Google announced today that it will be shutting down its Goog 411 service on November 12th this year. The 3 year old service allowed people to call 1-800-goog-411 and reach a voice-activated directory service. With smart phones and wireless access becoming more prevalent, it's not surprising that Goog 411 is being retired. Some attribute the Goog 411 service as the reason … [Read more...]
Facebook Announces Groups and Other Upcoming Features
Facebook held a live-stream just moments ago on Facebook Live where Mark Zuckerberg highlighted two things coming up. He also explained the "lock-down" that the press has speculated about which gave the Facebook dev teams 60 productive days wrapping up projects. He also highlighted the recent changes to photos with Photozap, making things look more professional by trimming … [Read more...]
MapCrunch – Travel the World in a Day
MapCrunch is a website that takes Google Streetview and makes it much easier to go exploring. Your globe-trotting can take you from the newest Antartica, Ireland, or Brazil locations to the ones that have been around for a while. You can teleport to random locations and explore for a bit and then teleport yourself somewhere completely different. MapCrunch is a one page site. … [Read more...]
Wikipedia Testing Article Assessment Feature
Upon looking through Wikipedia last week, doing research for the previous article on Ultrinsic.com, I noticed the site has implemented a change that incorporates article ranking. Rating if an article is "well-sourced", neutral, complete, and readable seems like information the free encyclopedia would like to know but also seems like it could be a move towards social news sites … [Read more...]
Google TV Opens Its Doors
The Google Blog (and the Google TV Blog) provided an update today on Google TV's recent progress. For those who haven’t yet heard of it, Google TV is a new way to think about TV: it’s a platform that combines your current TV programming and the open web into a single, seamless entertainment experience. Overall, it seems Google doesn't know where Google TV is headed and doesn't … [Read more...]