Results tagged “google”

Yesterday, Google announced that it would allow news publishers to limit the number of free articles readers access via Google's search, a move the AP calls "a concession to an increasingly disgruntled media industry trying to find ways to get users to pay for content. There has been mounting criticism of Google’s practices from media publishers — most notably the chief executive of the News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch — who argue the company is profiting from online news pages."

Sure, Rupert Murdoch wants people to pay for his content, but now he's definitely considering upping the ante. From the Media Decoder: "News Corporation...has engaged in early stage discussions with Microsoft about a pact to get paid from Microsoft to remove its news content from Google’s search engine... The Financial Times first reported on the discussions, which involve Microsoft possibly paying News Corporation to index its content on Microsoft’s search engine, Bing. The development has the potential that the newspaper industry could finally find a way to make online news lucrative." Wired, though, thinks it could be disaster.

Earlier this week Google Maps launched a flu shot finder at http://www.google.com/flushot. Google said it has "been working with HHS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state and local health agencies to gather information on flu vaccine locations across the country, particularly for the H1N1 flu vaccine (both the nasal-spray vaccine and the shot)."

One day, you're anonymously trashing a woman who badmouthed you to your boyfriend. Months later, because the woman is upset about being called a "psychotic, lying, whoring..skank," your identity has given up by Google! Unmasked Skanks in NYC blogger Rosemary Port tells the Daily News about her planned $15 million suit against Google (her website was on Google-owned Blogger), "When I was being defended by attorneys for Google, I thought my right to privacy was being protected. But that right fell through the cracks. Without any warning, I was put on a silver platter for the press to attack me. I would think that a multi-billion dollar conglomerate would protect the rights of all its users."

Google has complied with a court order to identify, to the best of the company's ability, a blogger who created a website Skanks in NYC devoted to insulting a former cover girl. The model, Liskula Cohen, obtained the IP address and the email address of her accuser yesterday and was able to deduce her enemy's identity. Appearing on Good Morning America today, Cohen said the blogger is a vague acquaintance: "Thank God it was her… she's an irrelevant person in my life. She's just somebody that, whenever I would go out to a restaurant, to a party in New York City… She was just that girl that was always there." Perhaps the pot has been calling the kettle skank all along?

A former Australian Vogue cover model, whose modeling career ended last year after a doorman disfigured her face with a broken bottle, has obtained a court order to learn the identity of an anonymous blogger who created a site called "Skanks in NYC" to insult her. The site, which was hosted by Google subsidiary Blogger.com, featured photos of Liskula Cohen with captions using the words "skank," "ho" and "whoring." (It's no longer active, but Blogger says "the name skanksnyc is available to register!") A Manhattan judge ruled yesterday that Cohen is entitled to file a defamation lawsuit, and Google must reveal the blogger's identity in order for her to do so. Speaking to the Post, Cohen's lawyer said something that might give some website commenter trolls pause: "The rules for defamation on the Web—for actual reality as well as virtual reality—are the same. The Internet is not a free-for-all." But a lawyer for the Skanks in NYC blogger insists, "You can be really, really mean to people—you just can't lie about a set of facts that are provable as lies." As for Cohen, she tells the Post, "I really hope it's not somebody I know."

With his family keeping vigil at the hospital, 33-year-old man remains in a coma after being struck by a tree branch in Central Park yesterday morning. An uncle of Sasha Blair-Goldensohn, an Upper West Side resident and an engineer at Google, told the Daily News, "I'm not worried about Sasha because he has IQ to spare... He hasn't really woken up. He's young and healthy, we're hopeful."

That rumor that Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick were leaving Greenwich Village for Park Slope? Totally a rumor. The NY Times finds out that the person who forked $8.45 million over for the mansion at 17 Prospect Park West is "a wealthy Google engineer and his wife who want to raise their young family away from the hustle and bustle and celebrity of SoHo, where the family now lives." Oh. The engineer, who wished to remain anonymous, said, "I hear people complain about the strollers in Park Slope. But try taking a stroller out in SoHo. SoHo is not exactly family-friendly." As for SJP, her spokeswoman "said that none of the scores of entertainment and real estate Web sites that picked up the story bothered to call to ask about Ms. Parker’s real estate plans." Snap!

The Guggenheim Museum and Google invite you to build something, somewhere. The alliteratively-named duo has launched the Design It: Shelter Competition, which asks contestants to design a virtual shelter using Google’s SketchUp 3D-modeling software and place it anywhere on the globe using Google Earth. The competition draws its inspiration from the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture—students there design shelters as part of their training—but instead of winning a master’s degree, the prize for Design It contestants is a paid trip to New York City complete with free software swag and private museum tours.

Liskula Cohen, a former Australian Vogue cover model who saw her modeling career end last year when a doorman disfigured her face with a broken bottle, is now taking Google to court to find out who is trashing her on the blog Skanks in NYC. The website, part of Google's Blogger subsidiary, is solely dedicated to maligning the Canadian model with photos and insults about her "horsey face" and the "desperation seeping from her soul, if she even has one" and how she's "a psychotic, lying, whoring, still going to clubs at her age, skank."

              

As Andrew Sullivan simply stated, "Say goodbye to the rest of your day." Google is now hosting an exhausting millions of images from LIFE's archives, "stretching from the 1750s to today." Here are a few NYC gems, and if you're looking for more of old New York, we'd suggest having some search keywords in mind to make it a bit less overwhelming!

   

Last month the History Channel series "Cities of the Underworld" was the first subway wrap ad to be unveiled on the Times Square Shuttle. Now Google Maps has stepped up to the plate, helping the MTA with their huge budget crisis by paying for a colorful ad campaign on the S. NYC the Blog notes that "Google has only wrapped the exterior of the train, leaving the interior with the more traditional ads we are used to seeing."

Google might have some geniuses at their desks, but the MTA is likely to somehow foil their goal of accuracy on their Transit maps. You may recall that earlier this year the company hadn't quite figured out the city's public transit system, but word is that this week they'll be announcing that their Transit option is now NYC-friendly, with full maps integration and a partnership with MTA (the feature has actually launched already).

A judge ruled Google must turn over the logins and IP address of everyone who has ever watched anything on Youtube to Viacom, which is suing Google over copyrighted clips appearing on YouTube. Privacy advocates are criticizing the decision, but Viacom claims it will only use the information for its case, "It will be handled subject to a court protective order and in a highly confidential manner." Google's lawyer said, "We are pleased the court put some limits on discovery, including refusing to allow Viacom to access users' private videos and our search technology...We will ask Viacom to respect users' privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs before producing them under the court's order." It is believed by some that "virtually every Internet user has visited YouTube."

Self-Googling may prompt you to sue for $100 million, but it doesn't mean the judge will allow the lawsuit to go forward. Yesterday, a Manhattan judge dismissed a doctor's lawsuit, which claimed his name was purposefully associated with porn sites by enemies as well as claimed he now can't stop self-Googling.

Streetsblog points out a handy new website called Ride the City that’s beta testing a version of Google Maps integrated with ideal cycling routes. The New York City site lets users plan a bicycle commute from point A to point B in any borough, choosing between the “safest” route along as many bike lanes and greenways as possible, and the “fastest” route which lets you plot the most direct course by bike. All known bike shops along the route also come up on the map.

Google is now revving up their maps engine with even more information, as you can see from the above screen shot of the Red Hook map. Now when you choose a map, a new “More” tab at the top gives you exactly what it promises: So far there are two additional map interfaces, with photos and Wikipedia entries.

As a part of greening up the earth, Google Transit will tell you the quickest way to get from Point A to B using mass transit in the city.

It turns out that Thursday's take down of 62 mob figures, many of them high-ranking members of the Gambino crime family and called the biggest mob bust in decades, was spurred by a Staten Island trucking company owner. Joseph Vollaro, who made a lot of money for the Gambinos, ended up becoming a government informant after being caught in a drug deal.

Giving business analysts something to talk about besides the economy, Microsoft has made an unsolicited $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo!. The offer is at $31/share, which is 62% more than Yahoo's closing price.

Today Lego celebrates the big 5-0, even getting some Google-love for hitting the half century mark.

The violent mugging that turned fatal last week prompted the NY Times to compare people's attitude towards crime safety today versus those of two decades ago, when people would carry mugger money around. (When you Google "mugger money," the first thing that comes up is a 1989 NY Times article, "Even the Nun Have to Carry Mugger Money.") While many people mentioned how safe the city is these days, last week we did hear about a Park Slope mugging (a woman gave the muggers her bag but yelled and neighbors appeared, some chasing the muggers into the park) and one man's relatively recent mugging in not-yet-gentrified Bushwick. If anything, it seem to help if one is aware and walks with confidence.

New York University's Child Study Center is pulling the plug on a controversial ad campaign publicizing childhood mental health problems that was considered stigmatizing. The campaign was meant to raise awareness of conditions like Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Asperger's Syndrome, autism, depression, and bulimia.

Intertube-savvy metropolitan diners now have yet another way to make sure their every culinary craving is sated: the new website FoodieBytes, now beta testing, lets users search restaurant menus based on the food they desire. For instance, typing in “pesto” and “whole wheat pasta” yields over a hundred New York eateries. You can narrow your search by neighborhood and, once you find a restaurant that seems appealing, peruse the entire menu, get the hours, address and price info, and find directions through a Google Maps interface.

The city's last privately owned island was sold to the federal government for $2 million. South Brother Island, a 7-acre island (just west of Rikers Island), will be turned over to the city's Parks and Recreation Department and will remain, as amNew York reports, "significant nesting colony for several types of shore birds, including Egrets, Cormorant, and Night Herons." According to the NY Times, the deal, which was "brokered by the Trust for Public...

FR.OG and P*Ong, two perfectly good Manhattan restaurants that opened earlier this year, have names that independently invoke two classic arcade video games, Frogger and Pong. Now, as the fall openings season draws to a close and the votes for worst new restaurant name have been cast, we’d like to draw your attention to the most incredibly iconic new restaurant name in New York: It's that of Roclantic Eatery, a soul food and oil drum “Bar-B-Que” place that opened just two weeks ago on the corner of Atlantic and Rockaway Avenue in East New York, coincidentally enough. Kind of rolls off the tongue. With a purple-painted exterior and booming, shadowed, all-caps signage, Roclantic’s owners have come up with a restaurant name so unique that as of right now, it doesn’t even return a single Google hit.

Probably the best way we can describe Snooth, a unique wine database that recently launched online, would be if the illegitimate web-child of Google and Facebook went to wine school. Or, more simply, it’s a ridiculously large database of wine that allows you to do really cool things and share it with your friends.

Recently Williamsburg doc Jay Parkinson unleashed his revolutionary idea onto Brooklyn -- a doctor for the uninsured, medical advice through emails, and the return of the housecall. The word spread fast and now much of the world is looking his way to see if he can change the way healthcare is provided.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an armed robbery on East 91st St. in Brooklyn, a confined space rescue at JFK Airport in Queens, and a pedestrian was struck at East 23rd St. and Lexington Ave. in Manhattan.
• A dump truck jack-knifed and rolled over, crushing the car next to it and killing the car's two occupants in Brooklyn.
• Jay Leno is auctioning off the set of The Tonight Show and donating the proceeds to fund an after-school program at Brooklyn's Paul Robeson High.
• Streetsblog notes dueling Google ad placements for and against congestion pricing in New York.
• One of the men who was shot by police with Sean Bell was arrested last night and arraigned on charges of assaulting his girlfriend, driving without a license, and harassment.
• A NJ town that enacted strict ordinances against hiring or renting to illegal immigrants three years ago has repealed them after discovering that the negative impact on the town's economy was significant.
• Maybe the Yanks or Mets should look into whoever is having sex with BushwickBK's neighbor, because he or she has quite an arm, as evidenced by the steady stream of panties landing in his yard.
• The sections of the Brooklyn Bridge rated "poor" during recent inspections will be refurbished over the next few years.