Surf the Earth with Google and Your Wii

Showing an example of how developers can do some really cool stuff with the Google Earth API, Google Earth iPhone Engineer David Phillip Oster has created a program that allows people to "surf" any region on the Earth's surface using the balance board for the Nintendo Wii. Oster used the Google Earth Browser plug-in and a javascript API, and the board transmits the person's movements…

Fired On Facebook

People are fired in all kinds of rude ways, but they typically don’t make the news. Get fired via Facebook, though, and the world goes “huh?” Crystal Bell, fortunately, wasn’t humiliated via any public communication; her boss sent notice via private message. According to the Calgary Herald, Bell, who’d been employed at a spa only two weeks, skipped a staff meeting on a day she…

Email Scams Already Way More Prevalent in ’09

We're only on day ten of 2009, and MessageLabs (owned by Symantec) is already telling me that it has detected a significant spike in email fraud and financial scams compared to last year. In the first week, messages with subjects like "Congratulations New Year winner!  You have won the UK National Lottery" make up nearly 10% of all e-mail,  three times what it was in…

Google University’s School of Personal Growth

The Googleplex already has a reputation as being a kind of Emerald City within Mountain View—pet friendly, masseurs on staff, Lego-topian mindsets—but the best company to work for has kept one perk relatively quiet: Google University’s School of Personal Growth.

Who’s Talkin’ About Social Search?

WhosTalkin.com has launched to the public after residing in private beta for 7 months. What's WhosTalkin.com you ask? It's a social media search engine that allows users to search across a number of social networking sites, blogs, news sites, forums, etc. And it's pretty cool.