iblog

Virgil: Google is the search engine. I laugh in the face of others. If I don’t find something on Google, I won’t even bother to look somewhere else. If it’s not on Google, it’s not anywhere. But funnily enough, there is actually very little research to suggest that Google gives better results than other sites.

Yet this is the kind of “habitual” mindset that rival companies are up against. They want users to use their search engines, but how can they compete with a generation that has actually turned a corporate name into a verb?

google
1. noun, singular. An internet search engine.
2. verb, transitive. To search on the internet using Google. e.g. “I googled it.”

Companies such as Ask are overhauling their websites. Whilst Jeeves was a fun gimick, he was doing nothing to make people take the engine seriously. Now they, like so many others, are simplifying their front pages (this won Google a lot of kudos in the early years), trying to offer different tools, and new ways to search. They can’t just copy Google, they need to offer something different, or better, if they want to hope to break our Googling habits.

But the problem I see with this is simple. There aren’t that many funky things you want to do with a search engine. No one wants new ways to search or special tools. We just want good results, and, research or no research, Google does actually do the best. So to all those other companies, without shame I still laugh in their pathetic unPageRanked faces.

Virgil: A new project has recently been given funding by the US Government - to get an internet router into orbit by 2009. A router is a device we use down here on earth, that facilitates communication between different computer networks. By getting one of these into space, this communication could start to take place between the satellites themselves, rather than constantly being bounced up and down from ground-stations, and moved around through subterranean wires. The space router project is called IRIS, and will enable people as distant as being seperated by continents to communicate almost instantly.

All sound fantastic? Well it’s a shame that it comes with such a negative spin. IRIS is a project of the US Ministry of Defence - it is to be used to facilitate communication between soldiers at American wars across the globe. The sattelite is yet another dirty space-weapon. Only after the space router has been tested and used to great killing effect by the US Army will it be opened to commercial or other use, including interesting things like extending the internet across the solar system.

Rushda: As much as I love Wikipedia and am tempted to look up almost everything on it, I’ve always been a little sceptical about how reliable it really is. It’s interesting then that even a co-founder of this highly popular site has recently said that it is “nonsense” to think that Wikipedia is a good educational tool. In response to the Education Secretary who was singing its praises, Larry Sanger has argued that Wikipedia is actually “broken beyond repair” and it is very risky for anyone to rely on it. Though the site is amongst the top ten most visited sites on the internet, it still must be admitted that absolutely anyone can edit it, and so the site is littered with thousands of errors. In factual stuff it may not be too bad, but it’s tricky relying on it for more subjective disciplines. I hate to be all ad hominem here but what I do find very amusing is that Larry has actually left Wikipedia and is starting up his own internet encyclopedia called Citizendium.org! Isn’t it obvious that he’s going to play down his biggest rival?

Lottie: From today, Google Earth users have been able to log on and view the the true extent of the destruction in Darfur. The Holocaust memorial Museum has teamed up with Google Earth to produce ‘Crisis in Darfur’, which visualises the destruction of villages and displacement of refugees via Google’s high resolution maps. The project also includes photos and eye witness testimony to help viewers understand the full extent of the current humanitarian crisis.

It’s a great idea. Over 200million people have downloaded Google Earth since it was released in 2005. This potential to reach so many people in one go demonstrates why it’s important for education to collaborate with popular technology.

Lottie: A 2006 survey by the American search firm ExecuNet revealed that 77 out of 100 recruiters interviewed admitted to using search engines to check out prospective candidates.

This certainly raises a lot of issues about what goes into your web profile and what restrictions this naturally imposes on bloggers (ie. most people under 45).

It can seem retrograde and ultimately damaging to have no web presence at all but, if a quick google search turns up an angst ridden teen blog or a series of drunken pictures, despite demonstrating obvious technological abilities, this won’t bode well for a job interview.

I’m not quite sure how to tackle this. As a journalism student I am perpetually terrified of writing something defamatory and this does a good job of censoring my writing here. However, I would still like to feel I can make a joke about Tony Blair or David Cameron without writing off a career in the public sector. I should point out that I like and respect them both equally and also that I have never done anything bad ever and got all As in my GCSEs… 

Rushda: It’s great how our Prime Minister is branching out - first he shows off his acting talent by doing a Catherine Tate sketch, as blogged about by Lottie a while back. And now he has made a channel on YouTube, the welcome video of which which can be seen here. The new channel aims to give people direct first-hand information about the Labour Party’s views and aims which isn’t filtered through the media. As predicted it’s become rather popular with over 700 views in the first 24 hours since it was released on Friday. Though Tony looks kind of awkward delivering speeches through YouTube, I suspect that’s only because we just don’t expect to see something like that. I think there is something cute about it and the intention behind it is great. Too bad it has a rating of 2 stars and lots of people are posting abuse! Awww Tony, I might just have to subscribe now!

Caroline: Last week I blogged about a Swiss national being sentenced to imprisonment after he defaced posters of the Thai King. Now it is YouTube which has fallen foul of the Thai charge of “lese majeste”. It featured a short clip showing pictures of feet over an image of the King. In Thailand the feet are considered offensive, even to the extent that one should never sit with feet pointing at someone. The offending film was removed on Thurs but as of yesterday access had not been reinstated because a still shot remained which the Thai authorities found offensive. A similar situation arose for YouTube in Turkey when the courts in Istanbul briefly blocked access to the site after accusations of homsexuality were levelled against Ataturk.

Virgil: Before you worry, don’t worry. This isn’t a blog about some insane psychopath who got an axe and chopped up his fellow WoW players. Computer hackers have located a flaw in the way that Windows presents animated cursors, and used it to gain control of WoW accounts - which are worth tons of cash, as it takes hours to bring a character on the game up to a desirable “level”. For instance a Level 60 character (one of the highest among players) would have taken many months of solid gameplay to achieve. So for all the spoilsport players who play to win, rather than for the fun of it, buying such a character from a hacker is a very worthwhile expense.

One Chinese group of hackers managed to seed their malicious code on many websites across the net, which turned them unknowingly into “booby traps”. Once the code worked its way onto a poor player’s computer, as soon as they loaded up their favourite game it would steal all their login information and send it back to the hackers.

I have nothing but heartbroken sympathy for anyone who was a victim of this. Much as I disagree with the sillyness of playing such games to that extent, I can understand how, for the geeky WoW devotee capable of owning a Level 60 account, their character would have been their pride and joy, and an investment of a colossal amount of time.

Lottie: If you have absolutely nothing else to do with the rest of your life The Impossible Quiz will definitely keep you entertained but never fulfilled… 

This is a crudely drawn (see windows paint for inspiration) game that challenges the player to answer 110 questions. The quiz requires some absurd logic and even occasional guess work to get right. 

You start the game with 3 lives and one wrong answer loses one life. If you (and I promise you will) lose those lives, you go right back to the beginning… 

I may be a bit of a sadist for introducing you to this life destroying game, but it’s fun when you get the hang of it and never underestimate being able to answer the questions ‘how many holes does a polo have’ correctly. (Clue: It isn’t one!) 

Good luck! 

Rushda: There is currently an enormous shortage in the UK of therapists who can help treat people who suffer from depression. Given that 1 in 6 adults suffer from it, and the waiting times can be huge, a new idea has been proposed to get people the help they need quickly. Online cognitive behavioural therapy has been suggested to allow real-time therapy sessions from the comfort of the patient’s home. This is currently being trialled with hundreds of NHS patients to see if it is a good alternative.

Personally, I’m very unconvinced. Surely a depressed patient who has to chat online to someone they can’t see and can’t have any kind of personal contact with is going to feel worse after such supposed “therapy”. Much depression comes from isolation, and conversely much therapy has a social ‘real’ element to it: you’d like to think someone is actually there and listening and talking to you. I can’t therefore see how online therapy can possibly work. Perhaps it’s better than nothing, but maybe instead we should be encouraging all these depressed people (and the statistics are staggering) to go out, get some fresh air and do something fun and productive, instead of sitting cooped up at a screen waiting for some virtual words of wisdom.