Reader JP, sends us this little tidbit about accessing online information after someone has passed away. From CNET: As more and more people move their lives, address books, calendars, financial information, online, they are taking a risk that some information formerly filed away in folders and desks might never be recovered. That is, unless they share their passwords, which poses security threats.
The News; Dance Like Nobody’s Buying
By 6.23.06
• The Googleplex paid him off in lifetime supply of candy, hair combings. [LAT] “Lawmaker’s Porn Suit Against Google Dropped”
The News: Evil Had a Birthday
By 6.7.06
• Inspired by The Antichrist’s birthday, Google admits being to being evil after all. [CT]
The Sexiest Town on the Internet
By 5.22.06
Trends is perhaps one of the more hypnotically useless applications to come out of the Google hive mind lately. For example, Google Trends confirmed what Ben and I already knew: we need to infuse this site with a lot more porn, if we’re going to get more visitors from cities like Elmhurst, Illinois. Specifically anal porn, because not only is Elmhurst the most smut minded of all American cities according to Google Trends, but they are also the city most interested in sodomy.
Google Trends Forecasts Our Watery Demise
By 5.12.06
Using the fancy new Google Trends web app launched today, we were able to rank which US cities are searching for Wal-mart, iPods, Amazon and Sex the most, as well as compare results by city.
Google To Give AT&T Pipes The Double Deuce?
By 4.19.06
We love this quote from AT&T CEO Edward Whitacre, referring to Google, eBay and Amazon.com: “Why should they be able to use my pipes for free?” Pointing out that people are actually paying for the bandwidth going through his pipes hasn’t swayed good old Ed. If the man ran FedEx, both the sender and receiver would pay for a package.
Google Hates Public Library’s Blog
By 4.3.06
- “I read with amusement your recent piece on the rapid resolution of the google blog deletion, since of course blogger kills blogs every day (just browse the blogger support google group for head counts). One of the kill tactics that is especially swell is their spambot. Now I have no sympathy for true splogs and I appreciate that they’re trying to combat this. But as our small public library just found out, spam isn’t all they’re killing.”
Mesothelioma, Debt, Lawsuits Tops Google AdWords List
By 3.27.06
Seen via Boing Boing, seen via Battelle, this list of the top Google AdWords. We’re not ashamed to admit that we’re amazed at the strong showing of mesothelioma on the list… hell, we had to look it up. Who knew absestos huffers were such a lucrative clientele? The rest of the list, of course, is an interesting vivisection of the American psyche: debt and lawsuits are the biggest businesses.
Google Settles $90M Adwords ‘Click Fraud’ Lawsuit
By 3.9.06
Hot on the heels of reader Charles Flint’s nightmare with Google’s Adwords program comes the announcement that Google will be paying out 90 million in refunds to advertisers who paid Google money for cases of click fraud.
Consumer Complaints: Google Bills Incredulous Non-Customer for 3 Grand
By 3.8.06
Yikes. Reader Charlie Flint just wrote in with this horror story. The short: Google bills him $3,000 dollars for an Adwords account that he doesn’t actually have. To our untrained eye, this sounds very much like someone has gotten his bank details somehow and is using Google Adwords to funnel money out of his account, but we’re no experts. Can anyone with similar or not-so-similar experience tell Charlie what the hell is going on and what he can do about it?
Worst Company in America: Tier 1 Results
By 3.6.06
Ladies and Gentlemen, your Tier 1 champions! Some no-brainers, squeakers and absolute pummeling.
Round 7: Google vs. Sony BMG
By 3.2.06
Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you’re viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.
