Google Blogoscoped

Thursday, January 27, 2005

The Google Couch Potato

Watch the Google Couch Potato zap through the Google Video channels.

Hack #22: Depth Matters

“Our knowledge of objects and their actual size plays a hidden role in our perception of depth. Whenever we look at an object, our mind recalls memories of its shape, size and form. The mind then compares this memory to what we see, using scale to calculate a sense of distance. This quick-and-dirty comparison can sometimes trip us however, especially when we encounter something unfamiliar. One psychologist, Bruce Goldstein, offers a cultural example of an anthropologist who met an African bushman living in dense rain forest. The anthropologist led the bushman out to an open plain and showed him some buffalo from afar. The bushman refused to believe that the animals were large and said they must be insects. But when he approached them up close, he was astounded as they appeared to grow in size, and attributed it to magic. The dense rain forest and its limitations on viewing distance, along with the unfamiliar animal, had distorted his ability to sense scale.”
– William Bardel, Mind Hacks by Tom Stafford & Matt Webb, pg. 70, 71

PostSecret

At PostSecret, everybody can share secrets – sent in with snail mail. [Via Kevin Fox.]

SearchEngineSurveys.com

I recently linked to a Google survey you could participate in, and now the results are out.

Google Mystery Image 5

What does the image above, found with Google Images, show? Post your guess in the forum.

Color Fields for Flickr

What a good-looking image search idea: Color Fields lets you pick a color and brightness, and displays images of that color found at Flickr. [Via Kottke.]

CNet on Google Blogger Mark Jen

“Jen began making entries in Ninetyninezeros on Jan. 17, and soon drew the notice of other bloggers. Curiosity spiked when the postings suddenly disappeared for about a day earlier this week. (...)

Google spokesman Steve Langdon confirmed that Jen is a Google employee who started work at the company on Jan. 17, and that Jen is the author of the blog. He added that Google has blogging guidelines, but he declined to talk about them. Contrary to some speculation, Google did not pull the site from its index, Langdon said.”
– Evan Hansen/ Stefanie Olsen, Google blogger reappears, redacted, January 26, 2005

Another Mozilla Developer Joins Google

[Gbrowser]

Yet another Mozilla developer joins Google. Some say this is further proof the Gbrowser is nearing. [Via SEW.]

Business People Search

At Business.com, you can search for business people. Try enter your own name, you might be surprised. [Via Searchblog.]

A9 Yellow Pages

Amazon’s A9 searche engine introduces yellow pages, along with photos. John Battelle in Business 2.0 writes:

“In short, Manber & Co. (urged on by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who Manber says was “very involved”) strapped GPS-enabled digital videocamera-cum-terabyte server rigs to the top of a bunch of SUVs, and drove them around the commercial districts of major U.S. metropolitan areas, recording what became composite still pictures of entire cities, one address at a time. Tens of thousands of miles later, they had more than 20 million images of over 14 million businesses in 10 cities, and they aren’t done yet. A9 then created a local search application it calls Block View. It’s pretty darn cool, incorporating a lot of Javascript and other tricks to let you “walk” up and down the block.”

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