Google posts

Microsoft just made a dumb move. I decided to recreate how I think the conversation went between the tech guy and his boss. Tech guy: It seems a lot of customers are complaining about the new Hotmail. Bugs throughout the site, some of them can’t even log in. Boss: Fix it. Tech guy: That will take a few weeks, what do we do in the mean time. Boss: It works fine on Google’s Chrome, get them to use that. Tech guy: I don’t know about that, don’t you think we should focus on Internet Explorer? Boss: Who’s the boss? Tech guy: You are… Boss: Exactly. After thousands of complaints from customers over their…

It’s well known that Facebook and Google are in a war to see who invade their users privacy to the greatest degree. With the internet as the battleground, the battle is unsurprisingly pretty high tech, but Google just raised the stakes. They’ve just bought themselves an unmanned microdrone at a cost of around $60,000. Are they fed up of people chasing the Google Street View cars down the street? Maybe, or perhaps they’re just frustrated that the Street View car can only see through first floor windows. Either way, this seems like a pricey, if not awesomely cool way to invade users privacy and turn…

It’s no secret that Google is clearly ramping up for war with Facebook in the social network sphere. Fortunately, Google products are typically hideous, so Facebook certainly hasn’t got much to worry about in the GUI department. But that aside, Mark and Friends aren’t taking this new challenger lying down. Especially when the challenger is Google. Zuckerberg has apparently put Facebook’s headquarters on ‘lockdown’ for the next 60 days, leaving the office open 7 days a week in an effort to scramble to defend against Google’s plans. He’s even got a big neon sign on his door reading as such. You may…

Have you ever tried finding yourself in Google Street View? I have a friend who’s found himself twice. Both times he was pretty blurry, but there was no question. Twice. Six billion people. Found himself twice. What are the odds? If you’re going to go hunting though, you’d better hurry – Arturo Flores, a computer science grad student from UC San Diego, is working on a system that may one day render Google Street View one gigantic ghost town. No pedestrians at all. Flores says that situations such as my friend are exactly the problem that spurred his project – though Google goes to the trouble of blurring…

Whatever you may think of the iPad – whether you believe it to be the savior of old media or simply “a big iPod Touch” – there is one thing that cannot be denied: the thing has been a massive success. By last count, Apple had sold 3.27  million of them in the last quarter and, if that rate is anything to go by, sales are now probably over 4 million. The tablet computer, it seems, has arrived. Naturally then, Apple’s competitors are gearing up their own versions. This, for better or worse, is the state of our industry: Apple innovates and others then play catch-up. Research in Motion, makers of the Blackberry,…

On a happier Google note: according to CEO Eric Schmidt, 200,000 Android handsets are now being activated every day. That’s an awful lot of handsets, and is double May’s numbers. Hell, it’s 40,000/day more than June. Android fever, folks. Schmidt sat down for a hardcore gangsta rap session with reporters after his panel at the Techonomy conference, where he let some facts and figures fly about Android, not the least revealing of which was that he “loves the success of the iPhone” due to how much it drives search – search, of course, being what keeps that Android money coming in. Brilliant, Schmidt….

Well, it’s about time. Google is finally taking the initiative to shut down Wave, ending the company’s most heinous failure since… no, actually, this could be the company’s most heinous failure. What’s wrong with Wave? In concept, nothing – an open-source environment that combines email and live chat with a practically Wikipedian vibe into one intense collaboration tool? Hell, both my roommate and I heralded Wave as the beginning of the end of traditional email. The idea is perfect. Then, of course, the concept was executed, and the entire world it scratched its head as if to say ‘what the f***…

This is worthy of note because honestly, it simply doesn’t happen every day. Bing has actually beaten Google to a feature. Through its King of Bing Maps contest, Microsoft is getting its hands on some clever new tricks. One feature of particular note is Bing’s sudden ability to calculate cab fare. Simply select a region (for that city’s fare approximation), input directions as usual, and – bada-bing – your taxi fare is more or less on the nose. Y’know that thing you do, where you waver your hand to indicate ‘enh, so-so’? Yeah, it’s that. Personally, I don’t need an app to tell me my cab fare is going to…

*Sniff*. Sorry, I’m getting emotional. It’s just that… they… they just grow up so fast! Yes, our little Android, who just a couple of years ago was just a little babe in swaddling cloths, has now overtaken Apple’s ubiquitous smartphone in sales. Today, the Nielsen Company will announce that phones based on Google’s mobile operating system accounted for 27% of new subscribers, as compared to the iPhone’s 23%. In certain ways, this is unsurprising. Android is available on multiple handsets, including the popular Motorola Droid and HTC EVO 4G. It’s a bit like Windows being available on everything…

No matter how much you use Google search, or how much of an internetz pro you think you are, there’s always more to learn. This Google cheat sheet is surprisingly useful for those looking to harness the power of Google’s intelligent search options. For example, most people know you can use the words OR and AND to refine your search. But did you know you can place a + symbol in front of a word to search for only that word, not its plural or past or future tense? As a web guy, I frequently harness the power of Google’s additional search options, but there are a few in here I wasn’t aware of, so I’m sure there’s something…