Google

Even Google Has Bad Days

bob — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 02:19:56 -0400

In my (lately) infrequent viewing of hosted Google mail, I noticed the following (click for bigger image):

At least this shows that even the might Google can strike out once in a while (which makes the difficulties of the past few weeks just a tad easier to deal with).

Super (Ironic) Tuesday?

bob — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:22:21 -0500

The Grand Tech Merger Of 2008

The Microsoft/Yahoo! dance is quite fitting since it seems both companies share a very common hobby: zero day security vulnerabilities.

I guess it’s only fair that if Yahoo! passed on a virus to Microsoft during whatever activities they were doing together that they should do the right thing and partner in a more official capacity with them.

The Grand Debacle Of 2008

For the record, I’d still like a none of the above option for this election. Since there is little chance of getting a truly decent candidate in office we’re left with following the current candidates as they vie for our votes. Google is going to make following the election even easier this year and their Super Tuesday coverage is a great, innovative example. I do find it strange that they’ve partnered with Twitter rather than a certain other social networking service.

At least we have yet another example that the even gravitational mass of Google is not sufficient to prevent folks from finding what works best for them.

Now, if only Google or Microsoft would buy and then kill off Facebook…one can dream.

Two ironies and the day has just begun.

Morning Highlights

bob — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 15:11:03 -0500

It’s been a tough day so far, and I’m still recovering from the MacBook Pro open heart surgery (new 320GB HD + Leopard install + BootCamp/WindowsXP/EVE Online Trinity Premium Content install last night), but here are some odds-and-ends from this morning:

The Kindle is cooler than I thought (but Amazon is as lame as I expected)
These two discs are not even gold plated and they still cost $500,000,000.00USD
It’s the end of the world as we know it [for Netscape Navigator]
Warner music just decimated Zune, Rhapsody, Napster, et al (the subscription model was never all that intelligent to begin with so these folks deserve to have their business model crushed)
I hear they killed Kennedy and Lincoln, too

Finally, is anyone else thinking that Google may have to re-issue their 2007 Zeitgeist in light of the Bhutto assassination?

Google Talk Integration With AIM

bob — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:15:18 -0500

Google announced AIM integration with GTalk… nice!

Finally: IMAP Access to Google Mail (Hosted and Standard)

bob — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:59:28 -0400

It took two extra days for me, but my hosted and regular gmail accounts now have access via IMAP! It’s not nearly as necessary now since Google rolled out the new mobile interface for the iPhone. it’s taking a bit to sync via Mail.app, but that’s also over HSDPA.

Configuring the iPhone client was a breeze.

UPDATE: Mail.app has crashed twice so far during the sync attempt.

Google Acquires Jaiku

bob — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:12:49 -0400

Google has mixed up the presence world with it’s acquisition of Jaiku. Jaiku is just like Twitter and both let you tell the world what you’re up to and listen to what the world is doing (the “world” being those users on Jaiku and those feeds you’ve asked to flow through Jaiku).

Official Google Blog: Reach out and message someone: “Technology has made staying in touch with your friends and family both easier and harder: living a fast-paced, on-the-go lifestyle is easier (and a lot of fun), but it’s more difficult to keep track of everyone when they’re running around at warp speed. That’s why we’re excited to announce that we’ve acquired Jaiku, a company that’s been hard at work developing useful and innovative applications for staying in touch with the people you care about most — regardless of whether you’re at a computer or on a mobile phone.”

iTunes 8?

bob — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 12:14:13 -0400

Since I’m posting screen caps, this one is from my hosted GMail account this past weekend. I’ve been having issues with a download from iTunes and this is a cap from an auto-generated store reply.

I do not usually look at the text ads, but the one for iTunes 8.0 caught my eye, especially since (a) iTunes 8.0 does not exist and (b) the URL that the ad purports to take you to has 4 “w’s” in it.

I thought it might be a phishing site, but it the unwieldy Google syndication redirect actually takes you to the Apple iTunes page where the 7.x series is available for download.

Wishful thinking on Apple’s part? Ad released too early?

If it comes up again, I’ll hit it with curlor wget to see if it really is a phishing scam that is somewhat intelligent (goes after Windows/IE users, not OS X/Safari users).

(click on the image for a larger view)

MACSA :: Searching and Researching the World Wide Web: Emphasis on Christian websites

bob — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 21:20:36 -0400

Here are copies of the slides from Tim Nichols’ seminar on Searching and Researching the World Wide Web: Emphasis on Christian websites. If you have any suggestions for research resources or additional catalog, bookmark or search sites, drop a note in the comments!

Google Traffic Map Added to I-78 RDN Corridor Monitoring

bob — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 08:28:09 -0500

I added a direct link (under the I-78 traffic feed block) to the new interactive Google traffic maps for the drive to/from NJ on the I-78 corridor.

Direct link: for the commute.

Google News Bar For Your Site

bob — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 19:42:32 -0500

Like the AJAX-y news box at the top of the site? You can get your own, courtesy of the Google News Bar Wizard.

It has a full API and can be displayed in a couple different formats (so far, vertical or horizontal).

If you use the wizard, it generates a bit of HTML that you can just add to your existing site (provided you have a Google account and API key for your site). There are some interesting possibilities with this. For instance, altering the news displayed based on a search performed in your blog. For now, I’ll just keep playing with the keywords to try and find the best news mix.