Google Street View Icon In Party Clothes
The Google Street View dude icon is suddenly sporting a party hat and balloons:
Assumably the special icon is celebrating Google’s 10th Birthday, though there’s no mention of it on the Google Lat Long Blog.
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 09/23/2008 | Permalink | 
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Filed under: Google, MapsGoogle, Google-Maps, Street View
Chrome - Google Browser Launching
Google has officially confirmed that they’ll be launching “Chrome” — their newly developed, open-source browser, into the wild tomorrow for the Windows platform.
If you recall, I’d previously posted about rumors of a Google browser here and here a year ago, despite Google executives previously indicating that they would not build another browser. A number of other analysts dismissed my observations that a Google browser would be advantageous to the company and complimentary to their various other applications and services - but, I’m now proved right and Google’s efforts to obscure the fact of their browser initiatives appear in retrospect to have been intended to keep the whole thing as top secret as possible until deployment. In 2006, Google CEO Eric Schmidt had stated, “We would only do so…if we thought there was a real user benefit.” (more…)
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 09/02/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Googlebrowsers, Chrome, Google, Google Chrome
Googledance 2008
The Googledance party was held last night at the Googleplex for SES Conference attendees, and it lived up to its traditional party-on-a-grand-scale reputation for which it has become known.
The theme this year was “Glow in the Dark”, and they gave out t-shirts which flouresced nicely under blacklights, and those endothermic glow sticks that can be linked up for bracelets or necklaces. In one area was a large Lite Brite station that allowed party-goers to make colorful messages or illustrations of their choosing with the translucent pegs.
One really cool entertainment was the “Glow Graffiti” - they had set up a couple of different stations to allow the crowd to do digital graffiti — using laser pointers to write on the sides of a couple of buildings. A camera tracks where one drags the laser pointer beam on the wall’s surface, then a computer captures the trajectories and redisplays the lines drawn back onto the wall continuously with a projector. In this way, one can draw all over the side of a building with light.
“Google” tagged in digital graffiti on side of building
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 08/20/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Conferences, GoogleDigital Graffiti, Google, Googledance, graffiti, guerrilla marketing
SMX LoMo Keynote: Frazier Miller
Frazier Miller, General Manager of Yahoo! Local, spoke yesterday here at the SMX Local & Mobile conference in San Francisco.
It was very interesting to hear the take on local & mobile from one of Yahoo! Local’s top thought leaders. It was obvious that Frazier has a very tight grip on understanding what motivates consumers and where the trends may be headed in local/mobile evolution.
Some highlights of Frazier’s presentation included:
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 07/25/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Conferences, Local Search, Mobile Search, YahooLocal Search, Mobile Search, SMX LoMo, SMX-Local-&-Mobile, Yahoo-Local
Google Launches New Virtual Reality: Lively
Google has finally launched the long-awaited Lively virtual reality service.
Will it be a SecondLife killer, as some have suggested? So far, no, since it doesn’t have one huge planet or room for interacting with everyone as SecondLife does.
But this is the first baby-step Google has taken into VR, and we can expect them to evolve it further, particularly if the service proves popular. I haven’t tried it out just yet, but the feature descriptions include adding VR rooms to webpages, pulling photos and vids into the VR environments, and tying it closely to Google Talk - Google’s chat service. (more…)
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 07/08/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Futurism, Google, technologyGoogle, Lively, virtual-reality, VR
Google Photos To Compete With Flickr?
The Google Operating System blog reports that Google is likely changing the name of their Picasa photo sharing service to “Google Photos”.
A few other features are due to rollout as well, including licensing options, email photo uploads, and tagging of people in pics. (more…)
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 07/01/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, Image Optimizationflickr, Google, Google Photos, image sharing, Picasa
Town Forces Google To Remove Pics From Street View
North Oaks, a small town in Minnesota, demanded that Google remove pictures of the town from Street View service.
The town apparently has a strong desire to remain private, and since most streets in it are privately owned, they threatened Google with trespassing citations if the pics weren’t removed.
I’m surprised they would attempt to use a trespassing citation for this, since it seems a little bit odd to have open streets for people to drive along, ungated, even with the “No Trespassing” signs. I would think a more viable claim would be copyright infringement since the town might claim that buildings or streets were marked as private, or if they charge some sort of entry fee for vehicles passing through. A similar claim is apparently possible if one takes photos of buildings/places for which admission fees are charged to see/enter — reselling such photos or making money off of them in some way is apparently actionable under copyright law.
Privacy groups have complained about Google Street View since it was introduced, and Google recently responded by initiating the use of software which blurs individuals’ faces in the streetview pics.
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 06/02/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, Mapscopyright infringement, Google, Google Street View, privacy issues
Interesting Sights To See In Google Street View
Be sure to check out my collection of cool sights in Street View over at Search Engine Land today.
While the piece is strictly fluffy, it does cover a wide range of pictures that illustrate why people are concerned about privacy with the utility along with why it’s cool and fun to have.
Here’s my favorite pic from the set - a photo that captured a bit of skywriting:
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 05/29/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, Mapscandid photos, Google, Google Street View, internet photography
Can NearbyNow Escape The Fate of Local Shopping Search Engines?
Greg Sterling points out that a number of companies are attempting to build out inventories of local brick-and-mortar stores and expose this info via search capabilities. Greg notes that NearbyNow has just raised $11.75 million in additional funding, and that there are compelling reasons to believe that local product shopping search satisfies a lot of user needs and conforms to existing shopping behavior. Greg states:
Every shopping engine that doesn’t have this local store data will suffer at the hands of those that do. The significance of this and its potential impact on online shopping (and by extension mobile) cannot be overstated.
My initial gut reaction to NearbyNow is along the lines of: “I’ve seen this during the era of dot-bombs, and it didn’t work — why should it work now?” (more…)
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 05/19/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Local Search, Mobile Search, SearchingLocal Search, Mobile Search, NearbyNow, Product Search, Shopping Search
Google to launch ‘Friend Connect’ tonight
Google’s newest foray into social media will launch tonight in preview release at Campfire One. Google’s announcement about Friend Connect states that webmasters may use the service to easily set up social media sharing services on their sites, encouraging online communities to develop and potentially help to promote the site. Google Friend Connect functionality includes user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, reviews, and third-party applications provided through Google’s OpenSocial developer community. (more…)
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 05/12/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, Social Media OptimizationFriend Connect, Google, Social-Media, Web-2.0
