Damn Google being able to use their own technology to be able to do something really really cool.
Google Australia is celebrating Australia Day 2007 by photographing Sydney Harbour from the air, and we want to make sure as many of us as possible squeeze into the picture.So when you see the Google branded plane flying overhead this January 26th, hoist a sign, arrange your family into a fun formation or just get a bunch of friends together to wave.
Yuk. I just looked at my stats. And it turns out that the Google search term that brings most people to my blog is…
“Second Life Sex”
Damn, I’ve just realised that by even writing the term again, I’ve probably increased my google ranking. I’m not sure how happy I am being on the virtual sex tourist trail. Mind you I suppose it’s better than last year when the top Google search was ‘Making Crack’.
If you’re into adventure type games. Or just want to win some great prizes. Or are a real nerd and want to see how we’ve used Google Maps as part of our quest interface. Head over to MaliceBoxQuest.com, something Poke have put together for Penguin to promote the launch of a new mystic-thriller book called, strangely enough, The Malice Box.
Tom and Cookie, two of the other Poke folk who worked on the game have also written bits about it on their blogs. In fact I think Cookie sums it all up rather well:
The book is a bit like the Da Vinci Code – a dude runs about the place, solving puzzles and saving the world…For the online game we created, you get to navigate the globe using Google maps. Basically you solve puzzles, guess locations of ‘Red Gold’ on the map and win prizes. Go check it out and play the game and at www.maliceboxquest.com/
Oh, and if you’ve been paying attention this is the game that I was trying to find a scriptwriter for ages ago! And thanks to some helpful blog readers we eventually found Tim Wright, who was great to work with. Hooray for blogs!
On my way to work this morning I was pondering the notion of Googlability. I’m quite lucky that both of my names are spelled in odd ways, it means that there aren’t that many Iain Tait‘s out there. Apart from Dr Iain Tait at the University of Dundee with whom I have an ongoing battle for the top Google Spot – note: I’m not linking to him as it’ll just bump up his Google ranking ;-)
But it led me to a thought. As more and more people have bits of themselves online having a good solid Googlable name actually becomes a valuable asset. Being called John Smith (or any international equivalent) actually means that you’ll have to get into serious search engine optimisation in order for people to find you.
So, next time you’re naming a child, think about it.
This will just be one blog post about probably the most blogged about thing ever. The new Apple iPhone. Here’s a couple of thoughts…
It is the ultimate in gadget porn
Features some proper interface wizardry
Looks like another genre-defining piece of product design
Interestingly they’ve done deals with both Yahoo! and Google
It’s not as stupidly expensive as you might have thought
The queues to get hold of one are going to be massive
Whichever network gets territory exclusives on these these things is going to clean up (but they probably paid a fortune for it I’d guess).
But we’re all going to have to wait for months before we can get our hands on them. Even longer for us poor suckers outside of the US. There’ll be lots of people posting lots of smart stuff about this. So I’m not going to attempt to say anything much…
Apart from the fact that I think it looks like the kind of thing that I’d like to own, very much.
I was attempting to write something about Friday’s Microsoft Day that I went to. But I visited Live Local search to look something up, then realised I could see my own house from the air, from multiple different angles. And it’s, dare I say it, way slicker than Google maps in terms of visual quality. Not sure if it’s the same everywhere, but in central London it’s very very cool!
I totally missed Google’s birthday (28th September). But I picked it up today thanks to Mike at DigitalAgency
Perhaps the reason that I missed it was that it was my birthday on the same day and I was too worried about being old. I like having the same birthday as Google. Not sure why but oddly I do.
I also realised that Crackunit, in it’s current form, is one year old on the 10th October. Not sure how to celebrate, maybe I’ll have a blog party. Everyone’s invited. It’s BYO btw.
And I’m not going to bang on about it too much, but it reminds me of a conversation that I’ve had with a few people recently about online privacy and identity.
Sophie has mentioned to me a couple of times that I don’t credit her in my blog, and it’s true, but for good reason. Not because I’m trying to be a blog-swinger and attract chicks who read geeky blogs. Or because I’m trying to pretend that everything I write about is mine, mine, all mine. But because I don’t think that it’s right to ‘put’ someone online who doesn’t exist there already. I have no qualms about mentioning bloggers, or people who are active participants in online communities, or even people who are relatively googleable. But I’d never want to be responsible for ‘creating’ someone online. Even relatively anonymous Flickr postings can lead to all kinds of strange happenings.
The MySpace hit is just an extreme example of what happens when you get spotted in the wrong places online.
The one time when I have posted about someone who didn’t really have an online presence is when I blogged about my friend Olly who sadly passed away, I had a strange feeling that there would be people who knew he was tragically ill but may not have heard of his death. And sure enough there were a significant number of Google searches for his name that lead people here, resulting in a fair few emails from friends and acquaintances. Receiving those mails and dealing with them felt like an incredible responsibility and made me even more aware of the power of talking about people online.
Great list of the Top 10 Best Presentations Ever, a pretty tough list to compile and they’ve done a nice job. There’s a few in here that I’ve seen before, and a few that I haven’t.
As an aside I’m stunned almost daily at how much amazing video content is becoming freely available online. Martin Luthor King’s “I have a dream” speech in full is just one of those things. It’s starting to feel like pretty soon we’ll have access to a complete archive of the most interesting moments in film.
Following on from the Darknet post the other day, here’s some more on piracy in Sweden (and beyond). This 30 minute film gives a view of the P2P landscape (and especially the ‘bust’ on PirateBay – a major bittorrent site).
Obviously, given the group that produced the film, it’s coming at the argument from a certain direction. But there are some interesting bits in there.
I was surprised at the power that Hollywood has over the US government, and subsequently the lengths that they went to in order to ‘persuade’ the Swedish government to act against Pirate Bay. The backlash that this has generated in Sweden was also interesting, it would appear that many people are enraged by the US interfering and overturning domestic policy (which ultimately has led to the Pirate Party getting massive exposure and a sizable following).
I think the argument that’s put forward in the film that was most interesting talks about the fact that historically musicians were against recorded music, and the film industry was against VCRs. Both groups eventually turned these threats into revenue streams.
One commentator in the film recounts a Chinese proverb along the lines of:
When the wind rises, some people build walls. Others build windmills.
The ancient Chinese didn’t mention the fact that millions of others rush around looting stuff for free in all the confusion, but I guess that’s a much more modern predicament.
When I finished watching the film I didn’t end up feeling like my mind had been moved in either direction. It just made it clear that there really is a war going on, and there’s 2 groups of people who are determined to do things their way until they have to stop… But I did feel that one group was perhaps slightly more innovative and responsive than the other, no prizes for guessing which one.
I totally missed Google’s birthday (28th September). But I picked it up today thanks to Mike at 
