Category: Random, But Interesting

Tiny Mac-related hosting site is giving away gig of free email. No idea how. Stefanie Olsen reports…

Buddy just invited me into this new social networking app: share your music library (info only) and see how FOAF plays with tunes. Plan to sign up and see how it goes.

Now that we know Google’s Gmail is for real (though my God, what a joke it was…) and – blush – I went out on a limb and called it a hoax – I have unconfirmed news that Yahoo has already responded to some users with an upgrade to 100MB of storage. Here’s what a Yahoo mail user claims was sent to him, no idea if this is confirmed. Will attempt to find out for you all…

UPDATE: Yahoo PR sez: This test was in the works well before Gmail rolled out, and was sent out prior to the GMail announcement…

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Google announced GMail late yesterday, and the media, Wired News and CNet and the New York Times, bought it. So did The Register, which said that the company is using April Fools to launch the service for real. The Times’ John Markoff – no slouch he – wrote up the story totally straight citing unnamed sources “familiar with the service.” AP and Reuters moved wire stories….

But one can seriously debate whether this is a joke, folks (this is, of course, as is this Google job posting). Sure, there may be seeds of truth, like the patent application the company filed to serve email ads, or the fact that such a service makes a lot of sense for Google, and has been widely rumored. Or even the one gigabyte storage approach – never have to delete an email again – (sounds like Mirror Worlds…).Slashdotters are having a field day debating this one…turning up the fact that Gmail.com is registered to Google, for example…(this has been known for a while…)

But this has got to be an April Fool’s Joke. A very believable one, one that in the long run may come true, but a joke. Note an employee’s posting on his blog, under the subject “haha” and noting “I love this time of year.” And the release itself is simply too sophomoric to be anything but a joke. If indeed this is an elaborate ruse (including fake quotes and interviews from Wayne Rosing) I imagine the press will be most unhappy with the folks at the Googleplex. Journalists these days tend to have no sense of humor when it comes to their own gullibility. Unless, of course, they were all in on it…which has its own set of issues. Fun, no matter how you slice it…

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Now that would be something. Galbraith seems to think so. Recall he’s taken a wildly successful but directionless startup to greater glory before … Koogle is Chair of F’ster now…

Via boing boing, a very cool map visually relating what stories the newsmedia is covering, a hack on GoogleNews. You can toggle by country, pretty impressive. More on the NewsMap here. This reminds me of Map of the Market, which is now several years old but still cool too.

Love this hack. You have to enter your search backwards…

thanks, Seth…BTW, Seth hates the new Google interface…

Matt over at The Standard points me to this parody of Yahoo’s CAP program, which gets just about nothing right in terms of the presumptive pay for performance approach that it parodies, but is a pretty funny riff on what would happen if News Search was opened up to any bidder…

Organizations that are willing to spend the most will achieve the most prominent positions on the news pages, remaining in place until they are outbid by competitors. Although there will be no revenue payoff for news stories that rank high up the pages and gets lots of clicks, the program is certain to touch off a “share of mind” battle among news organizations–and, for the first time, allow the man on the street to tell his story without interference from editors…..

…Historically, professional journalists who were trained to separate wheat from chaff and remain utterly objective have decided what constitutes news stories and which ones deserve the most prominent “play” in newspapers, newscasts, and increasingly, online. That is, when they are not making up news stories, because it is easier than gathering the facts–and with some creative flare, can lead to prestigious journalism prizes. The Yahoo! “News Search” program essentially eliminates editors as gatekeepers to what constitutes news.

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Someone over there (I assume) is having fun at Google’s expense – check out the top result for a search on “Out of Touch Executives” on Yahoo’s Search page…

UPDATE: The Register has a story on this bomb, which clearly affected Google as well as Yahoo, and was perpetrated by Daniel Brandt, of GoogleWatch (and now Yahoo!Watch as well…he’s a busy guy).

(thanks, Phillip)

Sex, and….this. (Warning, not for the feint of stomach).

(You will thank me for NOT including an image, as is my custom).

(hat tip to Phillip)