Slashdot Mirror
Google Ride Finder Announced
nthitz writes "Need a ride? Now Google has included the ability to lookup where taxis are in real time! The new service is called Google Ride Finder. Using a combination of Google Maps and Google Local you can see where certain taxis are at the moment. Currently there are only 11 major cities that are supported, and there are still only a few cab companies that are involved. The service is pretty cool, but if they don't add more cities/companies, who knows how well it will do. For more info check out Google's Blog."
Neat idea, but I'd like something that tracks public transportation vehicles. Accessible via a WAP browser, it would be a great thing to have while waiting at a bus stop at 3am wondering WHERE the frigg the bus is!
I fear that maybe google is over extending itself. Google News is fine because it doesn't require external research, but the book service and now this... it seems like they'll have so much to maintain externally.
ZX2C4
Looks like they are getting closer and closer to being able to locate my keys in my house for me. Awesome.
Oh shucks....looks like i was .2secs behind the rest of the nerds...*sigh*
Dang. You are good, sir.
I applaud you.
*Polite golf clap*
While I can usually catch a ride from friends, sometimes it is difficult to do so when they aren't going the same way as me.
If you've ever read Jack Kerouac, you probably remember how he recounted the travels of his protagonists across the U.S. They relied mostly on buses, hitching, and occasionally the ride-share program. This type of thing benefits everyone, really. By encouraging people to ride-share rather than drive individually, the road is freed up from congestion quite a bit. Also, riding in a car is usually a more pleasant experience than riding on a dingy bus.
Less cars on the road, less air pollution from exhaust. Less wear and tear on the highways, less taxes to pay for them.
I'm glad to see they actually read my little email note about adding this kind of service. If it works out, I think this could be a real benefit to those of us of meager means.
Sometimes I think Google is running too much and too fast.
:(
Google Maps and Google Local (thus Google Ride Finder too) are available only for US citizens.
Services are fine, are good, are nice, and I'd like to see something similar for my area too (I live in Italy).
My not-so-secret dream is that one day they'll extend all those great services to the rest of the world, maybe before launching tons of other services I would only look at saying "it would be nice to be able to use it..."
Oh, well, I feel like I live in the third world
-- Personal Blog: http://www.delymyth.net/ (italian)
Did anyone else see the GMAIL login page become this: well i'm not good enough to download the page, there's a funny handdrawn picture, but here's the text: Welcome to Gmail A Google approach to math. On the eve of Gmail's one-year birthday, our engineers were toiling away furiously. Notes scribbled all over the walls. Complex calculations on napkins and empty pizza boxes. Millions of M&Ms. The result?... starting today, we're beginning the roll-out of our new and top secret Infinity+1 storage plan. The key features are: Write, don't worry. You want to stop caring about storage. We want to keep giving you more. Today, and beyond. The gift that keeps on giving. 1102.353769 megabytes of storage (and counting) for every user. No complicated equations. No tough algorithms. Just this one graph: Gmail turns 1 today. And we've always loved a good joke. We know we won't reach infinity, but check out what we will do ...
Gmail Sign In
Username:
Password:
Don't ask for my password for 2 weeks.
Forgot your password?
Learn more about Gmail.
Check out our new features!
A few words about Gmail and privacy.
I'm not so sure.
The Google Blog says "Thursday, March 31, 2005".
when Google announces a new ( and real ) product.
I guess this is wicked cool if you have a cool cell phone or PDA. I can definitely see the benefit in signing up for this service by a cab company.
There are three types of people in the world.
1. People who don't get April Fools jokes
2. People who get April Fools jokes, and laugh at them but don't tell.
3. People who get April Fools jokes and shout out "OMG I BET THATS AN APRIL FOOLS JOKE". They're incapable of running with a joke, they insist on pointing out the joke, and are also the same people who tell you your shoes are untied, and when you look go "HA HA GOTYA". They also get beaten a lot at school.
Hmm.. so you're telling me my Debian box has ActiveX?
Works fine here
...where's my car?
1 Gigabyte of storage for email, free! No way!
April 1st!!!
/.
Yeah, I hate this day on
I'm coming back tomorrow when all the bogus crap is over.
"When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind." -- Bill Moyers
This is going to be the problem with every single story announced today , we are going to have about 40 APRIl FOOL posts.
I mean perhaps this is an aprils fool but i doubt google would let go of such a great idea , but the idea in itself is excelent so if it is an april fools joke then lets hope they do actualy do it .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I hope you aren't using IE on Debian. It's not considered stable :-)
PDT.
Happy birthday to gmail.
Quick! Try and use above 1GB of storage! If you can't, we can sue them for false advertisement!!! We might have to go to France to do it, though.
Free of Flash! Free of Flash!
sorry about that i seem to be repeating myself ,I just got my morning coffe
fidelcatsro--
I would expect a service called "Ride Finder" would get many visits from lonely Britons .....
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
This is a taxi-finding service, not a ride-share service.
If I wanted a cab, I think I could have just called the cab company dispatcher or flagged one down. I'm not sure how booting my computer, looking up the site then requesting a cab is any faster than the current way of hailing a cab.
If it is a joke, it's a pretty good one. It knows that in Dallas, TX, Super Shuttle is a local service, and is in fact the only one it supports, right now.
Also, they've increased my mailbox size. Read this.
Now we need a site to locate depressed persian tow truck drivers, and we're all set.
ULLWAYS.
...and it does not seem to be a joke, as the richtext thingie works.
Actually, March 31st. Check the date on the blog. Not a gag.
Gmail is increasing the storage space for every gmail user. Log in and check your quota. Mine's been going up for a couple hours now.
Also, they have added the ability to format your emails now, too.
A good addition to their service on their 1 year birthday
You are currently using 50 MB (5%) of your 1107 MB. The counter on the login page just keeps on going. And it actually works! Hello infinite porn!
That would have been neat. :) Get to know where and with whom your spouse is right now.
Don't forget, Gmail was also proposed on April 1st.
It was announced on March 31 in the google blog. Actually, this appears to be really real. And there is no aspect in this situation that is not compatible with reality. There is GPL, WLAN, Google Maps. Most cab companies do track their cars for various reasons so there is no problem sharing this information with google.
haha! Yes, put this on slashdot frontpage: "Everyone, on April's first, go above 1 GB!!!" Let's slashdot Google and Gmail!
I recommend Mozilla Firefox. You might have heard of it.
...worst moderation ever.
G is for growth Storage is an important part of email, but that doesn't mean you should have to worry about it. To celebrate our one-year birthday, we're giving everyone one more gigabyte. But why stop the party there? Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GBs by giving you more space as we are able. We know that email will only become more important in people's lives, and we want Gmail to keep up with our users and their needs. From Gmail, you can expect more. ------------------- Is this a joke or real?
I zoomed in on some taxis in the Baltimore, MD area, then waited a few minutes. After clicking the "Update Vehicle Locations" button, the cars magically moved!
This looks to be quite promising.
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
excellent? why on Earth would anyone want this?
even if you happen to live in one of the covered areas and want to use one of the participating companies, what help would this map be?
where I live you don't need any of this "use the internet for the sake of it" crap. you phone the cab company and it asks you to press 1 if you want to go as soon as possible, otherwise hold for an operator to make a booking manually. when the cab get's close to your house the phone rings twice. the whole thing needs about 10 seconds of effort on your part so where's the room for improvement?
http://news.com.com/Google+plans+to+double+Gmail+c apacity/2100-1032_3-5649571.html?part=rss&tag=5649 571&subj=news
I don't know what to believe today! *goes insane*
Agreed. But I don't like to pre-cache my taxis.
Well, you are limited to 10 Meg attachments. Dunno what kinda pr0n you watch, but I suspect most people will need more than a measly 10 meg attachment to satifsy their new Gpr0nMail.
April 1st!!!
Of course nothing legit *cough* GMail *cough* was ever announced on April Fools Day.
it's an elaborate one. The cars MOVE along the roads.
April fools aside, I'm not sure how this would be useful.
They seem to only show available cabs, but which cab you get is up to the dispatcher, making the information available to you potentially useless.
In other news.. GMail now offers 2gig storage at least + more space daily as you reach the limit as well as rich text editing. Plus the amusing page up now.
Ahahah, you must be in communist Russia, because the joke's on you!
He likes the HOT GAY COCK porn.
;) if you flag a taxi its cheaper ,well atleast where i live .
and its always instant , walking around town with my PDA all i need to do is find a hotspot(ussualy someone unsheilded network but thats not my fault)and track a taxi and stumble over to intercept it (my wife refuses to pick me up if ive been out drinking)
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I'm coming back tomorrow when all the bogus crap is over.
:)
Ahahah, you must be new here, you'll be waiting alot longer then a day.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Yup mine's up to 1114 MB. yay for google!
Informative? Just telling people what day it is counts as informative? Seems like a pretty low standard.
Oh, wait, I see, it's informative because he's pointing out that it's an April Fools joke. But really, is saying "IT'S A JOKE!!!" really all that informative?
Particularly considering that a small amount of reflection will reveal that it is not particularly funny; and a small amount of research will reveal it is an actual functioning service. Which is to say, it is not, in actual fact, a joke.
Funny, it's working just fine on Firefox in Gentoo...not sure how I could possibly even have Active X barring some weird WINE stuff.
Whether this is real or not, the Taxi Companies Google lists are going to be very happy sitting there as part of one of Google's new services.
It looks like they'll be having a Merry April Fools Day.
OK, I should have said "it requires scripting of ActiveX controls if you are using IE". Actually, my preferred browser is links. Works really well with pine :-)
where I live "private hire" taxis are far cheaper than flagged ones.
the idea of trying to chase a taxi with a PDA is ridiculous.
the amount of work Google would need to do to make this idea even remotely useful is staggering.
You have to see how they're doing it. Earlier when I checked, I was up to 1100 something. I just checked again, and it's 1114. It looks like they're doing the reverse of nibbling away, by giving everyone 1 extra MB at a time, and then when they reach the end of the userlist, starting over.
I'm not making this up, if you have a gmail account, go see it. Mod me down if you look and it's a joke.
Oh, up to 1116... I'm never going to get to sleep tonight, I have to keep checking.
I've contacted Google numerous times about the problem of no distance scale on Google Maps and yet still no distance scale; I mention this here since the Taxi finder feature is using Google Maps.
... without a distance scale on the map, the user is left wondering how far two points are - distance is important in determing whether one has enough gas, money, time, etc to get to the intended destinaton.
Map makers, the ones that actually collected the data for the maps Google, etc uses, know how important scale is for both creating an accurate map *and* as well as for the user of the map
In short, Google Maps is nice, but without a distance scale, it's of limited usefulness.
If anyone from Google is reading this, please chime in regarding this matter - thanks in advance.
Ron Bennett
Dont worry we can confirm which are april fools jokes tomorow , you cant really dupe and april fools joke
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I'm sure the other Anonymous Coward is as concerned about getting Moderations as I am. Were I less Anonymous, I would bet you good money you wind up modded down to 0 once some mods come through with enough clue to realize it is not informative to say "April 1st!!!!" in response to a story that is not actually an April Fools joke.
it uses javascript extensively
true , and it is not avaliable in europe , let alone my country , let along my area .., though my main problem is its 20 to 10 and i have just got my first coffe so this seemed like a far better idea before i had thought it through ;)
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
what's next? "The Google's Guide to the Galaxy"?
Screw the Taxi tracker. I'm looking forward to a Google Gulp, found here. My favorite bit:
From forest to freezer: A Google Gulp history
It is estimated that nearly half of Planet Earth's plant and animal species live in tropical rain forests, the vast majority of them undiscovered by humans and therefore not yet subjected to commercial exploitation. For Google, this cornucopia of undigitized data represented an irresistible acquisition target. So, for the past two years, as his 20% project, VP of operations Urs Hoelzle has spent one day a week collecting flora samples in several Bolivian sub-equatorial rain forests. For the most part, the compounds he returned with were nothing special - the usual grab-bag of future steroids, muscle relaxants, skin care appliqués and long-shot cancer drugs.
I bet Google Gulps are good with vodka. Shit, anything is good with vodka.
porp
Beyond that I'm not sure yet. If it gets integrated with traffic/weather reports or works on mobile devices it would be more useful. It's definitely a pretty cool hack no matter what.
Mobile service providers, r u reading this? :-)
I'm pretty sure this isn't an April Fools joke, considering the service seems to actually work and it was announced on March 31 in the blog.
This is just Google showing once again how they're really smart. Seems that they've been coming out with more new cool stuff at a faster rate than ever before.
It's true. I'm up to 1119 Mb and climbing.
I say: Total awesomeness!
am I the only one that thought about the freelance mode in NFS:U2 ?
In related news:
google also announced a new service, called "google date finder", to ease chances for _challenged_ people (read: geeks). In conjunction with google maps, google local, google ride finder and datefinder.com, the service is expected to be a huge breakthu success....
Powerful is he who overpowers his temptations.
As far as I'm aware, this is actually real.
It seems as though the size limit is going up around 1MB a minute or so...
Mines at 1122MB now
You are currently using 59 MB (5%) of your 1122 MB.
I believe the April Fool's joke is actually Google Gulp. It's still in beta, and to get it, you need to trade in a used Gulp Cap at a local convenience store. However, it comes in 4 great flavours!
I thought this was a joke (they like their jokes), but I guess not.... last year's joke was GMail. This year's is: http://www.google.com/googlegulp/
-Palal
Well looking breifly at the javscript in the page, its set to run all of april 1st (like the origional Gmail announcement!) and end with the text 'Over 2000 MB' on the home page, and presumeably all the users are going to get that as well, as thier box sizes are rising as we speak. The infinity plus one bit may be a gag, but thier marketing is genious! So in my opinon, they are, infact doubleing the size of thier service on the one year aniversary. Awsome.
FROM THE DESK OF: MR SAMULL BAYO.
... uh... umm... iraque. I promise to share my gmail invitations... um... caps with my friends. thank you for your attention.
DAIMOND BANK OF AFRICAN COTONOU, BENIN REPUBLIC.
ATTENTION:
I work for the USArmy and it would be nice if you could help us to get gulped and donate one gulp cap to me...us... for my... our... service here in
Does NOT require ActiveX. It does require one of the following:
IE 5.5+ (Windows)
Firefox 0.8+ (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Netscape 7.1+ (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Mozilla 1.4+ (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Probably because the code makes extensive use of the XMLHttpRequest feature (""Ajax" to some), though that doesn't explain why it doesn't work with Safari outright. Through a quick view source, I can detect they're using XSLT, and that's probably why Safari can't. But none of this matters, as Tiger's coming out very soon and we can expect Safari 2.0 to support a lot that it couldn't before.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Maybe there will be cops sitting in their cruisers with their laptops clicking feverishly on "Update Vehicle Locations" and punching numbers into a calculator...
Looks like Lycos wants to be part of the April Fools Action.
mnewberg.com
I think it's picking up speed, I'm already up to 1124.
Maybe they sped up once the story broke on
(Hi, Google! How's Oregon? I wish I'd known you were moving there, I wouldn't have moved back to Texas... would move back in a heartbeat
The actual Google April Fools Joke is Google Gulp, a DNA reading, brain-altering drink.
http://blog.ask.com/ Ask Jeeves is playing around.. Time for bed
mnewberg.com
The bastards. I filled up my account about a month ago and moved many of my messages to the trash (all 32000 I didn't want to read, many from the LKML). I also unsubscribed. Now they've increased the space and it is no longer in the red! I now have to fill it up again! :(
Help a Gmail user in need, send me large attachments please: adpowers@gmail.com
Hmm, mines at 1131 right now.
And it's about 3:00 am for me. 24/3=.125
I'd guess they're aiming for it to last all day? I can't remember what timezone googleplex is in, though...
http://www.google.com/googlegulp/
Differently useful (I don't want to say just as good, since they're different things) would be a way to click and drag to get a distance between two points. Or a way to click to set a point for directions (instead of typing in an address). I have a feeling they're working on these things.
My other first post is car post.
Anyone notice that their gmail storage space is increasing? currently it says "You are currently using 125 MB (11%) of your 1130 MB".
Is this to celebrate the 1 year aniversary of GMAIL? Perhaps they are increasing storage to 2GIG?
I have heard that Gmail is also set to come out of beta testing today as well...
along with Google Gulp http://www.google.com.au/googlegulp/ there is some very interesting stuff happening in the google camp today.
They say on their what's new page that they're upping the limit to 2GB. They're probably doing it proportionally over April 1st, so by the end of the day you'll have 2GB and it'll stop (for now).
Google Maps used to work in Firefox, but for some reason it and Google Ride Finder no longer do (at least for me). Perhaps it has something to do with the page's 42 errors, implying it is not valid XHTML.
happy april fools everyone...
I checked it out and found it totally useless. The cab company in Milwaukee is legit. The cars hop around like gps errors, the dispatcher won't necessarily send the closest since it might be taken already. Most people I know use only 1 cab company.
Bus tracking would be a much better idea. I don't think they have tracking equipment, though I could be wrong.
GoogleChick - finds hot chicks in your local neighborhood
GooglePizza - finds hot pizza in your local neighborhood
GoogleCrack - finds hot crack in your local neighborhood
Then, the transformation from "Google, Friend of the World" to "Google, Matrix Overlord Ruler of the Human Slaves" will be complete...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
That's gottas be the worst April fools ever. L4M3
If you have "Script ActiveX controls marked safe for scripting" set to "Disabled" the site won't load and you'll be told to use one of the browsers you've listed above. Even if you are using IE 6.
If you have the scripting parameter set to "Prompt", you'll get the standard pop-up:
"A script is accessing some software (an ActiveX control) on this page which has been marked safe for scripting. Do you want to allow this?"
If you OK it, you'll see the map.
Now don't I feel foolish for moving from Cleveland to LA. I should've known Cleveland was the place to be.
Works fine for me in Camino on Mac OS X. No ActiveX here.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I'd like a search engine for car pooling. The only reason 90% of the cars on the road have no passengers is the inability to organize a more efficient scheme; this would require only centralized planning. A computer service would be ideal for the task, so long as it had sufficient start-up popularity. Google does. Get on it, Google; save us some gas money.
Now I can "call a cab" for my girl and make sure she doesn't bang my bestfriend on the way home.
Yeah, I got distracted and didn't save the post for a while.
I'm ~1142 @2:26AM Central.
Oh, and now
But I never thought to get a patent.
Here is a link to a screenshot: http://www.joefarish.co.uk/images/gmail.jpg
. . . you probably don't want to. I would hope that you would have married a person that you can trust to be completely faithful to you, and, perhaps more importantly, that trusts you to be completely faithful.
/., where everybody either is married, has two kids and a job or lives in their parents' basement. Now that I think about it, those aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. . .
Then again, this is
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
you have to remember they are a (primarily?) US company...
if you want something like that for your country, maybe a company in your country should do it...
When they say infinity + 1, I wonder i they mean Yahoo space + 1. Yahoo went to 2 gigs, and now Google is matching, maybe they'll continually beat their next competitor. That would make the e-mail race quite interesting.
Apparently they will pick you up if you are swimming in the river.
taxi_.gif
Come back around June 2nd
From http://www.google.com/googlegulp/faq.html
11. When will you take Google Gulp out of beta?
Man, if you pressure us, you just drive us away. We'll commit when we're ready, okay? Besides, what's so great about taking things out of beta? It ruins all the romance, the challenge, the possibilities, the right to explore. Carpe diem, ya know? Maybe we're jaded, but we've seen all these other companies leap headlong into 1.0, thinking their product is exactly what they've been dreaming of all their lives, that everything is perfect and hunky-dory - and the next thing you know some vanilla copycat release from Redmond is kicking their butt, the Board is holding emergency meetings and the CEO is on CNBC blathering sweatily about "a new direction" and "getting back to basics." No thanks, man. We like our freedom.
When will Google Pimp go out of alpha and allow us to use maps to find rides through froogle for prostitutes?
Yeah, I'd say it's a shot at Yahoo!, er, I mean "Premium Brand". Looks like they're giving 2050MB storage.
Finding a taxi and being able to translate what the hell my driver is saying TOO?! Genius.
Quench your thirst for knowledge.
At Google our mission is to organize the world's information and make it useful and accessible to our users. But any piece of information's usefulness derives, to a depressing degree, from the cognitive ability of the user who's using it. That's why we're pleased to announce Google Gulp (BETA)(TM) with Auto-Drink(TM) (LIMITED RELEASE), a line of "smart drinks" designed to maximize your surfing efficiency by making you more intelligent, and less thirsty.
more here
I love a company with a decent sense of humor!
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
now i'll have no problems tracking those taxis and where the hookers in the red light district are going...
Don't really need that here but bloody hell I wish someone would get off their ass and hook up London bus locations to the net. They're already fitted with some sort of tracking system so the bus stop can tell you when the next one is coming so its not like it would cost anything but people would really appreciate being able to look it up on the net or on their phone so they didn't have to leave the house before they had to.
Personally I think it would push bus usage right up which is something they mayor keeps going on about, that is in between increasing the prices to the equivalent of a gallon of US gas per fucking bus ticket! and letting the bloody privatised bus company bosses get away with making personal millions. The dick head also has some other bright ideas - invest millions in putting ticket machines on EVERY bus stop in central London because buying a ticket on the bus 'slows everyone down' - of course the roadside ticket machines break down daily and that holds the bus up longer when the driver argues with someone who can't get a ticket and then gets out and tries to fix it.
Just to think the money from those now disused ticket machines (i could have told them it wouldn't work from the start) could have been spent on this, but oooh no, what do they do? they go and by some stupid Mercedes bendy buses which promptly piss off everyone on the road and catch fire! ok that's the end of my London rant, if you ever come here its probably easier just to get a black taxi, they're everywhere, they've memorised every road, they can use the bus lanes and will get you there fast and in comfort, but they're bloody expensive.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
..on Gmail: "G is for growth Storage is an important part of email, but that doesn't mean you should have to worry about it. To celebrate our one-year birthday, we're giving everyone one more gigabyte. But why stop the party there? Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GBs by giving you more space as we are able. We know that email will only become more important in people's lives, and we want Gmail to keep up with our users and their needs. From Gmail, you can expect more." They also (finally) added rich text formatting to emails. All of this within like two days, sheesh.
April Fools Day 2k5 will not actually begin for nearly another 2495 years, give or take the odd leap second. [2K5 is engineering shorthand notation for 2.5k ..... meaning 2500. The unit specifier {or multiplier} goes between the whole and the fraction where you would normally write a dot {or a comma if you're continental}. When you measure a 4K7 resistor on an AVO it reads 4.7 k ohms. If somebody is described as 1m8 tall they are 1 metre and 80 cm, not 1 metre and 8 cm. When you see 5.6 referring to money on a calculator it means 5 pounds and 60 pence, not 5 pounds and 6 pence.]
Google reminds me in some ways of Apple; they both take pot shots at the current leaders (usually in good fun).
I have to wonder if Google tapped into already public data, or if they contracted with them for this data. This reminds me a lot of the Amatuer Radio technolgy APRS.
Take a look at: My School's station (The actual club call is W5YJ, but we havn't updated the software yet.)
Search for stations near the NOKC digipeater... here
You can even see local (Stillwater Oklahoma) weather data via APRS by clicking here
-Daniel
KD5UZZ
www.w5yj.org
Another story that sounds great for an instant until you relise it's US only.
The internet...aggh!
A blog I run for the wealth
Ah ha, I did it, I can't receive any more large attachments at this point:
You are currently using 1159 MB (99%) of your 1171 MB.
It seems they do have a hard limit this time, previously you could go up to 1023 or so with out problem, but as they are slowly increasing it, the number is actually a hard line. I'll have to try harder in the morning.
So, they do have all addresses of the local hookers? Great idea!
google's an american compnay, you fucking prat
all rightey, bring em on....
they should have turned it around. google for cab drivers that will show them where potential customers are :).
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
.... real time streaming and more to come soon....
Google put up the press release for Gmail on March 31.
Nono, April 2nd is when we get the dupes of the April 1st stories.
... ah, you're way ahead of me.
And April 3rd is when we get
Where I live, having GBS on the busses would be redundant and fairly useless.
If I'm at the bus stop, I can look at the sign and printed there it tells me that the bus will arrive at 9:53 am. I check my watch and at precisely 9:53, the bus pulls up. Every time.
When friends are at my house in the evening, they may hop onto the web to see what time the subway is leaving. Not just the last train, but any one before that.
When I lived in the states, in Washington DC, there was no attempt at keeping a schedule at all. I was on the subway one time, in the first car, when the driver stopped for a few minutes in mid tunnel, to chat with another driver who had also stopped. Since I was near the front, I could hear it and it wasn't safety-related or anything justifiable, it was all "Hey, girlfriend, how's your Momma doin'?"
Here in Tokyo, they move about twenty-seven million people around on mass transit every day. (Compare that with NYC's daily 3.1 million.)
I guess to do that you have to be pretty precise about your timetables.
Strangely though, last night there was a one hour delay on my usual train. Somebody had jumped in front of it. That's about the only reason things get slowed down.
-- My Weblog.
I seriously hope this one is an April Fools joke too: HTML formatting in gmail. I can't believe they did it. the scourge of email has made its way into the best webmail there is.
yes >
A ride finder? Thats nothing! I love their new "Google Gulp" (beta) program! Have a look at it yourselves!
http://google.com/gulp/
(Anyone want a free gulp invite?)
Why don't they create an awesome ride board. You just plug in where you are and where you're going and it will find people who need or are offering a ride (to save on gas costs!).
or else!
"If I'm at the bus stop, I can look at the sign and printed there it tells me that the bus will arrive at 9:53 am. I check my watch and at precisely 9:53, the bus pulls up. Every time."
You know, you nearly had me convinced, then I noticed the date...
Where I live, you wait forever and then two turn up at the same time. Or not. Just don't get me started on trains. And as for...
I guess gmail team is fooling us.
The best result comes from everyone in the group doing what's best for himself and for the group
But the Google "Gulp" drink looks a bit dodgy....
Another story that sounds great for an instant until you relise it's US only.
And April 1st.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
You are currently using 55 MB (5%) of your 1215 MB.
I really hope this is not a hoax. I guess we'll never run out. Pffft take that Redmond!!! MWHAAHAHAHAHAA!!!!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Sung to the Lee Greenwood song:
:-)
I'm proud to be an American
Where atleast I know I free
We get all the new technology
Before everyone except the Japanese
Sorry everyone else, I just live here, it's not my fault.
If it can go wrong it wnetscape: Segmentation Fault, Core dumped
where the police are
What a radical, yet simple idea.
In fact, from my own experience hitching in Europe as a teen the idea of a database of rides for hitchikers is not new at all. I can't remember how it is acutally spelled or even pronounced, but Germany has, or at least had, a system called something like Mitzfrauzentrale where you simply walked into an office and made a reservation to share a ride with someone.
Now subtract the office part and substitute it with the Net and you've got a hell of an idea.
Hitching used to be so common in the seventies and it was never really that dangerous. It's just that Americans have become so paranoid since the eighties. Even in the eighties I used to hitch, but it's true many of the people I could get rides from were sketchy. It would be so cool to see it become popular again with a new degree of security built in. Just being able to ID the driver and the passenger to a certain degree would change the whole equation enormously. After all, why is a taxi safe? Basically the only difference is that you can ID the driver.
nokia,ericsson,philips,siemens,sony,nintendo,heine ken,inbev,... arent, does that mean you wont be disappointed when they dont release their products in the US?
Google to offer a new "ride finder" service...
"Great, a quick way to find hot chicks in my neighbourhood" thinks I.
And then I find it's for taxis.
Bugger. Guess I'll just have to keep cruising the bars. At least that way I have an excuse for being drunk ("No honestly, I was only out looking for girls")
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Not quite sure why you posted that when there aren't any April Fools stories on slashdot yet...
An even better idea would be keep the joke going, but peg everybody's available space just below the exponentially increasing $/GB curve. The only downside is that you make less money that way (because it's too fair), and you don't get to beat your chest in press releases when you graciously bump up the available space in big delayed steps.
Power to the Peaceful
Wrong.
The New Tool for the Traffic Cop is obviously going to be Google Donut Finder. I mean come on, get with the program, this is the real world.
> put this on slashdot frontpage: "Everyone, on April's first, go above 1 GB!!!" > Let's slashdot Google and Gmail!
You'll need to translate it into English if you want it anywhere near Slashdot...wait, what am I saying!
They should have each service covering the whole world on the day of release?
...
Maybe you could suggest a service provider for Google to work with in your area? Here's the ones they partner with now
"Ride Finder works closely with a variety of technology providers, including Mobile Knowledge, Tranware, and Vettro."
That's what a ride finder is, a message board that connects individuals needing or offering rides.
Since Google usually has a commercial angle, maybe they could combine individual offers/needs with commercial offers. Both local and inter-city (or inter-country). I'm thinking that an old lady without a car that needs groceries could connect with someone else that goes to the store once a week but is a block away and otherwise they would never meet. Of course, college students trying to get to/from home (or spring break). This is what the Internet's supposed to do!
I use about 80MB of my space, so I'm happy
Google Gulp
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
Yep. At the rate I build up email, it's going to be practical infinity: after 6 months, "You are currently using 28 MB (2%) of your 1259 MB." If they raise it by 1 GB a year, I will never run out of space.
Sorry to correct you, but I've used both Google Maps and Google Local to find businesses in Montreal, Canada. It was a terribly useful feature and I am quite pleased with it. I don't know where you are from, but I can confirm that up here, it works just fine :)
iopha
they will soon announce the google google feature search to help sort through several thousand beta gizmos.
You can't tell if the cab is currently occupied. So even assuming they update locations enough that you could say "oh look, one's coming!" and run outdoors, most likely it'd be taken.
I live in Chicago. Around here, either you live a in neighborhood where you catch a cab by standing on the corner for five minutes or less, or you don't, and you have to call for one.
This cool little hack doesn't help in either of those cases.
Storage is an important part of email, but that doesn't mean you should have to worry about it. To celebrate our one-year birthday, we're giving everyone one more gigabyte. But why stop the party there? Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GBs by giving you more space as we are able. We know that email will only become more important in people's lives, and we want Gmail to keep up with our users and their needs. From Gmail, you can expect more.
Fonts, bullets and highlighting, oh my! Gmail now offers rich text formatting. And over 60 colors of the rainbow. Discover a land of more than just black and white. Learn more
Now here's the bottom of my screen:
You are currently using 14 MB (1%) of your 1273 MB.
Yay! The new math! 1273MB == 2GB!
My Systems
It always was a hard limit. 1 gig = 1024 meg.
Granted it's a more specialized service than Google's, but it's also pretty cool.
4. People who don't like April Fools jokes, because they are most often contrived, juvenile, and downright mean to your fellow person.
Not only that, but log in! (or view What's New)
They actually mean it. You have exactly that many megabytes of storage (if your clock's set right).
Yay Google!
That was covered under 3.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
April fools day none of the news on /. is real today
Yay! Please put this on MBTA busses and trolleys.
This would be amazing. Then I could leave my house on time, regardless of how not-in-time the green line is running.
The tricky bit: I'd want to see the general direction of the vehicle too. Who wants to run to the bus or trolley only to implicitly find that it must have been going the other way?
Sorry pal. Google's April Fool's joke would be what they call their Google Gulp.
Now you can drink google!
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
Goldman Sachs was right; a super-spike in oil prices to over US$100 bbl was not ony was possible but it has had far-reaching consequences for the economy and our culture.
After they signed an agreement with OnStar and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Google can now track private vehicles willing to be part of a car pool in this era of $5 gal gasoline. Registered users can offer or receive rides and collect or provide instantaneous electronic payments for their cost of the ride, minus a few percent for the new consortium.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
7. How can I get my hands on a Google Gulp?
This "limited release" beta product is available to anyone who turns in a used Google Gulp bottle cap at any local retailer. If you don't have any Gulp caps, ask a friend to give you one.
8. What if none of my friends have a Gulp cap to give me? Can't you just give Google Gulp to anyone who wants it?
Well, we're thinking about it, but, um, you have to understand that there are many considerations which go into deciding how to distribute --
9. I mean, isn't this whole invite-only thing kind of bogus?
Dude, it's like you've never even heard of viral marketing.
HAhahah I love the nods towards gmail... great
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
What IF Google IS going to give GMAIL users 2GB of storage? Would be a neat way to one-up Yahoo! who recently announced that they will be offering 1GB of email storage. I have to admit, the only reason I am a GMAIL user is because of the storage capacity. Why would I want to stay with beta GMAIL when I could have a much richer web-based email at Yahoo! with the same capacity?
-516
I drive half an hour to work every day. Not a bad commute, but man I wish I could take public transit (the process of switching from bus to bus and then from bus to light rail means that it would take 2.5 hours to get to work). Google Rides sounds like a spiffy idea (I used it to get to the coffee shop this morning) but would it have killed them to include public transit in their database as well?
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
I like the 'draggable' maps on ride finder. You can click and drag to move the map around. Yahoo and mapquest has to refresh the whole page to move the map around, which seems to take forever. I know its only a few seconds to wait, but if you just wanted to move one block to the east, then two more blocks, it gets tiring. Just the map itself is a nice innovation by Google.
In the hands of someone like Tom Cruise, this could be used for evil!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Nah. I looked at it. It looks legit. Considering that last year I thought the gMail announcement was an April Fool's joke....bastards are out to get me:)
Given Google's proposal to what is now the Wikimaedia Foundation to host some of its content, "Google's Guide to the Galaxy" seems about right.
Surprisingly enough, not all jokes are unfounded. From the "New Features!" link:
G is for growth
Storage is an important part of email, but that doesn't mean you should have to worry about it. To celebrate our one-year birthday, we're giving everyone one more gigabyte. But why stop the party there? Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GBs by giving you more space as we are able. We know that email will only become more important in people's lives, and we want Gmail to keep up with our users and their needs. From Gmail, you can expect more.
Of course, Gmail was launched last year on April 1st, so that's kind of irrelevant anyway. But yeah, that people can't figure out the difference between this and "Google Gulp" in a couple of seconds is disappointing.
It still won't stop and pick up black people.
Except that the ride finder isn't really an April Fool's day joke, as it was posted to Google Labs (http://labs.google.com/) on Mar. 30th.
Maybe it is a Mar. 30th joke?
-dr. layyze f. tooth PhD
get over it. Google started in the US and offers services to the US. That is where they feel their market is. Either start your own company, move or bitch about it. Bitching won't solve your problem though.
This came up in the other google story too, but I just don't get it. Decoding html into plain text can be done easily in under a 1000 lines. Just feed your all html mail through one of these or use a client that does it (I use Opera Mail).
Isn't this why we are always screaming for standards based formats?
-ashot
But they showed 1000 on their website and used 1000 Megs when calculating the percentage used (which mean you could get over 100% previously).
Google is pleased to announce the beta version of a new data service. The most revolutionary feature of the new service is that it eliminates the need to fill out time consuming questionaires.
What you search for can tell us a lot about you. google uses cookies to keep track of users of its search engine. Patterns of searches reveal a lot about the demographics and sexual preferences of google users. With our new googlelocal service, we are able to pinpoint users locations, allowing us to match you up with people in your area.
googlematch automatically chooses potential mates of the appropriate sex and orientation. The most difficult part was differentiated between straight women and gay men and straight men and lesbians. By analysing google searches versus time, googlematch can identify women by the 28 day cyclical nature of their queries. Whether a user prefers men or women is determined by using a bayesian filter, similar to that used to differentiate spam from legitimate email, on search queries.
googlematch can also match you up with someone that shares your political affiliation. Republicans are more likely than democrats to search for financial services, offshore asset protection accounts, stock ticker symbols, brooks brothers suits, religious goods, guns, jesus, scripture, tax loopholes, choir boys, kiddie porn, and teen rape. Democrats are more likely to search for recycling, environmentally benign products, bicycles, hiking boots, flax, hemp, organic products, sustanable agriculture, solar energy, banned books, condoms, cunnilingus, g-spot, erotic art, bondage safety, polyamory, nudist resorts, multiple orgasms, and erotic massage. Even when searching for similar topics, how you word your search can reveal political bias: "gay rights" vs. "homosexual agenda" or "anal sex lubricant" vs. "britney spears ass rape". google also correlates the timing of searches with things mentioned on national TV networks using closed captioning decoders to tell whether users are watching, for example, the Christian Broadcasting Network or PBS.
Because so many people search for porn, google is able to learn a lot about their sexual tastes. For googlematch users who don't search for porn, google makes educated guesses based on the preferences of other users with otherwise similar search habits.
Because googlematch is based on analysing your past searching habits, it differs from most other services offered by the company in that there is no need to enter a search query. We already know what you want. When you visit the site, you are simply asked to choose a pseudonym and then immediately presented the opportunity to chat anonymously with prospective matches who are currently online.
it don't support any of MY browsers... looks like they are really bashing us Mac users....
A rideshare system would seem to be in high demand... you would think Google would make an attempt to support most older browsers....
Looks like Bill Gates and Google are in bed with each other, out to eradicate us Mac users.
But isn't it actually rtf, not html?
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.
Is that you dean? You poking around in my history again? You know you should stay out of sites not linked from joecartoon.