Google Blogoscoped

Thursday, October 6, 2005

Web 1.0 Nostalgia

[Scaling Extensible Whatever with Blah Blah Blah Across the Enterprise.]

Funny: photos from yesterday’s Web 1.0 Summit. It’s back to ’99 and before, when the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures would be prominently featured as animated GIFs on Geocities homepages. [Via Boing Boing. Image CC-licensed.]

UFO Maps

UfoMaps.com utilizes the Google Maps API to show UFO incidents across the US.

Google Tivo And Other Future Inventions

Google Tivo has made it on the list of the “top 10 most ridiculous products of the feature”. Other products listed are Gilette Lightspeed (21 blades!), Starbucks Beer, or Logitech Extra Long (“This mouse gives you the ability to rest your entire forearm on it”). [Via I Am Bored.]

Taiwan on Google Maps

“Google Inc (...) said its description of Taiwan as a “province of China” is consistent with international naming conventions such as those followed by the UN.

Google faces protests from the government because of the description, which is used on its map service. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has instructed its US representative office to ask Google to correct the listing.”
– Bloomberg, Google defends map service listing, Oct 06, 2005

Panoramio

Panoramio is another Google Maps powered photo explorer. [Via Digg.]

Formula of Laughter

Found by a Russian-American researcher Igor Krishtafovich, here’s the mathematical formula of laughter:

HE = PI x C/T + BM

Might make for good party talk.

[Via Digg.]

Yahoo Directions on the iPod

IPod-Iway is a service enabling you to download Yahoo maps on your iPod Photo. [Via Digg.]

New Video Search Engine

SearchForVideo.com is a new video search engine. [Via SEW.]

Google Gets Political

Andrew McLaughlin in the official Google Blog writes:

“It seems that policymaking and regulatory activity in Washington, D.C. affect Google and our users more every day. It’s important to be involved – to participate in the policy process and contribute to the debates that inform it. So we’ve opened up a shop there. The first member of our Washington team is Alan Davidson, a veteran thinker and advocate for issues we care about.

Our mission in Washington boils down to this: Defend the Internet as a free and open platform for information, communication and innovation.”

Andrew agrees that sounds “a little high and mighty” and breaks it down into “something a bit wonkier.”

One thing smells funny, though. Andrew in the post says Google is “a neutral tool” and that’s why they would “continue to oppose efforts to force us to block or limit lawful speech.” Ok, so then what about Google agreeing to censor certain news sources in Google News China? Oh, he said “lawful” speech. So because according to the Chinese government, these sources are illegal, it makes it alright to block them? His last sentence leaves hope, though: “In a future post, we’ll introduce you to some of the policy issues we’re confronting outside the U.S.”

Yahoo’s User Product Review API

Yahoo added a new web service to their growing API features: user product reviews. [Via Gary Price/ SEW.]

Snowball, Jupiter, and Wolfpack

Question: what do the words snowball, jupiter, wolfpack, and softsled all have in common?

Google Earth Game

Over at GoogleEarthGame.com, a “new online reality game” takes place. Players “face their worst fears all while trying to beat the GameMaster.” From the about page:

“Using Google Earth placemarks and web pages, we’ve created the world’s biggest interactive game.

In order to beat the GameMaster, you must follow the clues and utilize the Checkpoint feature to move ahead.”

Also see the help page for screenshots.

[Via Miel.]

Google Office Drawing

SuTiBen says “All this talk about Google Office inspired me to draw this. Supposed to be funny but looking back, maybe its not.” [Thanks Steven V. Image CC-licensed.]

Today One Year Ago

On October 6, 2004, these were some of the items here:

Much more of course can be found in the archives:
2005 II, 2005 I, 2004 III, 2004 II, 2004 I, 2003.

Video iPod?

Rumors have it Apple’s going to announce a Video iPod next Wednesday. Your call...

GooGhoul

GooGhoul.com aims to find Halloween events in your neighborhood. The site also allows you to post reviews for specific events, and rate them (ratings are then show right in the search result page). The related ads show products like a “Bloody Pumpkin Fountain” or a “Beer Bottle Costume.”

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