Google are proudly trumpeting their new Stories feature, which basically automates the tiresome thing of organising your photos – assuming you’ve let Google+ upload all your photos to the cloud for you. And it’s a pretty nifty automatic feature.
Perhaps too automatic. Because left to its own devices, this is what it trumpeted as one of my more recent stories…
What Google+ Stories did with one of @almostwitty’s photos
Mirrored from almost witty.
Google Street View has thrillingly – and rather scarily – managed to scan 95% of the homes in the UK. Which means that most of my childhood haunts are finally on Google Maps for an easy trip down nostalgia street.
However, when I try to go down this street in Tywyn and then move forward, I am magically transported through some mysterious blurred tunnel to another place in time and space. Also known as the back alley. Then I’m transported back.
Such a shame I can’t seem to find a way to tell Google how to correct their mistake. Unless there is a teleportation tunnel operating in Tywyn these days…
Mirrored from almost witty.
Miss H recently did a Google search for a local pizzeria near where I live and she works. My picture pops up – because I once wrote a favourable review of it.
Better yet, if you then do the same search but concentrating on images, there’s a Google Ad inviting you to travel with 1200 lesbians. Sounds like my average dating night out to me.
Mirrored from almost witty.
So, Google Maps Navigation has launched and shares in sat-nav companies have already collapsed – following my sharedealing friend’s famous edict that you don’t want to launch any product that Google can march into. But I’m not so sure what they’re worried about.
I used Google Maps on my Android phone a while ago to try and drive to a remote location. Sure, the interface was incredibly clunky and it wasn’t the best set-up in the world – but I’d have been fine with that if it ACTUALLY WORKED. Ironically, while my phone had a GPS lock throughout the journey, it spent ages vainly looking for a data signal.
No doubt Google can improve on the user interface and speed of the application – but unless Google suddenly have powers to swamp the entire continent or planet with a coherent data signal, there’s still going to be a lot of room for a “traditional” satellite navigation company. Because when you’re lost, the last thing you want to find is that your freebie Google Maps device can’t tell you where you are either because it can’t download the relevant map of your location.
Mirrored from almost witty.
Well, as at 14:48 GMT on 31 January 2009, you get:
Type Google into Google and...
Essentially, Google is warning you that THE ENTIRE INTERNET IS DANGEROUS AND UNCHECKED. Including its’ own sites. This is, I presume, a bug. 
Although if Google is telling the world that websites are unsafe and harmful, does that mean website owners can sue Google for libel?
Then again, I suppose it’s safer than what an IT manager thought would happen if you typed Google into Google…
Originally published at almost witty. You can comment here or there.
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