Archive for January, 2009

Google 2009 Inaugural Ball: Invitation
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

Did you get your your non-transferable, barcoded invitation to Google’s Inaugural ball? If not it says, “Join Google/YouTube and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights to honor the incoming Obama Administration, welcome a new era of open government, and take a break from traditional Inaugural balls.” According to invitations, this event will begin at 9:00 [...]

Chinese Govt Pays Users: to Comment in Their Interest
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

China is using an increasing number of paid “internet commentators” in a sophisticated attempt to control public opinion.
These commentators are used by government departments to scour the internet for bad news – and then negate it.
They post comments on websites and forums that spin bad news into good in an attempt to shape public opinion. [...]

Malformed Google Result URLs: Reported
Monday, January 5th, 2009

Maxim from Russia has recently reported that Google is having some big time problem with URLs in search results. When you search the google russia page – Google.ru for site:www, you’ll notice that in the SERPs, instead of www.something.com it will read www/something/com or similar.
I’m not exactly sure if this bug is restricted to [...]

Google Shuts off Several Products: including Notebook & Google Video
Sunday, January 4th, 2009

Recently after Google’s 3D world Lively was shut down, Google has made yet another announcement implying that they will be canceling a couple of other products or product features. These are:
- Mobile service Dodgeball. “We have decided to discontinue Dodgeball.com in the next couple of months, after which this service will no longer be available,” [...]

Gmail Send and Archive: Button
Friday, January 2nd, 2009

The Gmail Labs offer a new opt-in feature: “Send & Archive”. This will add a button when you compose a mail. Clicking it, your mail will be send and the whole mail conversation will be archived in one go.
- To activate a Gmail Labs experiment, switch to the Settings in Gmail and click the Labs [...]

Google Euro Logo: Launched
Friday, January 2nd, 2009

Above is the Google logo doodle for 2009: Googl€! This was showing on the Google homepage in Slovakia as the country shifted from Slovak Koruna to Euro currency. The idea behind this doodle is simpleenough to have been around before, and indeed it was.

NewLively.com Launched: by 3D developers in Beijing
Thursday, January 1st, 2009

Google’s 3D world Lively, shut off on January 1st after being live just a couple of months. Their homepage is now displaying a good-bye message to its user community, and if you were among the (not so lucky) early adopters, your embedded rooms will now show a hand-waving and posing avatar crowd!
However, more of an [...]