Official Google Checkout Blog

Official Google Checkout Blog

Google Checkout - Google Code

Google Checkout allows buyers in over 140 countries to purchase goods and services using a credit or debit card through our fast, secure checkout process....

For more, see Google Checkout - Google Code

Google Wave Explained In Two Minutes (CLIP) (GOOG)

Google Wave Explained In Two Minutes (CLIP) (GOOG)

Digits at WSJ Blogs writes that Rupert Murdoch at News Corp. Considers a Google Ban

Stories such as this one at Digits of WSJ Blogs

News Corp. Considers a Google Ban - Digits - WSJ

suggest that some leading entrepeneurs in the news business perhaps do not accurately understand the revolution that is going on in the new technologies of human communication.

NEWS is going to be "delivered" differently in the future than it has been and search engines will not be circumventable. News entrepeneurs should therefore probably start spending more time figuring out how they can capitalize on these new technologies rather than fighting them - to no avail, we think.

You Need To Take Control of Google Dashboard To Prevent Data Theft - Security - IT Channel News by CRN

You Need To Take Control of Google Dashboard To Prevent Data Theft - Security - IT Channel News by CRN

Google Wave and the practice of IP law | The Invent Blog®

Google Wave and the practice of IP law | The Invent Blog®

Google Wave to be opened for federation today! Yes, for you to host.

Google Wave to be opened for federation today! Yes, for you to host.

Google Maps Navigation beta unleashed

From engadget....

Google adds free turn-by-turn navigation, car dock UI to Android 2.0 (video)

Google Social Search aims to make social networks more useful

Google Social Search aims to make social networks more useful is Sharon Gaudin's title at Computerworld.com in her article on Google's October 27, 2009 launch of the experimental Google Social Search service, as created by Google Labs. So I went to Google Labs to sign up for this experimental service, which was permitted.

Lo and behold then, however, how surprised I was that when I conducted my first search on Google after sign-up for Google Social Search that I got the message: "The experiment you're trying to access is no longer available. Go to experiments overview." And when I do that, I see I am still signed up for the experiment.

What gives at Google? Bumbling?

Google Books and Copyright Law : New Feature Creates Word Clouds for Published Materials : The Example of Stars Stones and Scholars by Andis Kaulins

Words. Words. Words.

Google Books has a special page for Legal Analysis relating to Google Books and copyright law.

Our photo shows the sculpture "The Word" at Groote Markt, the marketplace in Sint-Niklaas, capital of Waasland, Flanders, Belgium,the largest such marketplace in the country:


Google Books is a wonderful information resource which can assist greatly in determining whether to buy a book or not.

Google Books has expanded in the course of time to include many new features. Among these new features are word clouds - in a book's "Overview" section - showing a selection of frequent important terms found in a book. Here is the Google Books word cloud for Stars Stones and Scholars, the Decipherment of the Megaliths by Andis Kaulins.

"Common terms and phrases

Ain Ghazal Ancient Britain Andis Kaulins Andromeda Aquarius Aquila Arbor Low astronomical Auriga Autumn Equinox Barclodiad Y Gawres Bouar Canis Major Carnac Cassiopeia Catal Huyuk Cave Paintings Ceide Fields Celestial Pole Centaurus Cepheus Cetus Clava Cairns Cohen Gadol Coma Berenices constellations Corona Australis Corona Borealis County Sligo Creswell Crags Cygnus Decipherment Delphinus Deneb Dolmen Draco Dschubba Ecliptic Pole Egypt Eridanus Estonia Externsteine False Cross Fowlis Wester Gardom's Edge Gavrinis Gemini Ggantija Gozo Herefordshire Beacon Hierakonpolis Hyades Hydra Hydrus Kents Cavern Lanyon Quoit Large Magellanic Cloud Lascaux Latvian Leo Minor Magdalenians Malta megaliths Menhir Miami Circle Milky Mnajdra Mulfra Neolithic Newgrange Ophiuchus Ordnance Survey Perseus planisphere Pleiades Pole Star precession Richard Hinckley Allen Rock Drawing Rollright Stones Sagittarius Sarsens Saulheim Scorpio Scotland Serpens Caput Serpens Cauda Silbury Hill Solstice Stonehenge Tarxien Taurus Trethevy Quoit tumuli Ursa Major Ursa Minor Virgo Wayland's Smithy Yarmukian Zhangye"

We are very happy to be part of Google Books and view "word clouds" of our published works to be "fair use". But is the legal issue here so simple?

Take a look at these word cloudsvia Federal News Service transcriptsregarding the Democratic Party and Republican Party conventions leading to the US Presidential Election of Barack Obama.

It would certainly seem to be the case that a particular design of a word cloud is copyrightable, and since every word cloud has its own design, then word clouds would appear to be subject to copyright protection. But who owns the words in a cloud?

Word clouds are essentially one example ofdata visualization, for which there are numerous programs online.

Is a "word cloud" a derivative use (in which case it belongs to the original copyright holder) or is it a transformative use (in which case it belongs to the transformer). We favor the latter interpretation, but the issue has never been litigated.

As software applications show, "word clouds" appear to have a very "proprietary" character.

Online anyone can generate word clouds for free at WORDLE.net, which, however, claims the copyright to the word cloud image created, licensing it under a Creative Commons license with attribution. Here is a Wordle word cloud of the most recent postings at LawPundit:


There is also a free networking site for writers at The Word Cloud.

Crossposted to LawPundit.

Google Voice Phone Management System Arrives : Can also be Combined with Google's GOOG 411 to Find and Connect with Local Businesses by Phone for Free

Some readers are no doubt familiar with Google's free Goog 411 "find and connect to a business by phone service" - dial from any phone 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411):



So how about the new Google Voice?



Jeff Bertolucci at PC World in his June 26, 2009 article Hands On With Google Voice -This Is Really Cool reviews "Google's long-awaited Google Voice phone management service that finally became available this week to a lucky few" writing:

"Google Voice provides a single phone number, such as 415-555-1212, for all your cell, home, and work numbers, and lets you manage your voice services online. Unlike a landline service, a Google Voice number isn't tied to a geographical location. Unlike a cellular service, it's not linked to a specific handset. And unlike a VoIP line, it's not matched with an IP address. Rather, it's tied to you. So if you move, change jobs, or switch wireless carriers, your Google Voice number stays with you. One drawback: you can't port your current number to Google Voice, although that option may be added in the near future, the company says.

This isn't a Skype-type service either. You don't use your computer to make phone calls, and there's no additional software or hardware to install or buy. (You can, however, use the Click2Call feature from the Google Voice website to place calls.) Is it perfect? No, it's got a few quirks, and the myriad of configuration options can be confusing at times. But Google's onto something big here. A service that helps manage the multiple phone lines in our lives should have universal appeal." [emphasis added]

Read the rest of Bertolucci's review of Google Voice.

Unfortunately, Google Voice is open to use at the moment by invitation only.

Click here to sign up at Google for a Google Voice invite.

Blogger Babble at Google - The Glitches Continue

This is a copy of an e-mail I just sent to Blogger developers:

"Dear Blogger Developers,

For some reason, Blogger development lags far behind the general pace and quality of Google development. Why is that?

I complain about this from time to time on my Blogger blogs but it seems to fall on deaf ears.

The newest glitch is part of the Blogger advertising toolbar script code which Blogger enters onto blogspot.com pages. This script has the nefarious quality of now appearing on Google as the "description" of the site (since it appears before any other TEXT on the site)".

I have a new blog, megaliths.blogspot, for which the following "description" appears now on Google (March 22, 2006):
"Notify Blogger about objectionable content. What does this mean? Blogger · Send via SMS · Get your own blog · Flag Blog · Next blog · BlogThis! ..."

This is not limited to my site. You can also see this if you enter the search phrase - "link size" Blogger - into Google and look at the first result, which is a page from the site linux.help.blogspot.com. I looked at that page http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2006/02/concise-explanation-of-i-nodes.html and it is quite a normal page, so why is Google giving us Blogger Babble????

As seems so often to be the case at Blogger, programming changes are instituted before such changes are suitably tested for their effect on the real world.

Sincerely,

Andis Kaulins"

P.S. Note also how the long link in the text of this page - a Blogger template - runs across the right border, at least it does on my Firefox browser. I have left it that way intentionally to show another Blogger error which needs correction.

Find the Google U.S. Home Page in English

We have a problem with Google in Germany since Google apparently redirects the Google.com URL to the Google home page of the country of the location of the computer or server. Worse, even when one is diverted here in Germany to Google.de and selects the option "English" in the language preferences, it remains the Google Germany home page, even though it is in English. This is apparently done to direct local advertising to local users.

The solution here is the following link
http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en
which takes one to the original Google.com U.S. site in English.

However, this kind of a fudge should not be necessary. The user is quite aware that he can reach Google Germany by using the google.de URL address so that there is no reason to redirect such a user to google.de if google.com is the address which the user has typed in or clicked as a URL.

We have the same problem with AOL by the way, which is keyed to the language of the browser used. For AOL, we thus use our English-language Mozilla Firefox version, because AOL under IE otherwise redirects us to the German pages of AOL, even though we explicitly select aol.com and not aol.de. The reason for this is that the language of the Internet Explorer installation is tied to the language of the Microsoft Windows version installed on the computer. If you buy a computer in e.g. Germany, the default versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system and IE browser are all in German and there is no way to get English versions, which makes Internet Explorer a washout for AOL overseas.

In any case, go here for the real true Google.com website in English.

Google Guidelines for Third Party Use of Google's Trademarks

Although Google is now a household word used daily by millions of people around the world, Google™ is also a trademark of Google™ Inc. As a result, there are strict legal limitations on what use can be made of the Google™ trademark online or elsewhere.

Google has a special page online titled "Google Permissions" which provides Guidelines for Third Party Use of Google's Trademarks.

We abide, for example, by one of these rules in formulating the name of this blog "Google Pundit", where Google is an adjective describing just what kind of Pundit we are, e.g. to distinguish us from "Law Pundit". As Google writes in the Guidelines "Use the trademark ONLY as an adjective, NEVER as a noun or verb, and NEVER in the plural or possessive form".

Here is how we see the law, but this is only our opinion, and not legal advice.

Trademarks relate to products and services of a company and the whole idea of trademark law is to permit trademark holders to distinguish their goods and services from those of others and to profit from the goodwill of their trademark. Without a license from Google for example, no one is permitted to produce any kind of a product with the name Google used in that name. For example, a software product named "Google Search Optimizer" - without a license from Google to use its Google trademark in the name of the product - would violate that trademark.

In our opinion, our blog title (and anyone else's blog title with Google in the name of the blog) would be a clear case of trademark infringement if it created confusion with regard to its ownership, and that is why our blog specifically contains a prominent notice that Google Pundit is in no way related to Google Inc. but rather presents third-party information about that company and its products and services. Indeed, the subtitle of our blog is "An informative blog about Google which is NOT affiliated with Google™ Inc. in any way."

Take a look at the "Google Permissions" at Guidelines for Third Party Use of Google's Trademarks. You will see that Google has many trademarks.

Google Pundit Not Affiliated with Google™

Google Pundit Is Not Affiliated with Google™ Inc. in Any Way

As a graduate of Stanford Law School - Stanford is the home of Google - we are great fans of this amazing company and have been from the very beginning, having informed our law students at the University of Trier Law School from the outset (1999) that this was the search engine to watch.

As a result, we have already posted regularly about Google on our other blogs (e.g. in defending Google Book Search, (formerly Google Print) at LawPundit, e.g. here, here, here, here and here).

Hence, we thought we would see if the name GooglePundit is free on Blogger. The name was free, so we thought we would try out a blog devoted solely to Google, where we will also repost some of our previous postings relating to Google if they bear on actual matters of interest.

Please note that Google™ is a trademark name of Google Inc. It belongs to them, not to us. See the Google Guidelines for Third Pary Use of Google's Trademarks. Obviously, anyone is free to write editorially about Google, but using the Google name in a blog is a borderline case legally. However, since the blog is hosted on Blogger, a Google company, we imagine that they can shut us down if they want to. Besides, we are favorabale towards Google and intend to post positive information, so that this blog may be tolerated, though this is not guaranteed.

Our personal intention in creating this blog is to keep up on what Google is doing. There are now so many new projects under way that it has really gotten quite difficult to keep up. This blog will assist us - and perhaps our readers - in the necessary task of keeping up with a dynamic company that is rapidly changing our planet.

Note that we also limit our blogroll solely to official blogs or official websites of Google, excepting only our selection of non-affiliated unofficial blogs about Google, which we thought necessary for balance.