Salon.com > Google http://www.salon.com Fri, 03 May 2013 03:47:40 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Google Earth as art http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/higher_definition_brings_google_earth_into_chicago_living_room_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/higher_definition_brings_google_earth_into_chicago_living_room_partner/#comments Thu, 02 May 2013 18:56:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13287895 Hyperallergic

 

OAK PARK, Illinois — You’re driving to a suburb that you don’t know well, and you whip out your iPhone to quickly punch an address into Google Maps. In this case, that address is 704 Highland Avenue, home of Sabina Ott and John Paulett, who run Terrain Exhibitions, a once-a-month-ish, home-turned-cozy gallery experience. Every artist who shows work here must wrap it around the concept of the artist-writer couple’s home.

Jeroen Nelemans, Higher Definition - QR Code

Jeroen Nelemans, Higher Definition – QR Code (all photos by the writer unless otherwise noted)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/higher_definition_brings_google_earth_into_chicago_living_room_partner/feed/ 0 Google’s new answer to Siri http://www.salon.com/2013/04/29/googles_new_answer_to_siri_ap/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/29/googles_new_answer_to_siri_ap/#comments Mon, 29 Apr 2013 22:30:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13285139 SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Siri may be feeling a little job insecurity. The sometimes droll assistant that answers questions and helps people manage their lives on Apple's iPhone and iPad is facing competition from an up-and-coming rival made by Google.

The duel began Monday with the release of a free iPhone and iPad app that features Google Now, a technology that performs many of the same functions as Siri.

It's the first time that Google Now has been available on smartphones and tablet computers that aren't running on the latest version of Google's Android software. The technology, which debuted nine months ago, is being included in an upgrade to Google's search application for iOS, the Apple Inc. software that powers the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. It's up to each user to decide whether to activate Google Now within the redesigned Google Search app, which is available through Apple's app store.

Siri tried to dismiss the competitive threat. When asked for an opinion about Google Now, Siri responded: "If it's all the same to you, I'd rather Google later."

Mike Allton, a St. Charles, Mo., resident who has owned an iPhone for four years, could hardly wait to check out Google Now, even if Siri might interpret it as a betrayal.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/29/googles_new_answer_to_siri_ap/feed/ 1 Will smartglasses replace eyeglasses? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/27/in_a_few_years_everyone_will_be_wearing_smartglasses_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/27/in_a_few_years_everyone_will_be_wearing_smartglasses_partner/#comments Sat, 27 Apr 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13283297 Scientific American

Google Glass is just the beginning. The search giant’s smartglasses are in the headlines, but numerous other players are also looking to cash in on what’s expected to be a boom in eyewear that puts virtual and augmented reality face-front.

Smartglasses overlay digital information onto the wearer’s view of the real world. Usage scenarios are limited only by developers’ imaginations. Google Glass has apps for search, navigation, photo capture and sharing, to name a few. Commercial possibilities include enhanced vision systems for use in manufacturing, engineering, health care and other industries. A surgeon could have all of a patient’s vital information literally in front of his eyes while operating, for example.

There’ll be no shortage of smartglass systems in as little as one to two years. Research firm Gartner says there are about a dozen companies with products in the works, many of them ready for prime time. There could be as many as 10 million smartglasses sold worldwide by 2016, if software developers can come up with appealing applications that provide wearers with useful, nonobvious information about their surroundings, according to IMS Research, which defines smartglasses as “wearable computers with a head-mounted display.” Without good apps, the number of smartglasses sold could number only about one million by 2016, IMS adds.

“This stuff is bubbling up and it’s going to happen,” says Trae Vassallo, a partner in venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which has joined with fellow firms Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures to fund smartglass app development. Vassallo sees big potential: Kleiner Perkins’s investment will “depend on the quality of the ideas and the entrepreneurs.”

One such company is Rochester, N.Y.–based Vuzix Corp. Its M100 Smart Glasses, now shipping to developers, can run any existing Android app. CEO Paul Travers says developers are building augmented reality (AR) apps for the M100 in areas like fitness, navigation and gaming. “There will be a lot of people in the consumer space that will like these gizmos,” Travers says.

Like Google Glass and most other smartglasses, the M100 has a built-in video camera that projects an image of the real world onto an eyepiece that is essentially a prism. This so-called “wave guide” approach lets developers layer information and graphics into the wearer’s view. Advances in optics and microprocessors fueled by the smartphone revolution are what’s behind the expected boom. “The killer app for all of this are things that allow immersive AR with sensors you can fit in a phone,” says Dan Small, a research principal at Sandia National Laboratories, which has conducted extensive research into augmented reality for the military.

There are limitations: Both Google Glass and the M100 are monocular systems that use a single eyepiece to deliver an augmented field of view of about 14 degrees. Humans’ natural field of view is roughly 180 degrees, so there’s a keyhole effect.

Some manufacturers are developing binocular systems that resemble conventional sunglasses, in part to achieve a wider field and 3-D viewing. Israel-based Lumusmakes AR shades that wouldn’t look out of place at a ski resort. “Google is basically a beam-splitter technology. Looking through that, your view of the world is skewed,” says Lumus business development manager Ari Grobman. “We’re giving you a pair of glasses and overlaying information on that.” He adds Lumus is in licensing talks with several major electronics companies. “We’re hot and heavy in terms of pushing into consumer applications.”

Also taking the binocular approach is Epson Corp. Its Android-powered Moverio BT-100 smartglasses give users the impression they are looking at information on an 80-inch screen through a 23-degree field. Being binocular “is very critical because it allows you to overlay 3-D content in the center of your field of view,” says Eric Mizufuka, new products manager at Epson.

Epson, a division of Seiko, is targeting the commercial market. Partner Scope AR has created BT-100 AR software for use in industrial training. One of its apps overlays images of tools that the wearer would need to fix high-tech equipment, and shows where the parts should go. “We can take someone who’s been working at McDonald’s and turn them into to the equivalent of a worker with 30 years training on that machine,” says Scope founder, Scott Montgomerie.

Other companies developing smartglasses include Olympus, Sensics and AR contact lens developer Innovega. Microsoft and Apple, which holds AR patents, are also said to be eyeing the smartglass market.

Experts say today’s optics and chip technologies are for the first time sufficient for functional AR. What’s needed to deliver fully immersive virtual reality or AR experiences, a la The Matrix, are breakthroughs in tracking technology. To track head movements, AR glasses need fast internal sensors, or an external system. The slightest lag can be disconcerting. “Humans are very adept at picking up latency,” says Sandia’s Small. “The problem is that sensors don’t track like chips do with Moore’s Law.”

Still, it’s expected that the sight of smart-bespectacled workers and consumers won’t be uncommon within a year or two once prices hit the sub-$500 mark—Google Glass prototypes sell for $1,500, if you can get them.
Widespread smartglass use will raise a host of privacy and regulatory issues. “We’re already hearing the term ‘glassholes’,” says Gartner’s Angela McIntyre. And you thought the jerk with the cell phone was bad.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/27/in_a_few_years_everyone_will_be_wearing_smartglasses_partner/feed/ 3 Former Google CEO offers up tech treatise http://www.salon.com/2013/04/22/former_google_ceo_offers_up_tech_treatise_ap/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/22/former_google_ceo_offers_up_tech_treatise_ap/#comments Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:55:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13279082 SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Some illuminating books already have been written about Google's catalytic role in a technological upheaval that is redefining the way people work, play, learn, shop and communicate.

Until now, though, there hasn't been a book providing an unfiltered look from inside Google's brain trust.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, who spent a decade as the company's CEO, shares his visions of digitally driven change and of a radically different future in "The New Digital Age," a book that goes on sale Tuesday.

It's a technology treatise that Schmidt wrote with another ruminator, Jared Cohen, a former State Department adviser who now runs Google Ideas, the Internet company's version of a think tank.

The book is an exercise in "brainstorming the future," as Schmidt put it in a recent post on Twitter - just one example of a cultural phenomenon that didn't exist a decade ago.

The ability for anyone with an Internet-connected device to broadcast revelatory information and video is one of the reasons why Schmidt and Cohen wrote the book. The two met in Baghdad in 2009 and were both struck by how Iraqis were finding resourceful ways to use Internet services to improve their lives, despite war-zone conditions.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/22/former_google_ceo_offers_up_tech_treatise_ap/feed/ 0 Google fined by data protection agency http://www.salon.com/2013/04/22/google_fined_by_data_protection_group_ap/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/22/google_fined_by_data_protection_group_ap/#comments Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:26:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13278592 BERLIN (AP) -- A German data protection agency fined Google Inc. 145,000 euros ($189,000) for illegally recording information from unsecured wireless networks - an amount it acknowledged is "totally inadequate" as a deterrent to the multinational giant.

Hamburg's state data protection agency said Monday that Google admitted collecting data including emails, passwords, photos and chat protocols from 2008-2010 as it prepared to launch its Street View service. Google says it never intended to store personal data and the agency says it has been deleted.

Agency head Johannes Caspar says "company internal control mechanisms failed seriously" at Google but the maximum fine possible was 150,000 euros which was "unlikely...to have a deterring effect." Google earned $3.3 billion in the first quarter.

Caspar urged dramatic increases to possible maximum fines under future European regulations.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/22/google_fined_by_data_protection_group_ap/feed/ 0 Is mental health seasonal? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/21/study_depression_and_anxiety_may_be_more_seasonal_than_we_think_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/21/study_depression_and_anxiety_may_be_more_seasonal_than_we_think_partner/#comments Sun, 21 Apr 2013 15:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13276553 Pacific StandardSpring has sprung, at least for most of us, which means sundresses, seersucker and boozy croquet parties on the front lawn. Goodbye happy lamp, hello mimosa.

But it’s not just champagne that’s lifting our spirits and banishing the wintertime blues. According to Google (and a team of researchers from the University of Southern California, Harvard and Johns Hopkins) mental illnesses — such as obsessive compulsive disorder, depression and anorexia — are far more seasonal than we think.

The epidemiologists, led by John Ayers, combed through every Google search performed in the United States and Australia between 2006 and 2010, looking for queries like “symptoms of” and “medications for” OCD, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar, depression, anorexia, bulimia and schizophrenia.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/21/study_depression_and_anxiety_may_be_more_seasonal_than_we_think_partner/feed/ 9 Why can’t America unite on the economy? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/18/why_cant_america_unite_on_the_economy_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/18/why_cant_america_unite_on_the_economy_partner/#comments Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:57:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13275075 We come together as Americans when confronting common disasters and common threats, such as occurred in Boston on Monday, but we continue to split apart economically.

Anyone who wants to understand the dis-uniting of America needs to see how dramatically we’re segregating geographically by income and wealth. Today I’m giving a Town Hall talk in Fresno, in the center of California’s Central Valley, where the official unemployment rate is 15.4 percent and median family earns under $40,000. The so-called “recovery” is barely in evidence.

As the crow flies Fresno is not that far from California’s high-tech enclaves of Google, Intel, Facebook, and Apple, or from the entertainment capital of Hollywood, but they might as well be different worlds.

Being wealthy in modern America means you don’t come across anyone who isn’t, and being poor and lower-middle class means you’re surrounded by others who are just as hard up. Upward mobility — the old notion that anyone can make it with enough guts and gumption — is less of a reality.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/18/why_cant_america_unite_on_the_economy_partner/feed/ 8 US Internet ad revenue up 15 percent ove 2012 http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/us_internet_ad_revenue_up_15_percent_ove_2012_ap/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/us_internet_ad_revenue_up_15_percent_ove_2012_ap/#comments Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:40:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13272630 NEW YORK (AP) -- A new report says U.S. Internet advertising revenue grew 15 percent to a record $36.6 billion in 2012.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers said Tuesday that mobile ad revenue more than doubled to $3.4 billion, accounting for 9 percent of total Internet ad revenue last year. In 2011, the $1.6 billion in mobile ad revenue made up 5 percent of the total. Mobile ads represent an area of growth for many companies, including Facebook Inc. and Google Inc.

Search ads still account for nearly half of all online advertising revenue, at $16.9 billion in 2012.

The IAB, which represents media and technology companies, releases online advertising revenue numbers each quarter. Management consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers compiles the data independently based on information from companies that sell advertising on the Internet.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/us_internet_ad_revenue_up_15_percent_ove_2012_ap/feed/ 0 Google clears new hurdle in EU antitrust case http://www.salon.com/2013/04/15/google_clears_new_hurdle_in_eu_antitrust_case_ap/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/15/google_clears_new_hurdle_in_eu_antitrust_case_ap/#comments Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:30:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13271140 BRUSSELS (AP) -- Google has taken another step toward settling a European antitrust investigation focusing on whether the Internet giant is abusing its dominant position of online search and advertising markets.

Google Inc. has submitted a list of remedies in legally binding form to address the concerns voiced by the European Commission, which acts as the 27-nation bloc's antitrust authority, the body's spokesman Antoine Colombani said Monday.

He added that they will shortly be put to a market test to see whether they will be sufficient, but declined to elaborate on how long it might still take to reach a settlement in the three-year-old investigation.

The Commission is probing whether Google unfairly favors its own services in its Internet search results. Google's search engine - the world's most influential gateway to online information and commerce - enjoys a near-monopoly in Europe.

The major concession offered by Google is widely expected to center on more clearly labeling search results stemming from its own services such as YouTube, Google Maps or its shopping search function.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/15/google_clears_new_hurdle_in_eu_antitrust_case_ap/feed/ 0 When capitalism consumed the Internet http://www.salon.com/2013/04/14/when_did_the_internet_become_a_for_profit_venture_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/14/when_did_the_internet_become_a_for_profit_venture_partner/#comments Thu, 03 Jan 2013 19:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13269723 “Let’s grab all this new technology in our teeth once again and turn it into a bonanza for advertising.” These are the words of former Procter & Gamble CEO Edwin Artzt. Renowned for his business acumen, Artzt, always one to turn a profit, told his fellow captains of industry to aim their attention to something new, something unseen before, something that needed to be conquered.
Jacobin

The early Internet was certainly a different place. It seemed a time of unlimited potential, when the old barriers to communication and information were said to melt away like so much butter in the microwave. People would be linked in ways never seen before, all in a purely public and noncommercial space. Early analysts claimed that the old media conglomerates were going to be swept aside by a coming Digital Age. For those looking to the future, the Internet would be the democratic space since its underlying principle, the networked sharing of data, was inherently leveling, free, and transparent.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/14/when_did_the_internet_become_a_for_profit_venture_partner/feed/ 45 Lithuanian tax authorities use Google Maps to track down dodgers http://www.salon.com/2013/04/10/lithuanian_tax_authorities_use_google_maps_to_track_down_dodgers_ap/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/10/lithuanian_tax_authorities_use_google_maps_to_track_down_dodgers_ap/#comments Wed, 10 Apr 2013 17:59:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13267131 VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) -- As soon as Google Maps Street View was rolled out in Lithuania earlier this year, tax authorities were ready.

Sitting in the comfort of their own offices, inspectors used the free Internet program for a virtual cruise around the streets of some of the Baltic country's big cities, uncovering dozens of alleged tax violations involving housing construction and property sales.

They identified 100 homeowners and 30 construction companies as suspected tax dodgers thanks to Street View, finding homes where they shouldn't be and other suspicious activity, Darius Buta, spokesman for the State Tax Inspectorate, said Wednesday.

"Our inspectors track these buildings on the Internet, and if a violation seems obvious, they visit the sites. This saves lots of time and resources," Buta said.

Lithuanian officials said they were unaware of any other country where revenue collectors had used Google's Street View, saying they didn't draw on anyone else's experience. Still, tax authorities across the world are turning to high-resolution maps, online databases, and social media in a bid to catch out cheats.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/10/lithuanian_tax_authorities_use_google_maps_to_track_down_dodgers_ap/feed/ 0 Google’s war against fake news http://www.salon.com/2013/04/10/googles_war_against_fake_news/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/10/googles_war_against_fake_news/#comments Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:30:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13266975 (NOTE: This post has been updated since it was originally published.)

An outfit called "NewsCred" sent me an email this morning with the subject: "How Google's stance on branded content could impact marketers." It provided a link to an unbylined piece titled "Why Google Should Rethink Its Approach to Sponsored Content."

Haha, I thought. This should be fun. On March 27, Richard Gingras, Google's senior director for news and social products (and formerly, Salon's CEO), warned in a blog post that Google News strongly disapproved of news outlets that were passing off sponsored content as the real thing.

If a site mixes news content with affiliate, promotional, advertorial, or marketing materials (for your company or another party), we strongly recommend that you separate non-news content on a different host or directory, block it from being crawled with robots.txt, or create a Google News Sitemap for your news articles only. Otherwise, if we learn of promotional content mixed with news content, we may exclude your entire publication from Google News.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/10/googles_war_against_fake_news/feed/ 23 Judge strikes down high-tech workers’ lawsuit http://www.salon.com/2013/04/08/judge_strikes_down_high_tech_workers_lawsuit_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/08/judge_strikes_down_high_tech_workers_lawsuit_partner/#comments Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:51:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13265155 SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A federal judge on Friday struck down an effort to form a class action lawsuit to go after Apple, Google and five other technology companies for allegedly forming an illegal cartel to tamp down workers' wages and prevent the loss of their best engineers during a multiyear conspiracy broken up by government regulators.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, Calif., issued a ruling Friday concluding that the companies' alleged collusion may have affected workers in too many different ways to justify lumping the individual claims together. She denied the request to certify workers' lawsuits as a class action and collectively seek damages on behalf of tens of thousands of employees.

The allegations will be more difficult to pursue if they can't be united in a single lawsuit. Koh, though, will allow the workers' lawyers to submit additional evidence that they have been collecting to persuade her that the lawsuit still merits class certification.

"Plaintiffs appreciate the court's thorough consideration of the evidence and are prepared to address the court's concerns fully in a renewed motion," employee attorney Kelly Dermody wrote in a Friday email.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/08/judge_strikes_down_high_tech_workers_lawsuit_partner/feed/ 0 Facebook Home capitalizes on Google http://www.salon.com/2013/04/05/facebook_home_capitalizes_on_google/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/05/facebook_home_capitalizes_on_google/#comments Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:30:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13262486 NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook Home, the new application that takes over the front screen of a smartphone, is a bit of a corporate home invasion. Facebook is essentially moving into Google's turf, taking advantage of software the search giant and competitor created.

Facebook Home will operate on phones running Google Inc.'s Android software and present Facebook status updates, messages and other content on the home screen, rather than making the user fire up Facebook's app. The software will be available for users to download on April 12 and will come preloaded on a new phone from HTC Corp., sold by AT&T Inc. in the U.S.

Google gives away Android, the most popular smartphone software in the world, in the hope that it will steer phone users toward Google services, such as Maps and Gmail, and the ads it sells. Compared to ads targeting PC surfers, mobile ads are a small market, but it's growing quickly. Research firm eMarketer expects U.S. mobile ad spending to grow 77 percent this year to $7.29 billion.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/05/facebook_home_capitalizes_on_google/feed/ 1 Review: Google laptop is impressive, but may disappoint some http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/review_google_laptop_impressive_but_not_for_all/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/review_google_laptop_impressive_but_not_for_all/#comments Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:12:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/review_google_laptop_impressive_but_not_for_all/ SIEM REAP, Cambodia (AP) — Google's first high-end laptop, the Chromebook Pixel, is an impressive machine. It feels light and comfortable in my hands and on my lap. Its high-resolution display makes photos look sharp and video come to life. From a hardware standpoint, it's everything I'd want a laptop to be.

But the Pixel isn't very practical — at least not yet — for most people. It works well when you have a steady Internet connection, but can't do much once you lose that connection. And because it uses Google's own operating system, it doesn't run enough software yet to replace your other machines.

I brought the Pixel along for a nearly three-week trip to Thailand and Cambodia, where I knew I wouldn't have the type of round-the-clock access I'm used to in the U.S. I was surprised by how much I could do, but quickly got frustrated when I couldn't do more.

Such frustration doesn't come cheap. Prices for the Pixel start at $1,299, just $200 less than a MacBook with a comparable screen and the ability to do much more offline. A higher-end Pixel with cellular access costs $150 more than the basic model and is scheduled to start shipping Monday.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/review_google_laptop_impressive_but_not_for_all/feed/ 0 EU regulators to take legal action over Google privacy http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/eu_regulators_to_take_legal_action_over_google_privacy/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/eu_regulators_to_take_legal_action_over_google_privacy/#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2013 20:38:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13259288 Privacy regulators in six EU countries -- the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands -- could seek to punish Google with fines for refusing to backtrack on changes made to its privacy policy last year, which, according to an investigation, contravene EU laws.

The regulators announced plans to take legal action Tuesday. But the threat of fines will mean little to the Internet giant. As the Guardian noted, two threatened sets of fines (one up to $500,000, one up to $300,000) amount to the money generated by Google in sales every 10 minutes. Via the Guardian:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/eu_regulators_to_take_legal_action_over_google_privacy/feed/ 0 Google honors a feminist original http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/google_honors_a_feminist_original/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/google_honors_a_feminist_original/#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:11:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13258894 Maria wanted to study metamorphosis, if only she could find the time to investigate. Her two daughters needed her, many hours, every day. It was a thorny problem, this balancing work and motherhood, but she took the long view. When her children were young, she stayed close to home, investigated parasitoid wasps and tiger moths in the neighborhood and nearby gardens, taught painting and wrote two books about European insects. Later, when her daughters were grown and she was 52, she left her husband and sailed to South America to research the rainforest and venture, as she described it, "far out into the wilderness." Her masterwork, "The Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam," was published in 1705, more than 300 years ago.

Today, her 366th birthday, marked at Google by weaving her Surinam engravings in its Doodle for the day, is a chance to re-evaluate her legacy.

Many discussions of work/home life balance take as their starting point the publication of "The Feminine Mystique" 50 years ago. Feminists of the 60s and 70s are praised for opening our eyes or blamed for raising our expectations. Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In," Anne-Marie Slaughter's essay in The Atlantic about the impossibility of having it all, Marissa Mayer at Yahoo banning the telecommute, countless blogs and television pundits, all tell us how to navigate the modern world.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/google_honors_a_feminist_original/feed/ 1 When Google lost its cool http://www.salon.com/2013/03/29/when_google_lost_its_cool/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/29/when_google_lost_its_cool/#comments Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:45:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13254908 A strange thing happened on Twitter in the middle of March. "Why I Left Google," a year-old post by a former Google executive named James Whittaker, went viral, for the second time.

A fairly scathing denunciation of how Google's corporate culture had changed for the worse, Whittaker's post got a reasonable amount of notice when it was first published. But this time around, the buzz was louder.

Exactly how the screed was born anew is anyone's guess. The precise mechanics of viral transmission are an enduring mystery. Maybe someone was randomly trolling  the Web, stumbled across Whittaker's lament, didn't notice the date was March 13, 2012, instead of March 13, 2013, tweeted it, and hit a nerve. Or perhaps one of Google's competitors saw an opening, and struck a clever blow of Twitter meme warfare.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/29/when_google_lost_its_cool/feed/ 34 FBI pursues greater real-time Gmail spying powers http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/fbi_pursues_greater_gmail_cloud_spying_powers/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/fbi_pursues_greater_gmail_cloud_spying_powers/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:32:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13253465 The FBI is seeking to expand its spying powers when it comes to real-time communications. According to Ryan Gallagher at Slate the agency has made it a "top priority" this year to gain the the ability to wiretap all forms of Internet conversation and cloud storage. The 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act only allows the government to force Internet providers and telecom companies to install surveillance equipment within their networks. But, as Gallagher notes, "it doesn’t cover email, cloud services, or online chat providers like Skype." The FBI has thus a difficult time expanding its vast surveillance dragnet to monitoring Gmail, Google Voice and Dropbox in real time. Gallagher writes that the agency hopes to change this in 2013:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/fbi_pursues_greater_gmail_cloud_spying_powers/feed/ 4 Google tells Sweden that “ungoogleable” is not a word http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/google_tells_sweden_that_ungoogleable_is_not_a_word/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/google_tells_sweden_that_ungoogleable_is_not_a_word/#comments Tue, 26 Mar 2013 22:20:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13252680 In 2002, "google" was so entrenched in our vernacular that it became the "most useful word," according to the American Dialect Society. In 2006, it was awarded entry into the Oxford English and the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionaries, elevating the neologism to a formally recognized word that became an eponym for Internet search.

It was only a matter of time, then, that someone would try to push "ungoogleable" as a word (though really, is there such a thing?). The Swedish Language Council tried to do just that when it created its annual list of "top 10 new words which have become popular in Sweden to show how society and language are changing," according to the BBC. The council defined "ungoogleable" ("ogooglebar" in Swedish) as anything that cannot be found by using a search engine.

But Google has historically taken issue with generalized uses of the term, citing trademark concerns and arguing that the term "google" should only describe instances in which the Google search engine is used.

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