This snapshot of the busy New York intersection has been accessible through Street View feature for quite some time now. From the first sighting to the publication of this post, more than 11 hours have passed. I’ve sent a complaint to Google; let’s see if they act on this potentially disturbing scene immediately, if at all.

On a side note, I’m now convinced that the faces of people captured by Street View’s cameras are automatically blurred out. The sheer manpower required to blur out faces manually notwithstanding, I’d imagine anyone working for Google seeing a dead guy would keep him from appearing, right?

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For those who can’t see the pic above, here’s a transcript:

• I went to buy some black ink for my printer today…
• Then I realized that it would be cheaper to just buy a new printer that already came with black and color ink… (picture of Canon PIXMA iP2600 costing $30)
• Then I decided to see how much ink for the new printer would cost… (picture of black and color cartridges of aforementioned printer costing $37.94 total)
• then I remembered why I have 3 other printers sitting at home without ink…
• …It’s cheaper to buy a new printer than to buy new ink.

Is this true where you live, dear readers?

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Well, it’s not really a logo, because the new AOL branding involves plastering what’s spelled out as “Aol.” (in Arial) over various objects, apparently to reflect the new company’s dynamic and ever-changing nature. I’m not totally convinced, and maybe you’ll share my sentiments once you see the sample use of this new branding below:

The marketing rationale behind the new branding:

“AOL is a 21st century media company, with an ambitious vision for the future and new focus on creativity and expression, this required the new brand identity to be open and generous, to invite conversation and collaboration, and to feel credible, but also aspirational.”

Love it or hate it, hit the comments below. Let’s see if new AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, moving in from Google, can reverse AOL’s persistent decline.

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Looks good on paper. Someone put up a company to create this! Whoever decides to turn the Parent Porn Blocker will likely have an uphill battle though. Not only will they have to deal with the numerous workarounds sure to pop up once the product hits the market. I can imagine the makers coming under fire for turning innocent children into Oedipuses (Oedipii?).

Other than automatically replacing the heads of porn actors with the faces of the viewer’s parents, what other effective ways are there to keep children from watching porn?

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First, Verizon redesigns the phone’s interfaces to make it easier for users to accidentally access the operator’s data services:

Here’s how it works. They configure the phones to have multiple easily hit keystrokes to launch ‘Get it now’ or ‘Mobile Web’—usually a single key like an arrow key. Often we have no idea what key we hit, but up pops one of these screens. The instant you call the function, they charge you the data fee. We cancel these unintended requests as fast as we can hit the End key, but it doesn’t matter; they’ve told me that ANY data–even one kilobyte–is billed as 1MB. The damage is done.

And yes, as you’ve read, the operator data billing units are 1MB. So even if you download a measly byte, you end up with a $1.99 on your bill. Even worse, a Verizon employee reveals that the so-called “blocking” solution will not prevent from getting charged for data:

Now, you can ask to have this feature blocked. But even then, if you one of those buttons by accident, your phone transmits data; you get a message that you cannot use the service because it’s blocked–BUT you just used 0.06 kilobytes of data to get that message, so you are now charged $1.99 again!

The employee goes on to claim that this approach entirely legal, but definitely not ethical. I definitely agree: who doubles a 2-year contract pre-termination charge (from $175 to $350) anyway?

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It’s news that should please the Internet’s non-English users and domain name speculators alike. The former will now enjoy a web that’s no longer limited to English, potentially opening it up to new users. The latter will now have more names to grab online, in the hopes that they can sell it later on for a higher price. I have no idea how to spell “house” in Arabic, but you can bet someone will secure that word once it can be registered as a domain name.

Personally, I think making the foundation of the internet—domain names—more internationally will help the Internet go beyond its heavily-English origins, but at least one reader of the BBC source article shared a great insight: “There is a danger that the internet – a tool for culture, information – sharing and dialog on a non-national level, may become irreversibly fragmented”.

What the reader meant was that, with web addresses set to become more friendly to locals throughout the world, the need to understand what’s currently the universal language of the net (English) diminishes. Why bother exploring the world wide web when there’s already a lot available in your own language/script? Ironically, this push to make the web more universal may end up making it more fragmented.

What do you think? Feel free to comment below.

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Here’s the table ranking the top 10 countries. Thanks to the US-centric tech media, poor America is listed at number 15, with an average connection speed of 4.8Mbps, with an average $3.33 cost for a 1Mbps connection.

Most likely this is material for the “Oh, how the US is behind technologically” bandwagon. But hopefully the respective government infrastructure agencies consider the top 10 as models to follow.

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With Ninite however, the process is streamlined. Simply visit ninite.com, choose the applications you want, and the site builds a customized installer for your convenience. And theoretically, it gets even better: if you’re really familiar with slipstreaming additional software onto your Windows installation disc, you can integrate your customized installer into Windows setup, potentially allowing a computer that’s usable from the get-go once you log in to your new Windows installation for the first time!

Check out Ninite at Ninite.com.

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I hear newbie Mac Users argue that since they paid so much already for an Apple unit, paying for Apple Care is just way too much. But let me remind you that you don’t actually have to buy an Apple Care at the same time you buy the unit. You can actually defer it until a month before your current Apple Warranty expires. So that gives you ample time to save up for an Apple Care Protection Plan that costs roughly around $250-$350, depending on the Apple Product.

Courtesy Apple Gazette

Now all I have to do is save up enough money for that 15″ Macbook Pro I’ve always wanted—so that I can install Windows 7 on it!

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Proof of the alleged misdemeanor was a screenshot of said poke

Technology and law traditionally haven’t meshed well together, as technology’s constant stream of new developments sometimes make the law’s adherence to the letter ludicrous. Stanford fellow Ryan Calo laid out the legal rationale behind the whole affair:

…it is still a form of communication restricted by a protective order.

“A poke is a very deliberate action,” he said. “You have to select the person and say, ‘this is what I want to do.’”

Advances in technology have expanded the spectrum of communication, from low-engagement to high-engagement ways of interacting with others, Calo said.

Fair enough, a woman goes to court and successfully gets a court order protecting her from further communication from an offending party, and that protection was violated. Getting arrested for poking someone else on Facebook sounds a bit rough, but there’s a lesson here: If someone hated or feared me enough to actually file a restraining order against me, I would simply delete him or her from my list of Facebook friends. Common sense people!

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