You know how Google has managed to integrate all of its services – Google Maps, Google Docs, Gmail, etc -- into one intuitive, inter-connected whole? Yahoo's about to try to do the same thing.

But the plans go even bigger: specifically, to transform the site into a vast social network where Yahoo users can quickly find, communicate, and share information with one another.

"We are literally in the process of rewiring Yahoo from the inside out," said Ari Balogh, Yahoo's CTO, in a speech at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. They've made a bunch of acquisitions recently -- photo-sharing site Flickr, bookmarking site Del.icio.us and social calendar site Upcoming -- and now they want them all to play nice together.

"We are not building another social network," said Mr Balogh. "We are building social into everything we do."

Well, everything done by people sitting at home, alone, in front of their computers, with nothing but their cat, some Cheetos, and the blue glow of their monitors to keep them company, that is. [Source: BBC]

In the U.S. we're lucky to have a police force that's (generally) trusted and can be relied upon to do the right thing and do what they can to solve crime. In Brazil, unfortunately, there's much less faith in the quality and reliability of the nation's police. Because of this many crimes go un-reported. A new project created by a Brazilian Professor aims to correct that, letting people anonymously and quickly report crimes, pinpointing them on an online map for everyone in the world to see.

The site, WikiCrimes, works as a layer over-top of the popular Google Maps service. If you've been a victim, you can zoom in and pinpoint the location of the offense, then add details of what happened, including a date, type, description, and whether it was reported to the police. Others can then browse the site and filter the crimes based on location and a range of dates, perhaps determining whether their chosen vacation spot is really the best place to be.

The initial focus of the site is crime in Brazil, but there's nothing preventing you from posting crimes in any country around the world. In fact, we found a few crimes posted in the U.K., but as of yet nothing reported from the U.S. Somehow we don't think that's because of a lack of crime, so, get in there and report what's happened to you. Even if you do trust the police there's no reason not to share what happened to you with everyone else. It might just prevent another victim. [Source: BBC News]

There are many defining moments in our lives; getting a driver's license, going to college, having your first (legal) drink, etc. etc. One of those moments is riding a bicycle without training wheels -- a shaky period that quite often results in some skinned knees and shame. Learning to ride with just your parents watching is tough, but imagine if your youthful bicycle failings were posted permanently for the entire world to see. That's just what Google's StreetView has done, capturing a poor kid having a massive crash on his bike in frame-by-frame agony.

Okay, so maybe it's not as bad as getting caught walking out of a strip club or breaking into a building, and you can't see the kid's face so there's a bit of anonymity here, but just the same, we're glad our childhood bicycle failures were completed in the pre-StreetView era. [Source: GoogleMaps, via Kensington, Victoria]

Tools originally developed to filter out copyrighted content on YouTube have been adapted by intrepid Google employees to track sexual predators through pattern recognition. Designed to pick out pirated movies, the software can identify complex or modified patterns such as calendars or T-shirt logos in images and videos, which can help authorities locate images and videos that could be considered child pornography.

Based on these patterns, authorities can then begin to track the abused children and, hopefully, bring the criminals to justice.

Google is handing the new program over to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to help them pore through the millions of images and files in its archive. Last year alone, the organization vetted over 5 million images and videos in an effort to identify and save victims of abuse.

"You always hope that your work will eventually be used to do some good in the world, and this was an amazing chance to make that hope real," Google research scientist Shumeet Baluja told the BBC.

From the BBC

We are all in agreement, Google Street View is freaking creepy, but is it lawsuit worthy? Aaron C. and Christine A. Boring (yes, their real names) are suing Google because images of their home appear on Google Maps' Street View. According to the Boring suit filed in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Oakridge Lane is a private road and the "reckless conduct" of Google has "exposed plaintiff's private information to the public."

Never mind that there is clearly no Private Road sign at the beginning of Oakridge Lane when viewing it in Google Maps Street View, or that photos of the Boring home, its approximate value, taxes paid, and details of the internal structure are all available on the Allegheny County Web site.

All of that is even completely irrelevant, since taking photographs of homes from public streets is clearly protected by the First Amendment. Just ask Barbara Streisand who sued an aerial mapping company for including photographs of her home in its products. Streisand lost that suit and was forced to pay the companies legal fees.

From Newsvine

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Nicholas Sullivan at the MIT Media Lab has reached a similar conclusion to the one driving Google's Grandcentral for the homeless push -- communication is the key to success. The report out of MIT claims that putting prepaid cell phones in the hands of the 38 percent of the poorest Americans without one could earn them between $2.9 billion and $11 billion a year through increased business (for the self employed), and increased hours or wages.

The two surveys used to generate this report also found cell phones provided an important security blanket effect for the owners, with a vast majority of Americans agreeing that a cell phone was "very important" for emergency situations. This safety blanket effect is important because the poorest among us who would stand to benefit most financially from a cell phone are also disproportionately affected by crime.

That two for one shot, finances plus safety, makes us feel like some filthy rich philanthropist should start buying up and handing out every prepaid phone he/she can find.

From Textually and Cellular News

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Well, they're a little late to the party, but AT&T is finally warming up to Google's phone OS, Android. T-Mobile and Sprint and members of the Open Handset Alliance, which champions Google's new Linux-based platform, and Verizon has promised to make its network open to any device, a move that likely had Android devices specifically in mind.

At the CTIA wireless show in Vegas AT&T Mobility chief, Ralph de la Vega said,
"I like it a lot more than I did before... It's something we would want in our portfolio."

His conversion on Android came after Google executives showed him that AT&T would be able to load its own applications on any Android handset it sold. Previously, the company had been fearful the handset would be geared too much towards the Google brand. Too be fair, however, AT&T's tepid response would not have prevented Android devices from getting on its network. AT&T's network has long been open to any device that operates on the right frequency, is GSM based (as opposed to Verizon's CDMA cellular technology), and can accept a SIM card.

Regardless, this means it looks like most of the major carriers are on board with Android, which means we may see a more open system for creating user--friendly (i.e. Google-like) cell phone applications that work on all phones (with Android, of course).


From the Los Angeles Times

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Google has started giving users the ability to edit their Google Documents in an offline mode. Google Documents, part of Google's free online suite of office software, is a word processing application that allows you to create, view and edit documents as well as import Microsoft Word files, .txt and other popular document formats. The rest of the suite, accessible from within your browser, includes presentation (similar to PowerPoint and Apple's Keynote) and spreadsheet software.

What does the new offline mode mean? After you enable the feature, your documents will automatically be downloaded to your desktop. Now, you'll still be able to make edits and changes to your documents within your browser even if you disconnect from the Web.

It sounds complex, but the basic idea is pretty simple. As soon as you reconnect to the Web, the two versions of the Google Document -- the one on Google's server and the one on your computer -- will automatically sync. Previously, you were only able to access your Google Documents when connected to the Internet. For more information and an additional explanation, check out Google's video.

Google began rolling out access to a small group of users yesterday, but everyone with a Google account should have access within the next few weeks. Initially, users will only be able to use offline features with Google Documents, Google's free word-processor, but we expect Spreadsheet and Presentation to have it soon enough. To see if you have access to the offline mode, go to docs.google.com and search for an "offline" link in the top-right of the screen. We think it's a pretty cool feature that will come in handy, particularly for anyone who frequently finds themselves outside of Wi-Fi hotspots (like on a plane).

From Wired and Ars Technica

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Google is hot right now. Its stock price may have taken a bit of a hit lately, but new offerings like GrandCentral continue to revolutionize the Internet, and with its Android phone operating system poised to conquer the mobile world, things are looking good for the company.

Naturally, then, the brightest tech employees want to get in the door, and Google's interview process is notorious for being lengthy and arduous. It's no surprise, of course, that not all applicants are welcomed with open arms. Some of those who got the cold shoulder treatment are posting their experiences online for the benefit of those who might interview with the Big G in the future.

The stories range from the mundane, like an interviewer with a thick, "Chewbacca-like" accent that was hard for the job candidate to understand ("I'm obviously partially retarded," says "Rod"), to tales of wonderment, such as one applicant who was too dazed by the lunch offerings to put together a comprehensive interview. Then there are the truly disturbing stories, such as that of one applicant whose military background wasn't taken too kindly:

"The interview was going swimmingly until I met up with one interviewer who was apparently anti-military. Using the Google "Do No Evil" mantra as a pretense, he asked me how many people I'd killed when I served. When I explained to him that I was MI, he then asked if I could estimate how many people were killed because of the intelligence I'd gathered. The implication was I was either an evil, efficient killer or an incompetent one - a real no-win situation."

Good luck, job seekers of the future!


From Silicon Alley Insider

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Every so often an Internet inside joke makes a leap from the back channels of YouTube to mainstream popular culture. One that seems to be heading for bigger and better things is the trend of Rick Rolling. Rick Rolling is a take on an old Internet joke called Duck Rolling, where a web site would offer a link to celebrity photos or gaming news, but following the link only led to an odd picture of a duck on wheels.

In Rick Rolling, the image of the duck is replaced with a YouTube clip of the 20 year-old music video for 'Never Gonna Give You Up' from late 80's blue-eyed-soul two-hit-wonder Rick Astley.

Between our culture's rampant 80's fetishism and a newfound appreciation for all thing geeky and web oriented, Rick Rolling has made the jump from an inside joke for web site administrators to live versions that get splayed all over YouTube. Protesters outside of a Scientology building in London broke out into the song. A women's basketball game at Eastern Washington University was interrupted when 'Never Gonna Give You Up' was blasted over the PA and a man in an Astley-like trench coat danced around the gymnasium lip syncing.

It's probably only a matter of time before Trey Parker and Matt Stone base an episode of 'South Park' on it.

From The New York Times

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One of the most frustrating things a news hound encounters online is the Wall Street Journal. The preeminent financial paper in the country has still yet to join the rest of the online news world and offer its world class reporting for free.

But fear not, faithful devourers of information, there is way around the Wall Street Journal's $79 a year subscription fee. And it's completely legal!

When you follow a link to a Wall Street Journal article -- like this one -- from a regular Web site, you get the first part of the article, but are told to subscribe to read the full article. Luckily for us, though, the Wall Street Journal struck a deal with Google and Digg that allows visitors to those sites to view the entire paper without subscribing.

So, you have two options. The first, and simpler option, is to search Google News for the headline of the article you want to read. Since you'd be following the link via Google News you'd be able to access the complete article. This can be a little tedious and doesn't guarantee you access to the entire paper however.

The second option is to use Firefox and install an extension called Refspoof. Refspoof allows you to trick the Wall Street Journal into thinking you're visiting the site via a link from another site. After installing the Refspoof ,visit WSJ.com. Then, in the "spoof" field of the Refspoof toolbar type digg.com. Then, click on the "R" icon to the right and select "static referrer."

Congratulations, you should now be able to browse the entire Wall Street Journal, sans subscription fee!

From Machinist

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As promised Verizon offered up some more details about its open access plans, though some questions were still left unanswered, such as the specific requirements for certification and the price of getting devices certified.

By the second half of the year, the program should be in full swing. All retailers and handset makers will have to do is get their devices certified by Verizon, which claims the requirements are only slightly stronger than industry standards. There will be no limitations on the phones or software that can be run, which means by the end of the year we're sure to see Android and other platforms working on Verizon's high-speed EV-DO cellular data system.

There were two very exciting revelations about Verizon's plans. One, that the open access system will be extended to the company's 4G LTE ultra-high-speed data network, which should enter testing phases by the end of the decade. And two, that Verizon is considering a multi-device flat-rate subscription, which would allow you to use multiple devices on the network for the price of one.

From Engadget and Reuters

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It was bound to happen eventually (if for no other reason than MySpace did it first) -- Facebook is finally offering up an instant-messaging service. Ironically, Facebook's new IM service may have the effect of killing off a couple of chat applications already available on the social-networking site.

Initial rumors claimed that the new Facebook IM service, which is to be embedded into people's profiles, would be based on Jabber, the same standard underlying Google Talk. This would have meant that other IM programs, such as Pidgin, Meebo, or even Google Talk, could connect to the Facebook service easily and bring it to the desktop. These rumors, of course, turned out to be false, and Facebook IM, at least initially, will only be available on Facebook pages.

With MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, AIM, Skype, Gizmo, and Google Talk already clogging the Internet, we're pretty confident we don't need any more new IM services. Especially not ones that can only be accessed on the Web by logging into a separate place from all your other IM services. But if Facebook ever manages to get all the other IM programs to work with its IM service, then it might become an attractive online chat place indeed.

From TechCrunch

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Google, the Internet company that seemingly can do no wrong nor make any missteps, is preparing to engage in one of the most time-honored and well-practiced activities of the Web era: the layoff.

With its acquisition of Internet ad firm DoubleClick now approved by European regulators, Google is set to commence the full integration of this early Web success into its strategic and administrative system, which will likely include reducing the company's size, at least where positions are redundant or deemed outside the Web giant's new goals for serving up ads online. According to a memo by Google CEO Eric Schmidt posted yesterday on the Google blog, "there will be reductions in headcount." Most of the layoffs will take place in the U.S., according to the memo.

While the culture of Google is one of continual, almost unabated growth, the culture of DoubleClick is storied with the looming threat of layoffs, at least from its expand-and-contract days through the early Internet boom, bubble and burst phenomenon. This is not to say that all of the possible layoffs will come from the DoubleClick side, as Google will have to determine who among its combined workforce is most valuable to the venture.

The integration of DoubleClick's ad serving technology and reach will have a significant impact on Google's repertoire of online advertising tools, which let people submit ad campaigns online without the help of a salesperson.

Google's goal with this acquisition is to better compete with companies like Yahoo! which have much stronger capabilities with banner and multimedia ads. Google's strength has been with highly personalized and targeted text ads, which Web users seem to appreciate because they are unobtrusive and contextual.

From Official Google Blog (via Infectious Greed by Paul Kedrosky)

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It's no secret that Google Maps is cool, but it's also a bit creepy. If super close zooms of camels and a well in Chad weren't disturbing enough, the people spending hours on Google StreetView tracking down disturbing images and deeply personal glances into people's lives and living rooms.

We put together our own round up of scary street views last June, but new ones pop up every day. Times Online has collected 10 more confounding images and we feel obligated to share this new collection of frightening Street Views.



From Valleywag

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