Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Google is getting ready to launch their Street View technology in the UK, and it isn’t being met with open arms. Although the mapping tool is already in place in some major US cities, folks in the UK are protesting the implementation on their turf.  Street View works by taking photos of, logically enough, streets to match maps. However the photos also include any people on those streets. This is where the problems come in for the UK folk. They feel this is a blatant disregard for privacy; and that permission should be granted by any individual photographed since the pictures are being used in a commercial regard. 

Personally, I don’t see how Google is getting away with this. As a freelance photographer myself, I know that any photographs that I take (even in a public setting) must have release forms signed by each recognizable person in the photo, if I am to be using them in any way for profit. (They even consider a person to be “recognizable” if the photo only shows the back of them for the record.) Apparently, Privacy International, a UK rights group, agrees. They believe the technology clearly breaks data protection laws. 

MORE »

Your right to privacy is no longer as private as you once thought or hoped. By court order, Google is being forced to hand over all the records of every video watched by YouTube users. This information will include users’ names as well as IP addresses, and the request has Google lawyers arguing invasion of privacy.  The judge in his ruling, however, found this argument “speculative” and ordered them to turn over the logs on a set of four terabyte hard drives.

The purpose behind the lawsuit is that Viacom intends to prove that infringing material is more prominent than user-created videos. This would most likely increase Google’s liability if they are found guilty of contributory infringement. The suit was originally filed in March of 2007, with Viacom seeking over $1 billion in damages. Google tried to argue that the law provides a “safe harbor for online services so long as they comply with copyright take-down requests.” Apparently Judge Louis L. Stanton, the senior judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who issued the opinion and order, wasn’t buying it, since the order also requires Google to supply copies of any video that was taken down for any reason.

MORE »

Internet users usually hit a brick wall when trying to search for content that is embedded in Adobe Flash media. Content of this type, whether in SWF or the more common FLV format, are never really available for web-crawling search engines to access. Well, not anymore.

Adobe is teaming up with search giants Google and Yahoo start indexing Flash content and run the Adobe Flash Player on their servers at runtime. Initially, this will mean not only the ability to search Flash content but better search returns for your queries.

The jury is still out whether this move will have huge or limited impact, initial signs bode well, especially when one realizes that there is a wealth of training, e-learning, and marketing content all on the Flash medium.

Google will begin offering Flash search capabilities within the week while Yahoo plans to do so in a future update to Yahoo Search.

Read [InfoWorld]

In an apparent attempt to boost it’s rather floundering search presence on the Net, Microsoft announced its plan to purchase the relatively unknown company Powerset.  This startup company has developed semantic search technology based upon natural language processing.

What this type of software does is use specific linguistic algorithms to determine what certain queries submitted to the engine mean, and then formulates answers based on data existing in a knowledge repository. Wikipedia is the repository used by Powerset. Personally, I don’t know...this could be a good or bad thing considering Joe Schmoe public writes Wikipedia. Founded by CEO Barney Pell, COO Steve Newcomb and Product Architect Lorenzo Thione, Powerset is a Silicon Valley company that was first launched in 2006.

MORE »

Google finds yet another internet niche, an animated series created by Seth MacFarlane (creator of “The Family Guy") called “Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy” which will be streamed on the web only. And they have high rolling backers who agree that the idea is worth millions.

What really makes their plan innovative? Their marketing scheme. Instead of just randomly dumping static ads here or there, Google plans to use their AdSense program to make sure they are hitting their primary demographic for the program - namely, young men. So, when Johnny goes searching for more, more, more MacFarlane… Johnny will now get to see a video clip of “Calvacade”. There will of course still be advertising built into the clips. It may be as simple as ”brought to you by”, or the usual little blip commercial before the actual clip starts for example.  Mr. MacFarlane, who receives a percentage of the ad revenue, has done his part by already building up a group of new characters to star in the web-series, which are slated to run in 50-minute clips. He described the installments as “animated versions of the one-frame cartoons you might see in The New Yorker, only edgier.”

MORE »

Canadians can now rejoice, well maybe that is a little bit much, but they can now get business listing information by calling 1-800-GOOG-411. The free information service has been available in the US for some time now, and while it is still listed as experimental for those in Canada it does still offer the same features, which include the ability to find and be connected with a local business. When GOOG-411 is called from Canada users will be promoted for their “city and province.”

As of this posting the GOOG-411 service is still just in English, so any French speaking Canadians may have to wait a little longer, however Google has been “working hard to make it disponible en Français dans un proche avenir.” Google has also “incorporated some Canadianisms such as “eh,” “Traw-na,” “Cal-gry,” and, of course, “aboot.” into the service, which should hopefully take any such accents into consideration.

Via [Official Google Mobile Blog]

Google has just introduced two enhancements to its mobile service to provide users a faster mobile search experience through a fast loading mobile homepage and better iGoogle gadget management.

First, they updated their mobile homepage to make mobile access faster than before. When users visit google.com using their mobile browser, Google will cache the homepage so that when users bookmark the homepage, they will have quicker time when loading it during their next visit. This is possible no matter where users came from, whether through the mobile browser or through Google’s mobile search plug-in.

MORE »

Google has just ported its mobile version of Picasa Web Albums to S60-based handsets, similar to the versions featured on the iPhone and Windows Mobile phones. However, the Google Mobile Team did not just tweak Picasa to make it fit with the S60 mobile phones, it also refined the application a bit to fully maximize the power of the S60 phones.

So, with the Picasa Web Album for S60 phones, users can now enjoy the image uploading and web gallery service from Google with added ajaxy goodness, faster browsing and a better user interface as well. Google has even made it available in 36 languages and the previous complicated toolbar was replaced with new much simpler version as well as easy-to-understand icons.

To begin using Picasa Web Albums on your S60-based phone, just point your phones browser to http://picasa.google.com.

Via [Official Google Mobile Blog]

Google has just made available version 2.2 of its useful Google Maps for mobile application. Adding to the previously introduced public transportation for San Francisco is a new feature which lets users get transit directions all in the same place, similar to the web-based Google Maps. It has even expanded its coverage to include Chicago, Seattle, Vancouver as well as over 40 other cities across the US.

Additionally, version 2.2 lets users find the last transit trips of the day in covered cities. This comes in handy for users who rely on public transit, since they can easily schedule their activities at night. Likewise, users can also view earlier trips made by public transit. Even more useful is Google Maps for mobile’s My Location feature which lets users set the start point of their local trips.

Google Maps for mobile version 2.2 works best with Blackberry devices and other Java-based phones. In fact, it features faster searching capabilities and star rating features for business establishments.

You can download this mobile application by pointing your mobile phone’s browser to http://www.google.com/gmm.

Via [Google Mobile Blog]

A Sanford C. Bernstein analyst predicted that with the ongoing US economic downturn, the Internet will continue to shrink and most of its major players will suffer but at least two of the current major internet players will remain strong. Guess who? Google and Amazon.

The report entitled “U.S. Internet: The End of the Beginning” written by Jeffrey Lindsay predicted that given their current market performances, both Google and Amazon are most likely to sustain their current standing despite the present US economic recession. In fact these two major internet players continue to post 30-40 percent growth while everybody else seems to be suffering financially.

Interestingly the report has confirmed current happenings in the web industry. For one, it claimed that Yahoo will be eventually sold to Microsoft, while IAC will push through with its plan of splitting up its conglomerate. The report also noted that eBay and Amazon may soon be forced to impose sales taxes on their transactions.

The report also suggest that Yahoo may still recuperate from its slumping performance, possibly by turning over some of its search advertising to Google, or if Microsoft finally takes over the company.

Read [Reuters]