Thursday, January 4, 2007

Google Books Overview Page

I guess this is old, I just never saw it: when you remove everything but the ISBN parameter on a Google Book Search book page, you’ll end up on a nice overview page. As an example, the page for my 55 Ways to Have Fun With Google shows the cover, author information, the blurb, select contents available on Google Book Search, related books – this particular book is listed with Free Culture and Pig in the Box, I suppose it’s due to the Creative Commons licensing all of these have –, a “search in this book” box, a buy/ borrow this book box, as well as a list of key terms from the book (in this case, stuff like google, google robot, googlewhack, blog, google maps, robot, google images, pagerank, kevin bacon and googlebomb). The page adjusts itself to the specific book, too; take a look at the Free Culture overview page and you’ll find the section “references from scholarly works.”

(On a side-note, both 55 Ways and Free Culture are available as free downloads.)

Google Books Overview Pag ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (8)

YouTube Sued Over Voyeuristic Video

Reuters writes:

A Brazilian court ordered [YouTube] to be shut down until it removes a celebrity sex video from its site, a judicial clerk said on Thursday.

Daniela Cicarelli, a model and ex-wife of soccer great Ronaldo, sued YouTube after a video of her apparently having sex in shallow water on a beach with her boyfriend was posted to the site.

For days it was the most viewed video in Brazil.

A quick search on Google Video reveals that YouTube isn’t the only place the movie has spread to, either (Google Video’s 4+ minutes film titled “[FLAGRA] Daniela Cicarelli transando na praia com namorado!” has been watched 598,951 times since it was uploaded in October last year).

[Thanks Googlaxy!]

YouTube Sued Over Voyeuri ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (28)

Hacking Someone Else’s Gmail (Not)

Sankar in the forum reports on a deceptive mail he received last week. The sender tries to phish for Gmail account credentials of users by offering them a trick to hack someone else’s Gmail account... all they need to do is sent the email they want to hack as well as their own email address & password to adminpasster@gmail.com. (The obvious irony – by sending along your password it’s your account that may be cracked – might escape some newbies...) [Thanks Sankar!]

Join the ongoing forum comments.

Hacking Someone Else’s Gm ... by Philipp Lenssen

Create Fake Google Results

This is fun, and much easier than googlebombing: Gooogie.co.uk – that’s three “o” and an “i” in the domain – lets you create customized Google searches that don’t return any results, but a spelling correction instead. Like this one. (Let’s hope the site gets filed under “parody,” not “trademark infringement”...)
[Thanks Luca in the forum!]

Create Fake Google Result ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (9)

Deli.cio.us to Custom Search Engine

Vik Singh, an ex-Google (part-time) employee, created a tool that turns your Del.icio.us bookmarks into a Google Custom Search Engine. Vik describes the technical details and general background of this project. Caveat: you need to provide your Del.icio.us password.

Previous articles on Google’s Custom Search Engine service include the initial CSE review as well as advanced CSE tips.

[Thanks Vik!]

Deli.cio.us to Custom Sea ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (9)

Lessig at the Chaos Communication Congress (Video)

Lawrence Lessig spoke on the issue of current copyright laws vs our creative mashup culture at the 23rd Chaos Communication Congress that took place in Berlin on December 27-30, 2006. Also from the 23C3, there’s a talk on data mining the AOL search query data leak. The sound was unfortunately slightly off here in both videos.
[Hat tip to Matthias Schindler and Boing Boing!]

Also see the previous Lawrence Lessig interview.

Lessig at the Chaos Commu ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (2)

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