Google+ now has a meme text generator for images, allowing the Internet to parody itself until it's no longer funny. The Google+ stream, already jammed with animated GIFs, full-width images and videos, Google Music players (theoretically) and 1,000-word rants, is now a full-fledged competitor to I Can Has Cheezburger.
Google engineer Colin McMillen announced the feature this morning. The Google+ Creative Kit for editing images already had a text tool with lots of fonts to choose from, but this "funny text" tool is more brutal. Just drag an image into the share box, click 'Add Text,' and then there are boxes for top, middle and bottom text. The default font is white Impact, perfect for LOLcats.
The official blog of Open Street Map reports tonight that someone at a range of Google IP addresses in India has been editing the collaboratively made map of the world in some very unhelpful ways, like moving and deleting information and reversing the direction of one-way streets on the map.
Update: Google sent the following statement to ReadWriteWeb on Tuesday morning. "The two people who made these changes were contractors acting on their own behalf while on the Google network. They are no longer working on Google projects."
The IP addresses match the same ones that were caught last week running a long-term scam wherein telephone directory listings were scraped from a crowd-sourced phone directory in Kenya called Mocality. A Google contractor then systematically called those phone numbers claiming to have a paid placement deal jointly offered by the Kenyan company and Google! A Google spokesperson told BoingBoing on Friday that the company was "mortified" by the discovery - but now it appears the same Google contractor may be behind mayhem rippling throughout one of the world's biggest maps. Google says it's investigating these latest allegations.
There's been a flurry of good news in the last few days for opponents of the SOPA/PIPA anti-piracy legislation worming its way through the U.S. Congress. The White House has come out opposing key flaws in the legislation, so both versions are effectively stuck for now. Not taking any chances, some of the world's biggest websites, including Wikipedia and Reddit, are going dark on Wednesday, January 18 to protest the ill-conceived anti-piracy legislation.
On American Censorship Day in November, Tumblr censored its users' dashboards. Now other Web behemoths will follow suit, taking their sites offline entirely. For other sites interested in joining the protest, there are technical considerations affecting search engine placement that webmasters should consider. Google's Pierre Far has shared some important tips.
Google has released a new way to securely log into Google accounts on public computers. Using a smartphone, scan the QR code generated at accounts.google.com/sesame. The Google login prompt will appear on your phone, and logging in there will log you into a session on the desktop.
This prevents the user from having to type sensitive login credentials into a public machine, which could be compromised with keylogging software. The new QR code feature is an alternative to Google's 2-step verification. This generates a unique short code on your mobile, which you must input for each desktop login, using the presence of your phone as a form of identification.
Google has resorted to gamification to drive interest in its location services. It posted a YouTube video last week promoting a Google Maps-powered game coming to Google+ Games in February. It involves rolling a ball around a cube covered with 3D Google maps. Players apparently get extra points for hitting Zagat-rated businesses, promoting Google's acquisition of the review publisher last year.
"Play your world, like never before," is the promotion's slogan. It ends with a link to Google's new Start Here page for Google Maps, which offers a detailed walkthrough of the service. This gives Google a chance to show off all the new features of Maps, such as interior mapping and crowd-sourced map-making. If Facebook's history is any indication, one surefire way to drive social network eyeballs to something is to turn it into a game.
Google announced a partnership with the World Bank today to make Google Map Maker data more accessible to government organizations in disaster scenarios. Google Map Maker is the tool for crowd-sourcing the editing and maintenance of Google's world map. Its user-generated data include locations of hospitals, schools, settlements, water sources and minor roads.
Access to these data will help governments, NGOs, researchers and individuals plan without waiting for the changes to be approved and added to the official maps. World Bank partner organizations, such as government and U.N. agencies, can contact World Bank offices to request access to the data. Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Zambia, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Moldova, Mozambique, Nepal and Haiti will pilot the project.
Much spleen has been vented over the launch of Google's Search Plus Your World this week. As was inevitable, Google has merged its new Google+ social signals into its Web search, an act that the blogosphere waited until this week to be upset about. Before this launch, the integration of Google+ into search looked like the complete destruction of Google search, forcing social crap into everything. Instead, we got two modes: personalized and global. And now, unlike before, you can shut off social search entirely.
Search has a toggle switch now. One side recommends things based on your friends and connections, the other is a plain old search engine. Many bloggers still feel that it's terrible, whether you can turn it off or not. Others find it useful, if you're good about managing your contacts. One objection to the change is that it privileges Google content over objectively better results. Others find evidence that Google's definition of "Your World" is bigger than Google+. What about you? Are you mad enough to dump Google?
Google has announced the second annual Google Science Fair, an online science competition opened to students aged 13-18 from anywhere in the world. Google touts this as "the largest online science competition in the world," and it touts CERN, The LEGO Group, National Geographic and Scientific American as partners.
Participants can have up to three partners. They pose a question, develop a hypothesis, test it with an experiment and submit the findings online. Last year's winners became scientific superheroes, meeting the president, speaking at TEDx Women, just generally kicking butt. There are also prizes, including a $50,000 college scholarship, a 10-day trip to the Galapagos Islands with National Geographic or an internship at Google or any of the partner organizations.
Mocality, a Kenya-based crowd-sourced web and mobile business listings company, has accused Google of fraudulently stealing its customers. In a blog post today, Mocality's CEO Stefan Magdalinski maintained that Google has targeted its database, the core of its company, and lied to its users in an attempt to get them to join up with Google Africa's Getting Kenyan Businesses Online (GKBO) program.
Shortly after GKBO began in September, Mocality "started receiving some odd calls" from customers who were confused by pitches to build them websites that came from Google in apparent partnership with Mocality. There was no such partnership and Mocality claimed to discover it was Google lying to its customers to bring them into GKBO.
Google has released a statement which we have included at the end of the article after the jump.
One of the co-authors of the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate has said that he will make a manager's amendment to the bill to strike out the section where Internet Service Providers will be required to block a foreign website found to be infringing on copyrighted content. The bill's sponsor, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D - Vt.), said yesterday that the DNS blocking portion of the bill may be stricken before it comes to a vote on the Senate floor Jan. 24. While this could be a big win for SOPA/PIPA opponents, there is still plenty in the bill that is detrimental to the Internet ecosystem.
