Saturday, May 22, 2004

Andy Kaufman Returns... As Blogger?

“Twenty years ago, on May 16, 1984, most of the world believed that we had lost a comedic legend forever. This has turned out to be what will inevitably be known as the greatest comic prank ever conceived. Andy Kaufman, by all accounts, is alive and well at age 55 and is now living in New York City on the upper west side. To his loyal supporters and fans, Andy says “sorry about faking my death,” in a recent interview with ABC News at his apartment. In order to reach legendary comic status and seal his place in the history of performance art, he said it was “necessary to go away for twenty years.”

Andy Kaufman’s official site has been launched at:
http://andykaufmanreturns.blogspot.com/“
– Yahoo! News/PRWEB, Andy Kaufman Returns After 20 Years, May 19 2004

“But now, according to the Snopes urban legends website, it’s all a hoax.”
– Ananova, Is Andy Kaufman dead or alive?

“Regardless of the truth behind Kaufman’s return, the controversy surrounding the claim is in keeping with the spirit of the comedian, who would enjoy being remembered 20 years after his final performance.”
– ZAP2it, Andy Kaufman’s Resurrection Hoax, May 20, 2004

Andy Kaufman Returns... A ... by Philipp Lenssen

What If... Google Would Be Evil? (Part 7 of 10)

Google repeated their mantra in the latest statement attached to their IPO filing, when Larry Page wrote “Don’t be evil”. This was to remind us what the big G strives to avoid. And some might already be scared. We don’t like to switch tools all the time, and put trust into things served by google.com. Google may be our website host (Blogger.com), our community (Orkut), our paycheck (AdSense), and last not least our search engine. But we are ready to watch for the signs – and as Google also repeatedly states, other sites are just one click away.
So let’s ask ourselves: What if... Google would be evil?

7. Google making you pay for Google Groups

A free Google? Not anymore. Googleplex business has become straight-forward, and instead of attracting your ad-clicks you just pay upfront. Google Groups, a 20-year old archive of Usenet postings – the digital heritage of this world – can now be googled on a pay-per-view basis.

To be continued...

What If... Google Would B ... by Philipp Lenssen

Nigritude Ultramarine and Duplicate Content

“The Nigritude Ultramarine seo contest just got nastier with the addition of an application that uses Google’s API to scrape Google’s cached pages of Nigritude Ultramarine sites. The wily creator of this app then cloaks the stolen pages as if they were his, and since he’s got higher PageRank he kicks the site he copied out due to the duplicate site penalty.”
– Garrett French, Cache Bashing: Google API Used In SEO War

Nigritude Ultramarine and ... by Philipp Lenssen

PicSearch Finds Google

Another well-working image search besides Google Images* is PicSearch.
I entered “Google” and saw:

• A comparison of Stormfront images in Google.com and censored German Google.de

• The screenshot of Google’s front-page during 9/11 2001.

• The Googledance.

• The classic Simpson chalk board: “I will use Google before asking dumb questions”...

• And Google Mordor: “One site to rule them all”.

• A cartoon posted on Dominik Schwind’s blog: “Lost it on radar, but found it on Google.”

• Proof the Eiffel tower and Google logo go well together.

*If you want to find out if some images on your site are considered unsafe, search for your site’s name on Google turning on the “SafeSearch” option. Now compare this to the result when SafeSearch is turned off. (E.g. my “Outer Court” logo is apparently not safe.)

**This was the anniversary photo for Google France.

PicSearch Finds Google by Philipp Lenssen

Evan Williams Interview

Blogger creator and Google Program Manager Evan Williams talks about the new Blogger and the RSS vs Atom issue in a 8-page interview at eWeek.

“[We’re] certainly excited about RSS. I’ve actually been using “RSS” as a generic term internally because for a lot of people (...): That’s what you hear about. And it often gets distorted into RSS versus ATOM when RSS itself isn’t one thing, it’s three or four different things, depending on how you slice it.

I think it was Dave Winer who said that he thinks ATOM will just be considered a flavor of RSS. I thought that was astute because as far as familiarity, people have certainly heard the term “RSS” more. I don’t think the name RSS 2.0 versus ATOM versus 1.0, which are completely different animals, is really worthwhile for the vast majority of people to understand what it is, especially when most feed readers will support all of them.”
– Evan Williams, Google’s Blogger Boss Focuses on the User, 2004-05-20

Evan Williams Interview by Philipp Lenssen

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