Official pages on the matter:

• Official Google Blog Post
• Google Code Overview
• Google Code Instructions

It’s as easy as entering two numbers in your internet connection settings. The payoff is minimal, but I’m quite happy to be using Google’s servers instead of Comcast’s.

I’ve seen a lot of HTML cheat sheets, and many of them are very nice, but I have to say this one amazed me. Not only is it absolutely enormous, but it’s extensive, to boot. Dimensions weigh in at a full 4961×3508. It’s clean, simple, and rather elegant for being so packed full of useful information. I won’t take away too much from the guys over at Woork, so without further ado:

Download Full-Size Version Here. (4.2MB)

Visit Woork’s page for it here. Somebody should send cookies.

I love Google Caffeine more than actual caffeine. That’s a serious amount. Seriously.

To nearly everyone who uses it, Google’s revamped search looks just like the old one. To me, it’s a wonderful playground of happiness, where for once I actually rank the index using my own name. This is nothing short of amazing, since I’m constantly plagued by my namesake’s dopplegangers everywhere I go. In the case of search indexing, it’s nearly impossible to beat out some guy who got on American Idol using my name. Granted, it’s his name too, but he was on American Idol and I still have my dignity. Mostly.

So long story short, Google Caffeine goes much more in-depth when hashing out the rankings for its index. The results for any search shift and change on a daily basis, because live-search results are added to the mix, causing a more fluid day-to-day search experience along with providing more relevant data upon request.

[UPDATE]: You can now try this site, which compares the two versions of Google search.

My name is only an example, albeit a good one. Since the first night I discovered this treat, my ranking has changed for the worse already. I’m not holding it against Google, since I’ve been too busy to tweet much lately, or digg much for that matter, so it’s my own fault that I’m already slipping in the rankings. (Both sites do extremely well in Google index rankings)

But that’s the beauty of it, within two days my subtle inactivity has caused slippage. This can mean worlds to searchers wanting fresh information, as opposed to the standard top-ten listing we’ve all begrudgingly gotten used to.

http://www2.sandbox.google.com/

What are you waiting for? Try it yourself!

Soon afterwards, as Twitter attempted to blip back into existence, they posted an update on their status blog explaining that they were in fact under a DDoS attack, source unknown. Nearly every major Internet-equipped news service in the world began to post updates about Twitter’s demise. This irked me, since these people didn’t seem to realize they were basically reporting something about as new as velcro shoes, but it was interesting nonetheless if for nothing but the fact that Twitter has become what it has.

A Gibson Moment

So this afternoon I wake up to the news, as reported cnet’s Insecurity Complex that Twitter was not the only company affected by the attack. That in fact, Facebook, Twitter, Google and Livejournal had been targeted in a seemingly massive effort to blockade a single blogger. The pro-georgian blogger uses the handle “Cyxymu” – the name of a town in Georgia (likely his own) – has accounts at all affected sites, and it was these accounts that the attacks were supposedly targeting.

While the source(s) of this combined attack are as yet unknown, the combined might of all these tech companies working in tandem would probably stand a better chance of discovering it than most governments. Google remained largely unaffected during the outage, but tends to take this sort of thing very seriously. Unlike smaller startups Facebook and Twitter, Google has the financial clout to get results.

While nobody wants to say it outright, the fingers are pointing in one general direction for the source of the attack, and the general consensus is that It’s probably Russian.

UPDATE: The Guardian reports that Cyxymu “said his real name was Georgy and that he was a 34-year-old economics lecturer. He is an active critic of Moscow’s politics in the Caucasus region and was the victim of a similar attack last year that crashed LiveJournal.” They also report that he’s expressed a firm belief that the Kremlin is behind the attacks.

That’s when it hit me. What has likely just happened, is that several cutting-edge technology firms with vested interests in global Internet use have just suffered through collateral damage in a totally foreign, Russian conflict. Naturally, the first thing that came to mind was William Gibson, and his weirdly prescient writings over the last 20 or so years. Cyberwars, Russia, fractured Internets.

How freaking Gibson is that? Is “Gibson” even an adjective? I’m going to treat it like one from now on.

image via goodreads

That’s it. Nothing more.

It’s interesting to note that most suicide notes are written in desperate attempts to get noticed.

This comes at a perfect time, since only a couple of days ago I posted about my thoughts on Apple, AT&T, Google and Voice. I postulated that AT&T may have actually had nothing to do with the blocking of the app, and that it was simply a row between Apple and Google. As updates became available I later added that not only is the FCC as interested in this as we are, but that AT&T has officially denied any role in the drama.

I also poked fun at the fact that many of the loudest to complain in this case are those who have never actually used Google Voice, and were simply regurgitating hearsay and often bad information when drawing their conclusions. Conclusions which seemed to unanimously point the finger of justice at AT&T.

Which brings me to the core issue: I didn’t expect to be forced to the conclusion that I was, that I would be made to believe that Mike Arrington has not actually used Google Voice on an iPhone, and possibly has not used it at all. Sure, he’s got knowledge of it, he cites his own blog’s posts about it several times, posts which are several months old. He nearly always refers to it as “formerly Grand Central.” That’s all well and good, but it’s not Grand Central anymore. It’s Voice, and the myriad of problems Arrington rails off through the article all seem to be from some alternate reality where I don’t have my iPhone in front of me, with Voice at the ready, proving him wrong at every turn.

I think the best way to handle this is to simply go paragraph by paragraph in excerpts from his post.

What finally put me over the edge? It wasn’t the routinely dropped calls, something you can only truly understand once you have owned an iPhone (and which drove my friend Om Malik to bail). I’ve lived with that for two years. It’s not the lack of AT&T coverage at home. I’ve lived with that for two years, too. It certainly isn’t the lack of a physical keyboard, that has never bothered me. No, what finally put me over the edge is the Google Voice debacle.

Most of you won’t know what I’m talking about, so I’ll explain.

Yes Mike, AT&T has spotty coverage at best, and we all hate dropped calls. The grass is always greener though, isn’t it? Because last time I checked, customers of other wireless service providers were complaining about the same thing. But that’s not what I want to point out in this excerpt, the last line is: “Most of you won’t know what I’m talking about, so I’ll explain.” Really? Well thanks Mike Arrington, because I was sitting here completely befuddled by the moonspeak you were spewing. Please, go on.

Google Voice is a call management service that lets you determine what calls get through to you based on who’s calling and what time of day it is, among other factors. It has amazing features, like automatically transcribing all your voicemails. And you can forward calls to any other phone easily and automatically. Here’s an overview of the service if you aren’t familiar with it.

What I want to note here is that the article he links to supposedly explaining to us simpletons what exactly Google Voice is, is in fact from back in March.

This is what we’ve really been waiting for:

I’ve always wanted to use Google Voice but there’s a big switching cost – changing your phone number. Too many people have that phone number and use it to call in great stories. There’s no way I’m giving that up. And there’s another problem with Google Voice. When you make outbound calls from a phone, it (obviously) doesn’t use your Google Voice phone number, so recipients don’t know it’s you calling. Those were two hurdles I wasn’t willing to jump over.

There it is. “I’ve always wanted to use Google Voice but… …hurdles I wasn’t willing to jump over.” Wow. He’s just basically admitted that he is speaking entirely out of his ass. And these unavoidable “hurdles” he names? Not so much. I think it’s nothing short of amazing that the great Mike Arrington is willing to bestow such “obvious” knowledge upon us. Especially since it’s completely wrong.

When you set up your Voice account, you choose a phone number. This will be your Google Voice number for as long as you choose to keep it. It does not replace the phone number attached to your iPhone, that’s AT&T. Your friends who have this number saved will still have the number saved, and will still see your face when they dial it. If you want them to start using your new Google Voice number, you simply give them the number and tell them so whenever they call you. What a hurdle!

As for the second revelation, that when making outgoing calls your phone “(obviously) doesn’t use your Google Voice phone number” (and that your friends will have no idea who is calling if you should try it): This is absolutely ridiculous. All I have to do in order to make an outgoing call is to hit a contact’s name or enter a number to dial in the web-app furnished by Google. I am called by my own Google Voice number, I answer, and the system connects me to the party I’ve dialed. They see my Google Voice number in their caller ID, just like normal. All the Google Voice features are enabled, they work by touchtone during the call, you still have a dialer and a finger. It’s really no different than any other call once you get past the act of not initiating it with the dialer.

He doesn’t stop there, he actually continues, striding boldly forward into oblivious serenity, laying down his sage learnings cooly and methodically:

But now Google is planning on rolling out number portability, so I can move my mobile phone number to Google. None of my friends, family or contacts have to store a new number.

That still leaves the problem of outbound calls, though. I can move my mobile number to Google and then get a new iPhone account, but outbound calls won’t be identified because they are on the new number. Google has a solution for that too, though. They are releasing apps for a variety of handsets that effectively take over the native dialer, address book and call log. Problem solved. I can use any phone I like, or a bunch of phones, and just choose the one that makes sense at any time. I never have to be tied to a carrier and their restrictive contracts again.

Or so I thought. Apple and AT&T are now blocking the iPhone version of the Google Voice app. Why? Because they absolutely don’t want people doing exactly what I’m doing – moving their phone number to Google and using the carrier as a dumb pipe.

So I have to choose between the iPhone and Google Voice. It’s not an easy decision. Except, it sort of is. Google isn’t forcing the decision on me, Apple and AT&T are. So I choose to work with the company that isn’t forcing me to do things their way. And in this case, that’s Google.

Where do I begin? I’ve already covered his being obsessively wrong about the outgoing calls business, so that’s done. In doing so I’ve now covered the use of the web-app, so that’s taken care of. Earlier in my last post I covered the issue of AT&T’s involvement (or lack thereof) in the blocking of the native Voice app, something which Arrington believes he can simply state as fact (as he does everything else). So all that’s left is his plaintive cry for help, because he’s been so unreasonably forced to choose between his iPhone and Google.

Don’t misunderstand me, if there were ever an actual moment that truly did force such a decision, I would choose Google over my iPhone. Mike Arrington has not been forced, in any way whatsoever to make this choice. Mike Arrington has shown that he has no idea what he’s talking about, and that he simply wants attention. In this case, he probably expects to get a free iPhone 3GS from Apple, because he probably believes he has that kind of clout. He very well may. Too many people have placed laurels on the head of this man, and the combined weight of all that crowning glory seems to have caused a severe over-inflation of his ego. My suggestion to Mr. Arrington is this: If setting up and using Google Voice is too much of a hassle for you, maybe you should indeed put down the iPhone. While you’re at it, give the people at JitterBug a try, they might be more your speed.

Addendum: The Wall Street Journal doesn’t seem to have a clue what Google Voice is, either.

I think people tend to forget that AT&T is not the only carrier that Apple deals with, and that the US isn’t the only country in which the iPhone is sold. AT&T has always played second chair to Apple in the deal, and Google Voice has absolutely zero significant threats to wireless carriers hidden within it. Many of the rants floating around are written by people who don’t even have a Google Voice account yet, and seem to be basing conjecture on more conjecture, while piling rumor on top of that. The fact is that there are no facts, because nobody ruffling feathers about this mess are the people who know what’s going on. That would be the execs at Apple.

[UPDATE]: The FCC is very interested in knowing, too.

[UPDATE]: AT&T has stated they were not involved in the decision.

You are still able to use Google Voice on your iPhone. I have it, and I use it, all with a web-app. It’s not that bad, really.

If there has been any truly informative insight into just what is going on between the three industry giants, it would be the deleted tweet that came from the hand of Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search at Google. In it, she linked to a satirical (and hilarious) news article posted at BBspot, which told a story of Google turning the tables on Apple and removing them from their search index. The reasons given were meant to mirror Apple’s statement on deciding to block Google Voice’s native iPhone app, as well as Latitude’s.

While the article is purely satire, there was one particular bit of truth buried within it that many people are overlooking: The Google Voice application is still available for Blackberry and Android phones. This fact alone, considering iPhones in no way make up the majority of AT&T’s phone market, goes to show how flawed the argument is that AT&T is responsible for the block.

Why Google Voice is not such a threat to AT&T:

I’m going to use my own experience as a guide here, I know that’s not usually preferable, but in this case I seem to be one of few who actually use the service I’m blogging about.

• Texting: When I receive a text, I still receive the text, otherwise, I’d never know anyone texted me. It still counts against me come billing time. There are no less than 41 billion SMS and MMS texting apps available on the Appstore at any given time. Many of them have the ability to send text messages as data, but just like with Google Voice, the phone gets alerted via text upon receipt. Nothing new here.
• Calls: The way phone calls work on Google Voice is that you are connected through your Voice number, which means you are still connecting via your wireless connection to an actual phone number. Google Voice is not a VOIP service, and doesn’t even have the option while on a computer. It’s a number mask, a relay, a switchboard, a log and a transcription service. It’s not Skype.
• Long Distance Calls: I don’t know about the rest of you, but my AT&T account comes with free long distance calling, and it’s the cheapest account available. International rates are cut-cost with Google Voice, but there are already countless services set up for relay-calling international numbers at low rates, so this is not new.

What is new here is the fact that if Voice were given its own native app on the iPhone, then the two components of the device that make it a phone would suddenly be replaced with Google software. This wouldn’t affect AT&T much, but it would certainly upset Apple, whose software is being replaced. Right now, in order to use Voice, I basically have Safari open all the time, which isn’t a hassle since it already is anyway, due to GMail’s web-app being nicer than my phone’s onboard mail handler. That alone is a big hint. If a Google user like myself finds a simple web-app more useful than Apple’s software, then just how hard would it be for me to replace the Phone and Text buttons with a single GVoice icon should there be an actual app available?

The answer to that is that it’d be very easy, since that functionality is built into the phone. In fact, I’ve gone ahead and replaced the icons anyway, with home-screen Safari bookmarks for Google Voice and GMail. I don’t make any outgoing calls using the phone’s dialer, I simply dial out from the contact lists in my Voice web-app. Those contact lists are constantly sync’d with my GMail contact lists, which in turn are sync’d to my phone’s address book which in turn sync’s my Mac’s address book every time I plug my phone in. The system is pretty streamlined, and it’s nearly completely Google-driven except for, believe or not, a Microsoft Exchange service going on in there, but that shows how Google remains non-biased in their workarounds to get a product to the user. Since “the user” happens to be “Me” that makes me happy.

I strongly suggest that you actually try Google Voice before you believe anything someone else has written about it, including myself. As with any other service, it’s going to come down to personal preference in the end. I love it. I think it’s worth the slightly extra bit of work I go through to make phone calls or send text messages. But that’s me, I also like my freedom to use it, and admire Google for planning ahead and supplying me with a web-app the way they have. This stuff is free and they’re going great lengths to make sure it’s available. And after everything is laid out on the table, with Latitude’s absolutely senseless app-murder, it just doesn’t make sense to place the blame on AT&T anymore.

This looks like a simple case of lovers’ quarrel.

Sometime recently this message began popping up whenever a user visits the Facebook Ads section of their Facebook Privacy Settings. It’s dressed up to be some sort of reassurance to paranoid individuals, but to me it looks like a blatant insult to anyone aware of the original issue, as well as a statement calling myself and many other people liars.

I cannot stress enough how offensive I find this. Once again, Facebook is basically omitting any sort of direct acknowledgement of the fact that they ever allowed open-access of user-data to these third parties in the first place.

The old options page has also been replaced with a shoddy and confusing explanation of how the ads work:

Notice the wording has changed considerably. Where the option used to say “Appearance in Facebook Ads”, it now says “Show my social actions in Facebook ads to” followed by the drop down menu (which is still not showing up for some firefox users, with or without any sort of adblocking enabled).

If You Don’t Like History, Just Rewrite It.

Does Facebook truly believe that by ignoring the fact that users’ pictures were allowed to be used in ads without their informed consent, that they can make us think it never happened? Changing the settings page and throwing a reassuring banner on it, alluding to phantoms who apparently run around the Internet crying wolf, all in some vain hope that nobody will notice? Users who have been alerted by friends (or lovers) of their faces appearing on ads may feel a bit provoked at the very thought. I don’t believe they’d be overreacting, either.

It’s all well and good if Facebook has decided that allowing third party advertisers to show users’ profile pictures in their ads was simply too risky, but acting as though it never happened is unconscionable in my opinion. According to their official blog, the ads were entirely outside their control, and it was only recently that they discovered and began rectifying the situation. I still find this hard to believe. I’d much rather they come out and apologize for what has happened, and admit their own faults where relevant.

It’s hard to say at this point exactly what the brass at AT&T were thinking. Apparently they’ve decided the best reaction to DDoS attacks targeting 4chan is to completely block access to the site’s affected boards. The move affects users on their landline networks only.

I don’t think it’s necessary to go into too much depth on just how bad a move this is for AT&T. Corporate tech-giant or not, one simply cannot randomly instate censorship on the Internet, especially when it comes to 4chan.

As Mashable points out, 4chan is nothing short of notorious for their involvement (both alleged and obvious) in Internet attacks. This in no way makes it acceptable for a major ISP to block portions of the site, even if the action is seemingly validated by a concern for security. DDoS attacks happen all the time, to a number of sites. If the answer were always as simple as blocking them, there wouldn’t be much of an Internet left.

As of this moment, 4chan.org seems to be down. Likely it’s been knocked out due to the influx of traffic brought on by the news of the block.

Immediately following the discovery of the block, talk began stirring about retaliation. Anyone who hasn’t lived under a rock for the past few years knows that no Web-based entity knows retaliation like 4chan, or in this case, Anonymous.

AT&T may well learn that the quick option isn’t always the best, and that dealing with DDoS attacks may be preferable to becoming the target of them.

From 4chan’s status blog:

It’s come to our attention that AT&T is filtering/blocking img.4chan.org (/b/ & /r9k/) for many of their customers. There is no remedy at this time.

If you’ve been affected, I would advise you call or write customer support and corporate immediately.

UPDATE: Some coverage on TechCrunch, Digg, reddit, and Google News. Also, note that AT&T has yet to contact us.

In the status message, Moot urges users to “call or write customer support,” though I’d be surprised to see such docility from those affected. More updates to come.

[UPDATE]: Wisebread shows a conversation taking place in Reddit comment threads showing that both XKCD creator Randall Munroe and Imgur creator Alan Schaaf have effectively become the first hard-backers of the inevitable retaliation to take place against AT&T.

Munroe: What IP blocks do their corporate offices have? If they’re really cutting off my trashy time-wasting web entertainment, I’m cutting off theirs.

Schaaf: Let me know if you find out. Imgur is prepared to forward all their images; I hope they like goatse.

[UPDATE]: AT&T has released this comment:

Beginning Friday, an AT&T customer was impacted by a denial-of-service attack stemming from IP addresses connected to img.4chan.org. To prevent this attack from disrupting service for the impacted AT&T customer, and to prevent the attack from spreading to impact our other customers, AT&T temporarily blocked access to the IP addresses in question for our customers. This action was in no way related to the content at img.4chan.org; our focus was on protecting our customers from malicious traffic.

Overnight Sunday, after we determined the denial-of-service threat no longer existed, AT&T removed the block on the IP addresses in question. We will continue to monitor for denial-of-service activity and any malicious traffic to protect our customers.

4chan’s status blog update:

Here’s what happened:

For the past three weeks, 4chan has been under a constant DDoS attack. We were able to filter this specific type of attack in a fashion that was more or less transparent to the end user.

Unfortunately, as an unintended consequence of the method used, some Internet users received errant traffic from one of our network switches. A handful happened to be AT&T customers.

In response, AT&T filtered all traffic to and from our img.4chan.org IPs (which serve /b/ & /r9k/) for their entire network, instead of only the affected customers. AT&T did not contact us prior to implementing the block. Here is their statement regarding the matter.

In the end, this wasn’t a sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T’s part. Whoever pulled the trigger on blackholing the site probably didn’t anticipate [nor intend] the consequences of doing so.

We’re glad to see this short-lived debacle has prompted renewed interest and debate over net neutrality and internet censorship—two very important issues that don’t get nearly enough attention—so perhaps this was all just a blessing in disguise.

Aside from that, I’ll also add that there is some big news due later this week. Keep an eye on the News page, Twitter, and global message for updates.

So, it looks as though the official label for this situation would be Crisis Averted. Part of me is slightly disappointed, while the saner parts are overjoyed that AT&T caught on and corrected their mistake. Either way, it’s a good resolution.

I’m not about to lie to you. Google Wave gets me so excited that I feel like a schoolgirl. I’ve never even been a schoolgirl before, so that’s an odd feeling. Wave’s like that.

So it’s not difficult to imagine how giddy I was when Mashable posted about Google’s surprise blog update that actually named a date for selective release. It went a little something like this:

In other news: this morning we announced that we plan to start extending the Google Wave preview beyond developers on September 30th. This will take place on wave.google.com rather than the separate “sandbox” instance we are currently using, and we plan to involve about 100,000 users. In addition to the developers already using Wave, we will invite groups of users from the hundreds of thousands who offered to help report bugs when they signed up on wave.google.com.

This got my heart racing. A couple of months ago, wave.google.com popped up out of the ether, with nothing more than a video and a button to request invite. The Internet imploded in the ruckus and I promptly requested mine, as well as included the lyrics to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (in their entirety) in the comment box as a gift. I also unabashedly pronounced my love of the people at Google for what they’d done over the years. If that sounds odd, it’s because they asked people to include anything they wanted in the form, to include creative ASCII art. For the “Massive Dynamic” sort of company they’ve become, the people working there are still just like us. That’s a big reason I support them the way I do.

The imminent release of Wave is extremely nostalgic. I was in the 8th grade when I signed up for an invite to the (then) mysterious and new GMail. It’s surprised me greatly that people still shy away from the service, usually citing worries about privacy. These same users are usually Hotmail account holders. Ironic? I think it is, at least marginally so, considering these people are saying that they trust Microsoft more with their intimate details than Google, which of course leads to a flame-war that I’m not about to step into.

My point is this:

Google has come a long way since GMail was introduced. My friends who said I was foolish for signing up for a new service that saves and catalogues my data were later eating their words. Over time most of the stigma attached to Google’s operation of GMail has melted away, to be replaced by due respect for a truly fantastic email service. A service that ties its users into dozens of other Google developments by using one common login. A common login that can now double as a verified identity to the world’s largest Web-based presence by linking Knol with your Google Profile. I don’t see Microsoft offering this kind of service. Twitter requires that a user be a bona fide celebrity in order to get an account verified. Google only requires that you’re you.

Wave promises to revamp the way we use the Web in ways previously unexplored. GMail changed the way we email, Wave wants to replace it. That may be a little ambitious, considering huge numbers of people will reenact the shyness period that followed GMail. That’s fine, since there are plenty of other people who want in. So if you suddenly feel an urge to jump out of your chair on September 30th and start dancing, don’t be ashamed. I’ll hopefully be doing it proudly at that very moment.