Error406 – This is just not acceptable!

One day this month will mark Google’s official 10th birthday. The company will probably celebrate with a blog post and a special logo and we’ll see a slew of articles about how much they’ve accomplished in those 10 years. A few publications couldn’t wait and got their Google tributes out last month.

But when exactly should we be celebrating? Almost certainly on September 27. But the real answer is way more complicated than that.

Google is actually nearly 13-years-old, if you go by their corporate history page: “By January of 1996, Larry and Sergey had begun collaboration on a search engine called BackRub, named for its unique ability to analyse the ‘back links’ pointing to a given website.”

But if you go by when the Google.com domain name was registered, September 15 1997, the company will turn 11 next week.

However, the date Google celebrates as their birth month is a year later, September 1998. They celebrated on September 7, the date of the company’s incorporation, until 2005. Since 2005 (and also randomly in 2002), they’ve celebrated on September 27.

So why do they celebrate it on the 27th? According to Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan, who wrote about this mess last year, they pushed the date forward in 2005 to allow for the announcement of an index-size milestone (ie the record-breaking number of pages the search engine was sifting through).

At least Google is consistently inconsistent: “Google opened its doors in September 1998. The exact date when we celebrate our birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having cake.”

So Happy 10th, 11th and/or almost 13th birthday Google! The first three people who sing Happy Birthday to Google in a video comment below (all the way through, full volume, go for it) get a TechCrunch T-shirt.

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The internet is a world of information and even though we have the ability to search for what we want, it can always be useful to find out from others about websites that they have found useful.

So here’s my list:
Google.com – I dont know how you can not have heard of this site, its a search engine that I use daily to search for anything I want (websites, images, videos, files, games, programs, music).

OnTheBox.com – Sick of going to the shops to buy the TV guide, just visit this site. Choose your channels, the time/date and even highlight your favourite genres for easy viewing.

IMDB.com – The internet movie database is exactly what the name entails. Check out film news, reviews, ratings. Definitely check this site before going to see a film at the cinema, it can save you wasting time/money on yet another crap film..

7spire.com – I cant avoid adding my own sites to this list, if you ever want your own website, personal or business, I can provide hosting, visit the site for more!

Gmail.com – Google’s take on hotmail, I switched from hotmail to Gmail a few years ago now and I’ve not looked back, too many features to list!

Do you know of any more sites you find useful?

admin Internet

Another day, another lost data scare for the government; this time a memory stick containing sensitive intelligence on 33,000 serious offenders. The device also held secret information on around 10,000 priority criminals and the names and dates of birth of 84,000 prisoners.

The loss of the information, has, among other things, put police informants at risk of disclosure. The incident is the latest in a seemingly long line of errors involving to the loss of confidential files.

If you were to find such a device, or stumble upon secret documents forgotten on a train, what would you do with them? Would you alert the authorities, or use them for evil? And ideally, what kind of information would you like to stumble upon – military secrets, UFO sightings, political conspiracies?

admin World Tech News

A hacker has been jailed for two years in Spain for revealing hundreds of private emails written by a former colleague. The emails, which were taken from the former manager’s work computer, divulged details of his sex life.

The hacker sent them to the manager’s ex-wife, to a woman with whom he was having a relationship, and to the mayor of a council where he was working.

The emails were also copied on to other people who knew the victim.

A judge in Barcelona yesterday jailed the hacker, who was not named, for two years for an offence of “revealing secrets”. He was also order to pay a fine of €3,240 (£2,566) as well as €4,000 in compensation to the victim.

The judge ruled Spanish law allowed the courts to pursue anyone who “gets access to information of a personal or family nature held on information systems or computers which are public or private”.

He said Spain’s supreme court ruled the right to privacy “means the existence of a reserved area away from others which is necessary to maintain a minimum quality of human life”.

In this case, only 2% of the emails contained information “of a highly personal nature”. The judge said the way in which the victim’s right to privacy had been violated was the most important factor, rather than the content of the emails.

The manager left the Barcelona company in 2006 and believed he had erased all his personal emails.

His former colleague’s motive for hacking into his computer was not made clear in court. Nor did the court establish how the hacker managed to access the emails after the former manager believed they had been erased.

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Wrapit, the stricken internet wedding list company, called in administrators yesterday, leaving 2,000 newlywed couples bereft of gifts and their guests facing a combined loss estimated at £700,000.

The Wandsworth-based company was set up in 2000 to allow wedding guests to buy presents for couples from an online list, but ran into trouble and has failed to honour orders worth £3.5m.

Read more…

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