Google maps envelope
A short, very well-done video on how much Google knows about us.
Google can help you in case of zombie attack!
Mystery Google: Get Somebody Else’s Search Result
Head over to Mystery Google and search like you normally would — except get not what you searched for, but what the person before you searched for. Lots of potential for random weirdness here.
Search, but You May Not Find
Interesting read…
AS we become increasingly dependent on the Internet, we need to be increasingly concerned about how it is regulated. The Federal Communications Commission has proposed “network neutrality” rules, which would prohibit Internet service providers from discriminating against or charging premiums for certain services or applications on the Web. The commission is correct that ensuring equal access to the infrastructure of the Internet is vital, but it errs in directing its regulations only at service providers like AT&T and Comcast.
Today, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s new Bing have become the Internet’s gatekeepers, and the crucial role they play in directing users to Web sites means they are now as essential a component of its infrastructure as the physical network itself. The F.C.C. needs to look beyond network neutrality and include “search neutrality”: the principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance.
The need for search neutrality is particularly pressing because so much market power lies in the hands of one company: Google. With 71 percent of the United States search market (and 90 percent in Britain), Google’s dominance of both search and search advertising gives it overwhelming control. Google’s revenues exceeded $21 billion last year, but this pales next to the hundreds of billions of dollars of other companies’ revenues that Google controls indirectly through its search results and sponsored links.
One way that Google exploits this control is by imposing covert “penalties” that can strike legitimate and useful Web sites, removing them entirely from its search results or placing them so far down the rankings that they will in all likelihood never be found. For three years, my company’s vertical search and price-comparison site, Foundem, was effectively “disappeared” from the Internet in this way.
Another way that Google exploits its control is through preferential placement. With the introduction in 2007 of what it calls “universal search,” Google began promoting its own services at or near the top of its search results, bypassing the algorithms it uses to rank the services of others. Google now favors its own price-comparison results for product queries, its own map results for geographic queries, its own news results for topical queries, and its own YouTube results for video queries. And Google’s stated plans for universal search make it clear that this is only the beginning.
Because of its domination of the global search market and ability to penalize competitors while placing its own services at the top of its search results, Google has a virtually unassailable competitive advantage. And Google can deploy this advantage well beyond the confines of search to any service it chooses. Wherever it does so, incumbents are toppled, new entrants are suppressed and innovation is imperiled.
15 best hidden jokes - Google's easter eggs
(Read the full article with pictures here…)
1) Google Reader ninja
Probably the finest - and certainly the most childish - Google easter egg. Using the arrow keys, type “up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A” while using the firm’s RSS feed reader, and a little ninja appears on the left of the screen, which turns partially blue.
It’s a play on the cheat code that worked on early Nintendo video games produced by Konami, the Japanese entertainment company.
2) Steve Irwin
Most of the 3D buildings that appear in Google Earth have been sketched by independent designers, some of whom managed to sneak in easter eggs of their own.
Spin round to the waterfront side of the Sydney Opera House in Australia and you’ll find a model of the late wildlife expert and adventurer Steve Irwin wrestling a crocodile.
3) GMail spam recipes
The suggested links that appear in the bar above GMail inboxes are - depending on your view - entertaining, irrelevant or annoying. But you can’t help but smile at the recipe ideas that appear in the same bar of the spam folder.
The menu includes Spam Confetti Pasta, French Fry Spam Casserole and Spam Breakfast Burritos, and best of all they link to real recipes.
4) Recursion
The search engine’s “did you mean” feature helps even the worst spellers locate useful results. But type “recursion” into the search box and it suggests “recursion” as an alternative, sending you on a loop of clicks that all generate identical results. Word play, Google-style.
5) Talk to a martian
The Mars feature of Google Earth 5 allows users to explore the surface of the Red Planet - and chat to the locals. Typing “Meliza” into the search box takes you to an area of the planet where you can strike up a conversation with a martian.
But don’t expect anything too deep. The martian’s chat is powered by Eliza, a rudimentary artificial intelligence application that aims to replicate human interaction, but doesn’t really succeed.
6) The meaning of life
Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the geek bible, and it seems that Google’s engineers are big fans. Type “answer to life, the universe and everything” into the query box and “42” comes out as the top result.
Other phrases that generate tongue-in-cheek answers from Google Calculator include “number of horns on a unicorn” and “once in a blue moon”.
7) Google Earth flight simulator
As if soaring above the planet wasn’t enough, Google Earth allows users to fly an F-16 fighter jet anywhere in the world.
Simply press Ctrl + Alt + A to activate the rudimentary flight simulator; you can learn the controls here. The simulator was originally inserted as an easter egg but has since become one of the official features of the programme.
8) Ascii art
The name may not be familiar but you’ll undoubtedly have seen examples of ascii art on the web. It has become a catch-all term for any images made from keyboard characters, and has maintained its popularity despite the obsolescence of the early text-only computers where the style originated.
Googlers are so fond of ascii art that they alter their doodle whenever anyone searches for the phrase.
9) Niniane kicks ass
This easter egg is almost impossible to stumble upon, but fortunately Google employees have spilled the beans. Search for “Niniane kicks ass” in Google Maps and you are directed to the tech firm’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, where an engineering manager called Niniane Wang worked until this year.
As Mrs Wang explains on her personal website, her name was inserted into the Google Maps coding after she won a dinner-time bet with a colleague.
10) MentalPlex
Want to find something online but too lazy to type? Just stare into the spinning circle on Google Mentalplex, and project an image of what you want to find. Google claims that the results are “smarter and faster” than normal searches, and generated by an algorithm that factors in your recent browsing history and mouse movements, plus the current air pressure and astrological configuration.
While not an easter egg per se - it was an April Fool’s Day prank in 2000 that has been kept online - MentalPlex is a great examples of Google’s prankish sense of humour.
11) Swim the Atlantic
Early versions of Google Maps took an optimistic approach to long-distance travel. If you requested a route between locations separated by expanses of water - say Paris and New York - the software dutifully provided road directions to the west coast of France before suggesting that you “Swim the Atlantic Ocean (3,500 miles)”.
Whether a genuine easter egg or just a programming error, the swim option has now been withdrawn.
12) Mountain View on Street View
If you spent years designing something, it’s only fair that you get to be in it. Dozens of Google employees lined up to be captured by the Google Street View camera car as it passed their California headquarters.
One even dressed up as “pegman”, the draggable Street View icon.
13) Klingon search
Google has created several spoof versions of its homepage, including one for Klingon speakers, another for pirates, and a third specifically for Looney Tunes character Elmer Fudd.
They function just like the normal Google search engine - only the buttons are different.
14) Blues Brothers bridge jump
Another 3D buildings easter egg hidden inside Google Earth, this time recreating the famous bridge jump scene from Blues Brothers, the 1980 movie starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.
That was filmed in Chicago, but the stunt is reproduced for Google Earth on the Tacony Palmyra bridge linking New Jersey and Philadelphia.
15) Don’t clog the tubes!
Typing “about:internets” into the search box of a Google Chrome browser brings up the image above.
It is believed to be a reference to Senator Ted Stevens’ much-derided 2006 description of the internet as a “series of tubes”. His clumsy words, in a speech to a Senate committee opposing network neutrality, were seen to illustrate the poor understanding of some politicians about how the internet worked.
Man Delivers Baby Using Guide Found on Google
Many men might watch helplessly as their wives are about to give birth, but not Leroy Smith. As soon as Smith realized that the midwife wouldn’t arrive on time, he calmly did a Google search on his BlackBerry.
I don’t know what Smith’s Google query of choice was, but in the end it led him to a WikiHow guide on child delivery. And it must’ve either been one rather good guide or the Smiths were simply very fortunate, because their baby daughter was born without a hitch. The midwife arrived just as it was time to clamp and cut the umbilical cord, but otherwise Smith managed to get his wife through the delivery by himself.
I’m glad that this tale ended with everyone happy, healthy, and Smith’s wife announcing that she’ll never complain about his BlackBerry addiction again, but it makes me wonder about what happened to the days when people managed to deliver babies without cellphones and Google.
Hidden Masonic Symbolism in the Google Home Page
A lot of SOE people talk about knowing the secret to ranking well in the Google search engine, but a conversation I had the other day suggests that the secrets might be more arcane than simply adding Meta Keywords and applying semantic latencies within the interaction vectors. This is particularly worrying, and unveils a whole new raft of complications for anyone wanting to enjoy success online.
I recently met with a former Google employee who revealed some frightening things about the world’s third largest search engine which left me feeling a little alarmed. The ex-employee, who worked in a highly important position within the search giant’s office cleaning team claims to have overheard senior engineers talking about the arcane symbolism that underpins the search engine infrastructure, and BOASTING about how they are able to hide their masonic symbols in plain view on the iconic Google front page.
Some of the most overt facts that he revealed are shown below:
What is Digsby?
Digsby helps you save time by letting you manage all your IM, email, and social network accounts from one easy-to-use free application.
Introducing Google Wave
Could Google Wave Redefine Email and Web Communication?
Created by two of the guys behind Google Maps with a small team in Sydney, the concept behind Google Wave is to “unify” communication on the web. It’s a hybrid of email, web chat, IM, and project management software. It features the ability to replay conversations because it records the entire sequence of communication, character by character. Because of this, discussions are also live in Google Wave: you will see your friends type character-by-character. features don’t stop there, either. Google Wave also supports the ability to drag attachments from your desktop into Google Wave. It loads that file and sends it immediately to anyone in the conversation. It’s also embeddable, so you can embed Google Wave conversations on any blog.
![[Image]](http://ec.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/gwave1.gif)
As you can see, it looks very similar to a Gmail inbox, except it’s more focused on your contacts, whose faces you can see in your contacts sidebar on the left. As for conversations, well, it’s a bit different than anything we’ve seen before. You can reply and add your thoughts anywhere within a message. Communication within Google Wave is completely shared.
The key to it all is the faster line of communication. Attaching documents, like you do in email, is unnecessary in Google Wave. Real-time conversations and collaboration make it an ideal tool for business teams as well. Imagine an entire office having Google Wave open to quickly share and receive files. It combines some of people’s favorite aspects of many different web communication tools.
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