Google Street - Doing wonders for Norwich's tourist trade

Google Street is getting lots of headlines this week and Norwich is one of the 25 cities that Google decided to feature, although it is a Norwich I barely recognise.

Oddly, virtually every shot of Norwich seems to be in great weather and sunshine, things which I certainly don't recognise as being typical of Norwich. It did make me wonder when the city was photographed, but looking at specific shots of buildings I knew to be closing and area where building work was ongoing, I have worked out he photography was done during late July, which oddly was our sunny week last year.

So Norwich had better prepare for a boost in tourist numbers who having seen Google Street, will be under the false impression Norwich is some sort of tropical paradise. Oh how disappointed they will be,

What Google searches tell us about British internet users

Google today published the details of the most searched for terms on its search engine this year, and for me it tells us lots about the British.

Whilst worldwide the searches concentrated on individuals and events

It seems that the UK searches show that as a nation we have appalling memories and cannot remember the addresses of even the most popular websites, we fail to understand the simple standard ways in which many website addresses use dot com or dot co dot uk or that we as a nation cannot use bookmarks.

The UK searches results were

The fact that jobs is also in the top ten is also significant, given the state of the economy.

Not an impressive start for Cuil - The so called "new rival" to Google

I was reading about Cuil, a new search engine set up by former Google employees which has been launched with the intention of competing with the search giant.

Sadly though, from my ysing of it this morning, it is a very poor search engine indeed.

I typed in "Norfolk Politics", and got the response below. Not impressive.

I typed in Norfolk Blogger, and most of the links it gave me came up with the message shown below. Clearly the relevance of links are not something Cuil looks in to very well.

Perhaps most interestingly, I thought I'd do a search for Britain's top political blogger.

It appears that Cuil has never heard of him !

Hardly a rival to Google, in my opinion.

P.S. Bob Piper explains in the comments that this is because I needed to turn the "safe search" off. Thanks for this Bob. BUT it's a pretty poor search engine that does not believe a search for Norfolk Politics can bring up a safe website or web page.

Want to make the Tories spend more on their Henley campaign ?

It appears that the Tory candidate for Henley is making use of Google ads and his advert sometimes appears on this blog and other political blogs.

So ... if you are feeling naughty and want to cost the Tories a bit of cash, why not look through the ads on everyone's blogs and click on the ones from Henley Tories.

That should cost them a few quid.

P.S. Likewise, I would be stunned if anyone changed their vote by clicking on a paid for Google ad, so if tories click on the link to the Lib Dem candidate it might make the party realise this is a stunning waste of cash.

Google to create a "China friendly" version of Wikipedia

The Times today reveals that Google are to go head to head with Wikipedia to set up an online encyclopedia in the Wikipedia style.

Google's own version called "knowl" will though follow Google's usual rules of being one sided, sanitised and of course China friendly (so no writing about the killing of tens of thousands of students in Beijing).

If Google ran the world people like Robert Mugabe would just be so happy as the real world and real history would be ignored all in the interests of the mighty dollar.

A way to help the Lib Dems make money and take money from the Tories

Am I the only person fed up with seeing on Google ads the advert on the right of this page placed by a Tory PPC ?

Now if my limited understanding of Google adsense is correct, Chris Philp, the Tory who placed the advert, pays Google to have the ad placed on peoples blogs. He also has to pay more if the advert unit is clicked on. So by clicking on the advert he is forced to pay more to Google but, most importantly, the person whose blog the advert appeared on receives in some cases a payment from Google.

Now I am happy to be corrected, but it strikes me that if every Liberal Democrat clicked on the advert by Chris Philp every time they see his advert on someone elses blog, the person whose blog it is would be paid and Chris Philp is out of pocket.

Surely this is the simplest fund raising scheme ever for the Lib Dems ?