This afternoon, good friend Dave wrote that when he tried to google “Israel Medical Association Journal”, he received the following result:

When I clicked on “This Site May Harm Your Computer”, I got the following Google Page:

I have a fairly impenetrable firewall so I took a risk and clicked on the “Israel Medical Association Journal” link a second time, and got the following page:

I’m curious to know what happened and I’ll be writing to some contacts there to find out.

If anyone has any information on what malware Google is identifying on Israel Medical Association Journal’s site, please send me an email.

Speaking of email, when I checked my inbox this evening I received an email from the IRS. Not the real IRS, mind you, but the IRS as it appears in the mind of an illiterate criminal spammer pos trying to lure me to click on an image, a copy of that image appears below:

“You have get a Tax Refund on your Visa or MasterCard”.

Shyeah, riiiiiiiight.  Get this, criminal:  may every buck you get ripping off Americans be spent on medical bills, you pos.

Google may advance its global domination out to the high seas if it launches its own “computer navy”. According to the Times Online:

The company is considering deploying supercomputers necessary to operate its internet search engines on barges anchored up to seven miles offshore.

The “water-based data centres” would use wave energy to power and cool their computers, reducing Google’s costs. Their offshore status would also mean the company would no longer have to pay property taxes on its data centres, which are sited across the world, including in Britain.

This way, Google will be able to monitor their ‘data barges’ at sea, away from national laws and taxes.  Here’s how it will be accomplished:

Don’t be too surprised about Google’s marine domination. Google has already launched a satellite in conjunction with the US military. And like Gizmodo, I don’t feel lucky.  However, Google won’t be able to access the highest resolution images because of US government regulations.

But every programmer knows, and I say so because I’m one myself, that every application has a back door built into it by the programmer.

Via Gizmodo:

According to the company, the GeoEye-1 satellite is the highest resolution commercial satellite orbiting the planet right now. It reached orbit yesterday, but in reality, it’s not an ordinary commercial satellite: it’s fully controlled by the Department of Defense’s U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. And two guys named Larry and Sergei.

Part of the US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency NextView program, the SUV-sized GeoEye-1 launched yesterday in a Delta II 7326 rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California—without exploding. Hours later, GeoEye’s ground station in Norway confirmed that the rocket had delivered its payload right on target. The satellite was alive, fully armed and operational on its 423-mile orbit above the Earth.

Built by General Dynamics, the GeoEye-1 is equipped with a next-generation camera made by ITT. This camera can easily distinguish objects 16 inches long, with 11-bits per pixel color. In other words: this thing can see the color of your shorts. It will be up there, looking at your pants every single day, the time it takes for it to complete one orbit. And it will keep doing that for more than ten years, its expected life.

Of course, there’s nothing new here until you notice the huge Google logo on the rocket, signaling the fact that Sergei and Larry own the exclusive rights to the GeoEye-1 images. Yes, no other company will be able to access this information, only Google. And they will be there, available for the public in Google Maps and Google Earth.

In an article from the Independent, we read that:

Last week a comic book detailing why Chrome would be faster and better than its competitors was “accidentally” leaked, creating a storm of interest in the media. It was the most direct attack on Microsoft to date, coming at a time when its eighth version of Internet Explorer had been previewed (with little media attention) just days before.

In the company’s early days, its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said Google would not need its own browser. He added that there was no plan to take on Microsoft with online versions of applications because they did not provide as good an experience as desktop software. But all that changed two years ago when Google released a succession of online applications to rival Microsoft’s – culminating in last week’s launch of Chrome.

Nobody really knows what the depth of the competitve nature is of Google, but you can’t help but notice that Chrome’s logo

uses almost the same exact colors as Microsoft’s logo.

Even Zdnet wonders about Google Chrome’s constrictor-like nature.

Here’s an article on emerging privacy and malicious code flaws and vulnerabilities that could allow hackers to crash the Chrome browser and a new TV commercial starring both Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates.

When I first read that Google was creating a new browser, I figured it was an additional way for them to spy on what I search on.

Let’s face it. Google Maps is creepy especially at street level. Although I use Google Maps to confirm MapQuest directions, I mean, who is taking those photographs at ground level? I’ve seen photos of my own block and no, those are not photos from overhead satellites. Those are photos from someone’s camera taken from the back of a pickup truck.

Then I figured, what the heck, let me try Crome. I shouldn’t deprive myself of experiencing, at least once, this new tool.

The questions to ask are is Chome evolving with the net? There’s no doubt that browsers need to get better. For example, there are several million pages that render differently in Internet Explorer than they do in Firefox. For example, Smooth Stone looks differently on IE than it does on FireFox. I use both browsers and discovered a long time ago that code that I write for IE is executed differently than how FireFox renders the same code. The differences are subtle or they can be grotesque. It depends on how the page is coded. Regardless, there are differences.

People watch videos these days, they upload videos, they blog, they play Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, they use social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook. The uses for the internet are as diverse as the people who use the web.

The most important thing that I wanted to see changed was security. I also was worried that Chrome wouldn’t be stable and that it would crash. That’s all I needed was to promote a browser that would kill smoothstoneblog.com once it was loaded simultaneously during the first month Smooth Stone’s new life on its new domain, all along while I was spending every free minute I had to increase readership at its new location. Not very productive.

So this is what I did. I downloaded Chrome, loaded several pages, and then after loading several pages, like SmoothStoneBlog.com, FoxNews.com, Dell.com, I deleted it from my hard drive.

Here’s what I discovered:

1. The Download took less than two minutes.
2. The installation took less than one minute.
3. Bookmarked links from Internet Explorer were quickly loaded into Chrome
4. The Chrome window uses a different icon/symbol to indicate Maximize. It confused me.
5. Chrome is lightweight. The toolbar is minimal and doesn’t overwhelm you with lots of choices with fancy IT terminology.
6. The History displays itself like your email would if you had Gmail.com
7. The Chrome Options are minimalistic that I didn’t even have a need to click any to see what they would do.
8. Web Pages load rather quickly
9. There’s a JavaScript debugger which is excellent for Developers like me. ( I could have used it two days ago when my database crashed)
10. When you Right-Click, you can now Inspect Element. This shows your page similar to how it would as an XML file.

That’s it. Nothing mind-shattering. I deleted the tool and will wait to install it again when Chrome is out of Beta.

Via Anti-Israel Markings on Google Earth Now Filtered:

The default map of Israel on Google Earth no longer displays anti-Israel markings. Google was criticized in recent months for a series of orange markings overlaying the satellite map of Israel that were labeled “Nakba – The Palestinian Catastrophe.” Clicking on them led to the anti-Israel website Palestine Remembered.

See also Google Earth: A New Platform for Anti-Israel Propaganda and Replacement Geography