Searching Like It's 2001

This is interesting. As part of their 10th birthday celebration, Google released a special version that searches the Internet as it existed in 2001.

Google Circa January 2001

We really used to use this thing at iNetNow?

Some interesting finds:

iNetNow

Apple iPhone (rumors abound)

911 (unbelievable in hindsight)

Timely Persuasion (just horses, no book)

facebook myspace (nothing!)

Tried to find a GoogleWhack back then using modern terms but came up empty. Ideas?

I was, however, able to find one that still works today...at least until this post gets indexed:

Atnos Fitzwilly (just read the excerpt on the results page...)

Hacking: iNetNow Style

I couldn't resist this one - reminded me of one of those long lost iNetNow questions.

Perhaps we should have started hiring hackers...

Article: Hacking Sarah Palin's Yahoo account

This article gives a first-hand account of how the hacking of Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account was performed.

An excerpt:

"after the password recovery was reenabled, it took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info, Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes (thanks online postal service!)

the second was somewhat harder, the question was "where did you meet your spouse?" did some research, and apparently she had eloped with mister palin after college, if youll look on some of the screenshits [sic] that I took and other fellow anon have so graciously put on photobucket you will see the google search for "palin eloped" or some such in one of the tabs.

I found out later though more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on "Wasilla high" I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower..."

Straightforward stuff.

I...am totally...BLIND!!!

Online service lets blind surf the Internet from any computer, anywhere

Visions of future technology don't involve being chained to a desktop machine. People move from home computers to work computers to mobile devices; public kiosks pop up in libraries, schools and hotels; and people increasingly store everything from e-mail to spreadsheets on the Web.

But for the roughly 10 million people in the United States who are blind or visually impaired, using a computer has, so far, required special screen-reading software typically installed only on their own machines.

New software, called WebAnywhere, launched today lets blind and visually impaired people surf the Web on the go. The tool developed at the University of Washington turns screen-reading into an Internet service that reads aloud Web text on any computer with speakers or headphone connections.

"This is for situations where someone who's blind can't use their own computer but still wants access to the Internet. At a museum, at a library, at a public kiosk, at a friend's house, at the airport," said Richard Ladner, a UW professor of computer science and engineering. The free program and both audio and video demonstrations are at http://webanywhere.cs.washington.edu.

Internet Easter Eggs

I never knew about a lot of these. Some pretty cool stuff, though they aren't Gino's famous Surfboard Etch-A-Sketch or the classic "BoRyan and the Magic Sword" Site Search easter egg.

10 awesome Internet Easter eggs

I'm actually wondering why I never tried entering the Konami code on a webpage, since I secretly do it on most DVDs...

And still nobody has found either of the two Timely Persuasion easter eggs, hint hint.

This sounds familiar...

iPhone-A-Friend

n. The act of using a regular cell phone to get information by calling someone who is sitting at a computer and can surf the internet by proxy.

"We are hopelessly lost. I'll just use my iPhone-a-friend and my mom can get us directions from Google Maps."

"When are you going to get a real iPhone, you cheap ass?"

via UrbanDictionary

118.com Ask Us Anything

Yet another iNetNow:

Found this on Wikipedia (via nested tangents, read below for that...also, in the following quote, material between [] is added by this post's author for clarity and amusement):

Since May 2008, 118118 [a British directory assistance provider, coincidentally a subsidiary of InfoNXX] has introduced a service where you are able to call and ask any question you want and their info team will find you the answer. From "How tall is the Eiffel Tower?", to "What Bars are open late at night?"

Sure enough...it is described here:

When it comes to finding numbers, we’re the professionals. But that’s not all we can do for you. We can find as many numbers as you need in one call and we’ll put you straight through if you don’t have a pen. We can even tell you what films are on at your local cinema and give you show times. We can tell you what time your next train leaves or let you know what the nearest tube station to your destination is.
In summary, we can

• give you all the numbers you ask for during any call
• find you the business you want and tell you how close it is
• expertly search for business numbers or addresses even if you only have a small amount of information
• put you straight through to the number you want
• tell you what’s on and locate your cinema, give you the times and even tell you who’s in each movie
• give you departure and arrival times from the national train timetable
• tell you the nearest train or tube station to your destination
• give you directions over the phone to wherever you need to go

And if you call us from a mobile, we’ll always text you the numbers you need and for free, so there’s no extra charge and you don’t have the usual scramble for a pen and paper.
It’s no wonder we’re the most called number in the UK every day.

I wish them well. I like this idea wherever it appears, which is why I enjoy AskMeNow, and mourn iNetNow and Voce.

For your amusement (perhaps I should make this a separate post) I found all this through one of my famous mental/wikipedia nested tangents:

• I was listening to the first track of Vico C's Vivo, which begins with appears to be a short sample of the same song as used as the background music of the commercial I'd previously known as 'that Honda Rube Goldberg commercial'.
• I suddenly wanted to watch this commecial, since I never get tired of it, so I googled 'honda rube goldberg', and found it has a Wikipedia article, where I found out:
• Its name is 'Cog';
• That song is "Rapper's delight" by The Sugarhill Gang
• It's inspired or been spoofed by other commercials, including one for 118118.
• Naturally, I went to the Wikipedia article for 118118, where I found out about Ask Us Anything.

I should put a dummy entry in my HOSTS file for en.wikipedia.org so I get work done.

Adventures in Public Transportation

We went to see Mason Jennings play in Santa Monica last night. (Actually at Barnum Hall on the Santa Monica High School campus...odd venue.) Since my wife works in Westwood and we live on the east side, it made more sense for me to take the bus to her office than to go crosstown in two cars.

I know that public transportation in LA (especially the bus) has a bad reputation, but I was pleasantly surprised. Got on at Vermont & Sunset and arrived in front of UCLA 55 minutes later. The bus has a tv screen showing news, trivia, games, and ads. There's also a map (powered by MSN) with GPS that always shows you where you are and announces the next stops. It was on time and relatively clean, though the comfort of the seats left a little to be desired. Riders were mostly students, though that probably had more to do with the route and the time of day (I rode at 4:30pm).

The trip planner on the website was also relatively impressive. Granted it could have a little better error correction and navigation, but not having to enter a city and using a / between intersections is pretty brilliant. I'm surprised the mapping engines haven't picked this up as the standard instead of fumbling around with thethe mishmash of &/and/+ that they always have. Also surprised we didn't pick this up for the surfboard, as for me it's much more fast and natural to type a / without looking than & or +.

Roll Your Own CNN Shirt

CNN.com has this weird new store where you can order a t-shirt with a news headline on it.

SvN points out that you can screw with the URL to make it say whatever you want it to say. So...


Anyone remember which website we used to be able to do that with? Was it Pronto, or maybe Lycos411?

Samsung BlackJack II, and a related mild indictment of AskMeNow

When, for reasons well-known to some readers of this blog, I suddenly needed to find a new mobile carrier on February 1, I decided to return to the AT&T fold.

Because, from their point of view, it would be a new contract, I was entitled to new-customer pricing on devices, so I decided to rediscover my madness for Windows Mobile with a Samsung BlackJack II, which I quite recommend unless one has a need for an esoteric feature it doesn't have.
For me, the coolest feature was the built-in GPS, which works out of the box with (for example) Google Maps Mobile. Since I was actually more interested in more technical GPS information than moving maps, I soon installed GPS Skinner, and later gpsVP. The GPS feature has now become just about my favorite toy ever.

How does this relate to AskMeNow?
Early in my GPS experience, I was motionless in downtown LA and one or the other of those applications reported my altitude at several hundred feet, which seemed high to me (in retrospect, I think because it hadn't fully triangulated).
I decided, instead of Googling, to Ask AskMeNow Now.
Me to AskMeNow, 3/11 5:54pm: 'What is the altitude of Los Angeles?'
Me to AskMeNow, 3/11 6:47pm: 'What is the altitude of Los Angeles?'
I guess their NLP didn't get the point. I almost repeated it, prefaced with 'Cmon, this is easy, ', but waited until:
Me to AskMeNow, 3/12 3:26pm: 'What is the altitude of Los Angeles?'
And at last, AskMeNow to Me, 3/12 3:29pm:
Los Angeles, CA
Elevation: 5ft/1m
73.1 ?F / 22.8 ?C
Clear
...and that seems a bit low (but probably is just the minimum altitude for LA, which is horizontally huge), but the mild indictment is that it took three questions over two days to get the answer.
I suspect some sort of AI fields easy obvious questions, sending the others to humans (cf. Pronto and iNetNow), and this happened to all three questions, the first two getting lost in the 'human queue'. AskMeNow, GetTheAnswerLaterIfAtAll. I *love* automation, but some things just need a human touch.

ChaCha Adds Call In Service

ChaCha looks to be going Pronto on us...

ChaCha lets you, literally, ask a question

To use the new service you can call 800-224-2242 (which spells "chacha") and specify the information you want to an automated attendant. ChaCha then sends you a text message with the answer. You can access your questions and answers on the Web as well.

I tried it out and found it accurate and fast. Within a few minutes of me asking where I could get a veggie burger and a margarita in downtown San Francisco it came back with an answer: Perry's Downtown, 185 Sutter Street "They have a full bar, it's casual and good ratings." Bravo!

Sox May Boycott Japan

Interesting standoff going on down in Florida right now. The Red Sox are threatening to boycott their season opener in Japan and not board their plane this evening upon finding out that the coaching staff will not be receiving a $40,000 travel stipend as previously promised by Major League Baseball.

More details:

Boston.com

ESPN.com

Gotta love and respect the players standing up for the coaches like this.

Web 2.0 vs. Web 1.0

"Please go to the following URL..."

7 Things you don’t see in Web 2.0 from Web 1.0

Another

Interesting name. But I sorta dig the logo...

Look Up Web For Me

Marcavage Strikes Again

We all know the Liberty Bell is no place for religious communists. :)

Holy Grail In Action

We've talked about the Google drag-to-reroute feature before, but it blew me away to see how well it worked in practice.

My wife was on the 5 South headed to a baby shower in Costa Mesa. She texts me and says "Something's on fire. Billowing black smoke, traffic on the 5."

I hit SigAlert.com:


Uh oh, lanes closed. Plus...


Big accident, and that's the fire. Google Maps w/traffic:


And after one simple drag and drop:


"10E to 710S to 5S will get you around it."

Done in literally 90 seconds. What a difference 4 years makes.

PS: The authors of Towform do not condone texting while driving. Use a bluetooth headset.

Smack The Penguin

It ain't elf bowling, but it ain't bad.

Happy Xmas to all...

Super Smack The Penguin

Lenny Lynch

This should play well to our small audience...



More at LennyYoung.com

Bye Bye Payphones

Um, what took them so long?

Also, remember this database from the Surfboard?

AT&T to Disconnect Pay-Phone Business After 129 Years

AT&T Inc., the biggest U.S. phone company, plans to leave the pay-phone business after 129 years as more people use wireless handsets to make calls on the go.

The first pay phone, installed in 1878, had an attendant who took callers' money, AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said. Inventor William Gray set up the first coin-operated phone in 1889 at a bank in Hartford, Connecticut.

At their peak in 1998, there were 2.6 million pay phones in the U.S., San Antonio-based AT&T said today in a statement. That number fell to 1 million this year, including the 65,000 phones AT&T has in 13 states.

Pay phones, especially those in booths, have played a role in U.S. pop culture for decades. Clark Kent started using them to change into Superman in the 1940s. In the 1989 movie ``Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure,'' a phone booth doubled as a time machine. In 2002, actor Colin Farrell played a man trapped at a phone by a sniper in the film ``Phone Booth.''

The Tryptophan Myth

My favorite iNet Thanksgiving question/answer pair:

Thanksgiving Myth: Turkey Makes You Sleepy

The sleepy-turkey myth lingers around each year because it sounds so logical.

Alas, it is only marginally true. What's making you sleepy after Thanksgiving dinner is any combination of booze, bad conversation and a carbohydrate-heavy meal, but not the turkey itself.

Turkey does have tryptophan. But all meat has tryptophan at comparable levels. Cheddar cheese, gram for gram, has more.

In essence, big meals with any food containing tryptophan can cause sleepiness. The real culprits are all those carbohydrates from potatoes, stuffing, vegetables, bread and pie. The massive intake of carb-heavy calories stimulates the release of insulin, which in turn triggers the uptake of most amino acids from the blood into the muscles except for tryptophan.

With other amino acids swept out of the bloodstream, tryptophan—from turkey or ham or any meat or cheese, for that matter—can better make its way to the brain to produce serotonin.

Bonus Thanksgiving Funny via JibJab

!@#$

Swearing at work boosts team spirt, morale
Regular swearing at work can help boost team spirit among staff, allowing them to express better their feelings as well as develop social relationships, according to a study by researchers.

The pair said swearing in front of senior staff or customers should be seriously discouraged or banned, but in other circumstances it helped foster solidarity among employees and express frustration, stress or other feelings.