What happens if you search the web for the Unicode character "☺"? On the one hand, it's a symbol just like the letter A or the punctuation mark "!" - on the other, it contains semantic meaning. A smiling, happy face. I decided to look at a few popular search engines to see what they'd return. First up, a surprisingly poor entry from Google. The site at the top by Tim Whitlock is fine - but it's hardly an authoritative site. The rest appear to be random sites with the character in the URL. …
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I actively resent having a Google+ account. It's a bloated desert of half-finished ideas. Even the Google employees I know seem to have stopped using it. It's a necessary evil when dealing with Google products, sadly. I haven't used it in months and my profile tells people not to contact me there. That doesn't stop all manner of spammers from adding me to their "circles" - which, in turn, causes an obnoxious little notification bubble. Ok, so if you have to have a G+ account (for…
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What could be worse than email spam? Animated gifs in the subject line of email spam! This is a trend I've recently started to see on Gmail - here's what it looks like and how it works. So, what's going on here? How have they got an animated image into the subject line? Here's the raw text of the message's subject line: …
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I can only assume that on their first day at Google, new employees are given their Android phone, a ChromeBook, a self-driving car, and complementary Laser Eye Surgery. That's my theory on some of the problems besetting Android's Lollipop release. I've ranted about Lollipop before, and now I'd like to point out two particular problems. All of these tests were performed on a Nexus 4 running Android 5.0.1, and the most recent versions of the apps. Word Wrap I've spent two years moaning about …
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Last year I complained about a dangerous change to Google's Maps app. When driving, you want to spend the majority of your time concentrating on the road ahead. Flicking one's eyes to the mirrors & speedometer should be enough to quickly assess one's environment. The same applies for SatNav apps - every second that is spend trying to figure out what the graphics means is a second where the road goes unobserved. Recently, I've been trying Nokia's new Here maps for Android. There's a lot to…
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So Google Ventures is swinging in to London Town, dragging one hundred meeeeeellion dollars with it. Wow! What a way to reinvigorate the European tech scene. All that cash is sure to filter its way down into the economy. Viva la trickle-down economics! Or, not so much. Earlier last week, I was asked if I would mentor teams in a start-up hackathon - partly backed by Google. That, in itself, is nothing too unusual. I'm often asked by start-ups, early stage companies, and big business to…
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Hey kids! Did you know that the best way to report bugs to Google is via passive-aggressive blog posts? Yup, s'true. They don't offer support for any of their products*, so your only hope is getting your complaint to the top of Reddit / HackerNews / Cool Site of the Day and hoping that particular Google Product Manager is taking note. So - here's my rant :-) Google now let you pay for apps and games using PayPal. Well, I've got a bunch of credit left over in an old PayPal account, so I…
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Update! There's a new way to do this - read my latest post to find out how. Two or three years ago, I was contacted by a recruiter from Google. They wanted to know if I'd be interested in working for the advertising giant. We played the usual game of dancing around salary and schedules, when he dropped the bombshell - they were looking for people to work on Google+. I asked the recruiter if he'd seen my G+ profile. At the time, it had this childish scrawl all over it. We mutually…
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This is a necropost - resurrected from the now defunct blog of a previous employer. Well, I've had Google Glass for all of 30 minutes - so I thought I'd give you my first impressions. No, I haven't read the manual. The first thing to note is that it is really well packaged. Everything from the USB cable to the bundled sunglasses are held together beautifully. As someone who doesn't wear glasses, I found them fairly light and not too intrusive. The screen sits slightly above my line of site…
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I've an interesting use-case, that I don't think is met by Android. I want my tablet to have access to my Google Play account but not have access to my emails. I recently acquired a cheap Android tablet to act as a remote control for my entertainment equipment. The tablet sits in my lounge where it can be accessed by all and sundry - my wife, guests, the plumber, etc. Occasionally, I want to buy apps for the tablet - some of the fancy remote-control apps cost money - so now I have a…
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Search Engine Optimisation is the (dark) art of getting a site to the top of Google's ranking algorithm. If you're in the business of selling decorations for ponds, you want your shop to be right at the top of the results when people search for "bespoke synthetic frog spawn." The problem is, there are lots of people all playing the same game. So, what "unusual" tactics can be used to drive sites to the top? Yesterday, I looked at how homoglyphs like Il (capital i lower L) can be used to…
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My wife likes to set reminders for herself in Google Calendar. Recently, she added a note to her personal Google Calendar reading "Email alice@example.com to discuss pay rise" and set the date for a few months from now. She'd had a discussion with her boss, Alice, and they'd agreed to talk about salary later in the year. A few moments later, Alice sent her a "Meeting Accepted" email. What... The...? Although pretty embarrassing, it could have been a lot worse. It could have been "Email…
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