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Evidently, sleeping on the road is an everyday thing for asses in Botswana. Google says that one of its Street View cars did not kill a donkey in Botswana, despite what images taken by that Street View car seem to imply.
As CNET notes, the images appeared to have gained steam earlier this week after they were shared on the Web by various users.
Depending on your direction of travel as you click through the map, the donkey appears either to meet an untimely demise, or to rise from a catnap in the road as the Street View car approaches.
Google insists it’s the latter.
In a Google Lat Long blog post titled “Never ass-ume,” Kei Kawai, a Google Maps group project manager, explained the controversy:
Over the last 24-hours concerned members of the public and the media have been speculating on the fate of a donkey pictured in Street View in the Kweneng region of Botswana.Because of the way our 360-degree imagery is put together, it looked to some that our car had been involved in an unseemly hit and run, leaving the humble beast stranded in the road. As our imagery below shows, the donkey was lying in the path – perhaps enjoying a dust bath – before moving safely aside as our car drove past. I’m pleased to confirm the donkey is alive and well.
Over the last 24-hours concerned members of the public and the media have been speculating on the fate of a donkey pictured in Street View in the Kweneng region of Botswana.Because of the way our 360-degree imagery is put together, it looked to some that our car had been involved in an unseemly hit and run, leaving the humble beast stranded in the road.
As our imagery below shows, the donkey was lying in the path – perhaps enjoying a dust bath – before moving safely aside as our car drove past. I’m pleased to confirm the donkey is alive and well.
YOU be the judge.
READ MORE
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/16/google-run-over-donkey_n_2489691.html
A game to fight for control of the minds of everyone on earth.
Meet Ingress, a new free mobile app and alternate reality game made by Google launching this week (on Android first, available as soon as it makes it through the Google Play release process).
How does one play?
Users can generate virtual energy needed to play the game by picking up units of “XM,” which are collected by traveling walking paths, like a real-world version of Pac-Man. Then they spend the energy going on missions around the world to “portals,” which are virtually associated with public art, libraries and other widely accessible places.
“The concept is something like World of Warcraft, where everyone in the world is playing the same game,” Hanke said. Players are on one of two teams: “The Enlightened,” who embrace the power, or “The Resistance,” who fight the power. Anyone can play from anywhere in the world, though in more densely played areas there will be more local competition for resources.
The game will be good for Google’s business from the beginning. That’s because of advertising. Ingress incorporates real physical stores and products in the game, and has brokered relationships with Hint Water, Zipcar, Jamba Juice and Chrome apparel and messenger bags.
And eventually, Google plans to make these real-world game tools available as a platform for developers to make their own.
READ MORE and Check it out:
http://allthingsd.com/20121115/google-launches-ingress-a-worldwide-mobile-alternate-reality-game/?mod=tech
Google Fiber will provide internet services 100 times faster than is currently available. It will launch late this year, with high-speed internet and TV connections to consumers in Kansas City. Over time, Google Fiber hopes to spur a new wave of technological innovation, from telemedicine to cloud computing, that can capitalize on its network’s ability to stream high-definition videos and transfer large files. Indeed, some believe Google Fiber is so powerful that it will improve education technology and transform how businesses operate.
“There’s been a lot of excitement” here, says Michael Gelphman, founder of Kansas City IT Professionals, a grassroots networking and peer-advisory group. “Google Fiber has gotten the whole city thinking about technology.”
Google declines to comment on the cost of the Kansas City project, which charges households $70 a month not including TV service, but company executives say it expects to make a profit.
Enabling one-gigabit Internet speeds across the country is still a pipe dream. It would take Google a long time to dig the trenches and string the fiber-optic cable so that it can roll out Fiber elsewhere. According to some analysts’ estimates, the cost would eventually be tens of billions of dollars.
Until then, we must wait and watch as the residents of Kansas City enjoy this dream speed internet.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443545504577563272157846352.html?grcc=422867a418ec56da90aaec61ccfb7ff8Z3ZhpgeZ0Z10Z29Z7Z2&mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_tech&grcc2=e46
Fortunately, Charlie Miller is on the Good Guys side. A skilled hacker, Mr. Miller demonstrated how to hijack a smartphone via short-range radio technology known as Near Field Communication (NFC). He created tools that forced phones to visit websites seeded with attack software. The software on the booby-trapped websites helped Mr. Miller look at and steal data held on a handset.
NFC is becoming increasingly common in smartphones as the gadgets are used as electronic tickets and digital wallets.
Mr. Miller, a research consultant at security firm Accuvant, demonstrated the work at the Black Hat hacker conference in Las Vegas. During his presentation, Mr. Miller showed how to attack three separate phones: the Samsung Nexus S, the Google Galaxy Nexus – which both run Android – and the Nokia N9, which runs on the MeeGo system.
Nokia has said they are aware of Mr. Miller’s work. No word from Google yet.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19010945
Right out of Star Trek The Next Generation–The Game. Imagine this. Going away for a spell and coming back to find everyone addicted to video games. With the contraption’s popularity, the compulsion to play comes before relationships, causes fighting, and PEOPLE IGNORE EACH OTHER. Wow. How far fetched is THAT?
This episode came out 20 years ago. Now that bit of science fiction technology has come to pass. They are here. By 2014, Google, owner of the world’s most popular search engine, will sell eyeglass-embedded computers to consumers.
Project Glass test devices with software and cameras, to give quick access to information in a display above the eyes, will be offered for $1,500 to developers who attend Google’s I/O developers conference in San Francisco and will ship in early 2013. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company is sharing the design with developers to benefit from their work, Sergey Brin, the company’s co-founder said.
“With Google X I’m not really thinking about any sort of existing products or things to compare it to,” Brin said. “Google X is about brand new risky technological things that are sort of making science fiction real.”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-google-eyeglassembedded-computers-to-go-on-sale-in-2014-20120628,0,2912123.story
Mozilla, at a recent presentation unveiled what it believes is the browser of the future, Firefox Junior, which it built for the iPad.
Firefox Junior is a full screen browser with no toolbar, search bar or omnibox. Instead, the app navigates with two transparent buttons on either side of the screen, located near one’s thumbs that let you go back or open a new page.
The right button, which has a plus sign, opens a page that lets you search for a new page or URL, contains thumbnails of your favorite sites or lets you see other sites you recently visited.
If you swipe to the left, you get another page that looks like the browser’s home page, with thumbnails for separate user accounts and the main Firefox logo.
Mozilla has said this project is still in prototype mode. This means it could quite a while before you and I get to use the app.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-mozilla-firefox-junior-ipad-20120618,0,4367754.story
”Something like this has never been created before,” says Steve Lee, one of Fast Company‘s 100 Most Creative People in Business and the product lead for Google’s Project Glass.
The company is developing the futuristic eyeware at its secretive X lab. Much has been written about the project, but few details about the device itself have emerged outside concept designs and video.
Fast Company conducted an interview with one of the lead creators of Project Glass, Steve Lee. One question asked was if the technology would one day be incorporated into contact lenses. His answer:
I mean, that’s definitely a long-term thing. At this point, it seems like a natural evolution. Certainly if you make the technology invisible, a lot of people would say that’s attractive. But maybe instead of that perspective, you could argue that something like this could be thought of like jewelry–something that is bold and prominent. Something a person wearing it is proud of. In that case, you wouldn’t want it to be invisible–you want to show it off, like, Hey! I’m part of the future.
http://www.fastcompaSteveny.com/1838801/exclusive-inside-google-x-project-glass-steve-lee
The Mobile World Congress, held in Barcelona, Spain for this year featured mobile technology at its best, with ideas, prototypes, and soon-to-be’s of the largest growing technology genre. Including industry heavyweights like HTC, Nokia, and Samsung.
First held in 1987, it is the world’s biggest mobile tech show operated by GSM Associates. Mobile World Congress was held in Cannes until 2006, at the time called “3GSM World”, and then was moved to Fira de Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain and renamed Mobile World Congress. Continuing to be the forefront of mobile communications technology with people and companies from 200 countries, this year’s MWC ran from February 27th to March 1st of this year, and while Q101 strives to one day cover an event this important on the other side of the world, Engadget were the ones to cover and report from the event, and you can read more about their coverage, and the amazing and exciting technology that is featured here.
What is Pinterest.com? It’s a place where women can go and fantasize about being thin, build weddings they don’t have a man for, and pick out shoes that they can’t afford. Yet…there is something quite appealing about being able to lose yourself in the fantasy of what Pinterest has to offer. If you need that extra kick of motivation, just click on the Fitness section and there will be motivational sayings to offer you a boost, pictures of ripped chicks that maybe you will hang up on your wall and even light cooking recipes to help you get on track. Or you can do what many Pinterestites do and just look at Pinterest and imagine you are thin, have motivation, and can cook anything that crosses your mind.
I think one of the many appeals of Pinterest is that it’s a place where you can lose yourself for hours just thinking about the “what if’s” in life. What if I had enough money to buy that million dollar mansion and put that amazing water feature that I don’t need? Well good thing that Pinterest has a picture for that.
It’s Facebook without words. It’s the digital egotistical storybook you have always wanted to flaunt to your friends. It’s the over the top change from saying, “I just had dinner,” on Facebook to I am going to make this four layer cake with snickers frosting in the shape of Cookie Monster and it’s going to be amazing. It’s the perfect website for all of the slackers in life who need something else to eat up their time at work and stave off the boredom of living alone.
I was a Pinterest junkie for about two weeks. Then I realized I had a life that included school, work, friends, family, and my TV. So my new plan of action is to go in with a plan of attack. Similar to what you should do on Black Friday for if you don’t, you end up standing in line for four hours with a cupcake, a broom, two packages of socks, and a DVD player that you don’t need. I now will look for specific recipes or maybe I will try to find an idea for photos to hang on my wall. I won’t go looking at wedding dresses that I don’t need right now, pictures of piercings and tattoos that will never be cool or water features for a mansion I may never own.
On the flip side, the good thing about Pinterest is that it hasn’t been sold to all of the advertisers of the world so you don’t have to worry about the barrage of ads that come along with social media. No pop ups. No click through ads that seem to know exactly what you did and what you have said. I shouldn’t rag on Pinterest too much because they do have really good pictures on there that may inspire you in multiple facets of your life. It did for me. I found these awesome lockets that I would never have found without Pinterest. Did I need them? No. Did they appeal to me? Yes. So maybe there is subconscious advertising on there and I am one of the suckers that are born every minute. And for those suckers, there are apps for the Android market and iphone so you can always get your Pinterest on.
Everything is good in moderation. With the vast expanse of social media like Facebook and Pinterest, you can end up losing your life and waking up like Rip Van Winkle. Don’t know who he is? Pinterest will have a picture of him and someone is updating their status right now on Facebook asking a friend who Rip Van Winkle is.
This week, Google has said they’ll pony up a total of $1,000,000 dollars to the people that can crack the fabled “sandbox” security of their web browser/OS, Google Chrome. Offering prize money in the range of $20,000 to $60,000 during the Pwn2Own contest. Pwn2Own focuses on people who can remotely “hack”, and take control of computers that are running up-to-date internet browsers, and other web-based software.
Last year, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and even the vaunted Apple Safari were successfully hacked into, whereas Chrome stands tall above its competition. ”While we’re proud of Chrome’s leading track record in past competitions, the fact is that not receiving exploits means that it’s harder to learn and improve,” wrote Chris Evans and Justin Schuh, 2 guys that are part of Google Security. “To maximize our chances of receiving exploits this year, we’ve upped the ante. We will directly sponsor up to $1 million worth of rewards.”
However, an issue that Google has with the contest, is that the contest rules have been changed, to where the winners do not have to “show their work” (it isn’t long division, TRUST ME). This means contestants are not required to reveal the vulnerabilities in the systems that they crack, which caused Google to withdraw as a sponsor, but is still daring the coding and hacking community to attack their software.
Pwn2Own starts Wednesday, March 7th. Watch your stuff.
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