by Joey deVilla on June 15, 2009
The New York Post is a “scandal sheet” tabloid newspaper that’s best known for its sensationalistic, hilarious headlines. A few examples:
- When beer magnate Freddy Heineken was kidnapped, they ran a story titled No Deposit, No Return.
- When New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was linked to a prostitution ring: Ho No.
- On the possibility of a “Deep Impact”-style collision of a cosmic object with Earth: Kiss Your Asteroid Goodbye.
- When Newsweek retracted its story about the interrogation tactic of flushing copies of the Qu’ran down the toilet: Holy Shiite.
- A famous one from 1982: Headless Body in Topless Bar.
There’s even a book that features the best (worst?) of their wacky headlines.
So when you read the Fear Grips Google story in the Post, you should remember that tech really isn;t their forte and that you might want to take it with a grain of salt. I think Search Engine Land sums it up best:
Bing is probably better than Google anticipated and early indications are favorable in terms of user adoption; however not on any scale to threaten Google’s position. I wouldn’t be surprised if Google is taking Bing seriously and trying to carefully assess its algorithm.
Still, the graphic accompanying the Post’s article, Fear Grips Google, is amusing:
Tagged as:
Bing,
Google,
New York Post,
search engines,
sensationalism,
The Esteemed Competition,
yellow journalism
by Joey deVilla on January 18, 2009
by Joey deVilla on November 9, 2008
Google Maps, Live Search (a.k.a. Microsoft Virtual Earth) Maps and Yahoo! Maps are all based on Navteq’s mapping technologies. As a result, the tiles used in rendering the maps are the same size, and if you set the zoom to equivalent levels in each, you can seamlessly switch between the three. Take a look at the map below, which shows a map of Toronto as rendered by Google Maps, Live Search Maps and Yahoo! Maps:
The article Switching Between Mapping APIs and Universal Zoom Levels at David Janes’ Code Weblog explains that the mapping systems differ in their zoom levels:
- Google Maps has 20 levels of zoom, ranging from 0 (out in space) to 19 (pretty close to ground level).
- Live Search Maps has 19 levels of zoom, ranging from 1 (out in space, but not as far out as Google Maps’ 0) to 19 (pretty close to ground level). Live Search Maps’ zoom levels are equivalent to Google Maps’; for example, zoom level 5 mean the same level of zoom in both Google Maps and Live Search Maps.
- Yahoo! Maps provides the fewest level of zoom – a mere seventeen. Their counting system is the opposite of Google Maps’ and Live Search Maps; in the Yahoo! system, larger numbers mean farther away from the ground, not closer. The closest you can zoom in with Yahoo! Maps is zoom level 1 (street block level, equivalent to Google’s and Live Searh’s zoom level 17) and the farthest you can zoom out is zoom level 17 (equivalent to Google’s and Live Search’s zoom level 1).
David proposes a universal zoom level and provides code to do conversions between it and Google’s, Live Search’s and Yahoo!’s systems.
Links
Tagged as:
Google,
interoperability,
Live Search,
maps,
Yahoo!
by Joey deVilla on June 16, 2008
by Joey deVilla on April 28, 2008
by Joey deVilla on April 28, 2008
Filter Google Results by Date with a URL Trick: “Google can reorder search and news results from the last day, week, a few months, or entire year by adding a small string to the end of the search URL. Just add this string — &as_qdr=d — to the address bar and hit enter. You’ll get a custom drop-down box that lets you re-order results based on date.”
Tagged as:
custom search,
Google
by Joey deVilla on October 23, 2007
