Google defuses Googlebombs

Google has finally had it with Googlebombing, the act of hundreds of Internet users linking up specific words with certain web sites in order to produce a desired (and usually comical) search result. The company announced today via its corporate blog that they have finally altered their search engine algorithm to minimize the impact of Googlebombs by improving the way they analyze link structures on web sites.

Google's previous stance on this type of Internet pranking was just that—it was a prank and that they didn't want to get involved in manually altering otherwise-harmless antics on the web. Also called "linkbombing," the most famous Googlebomb was of course the search for the phrase "failure" that produced a link to the current US President, George W. Bush. Some other Googlebombs included associating the search term "waffles" with Senator John Kerry and "talentless hack" with Adam Mathes, but not all Googlebombs were created to slander—some users Googlebombed the word "Jew" to stop pointing to a hate site and instead directed the term to point to the Wikipedia entry on Jewish people.

Google says that there have been less than 100 "well-known" Googlebombs since 2001 and most were for very off-the-wall phrases which, in the eyes of such a large corporate entity, were not a high priority to fix. Googlebombing seems harmless, but Google should have been concerned that relatively small groups of web users could so easily alter search results. However, Google claims that the reason that the company has decided to finally give in and fix the algorithm was because too many people had begun to assume that the negative associations—particularly the political ones—were Google's own opinions and that the company was intentionally associating the terms with various parties.

And now comes... iPhone

Apple turned 30 on April 1, 2006—quite a milestone for a technology company that, for much of its life, has provided endless fodder for an army of pundits who have made a living out of writing its obituary.

And after months (if not years) of speculation it unvieled the iPhone at MacWorld. The new iPhone is a essentially a combination of three devices: a widescreen iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator. It does not have a keyboard.

Apple's new iPhone could do to the cell phone market what the iPod did to the portable music player market: crush it pitilessly beneath the weight of its own superiority. This is unfortunate for anybody else who makes cell phones, but it's good news for those of us who use them.

The device is 11.6 millimeters thick--thinner than the Motorola Q and Samsung's BlackJack--and has controls on its side. It incorporates a wide, 160-pixel-per-inch touch screen, a single "home" button, 2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi capability and cellular service. The phone automatically switches from a cellular network to Wi-Fi if it detects a signal.

The iPhone also comes loaded with Apple's Safari Web browser and fully incorporates Google's search and mapping services. Users can make phone calls directly from Google Maps.

The phone also makes use of the same kind of motion detection that powers Nintendo's Wii controller. Photos with a landscape orientation can be switched to portrait simply by turning the phone sideways, or iTunes can move into CoverFlow mode using the same motion. And in another novel interface move, photos and web pages can also be zoomed in and out by squeezing the sides of the phone.

The phone's Mail client can render rich HTML email, and connect to any IMAP or POP server. In a move that will make the iPhone a viable Blackberry competitor, Yahoo has announced free push IMAP to the phone. Indeed, Google and Yahoo both provide integrated search capabilities on the phone.

The iPhone's media capabilities are impressive, and it essentially gives you iPhoto and iTunes in the palm of your hand, complete with CoverFlow. The 3.5mm headphone jack outputs clear sound, and the movies and photos displayed on the phone are very sharp.

While the price tag might be out of range for many teenagers and their parents, Apple loyalists will probably be interested in the new iPhone, even though Apple has no phone expertise, said Chris Crotty, a consumer electronics analyst at iSuppli.

Gmail users report vanishing e-mail

A number of Gmail users are complaining that their e-mail has mysteriously vanished. After TechCrunch picked up the story, Google issued a public apology, stating that the problem affected only 60 users. There don't seem to be any noticeable patterns in the group of affected users.

Google seems confident that it is the result of an "isolated problem", but so far no specific details have been provided. Some of the affected users report that Google has restored a week or two of e-mail, but most of their messages were unrecoverable.

One could point to the little "beta" sigil below the Gmail logo and say that such problems are to be expected, but that doesn't change the fact that instances of significant data loss will create at least some uncertainty about the service. This incident also serves as a warning for those that use web-based mail interfaces exclusively. Gmail users should consider using the service's POP functionality for backup purposes. For those of us that depend on consistent and reliable mail access for business; mail backups are as important as document backups, if not more so. Let's hope that this really is an "isolated problem" and that it doesn't recur in the near future.