Inspired by the quality journalism currently being undertaken at The Blogging Times, I interrupt 901am’s usually family friendly viewing with an important question: is Google Maps exposing Human-Camel…well…use your imagination. Steve Rubel posts on a new Google Maps hack that allows closer than ever close ups from Google’s extensive satellite imagery, and what do we get?

What is this man doing to this camel? Prep work for an artificial insemination program for endangered camels? Why has Google indicated that one camel is more special with a green arrow? Is he the next target? I guess it’s true, everything on the interwebs comes back to sex.

I now return you to more family friendly viewing. :-)

PS: the hack works like this. Find a location, switch to satellite view and click the “link to this page” URL then change the number after the “z=” in your URL to a higher number to get a closer look at the mating rituals in your local neighborhood.

Originally posted on March 7, 2007 @ 10:18 pm

Japanese electronics giant Sony has confirmed rumors previously published at Kotaku (that as we reported resulted in a blacklisting for the site) that it intends on launching “PlayStation Home”, an online world that will allow Playstation3 users to interact in a virtual setting.

Reuters reports that the new world will include text, audio or video chat; users will be able to watch movie trailers or feature films and play casual games, and the service will be available to users in the US and Europe in the northern Autumn.

Pictures of the service, available at Joystiq, will seem familiar to users of Second Life. Aside from the slightly glossier graphics, “Home” looks and feels like a Second Life clone. No word yet as to whether Sony will allow the creation of objects in world along the same lines as users can in Second Life, but given the similarities don’t be surprised if similar features are also being planned.

The real question in terms of marketshare is does Sony really think that a Second Life clone can help boost faltering PS3 sales? Certainly they are coming from behind in terms of social interaction, with the Wii becoming a sensation based upon its strength in multi-person gaming, but Second Life style virtual worlds are relatively not that popular (despite the SL hype, there been only 2 million signups, with a whole lot less regularly logging in). Rather than “Home” I’d suggest they’d be much better off if they spent money bringing World of Warcraft to the PS3: that alone would result in a big boost in console sales.

Picture Credit: Joystiq

 

Tags: Sony, PlayStation3

Originally posted on March 7, 2007 @ 8:34 pm

In a sign that reality is starting to come back into Web 2.0 valuations, Valleywag reports that social networking grandfather Tribe.com was purchased by Cisco for only $3 million.

Having said that though, are any 901am readers users of Tribe? I’ve heard the name many times in the past, but for the life of me I couldn’t actually tell you what it did until I revisited the site for this post. It’s fair to say whatever the site does, revenue would be lacking. The main page consists of 1 Adsense ad unit in the footer, which gave me a totally unrelated ad:

With an Alexa ranking on 2,677 though $3 million makes it a reasonable buy, after all, imagine how much spam content you could pump into those pages :-)

 

Tags: Tribe, Cisco

Originally posted on March 5, 2007 @ 10:56 pm

In a move that can only be described as, well, French, the French Constitutional Council passed a law that has made the filming or broadcasting of reports of violence by citizen journalists a criminal offence.

The council’s decision comes exactly 16 years after amateur videographer George Holliday filmed police officers beating Rodney King on March 3, 1991.

The council has also proposed a system of certification for web sites and other online content publication mediums, that would allow them to be identified as ‘government-approved sources of information’ if they conform to certain regulations. Reporters Without Borders, an organization that campaigns for free press has warned this system could lead to excessive self censorship.

Infoworld has more.

Originally posted on March 6, 2007 @ 10:31 pm

As of today, users in Germany can send any listing found on Google Maps directly to their ‘BMW-Assist’ equipped cars. Drivers can then use the destination from their in-car navigation system and even call the final location from within the car.

On the Google Maps team, our goal is not only to help you find local businesses, but also to enable you to quickly connect with those businesses, wherever you are.

Here’s a video of the feature in action (English Version). Now only if I had a ‘BMW-Assist’ equipped car.

Read more.

Originally posted on March 8, 2007 @ 1:10 am