Tracks Flu, But Ignores Hackers
Nov 11th
Drudge has an interesting note up on his site today that reports that the Centers for Disease Control are working with Google to track, in real time, influenza hotspots based on user-input search queries.
Hmph. To my knowledge, this is the first time Google has voluntarily worked with the government on anything. Oh, they will work with the Chinese to censor the populace from offensive words like “Falun Gong” or “Tiannemen Square massacre.” But when it comes to protecting people from hackers, Google is mum.
Google is in the unique position to be able to spot global trends for searches for web-based vulnerabilities. For instance, if there was a vulnerability in a specific PHP file that was common on many websites, and the search for that specific file were to spike suddenly, likely caused by hackers looking for weaknesses, Google could report the trend to the government’s cyber centers. Likewise, Google could easily write software that would recognize credit card numbers in search results, and report such instances to the federal government too. This could go a long way to protect people against identity theft.
Maybe the coming administration can have better success getting Google to create public services such as the tools I mentioned.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Avast, Scurvy Google! We’ll Be Plunderin’ Yer Datacenter!
Sep 15th
Imagine if Google had a fleet of ships. Now imagine that Google put all of their servers on those ships and shoved off to international waters. Once there, Google would somehow harness the green power of ocean waves to power all of their servers and cool their datacenter core. Google imagines it will get free power and become untaxable.
I imagine pirates boarding these floating datacenters and holding geeky technicians hostage. I imagine Gmail sinking to the ocean floor during a hurricane.
But this is what Google is proposing to do in a recent patent filing. I have the rest of the details written up over at GeeksAreSexy here.
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