The Blogosphere got in a tizzy recently after Google decided to change its favicon (the little icon in your address bar that’s unique to each site).
To address those that demanded answers from the big G, Google has written a post about the new favicon, and explained that “the reason is that we wanted to develop a set of icons that would scale better to some new platforms like the iPhone and other mobile devices”.
Personally, I’m not a fan of the little G, and would have preferred that they stick with the big G, but apparently they’ve got some goals in mind, since they “tried in total more than 300 permutations”.
Apparently they wanted something distinctive and noticeable, as well as something that embraced the colorfulness of the logo, yet wouldn’t date itself, and considering the amount of feedback they received from people who noticed the change, I think they succeeded.
Rest assured though, if you can’t stand the new favicon, let them know, because they “really value feedback form users and want to hear your ideas”.
The Uno is unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.
By using gyroscope technology similar to the Segway, it balances on two wheels that sit right next to each other. The Uno goes forward when you push your body weight forward, and backwards when you push your body weight backward. The further you lean, the more the Uno tilts, and the faster it accelerates.
Apparently it’s so simple to operate that there are no controls except for an on-off switch. The gyro tells the ECU how much to accelerate automatically, and the proper amount of power is delivered to the wheels through electric motors, one for each wheel.
The body and frame are both custom designed, with a Yamaha R1 serving as the starting point. After prepping the frame, the molding took just six weeks to complete.
And if that’s not enough for you, then keep in mind that the entire thing was designed by Ben J. Poss Gulak, an 18-year-old who taught himself CAD on a home computer using Google’s free SketchUp tool to create the initial idea.
Robots.txt is a file that webmasters use to tell Google’s spiders what they can and cannot crawl through to index for search results, but for the curious, it’s also a way to figure out what Google doesn’t want the world to know about yet.
That’s because Google maintains its own robots.txt file that prevents their new products from showing up in search results until they’re ready. However, they don’t prevent you or I from taking a look at their robots.txt file and seeing what’s in there, which is exactly how Google Mobile LCB was discovered.
Google Mobile LCB appears to be a searchless search, where you put in your location, and Google automatically gives you various categories for things that are around you.
Though it’s obviously not finished, the idea is an interesting one, and I think we’ll see more and more programs become location aware as more and more cell phones come standard with GPS.
Yesterday was April Fools’ Day, but I feel like it should have just been called Official Rick Roll Day, since so many sites (DYH included) used it as an excuse for a little meme misdirection. (YouTube Rick Rolling anyone and everyone that clicked on a featured video link was a classic!)
However, not all sites went for the easy/obvious gag, and some managed to pull some pretty funny stunts. Below are some of my favorites:
Recently, I was alerted to a problem with DYH and Digg. Whenever a post was submitted to Digg, the user was greeted with the following message instead of the usual Digg verbage:
This link does not appear to be a working link. Please check the URL and try again.
A quick Google of [Digg + ”This link does not appear to be a working link. Please check the URL and try again.”] turned up this page, which indicated the fact that this issue was due to an incompatibility between Digg and the Bad Behavior plugin.
Since I’m a huge fan of the Bad Behavior plugin and what it’s done to eliminate the spam that this site was seeing, I was reluctant to just remove it.
Thankfully, there’s a workaround, though it gets into php code, so it’s a bit messy for Wordpress beginners. However, if you use the Bad Behavior plugin on your own site, and want Digg to Digg, then do the following:
Open up the Bad Behavior plugin folder
Open up the Bad Behavior subfolder
Open a file called “whitelist.inc.php” in a text editor
Find the following text:
// Includes four examples of whitelisting by IP address and netblock.
$bb2_whitelist_ip_ranges = array(
“10.0.0.0/8″,
“172.16.0.0/12″,
“192.168.0.0/16″,
// “127.0.0.1″,
);
Add Digg’s crawler address (64.191.203.34) as follows:
// Includes four examples of whitelisting by IP address and netblock.
$bb2_whitelist_ip_ranges = array(
“10.0.0.0/8″,
“172.16.0.0/12″,
“192.168.0.0/16″,
“64.191.203.34″,
// “127.0.0.1″,
);
Save, and re-upload the “whitelist.inc.php” file
Moral of the story: Almost any problem can be solved with a little bit of Google.
Wikia Search wants to take down the Google giant with a freely licensed (open source) search engine.
Since Google is now a $200 Billion company, it’s easy to assume that they’re going to be a bit guarded with regard to their search technology; as it is, after all, the driving force behind most of those billions.
However, Wikia Search feels that by putting users in control, they can create a search engine that works faster, is more accurate, and is more informative.
How is it going to do this?
By using the power of a community of users acting together in an open, transparent, and public way.
Their belief is that “search is a fundamental part of the infrastructure of the Internet, and that it can and should therefore be done in an open, objective, accountable way”.
Though it’s currently only an Alpha release (meaning the results are pretty bad because there is no user feedback data), as that data starts to roll in, expect the results to get better at an impressively quick pace. (At least that’s the hope.)
It’s definitely an interesting project, and I hope it’s successful too, because if it can do for search what Wikipedia did for the encyclopedia, then Google definitely needs to keep an eye on this David.
With the release of Google Maps 2.0 (Mobile), Google announced a new feature called My Location. It’s still in Beta (as are most Google products) but the idea is that your phone can now locate you on the map without the use of GPS.
How does it do this?
The My Location feature takes information broadcast from mobile towers near you to approximate your current location on the map - it’s not GPS, but it comes pretty close (approximately 1000m close, on average).
It’s not exactly going to replace your Garmin, but it’s designed to help with finding local restaurants and gas stations and the like, so I think it’s definitely a cool technology with a lot of possibility.
