“We have asked you here to appear before the robotic tribunal to defend your case, human.”
“I was ...”
“Quiet! You will speak when you’re asked to. R27161, please read the accusation.”
[human bows his head, momentary silence]
“R27161 speaking. The human #281738 is accused of having climbed upon an early Googlebot model around 20 years ago. Human?”
“It was 2008, those were just cars, not robots! I was actually...”
“No need to shout, human. Continue.”
“I was driving the damn thing!”
“R27161 speaking. I can sense nervousness in the voice pattern of #281738. High probability of lying.”
“Of course I’m nervous, you’re pointing your laser devices at me and they’re destructive!”
“Quiet now. Are you implying the 2008 models were not capable of walking the streets by themselves?”
“They had no legs!! No eyes, no arms!! Dammit, don’t you see, we invented you?!”
“You shall be quiet! R27161, do we have visual proof material.”
“R27161 speaking. Yes, we do, your robotic tribunal honor. I present to you the following picture from a service called Google Street View. It also clearly shows the 2008 models did have eyes.”
[picture projected on the wall]
“I...”
“Quiet human! The case is closed. 5 years in human computing.”
“But I ... you are...”
[human is carried out]
“Next!”
“R27161 speaking. We have several rebel force members accused of erecting no-index zones across the city in a clear violation of the robotic freedom act of ...”
[fade to black]
[Hat tip to Google Watch Blog and their source!]
[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Pesky Human Spotted Climbing On Top of Google ... | Comments]
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TomHTML of the French Google watch blog Zorgloob conducted an interesting experiment, and the results are in now. What Tom did was to put up a couple of fake definitions in order to fool Google’s “define” operator.
To explain, when you enter something like define hula-hoop into Google web search, you may get an instant result on top... in this case, the explanation that Hula-Hoop is a “plaything consisting of a tubular plastic hoop for swinging around the hips.” (You can also bring up these definitions when you enter e.g. what is hula-hoop, and the query define:hula-hoop yields a page with nothing but definitions, if available.)
But the definitions Tom put up were along the following lines (auto-translated from French)...
<<"TOMHTML: Webmaster french, known for trying to hijack the definitions of a famous search engine ...”
“Google Local: Directory of local information”
“AdSense: allows webmasters to sell advertising space on their web sites”
“Zorgloob: best blog news on Google”
“Google: Google was a lifestyle of the XXIst century”
(and so on ...)>>
As you can see, there’s a couple of serious ones in there, and a couple of prank ones. That was back in 2005. Now, the prank worked... and searching Google France for Définition Zorgloob shows Tom’s result as a Google onebox, as the screenshot from the auto-translation shows:
Oh, and Google, here are some more definitions...
[Thanks Tom!]
[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Vanity Hacking: Get Your Own Google Definitio ... | Comments]
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Google Maps is showing a redesign here, though I don’t know in what occasions it shows and whether it’s experimental or meant to go live for everyone. At the moment in Firefox (but not Internet Explorer, and also not in Firefox on another computer) I’m seeing the orange tabs gone; instead, there’s now a light blue bar on top with plain blue links reading “Get Directions” and “My Maps”. The search examples are now printed in gray inside the input box itself, as opposed to above it. A slight shadow effect makes the map area look embedded in the page, and it’s now spanning towards the right and bottom browser limits without padding. I think the new design looks a bit lighter and simpler.
As before, since some time, a “More” button in the map lets you browse photos and Wikipedia articles overlaid on the map. (And the easter egg of entering niniane kicks ass – a reference to Google employee Niniane Wang – still works, too.)
When Google Maps was launched as a Labs project in February 2005, it also didn’t have tabs, as above screenshot of that time shows (also see a larger version from October that year). Tabs were only to be introduced in 2006... and back then, the side bar was to the right.
Update: Here’s a statement from Google which Google Operating System got earlier this month: “We’re running the new UI as an experiment, so only a small percentage of users see it. If people like it better than the old UI then we’ll launch it to all users after cleaning up the bugs and incorporating any changes based on feedback from the experiment.” [Thanks Tony!]
[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Glimpses of a Google Maps Redesign | Comments]
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This is one of the smaller changes to Google – at least if measured in pixels! Google changed their “Favicon.ico”, the 16x16 image file that usually shows in the browser address bar or in bookmarks. The old icon used a square with red, green and blue edges, wrapping an upper-case “G”. The new logo is a bit more open, showing just the lower-case blue “g” from the Google logo, without borders, and a bit of shadow. To see this, visit Google.com (or images.google.com, Google Product Search and so on), empty your browser cache and reload the page.
Tony Ruscoe in the forum wonders, “Is Google undergoing a rebranding exercise...?” and adds, “Maybe they’re going to be known as ’the little g’ rather than ’The Big G’ from now on...”. Google continues to grow and grow, but one of their self-proclaimed core values is “Think and act like an underdog”.
[Thanks Websonic.nl and Sterling!]
[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Google's New Favicon | Comments]
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Brian Ussery is director of SEO at Search Discovery in Atlanta, Georgia, and develops using Google’s tools and APIs. He’s visiting the Google I/O work shop and brings us photos and more.
Google Developers from all around have converged on the Moscone Center here in San Francisco, CA for 48 hours to discuss their latest projects, new products and web applications. Google’s largest developer event, Google I/O 2008 is under way.
This year’s Keynote presentation by Vic Gundotra, Google vice president of engineering (formerly at Microsoft) along with special guests from Google Web Toolkit, Android as well as other teams, focused on building web applications to advance the web as a platform. According to Gundotra, “...developers are shaping the future of the web, putting foundations in place now that future generations of users won’t be able to imagine living without.” During the Keynote a number of new APIs were announced but the real crowd pleaser was a demonstration of Google Android’s “compass view” feature (soon to be released, according to Google) where the users’ movement changed with the perspective on their screen all in real time.
Unlike Google Developer Day 2007 and those scheduled later in 2008, Google I/O is a two day event focused on developer products as well as open initiatives. There are more than 90 sessions scheduled this year on topics ranging from Ajax and Tools to Social, Geo and Mobile applications. Code Labs, Fireside Chats, Live Tech Talks and other hands-on ways to help
developers get on board Google’s “cloud” are all available here at Google I/O.
Food ...
... more food...
... lining up for shirts (some of which spell words in binary with apparently mixed success) ...
... talks (Bruce Johnson, engineering manager) ...
... computers ...
... and smaller computers aka phones.
[Hat tip to Brinke!]
[By Brian Ussery | Origin: Google I/O Developer Get-Together | Comments]
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