Google announced on Tuesday that they’d been they target of a phishing scam originating in Jinan, China, aimed at the accounts of Chinese activists and senior officials in the U.S. Victims were sent fake emails with links to a fake Gmail site, which harvested the usernames and passwords of anyone trying to log in.
Google Wallet and Google Offers launched yesterday, both of which sound supremely cool – PayPal’s grumblings (and lawsuits) about commercial espionage notwithstanding. Google Wallet lets users swipe their phones in lieu of credit cards, even allowing subscription to a new prepaid Google debit card; Google Offers looks to work like a virtual loyalty card.
Hooray! I hear you say at the great news that Rovio, creator of the extremely addictive “Angry Birds”, has decided to release a version for Google Chrome. Peter Vesterbacka of Finnish software firm Rovio, made the announcement at a Google developers conference yesterday.
And you thought it was just Apple and Google! Gosh. TomTom has admitted that its satellite navigation devices can track users and report to third parties about how fast they’re going – like the police, for instance. Your TomTom is a speed camera now.Yay future.
YouTube is becoming your mother. Starting Thursday, if you upload something that violates copyright law you’ll be forced to watch a video telling you just how naughty you’ve been.
Google introduced their revolutionary new addition to Gmail on Friday and its name is Gmail Motion. Of course most people knew it was a joke, but the brains over at the ICT MxR Labs, the FAAST team, decided to make it a reality.
Google has set up the first of its startup-funding offices in Cape Town, under the ‘Umbuno’ flagship. “Umbono” is isiZulu for ‘vision’ or ‘idea’. Google also showed that it knows how to make a girl feel special, saying it chose Cape Town because the city is in “the process of positioning itself as a hub for innovation and technology”.
Brazilian ad agency Loducca has put together a collection of geo-tagged street art from Google Street View for Red Bull. The site is sweetly designed, with decent Cape Town representation. How exactly this is going to sell Red Bell any caffeinated beverages is beyond me, but whatever.
For those of you working in the digital journalism industry, it’s time to shine and get your hands on some bucks from Google! Google recently awarded media watchdog IPI (International Press Institute) with nearly R20 million as part of a new project to support digital journalism initiatives in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
Ha. But no, seriously, they’re talking about this – the dudes and ladies who run Twitter are being courted by a couple of companies, Facebook and Google among them, who want to shell out the $10bn that the company is apparently worth. Predictably, a bunch of people are whining about this being the end of Twitter, etc.
Ha. Some kid called Jack Weppler broke up with his girlfriend, so she put a truckload of embarassing Lolcat-style photos of him online – and tweaked it so that they’d all show up if somebody tried to Google him. So hey, that’s something new to worry about.
Speak2Tweet was launched over the weekend, a joint venture by Twitter and Google that allows anybody to post to Twitter using just a phone connection, in the hopes of getting more word out about the situation in Egypt as it unfolds. Google bought the company that engineered the technology last week because hey, it’s Google.
Google’s logo mutations are mostly spot on. For Easter they gooi some bunnies. When there’s pumpkins and draculas you know it’s Halloween. Bobsleds, Winter Olympics. It’s not always pretty but most times it makes sense so what in the name of everything holy, clear and sacred do our friends over at Google mean by this one?
I know – it’s December, you’ve got this big pseudo-Christian consumerist monolith being forced down every available orifice imploring you to spend more money on This New Shiny Thing, and maybe you’re a little sick of that right now. I understand that. But believe me when I say that this is a freaking awesome advert.
Maybe it’s a little early to be getting nostalgic, the Google’s Zeitgeist 2010 has you ‘Re-live top events and moments from 2010 from around the globe through search, images, and video.’ South Africans can go ahead and skip to 2:05, though, because that’s where the important part of 2010 really starts.
The Great Tripod on a Prius has made it’s way to Brazil, not long after wizzing by 2ov’s HQ in the Cape Quarter, I’ll have you know. But, as inevitable as portraits of maniacal bergies on the Cape Town records of Google Street view, corpses have begun popping up at an alarming rate as the Street View car chugs through Brazil, and specifically, Rio de Janeiro.
Word is afoot that a film version of my all time favourite childhood comic, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is in the works, with the writers of the Iron Man franchise on the case. Although, whether this film will work for the generation that actually cared about the comic remains to be seen. After all, […]