Posts Tagged Google

Google and Nicaragua team up to conquer Costa Rica

Posted by Joel in Technology on November 9, 2010

: Image via Wikipedia

Google Maps is fixing an error in its map of Central America that gave Nicaraguan commanders an excuse to invade a disputed area also claimed by Costa Rica.

FoxNews.com – Oops! Google Maps Error Sparks South American Invasion.

So, we have a missile being fired off the coast of California and now Costa Rica is invaded due to Google!

Is Google evil?

Is Google the Illuminati of this generation?

Is Google the devil?

Am I just throwing up posts today because I am reading and now really working on real posts?

What do you think?

Costa Rica, Google

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Net Neutrality: The End of Free Speech on the Internet? Google-Verizon Deal

Posted by Joel in Technology on August 5, 2010

I’ve posted on this before, and it is something which worries me a bit. If this deal goes through, and the FCC is not able to keep open the internet as a free speech zone, then it is possible that this is the end of the internet as we know it…

For years, Internet advocates have warned of the doomsday scenario that will play out on Monday: Google and Verizon will announce a deal that the New York Times reports “could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege.”

….

A non-neutral Internet means that companies like AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Google can turn the Net into cable TV and pick winners and losers online. A problem just for Internet geeks? You wish. All video, radio, phone and other services will soon be delivered through an Internet connection. Ending Net Neutrality would end the revolutionary potential that any website can act as a television or radio network. It would spell the end of our opportunity to wrest access and distribution of media content away from the handful of massive media corporations that currently control the television and radio dial.

Google, Internet, Net Neutrality, verizon

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Debating Google News and Robots.txt

Posted by Joel in Technology on May 10, 2010

By far, my largest category is Religious News, and I have it in my mind that I could be the next Arianna Huffington, only prettier, so from time to time I apply to be included in the Google News Stream. I’ve been turned down before (reminded me of High School) but this time, the email reply was a bit better:

Thank you for your email. Please note that Google News only includes articles that provide timely reporting on recent events. This means we don’t include informational and how-to articles, classified ads, job postings, fictitious content, event announcements or advice columns. When we reviewed your site, we found that it lists other types of content alongside your original news articles.

There are a few options you may want to consider to resolve this issue and be included in Google News:

1) Place all of your non-news content on a different host or directory, such as http://jobs.yoursite.com or http://yoursite.com/jobs, so that our crawler will be able to separate your different content types when they are indexed for inclusion in Google News.

2) Place all of your non-news content in one directory or folder, then set up a robots.txt file to prevent Googlebot-News from accessing that folder.

Alternatively, you can use a robots meta tag on each of your non-news content pages. If such pages include the appropriate meta tag, our crawler should ignore them.

For more information on using a robots.txt file or meta tags, please visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/exclusion.html

If you’re able to make the necessary changes to allow us to crawl only your news content, please let us know and we’ll be happy to review your site again for inclusion in Google News.

Thanks for your interest in Google News.

Regards,

The Google Team

So now, I have to decide how I want to proceed. Ideally, it would be easy to modify my robots.txt file with a meta tag excluding everything else for Googlebot-News, right?

Block different sets of pages from Google web search and Google News:
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /latest_news

User-agent: Googlebot-News
Disallow: /archives

The pages blocked from Google web search and Google News can be controlled independently. This robots.txt file blocks recent news articles (URLs in the /latest_news folder) from Google web search, but allows them to appear on Google News. Conversely, it blocks premium content (URLs in the /archives folder) from Google News, but allows them to appear in Google web search.

Or I could use the sub-direct0ry, such as news.thechurchofjesuschrist.us and then code that directory to look for the Religious News RSS.xml. Frankly, the robots.txt is a bit easier.

I have several different contributors now, meaning that articles and stories could be turned out on a somewhat regular basis and I hope with better commentary than the Huff Post. Plus, maybe I could use it for book reviews…

Ahh… dreamers and their dreams….

Google

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