Well, I didn’t know that! So, Google is saying that “infinite” is actually 999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,000 years. Good to know that there’s a definite limit on infinite.
(via Digg)
Being Five is one of my favorite webcomics that I subscribe to (Least I Could Do is another*), and I was emailing with series creator George Sfarnas this morning, so I thought I’d share the Thanksgiving comic strip:
Hope you are enjoying the day and spending it with your loved ones. I’m off to dinner!
KFC, a popular fast food chicken joint, decided to do a giant version of their iconic Colonel Sanders logo, built exactly where they knew Google Earth’s satellites would be going overhead. As you can see in the video above, they assembled the 325-foot tall banner in the Nevada desert last year, and you can view it now with this KMZ link in Google Earth.
(via SELand)
Crave and Gizmodo are laughing at some of the strange search queries being suggested by Ask.com’s suggest feature, which suggests complete or longer queries as you type in the search box. They’ve got examples like:
“is it legal to”, which suggests completing that with “marry your second cousin”, “own a penguin” or “sell a kidney
“can you” :: “freeze cheese”, “get pregnant in a hot tub”
Clearly, some of Ask’s users have some strange things in mind. Here are some search suggestions I found, with the suggested part in bold:
why did Jeeves retire
why do i never see baby pigeons? (answer: because pigeons don’t leave the nest until they are almost as large as adult pigeons)
why does my eye twitch
why does asparagus make urine smell
why does my belly button hurt
why does my urine smell (perhaps you had asparagus?)
i wanna to be anorexic
how to knock someone unconscious
where is my liver
Also, I noticed there are words that you won’t see in Ask’s suggestions, mostly curse words and some body parts, like fu(k, a$$, a$$hole, su(k, pi$$, peni$, v4g1na, and pretty much anything a parent wouldn’t want their children seeing when typing into a search engine. Plus: “naked”.
Yeah, I used |337 instead of typing the words, because the second I read that sentence normally, I felt like a kid again, looking through the dictionary and laughing when I found something “naughty”. Plus, I don’t need Google’s SafeSearch filter flagging me. I don’t hesitate to use any language, but in a list like that, it feel immature.
Anyway, go to Ask.com and play around with the search box. Let me know if you find anything funny.
GOOG hit a per-share price of $666.66 yesterday and multiple times today, proving that Google owes its success to the devil. So close to Halloween? It can’t be a coincidence!
(via TDavid)
The latest video gaining steam on YouTube is
“>this video of beauty pagent contestant Stacy Hedger performing the theme to Star Wars on a trumpet:
785,000 views, most of them since the video exploded over the last week. Obviously, her playing is awful, but it’s hard to ignore the hair, the dancing, or the using of the the trumpet as a blaster.
The Navy is embarking on a $600,000 alteration of meaningless barracks facility near San Diego, changing the look of the 40-year old building so it no longer resembles a swastika. Because of the availability and popularity of Google Maps, Google Earth, and other satelite maps services, people noticed the shape of the building, which matches the logo of the Nazi party, causing a mini and constly uproar that otherwise would never have happened.
The Navy said officials noted the buildings’ shape after the groundbreaking in 1967 but decided against changing it at the time because it wasn’t obvious from the ground. Aerial photos made available on such services as Windows Live and Google Earth in recent years have since revealed the buildings’ shape to a wide audience.
On the one hand, the building’s shape is unusual but efficient, and not that big a deal, and they could have just ignored it. On the other hand, if we can get the swastika building changed, perhaps we can start cleaning up all the buildings left behind by the Freemasons before their strange architecture begins confusing our Thetan masters.
Wonder what that smell is coming from the Googleplex? It’s the wonderful scent of thousands of Googlers, sweaty for the last nine years from using the free gyms, spraying on a whiff of the new Google perfume. Yeah, this stuff is little more than a trademark-violating crap product from China and probably smells like used wet socks, but who doesn’t want to smell like a Googler?
(via Valleywag and Blogoscoped)
Some wackjob has filed a handwritten lawsuit against Google, claiming his Social Security number, written upside down and scrambled very specifically, spells “Google”. Yeah, I’m not even sure, even if Google somehow manipulated the government into choosing that specific number in 1982, when he was born and Google was -15 years old, what violation that would be anyway. However, he wants five billion dollars for it.
What I do know is that this court document, containing exhibits from the lawsuit, has copies of his social security card, driver’s license, bank checks (with routing and account number). credit cards, library card, social security statement ($2,095 in income over the last seven years), and bank statement (does he eat at the Dimmick Inn and Steakhouse every night?). While I wouldn’t encourage people to apply for credit cards in his name and commit mass identity theft, it probably wouldn’t be hard, right?
A Digger discovered this oddity in Google’s translator, a biography of Russian tsar Ivan The Terrible (or Ivan IV) in which the title character’s name is translated into “Abraham Lincoln”. Weird.
Google translates Иван Грозный - Россия as “Abraham Lincoln - Russia”. Wikipedia’s article on ol’ Ivan spells Ivan Grozny (the term translated normally as Ivan The Terrible) as Ива́н Гро́зный. They are roughly identical, but Google may be getting tripped up on the lack of accent marks.
One good thing: You’ll notice Google Tranlate’s new overlay feature (new to me, at least), which shows the original text if you overlay the translation. Very useful.
Somebody decided to advertise in my comments (bad boy! buy an ad!) for their Firefox toolbar that is a StumbleUpon clone for porn. I just found the screencast for a software product that includes a ton of pornographic material, all while descibing features in a very dry delivery, to be hilarious. If you need a way to Stumble on porn (with tons of categories!), check out BringThePorn.com.
Obviously, clicking the link will reveal some stuff that is very NOT SAFE FOR WORK.
I’m gonna christen this Porn 2.0.
Also worth noting that Google Trends is tracking a lot of people searching for naked photos of Vannessa Hudgens, the High School Musical star who stupidly took nude photos of herself and sent them to her boyfriend. Trends for Friday show “vanessa hudgens pictures” as the number one gainer for the day
Interest in the shots of Hudgens nude made Trends not just at number one, but with related terms showing at #2, #10, #14, #22, #24, #25, #26, #31, #34, #37, #63, #71, #76, #89 and #100, proving that the internet is, indeed, for porn, and that the majority of searchers have no idea how to spell. That poor, naive girl.
Remember last Thursday, when Apple and Nokia were running dueling ads about the iPhone price cut? Turns out only Nokia’s ad was run by the actual company. “Didn’t You Hear” admits to running the ad, mostly to get some laughs. It wasn’t a terrible idea, what with it pulling a clickthrough rate of 12.72%. Apple, of course, wasn’t so pleased.
(via Gizmodo)
Just was introduced to Sally Forth, an interesting comic strip about a sarcastic middle class working mother. Does anyone know where I can get an RSS feed of daily strips so I can keep reading it?
Seriously, I am so sick of all these Google Phone rumors. If anyone knows anything concrete, it’s getting buried under a mountain of lies and speculation. I haven’t reported on the Google Phone, and I don’t plan to until we know for sure. Engadget’s got “specific” vagueries and Valleywag is pretty sure the whole thing is just a head-fake. Either way, considering Google has no experience with consumer software, and zero experience with hardware, I’d be shocked if we got anything exciting.
If there is a Google phone (and not just Google software for someone else’s phone), it’s a Blackberry, not an iPhone. This isn’t going to be a “wow” product, so would everyone please just sit down and wait till we actually know something?
I mentioned in July that the Gmail team was asking users to participate in a fun video project, filming a quick clip of themselves passing a large Gmail-branded envelope from the left side of the screen to the right. Google wound up getting some amazing, creative submissions, and the final video is just a load of fun to watch:
The video is the number one video this week, the number six video this month, and the top linked video of the week. I’m convinced that the wedding scene was fake, that it was just two people dressed up, but not at an actual wedding. My favorite has got to be the backwards pool scene. Which one did you like best?
Google uploaded this video to their YouTube account showing how game designer Matt Harding has been using Google Earth to show where’s he been around the world (dancing, apparently):
Google clearly has decided to give up the whole search engine thing, moving into the world of high fashion. The picture was taken by Neil of iGadget Life in Turkey, another store in a growing trend of weird foreign stores with names based on popular websites (like the Engadget store). Anything’s gotta be an improvement over the fashions in the Google Store, I guess.
Somebody decided to advertise in my comments (bad boy! buy an ad!) for their Firefox toolbar that is a StumbleUpon clone for porn. I just found the screencast for a software product that includes a ton of pornographic material, all while descibing features in a very dry delivery, to be hilarious. If you need a way to Stumble on porn (with tons of categories!), 
