http://dinneen.blogspot.com/2009/12/anyone-going-from-pohnpei-to-australia.html

My boyfriend has 2 surfboards that he left in Pohnpei that he really needs to get back to Australia. If you know someone that is willing to transport them. He can pick them up at any airport in Australia and will provide you with the $100 fee to transport them and a bonus.

Just leave a comment here if you can do it.

Cheers.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/5aYUuHjT4iM/fighting-fraud-online-taking-google.html

"Use Google to Make 1000s of Dollars!" or "Easy Cash with Google: You Could be Making up to $978 a Day Working from Home!" You may have seen offers like these using Google's name or logo that sounded too good to be true. Unfortunately, nearly all of them are, and, despite hundreds of consumer complaints and our own efforts to keep these sites from tricking people, some scams continue. To fight back, we're working to stop various fraudulent "Google Money" schemes, and this week filed suit against Pacific WebWorks and several other unnamed defendants.

Google hasn't created or endorsed any of the sites like those described in our complaint. Misleading ads try to take advantage of consumers in the midst of a difficult economy, and as the economic situation has worsened, the problem has only grown. As far as we can tell, thousands of people have been tricked into sending payment information and being charged hidden fees by questionable operations.



Even as we're taking legal action to try to cut these sites off at the source, we're still working constantly to remove scammy URLs from our index, and we'll permanently disable AdWords accounts that provide a poor or harmful user experience, whether or not they use Google's trademarks illegally. That said, we can't guarantee that schemes like these won't pop up, like the proverbial "Whack-A-Mole", someplace else online — either on a different network or under a different name.

We can solve only part of the problem — the rest is up to you. Just as you should be careful about giving out financial information in the real world, you should be skeptical and review any offers online before sending any information, and always be on guard when presented with an offer that seems too good to be true. Below is a significantly abridged list of some names that we know are suspect. For more tips on how to spot a scam online or what to do if you think you or someone you know has been tricked, check out this earlier post.

Although there's no secret kit that can guarantee riches, many people really do make money online. In our experience, the best way to build a business on the web is to really serve users — offer useful products and services or write about something you have a passionate interest in. If you are wondering if a particular program is legit, Google's business and advertising programs can be found from our home page, and the best place to find real jobs at Google is google.com/jobs.

Names to be wary of: Google Adwork, Google ATM, Google Biz Kit, Google Cash, Earn Google Cash Kit, Google Fortune, Google Marketing Kit, Google Profits, The Home Business Kit for Google, Google StartUp Kit, and Google Works.

Posted by Jason Morrison, Support Engineer (Search Quality Team), and Stacey Wexler, Senior Litigation Counsel

http://ammy.fury.com/2009/12/monday-freedom.php

The best thing I do during Dickens season is to take off each Monday. It's 3 days off work, but it's the most valuable time I have all year.

Today, I woke up and snuggled my cats and my sweetie. Then I got up and made more boiled chicken for Leeloo for breakfast. Then I drove to Piedmont for our annual day of relaxation with Elizabeth. After an hour in the tub, we were warm through and through for the first time in days. We followed that with lunch at Fenton's. Elizabeth had to get back to San Ramon to take Logan to the orthodontist. I called Grandma to check in on the way home. Back to San Jose, I checked in with Toyota. They had time to get me in for a quick service. While there I caught up on email. Then I popped into Petsmart and got some Sensitive Stomach dry food for Leeloo and Greenies for Pixel. Then I popped into Trader Joe's for some more chicken for Leeloo. Home again, I made turkey soup from leftovers while chatting with my mom. It is the most amazing turkey soup ever. Yum. Yum. Yum.

I'm doing laundry now while the dishwasher runs and the cats sit curled up next to me. I got so much done, and I feel refreshed and ready to face the week. (And I've still got over 300 hours of vacation on the books.)

Had my last two finals today. Two finals in one day is not fun. My crazy biochem instructor split our final into the "new stuff since the last test" test and the "comprehensive old stuff" test. She set each for half of the 3 hours allotted for the final. Nothing worse than taking half your final then waiting for almost an hour to take the other half.

Physiology was much more straight forward than the last test. It had questions like "what factors contribute to hypoxemia", which I much prefer over "dog x comes to the clinic showing this blood pressure and this cardiac output. What is the possible cardiac irregularity?". Yes, this was a vet physiology course, but diagnostic questions were always tougher, that whole applying what you know instead of stating it thing.

As a reward for being done we went to the local japanese steakhouse for dinner. My oldest calls it going to see the "egg man" because of the tricks with the eggs they do. Now hopefully I can have a few weeks of, if not time off, time without the back of my mind yelling "you are supposed to be studying for blah blah blah". Time with the family goooood.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/O8aOzc0o8vQ/happy-holidays-from-picasa-web-albums.html

I used to take a lot of photos with the best intentions of sharing them with friends and family. But most of the time they just sat on my camera's memory card, never quite making it to my computer, let alone to my friends and family.

Three weeks ago we made extra storage more affordable for Picasa Web Albums and Gmail, and now we're making it easier to get your photos in the cloud and share them, right in time for holiday picture snapping. We've partnered with Eye-Fi, makers of WiFi-enabled memory cards that make it easy to upload photos directly from your camera to Picasa Web Albums — no cables required. For a limited time, when you buy 200 GB of Google paid storage for $50 you'll get a free 4GB SDHC Eye-Fi card (a $95 value). The Eye-Fi card lets you wirelessly upload photos and videos directly to Picasa Web Albums or to your computer. It even includes automatic geotagging, so you'll know exactly where your pictures were taken. And you won't need to worry about running out of space — 200 GB is enough storage for a hundred thousand original resolution photos. Visit picasa.google.com/eyefi.html to get yours today.

By using Eye-Fi and Picasa Web Albums together, you can automate your photo sharing: photos are wirelessly uploaded and shared with the people that matter. Based on my experience as an avid Eye-Fi user, here's some tips on setting it up:

• Configure the Eye-Fi card to send photos to an active album (in my case, "Axe Family 2009 Lifestream")
• After the first photo posts to the album, share this album with individuals or a group (I created a "Family" group)
• Whenever the Eye-Fi card uploads photos to Picasa Web Albums, the people on the album's shared list are automatically notified via a daily digest email.
• Advanced tip: If you add yourself to the group, you'll get the digest email as well to remind yourself to curate your photos (delete bad pics, add captions, etc).

Eye-Fi can even make the holidays more fun: With nearly instant access to photos of her grandkids, my mother-in-law felt like she was with us this Thanksgiving, even though she was two thousand miles away!

Posted by Brian Axe, Product Manager

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Pvponline/~3/0o8b65O53tQ/

http://www.pvponline.com/?p=5227

Next week we’re starting an epic story arc. The final showdown between Scratch Fury and Santa Claus himself.

Scratch thinks he’s going to kill Santa. Santa has been preparing all year for Scratch. after last year’s battle with Jingle Force Five he knows Kringus will be coming.

We literally have a team working on these strips. Not just me. But at TEAM. There are at least, five people working on this story. Me, two story coordinators, a colorist and a second artist.

What artist you ask? Well, I don’t want to reveal JUST yet. But I will tell you this: He’s famous. Comic book famous. He’s an industry legend. And he attended this year’s Harvey Awards. Those are all the clues you’re getting right now. Don’t worry, despite a guest artist collaborating with me, this storyline will remain in PvP CONTINUITY

Okay that’s the LAST clue. Seriously.

More on this as we get closer.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Pvponline/~3/0Gf-Vvfk3RE/

http://www.pvponline.com/?p=5225

I’m going to be honest with you, this story-arc is gonna be a little dark.

I was trying to explain to Mary about 1960’s Alvin and the Chipmunks, before they were turned into a cutesy kids show in the 1980s and a CGI kids movies in the aughts. How Dave was this wreck of a man who had these crazy chipmunks he was forced to endure. And how he was always screaming at Alvin and it seems so abusive now and weird. And that he probably drank a lot, but he had no other choice, cause the chipmunks were his meal ticket.

And that lead to this week’s story. So enjoy. Merry Christmas.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/zp8Lt50Ukds/celebrating-computer-science-education.html

Today kicks off the nation’s first Computer Science Education Week. The goal of this week is to encourage students to learn about the discipline that powers the computers, applications and technology they use everyday. Computer Science Education Week emphasizes that our society's aspirations will be met by individuals who have an increasingly deep understanding of computer technology.

We've been thinking about ways that Google could help with computer science education for several years. After all, our search engine has been used in education since its inception — how many essays, research papers and theses begin with a Google search? Today, we'd like to summarize some of what we've been doing at Google to advance CS education. Our efforts focus on four strategic areas, with an emphasis on computing in core curriculum.

Use of Google tools to support teaching and learning
Having a web-based shared document, spreadsheet or presentation that students in a group or class can all view and edit online has had an enormous impact on collaboration in education. So we provide a free suite of our communication & collaboration applications designed especially for schools and universities. We also used our tools and infrastructure to build and support a community of teachers who have developed classroom content and activities around these applications.

Increasing the access to and quality of Computer Science curriculum
We have many people at Google who know about all areas of computer science, many with backgrounds and experience in education. With this deep base of computer science knowledge, we developed Google Code University to help faculty update their undergraduate computer science curriculum, and the Summer of Code, which gives students the opportunity to develop programs for various open source software projects.

Integrating computing curriculum across K-12 core subjects
A group of Google engineers and K-12 "teaching fellows" is working on building and testing models of curriculum to encourage innovation. These curriculum models revolve around "computational thinking", a problem-solving technique that draws on the thinking and analysis skills that computer scientists use everyday. Our goal is to integrate computational thinking across subject areas in K-12 by connecting these skills, which are already a part of core curriculum, more explicitly to computer science. We're also taking this a step further by integrating simple programming concepts in appropriate areas of core K-12 curriculum, such as algebra. Our hope is that by making computer science more visible and showing its connection to every subject area, students will experience the full power and utility of technology in areas of interest to them. Integrating CS into other subjects will also have the key added benefit of leveling the playing field, so that many more students will have the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of computing.

Supporting organizations and individuals through community outreach
We've also worked for years with teachers and nonprofits to build early interest in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields. Besides providing financial support and sponsorship for many external organizations, we've developed a number of scholarship and intern programs to increase the number of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM and computer science. In addition to these formal programs, every day Googlers all over the world organize visits with students at nearby schools and community centers to teach, present workshops and tech talks, and to share their personal stories on how they became computer scientists and engineers.

We're absolutely delighted to be a co-sponsor of the first Computer Science Education Week. As a company, we've benefited so much from advances in computer science and the creativity of computer scientists. We also know that the next great innovators in computer science are out there, ready to be inspired to create technologies that change our world and benefit our society. We urge our children, parents, teachers and educational institutions to pay more attention to this critical field, and we will continue to do our share.

Posted by Alfred Spector, VP Research and Special Initiatives and Maggie Johnson, Director of Education and University Relations

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/w4EVTiLXySk/relevance-meets-real-time-web.html

Search is a natural starting point for discovering the world's information, and we strive to bring you the freshest, most comprehensive and relevant search results over an ever expanding universe of content on the multitude of devices you use to access it.

That's why today, at the Computer History Museum, we're excited to share a few new innovations in the areas of real-time, mobile and social search that we feel are important steps in the evolution of information access.

First, we're introducing new features that bring your search results to life with a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web. Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before. When they are relevant, we'll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.

Try searching for your favorite TV show, sporting event or the latest development on a recent government bill. Whether it's an eyewitness tweet, a breaking news story or a fresh blog post, you can find it on Google right after it's published on the web.

Here's how it looks:


Our real-time search enables you to discover breaking news the moment it's happening, even if it's not the popular news of the day, and even if you didn't know about it beforehand. For example, in the screen shot, the big story was about GM's stabilizing car sales, which shows under "News results." Nonetheless, thanks to our powerful real-time algorithms, the "Latest results" feature surfaces another important story breaking just seconds before: GM's CEO stepped down.

Click on "Latest results" or select "Latest" from the search options menu to view a full page of live tweets, blogs, news and other web content scrolling right on Google. You can also filter your results to see only "Updates" from micro-blogs like Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku and others. Latest results and the new search options are also designed for iPhone and Android devices when you need them on the go, be it a quick glance at changing information like ski conditions or opening night chatter about a new movie — right when you're in line to buy tickets.

And, as part of our launch of real-time on Google search, we've added "hot topics" to Google Trends to show the most common topics people are publishing to the web in real-time. With this improvement and a series of other interface enhancements, Google Trends is graduating from Labs.

Our real-time search features are based on more than a dozen new search technologies that enable us to monitor more than a billion documents and process hundreds of millions of real-time changes each day. Of course, none of this would be possible without the support of our new partners that we're announcing today: Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca — along with Twitter, which we announced a few weeks ago.

The new features will be rolling out in the next few days and will be available globally in English. You can try them out today by visiting Google Trends and clicking on a "hot topic," which in most cases will bring you to a search results page with the new real-time feature.

Here's a first look at our real-time search:



We have also made some new strides with mobile search. Today's sensor-rich smartphones are redefining what "query" means. Beyond text, you can now search by a number of new modes including voice, location and sight — all from a mobile device. So we've been working to improve technology that takes advantage of these capabilities.

Starting today, we're extending our voice search capabilities on Android devices to recognize Japanese. In addition, we're using the location of your mobile phone to launch some helpful features, like showing you "what's nearby." Finally, at our event this morning, we demonstrated Google Goggles, a visual search application that lets you search for objects using images rather than words, using your camera phone. For more information on these mobile innovations, check out the Google Mobile Blog.

As we've written before, search is still an unsolved problem and we're committed to making it faster and easier for people to access a greater diversity of information, delivered in real-time, from across the web. I'm tremendously excited about these significant new real-time search features.

Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/PzebVbDCw3w/explore-whole-new-way-to-window-shop.html

What if you could decide where to shop, eat or hang out, with a little help from local Google users?

It might take you a while to ask them all, so to make it easier we've launched a new effort to send window decals to over 100,000 local businesses in the U.S. that have been the most sought out and researched on Google.com and Google Maps. We're calling these businesses the "Favorite Places on Google" and you'll now start to find them in over 9,000 towns and cities, in all 50 states. You can also explore a sample of the Favorite Places in 20 of the largest U.S. cities at google.com/favoriteplaces. Each window decal has a unique bar code, known as a QR code that you can scan with any of hundreds of mobile devices — including iPhone, Android-powered phones, BlackBerry and more — to take you directly to that business's Place Page on your mobile phone. With your mobile phone and these new decals, you can easily go up to a storefront and immediately find reviews, get a coupon if the business is offering one or star a business as a place you want to remember for the future. Soon, you'll be able to leave a review on the mobile page as well, just like on your desktop.


To scan the codes, you'll need a phone with a camera and an app that can read QR codes. For Android-powered devices, including the Droid by Motorola, we recommend using the free Barcode Scanner app. For iPhone, we have found the $1.99 QuickMark app to work best, and starting today, we're partnering with QuickMark to offer the app for free for the first 40,000 downloads. For other devices, we recommend searching for "QR reader" in your app marketplace, if it has one, or searching for the model of your phone and [qr reader] on Google. BeeTagg and NeoReader are two other apps that we've found to work well with the decals.

Here's a video that shows you how this all works:



This launch is part of our overall effort — online and offline — to provide you with the best local business results whenever you're trying to figure out where to go, whether it's a trendy Cuban restaurant in Philly, a comics shop in L.A., a hip hotel in NYC or a little bit of photographic history in Rochester, N.Y.

We plan to periodically send out new waves of window decals to qualifying businesses. If you own or manage a business and were selected as a Favorite Place, you may have already received your decal or, for most of you, it will arrive by mail in the next one to two weeks. If you weren't selected in this round, your first step is to claim your listing with Google's Local Business Center for free. That will help us determine that your business information is correct. Then, you can enhance your local business listing by adding enhanced content like photos and videos.

To explore a gallery of several hundred Favorite Places in 20 U.S. cities, to learn more about how to use the QR codes and to find out how your business can get involved, check out google.com/favoriteplaces.

Posted by Ryan Hayward & David Kim, Product Marketing Managers

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/_pTDMJBYUZ0/climate-tools-for-copenhagen-and-beyond.html

Representatives from around the world arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark today to negotiate a successor treaty for the Kyoto Protocol. This 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) has been called the most important conference in a decade.

In fact, in an unprecedented initiative, 56 major newspapers in 45 countries published a shared editorial calling on politicians and negotiators gathering in Copenhagen to strike an ambitious deal on combating climate change. The editorial appeared in 20 languages including Chinese, Russian and Arabic. It asserts that the Copenhagen summit has the power "to shape history’s judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it."

So in honor of this important event, we've built a number of new tools to give delegates — and you at home — easy access to useful information to help visualize and explore data and issues relating to climate change.

In September we launched a series of new Google Earth climate change layers and tours in collaboration with the Danish government. Check out these tours to explore the effects of climate change and get a better understanding of the scenarios that could unfold if we don't stop this environmental threat. The tours were developed together with leading environmental organizations and individuals including The World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace as well as Al Gore, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and others.


Over the past weeks, many of you have already uploaded personal statements of your hopes (and fears) for our planet through YouTube and the Raise Your Voice campaign. Now the search is on for the best video and text questions to be delivered to global leaders and climate activists who will come together in Copenhagen to answer the top-ranked questions from the YouTube channel in a townhall produced by CNN International. Voting with Google Moderator will continue until December 14th.


An Australia-based Googler also recently launched a tool called Show your Vote which puts the supporting voices for a global deal right on a Google Map. This tool can be integrated into any website to help drive the outreach and collect votes, and can already be found on UNFCCC, COP15.dk and WWF Earth Hour.

And if you're in Denmark with us, check out two unique installations powered by Google and YouTube. The first, a giant CO2 CUBE, is an art installation that visualizes one metric ton of carbon dioxide and has YouTube videos streaming on its walls. The second is an interactive Google Earth simulator made up of flat-screen panels and controlled with a free roam Space Navigator 6-axis joystick. (It's cool, trust us.) Welcome to Copenhagen!

Posted by Jonas Vang, Sr. Industry Analyst and Benjamin Kott, Green Business Operations

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1551

Jeez, so many (okay, just two) callbacks in this strip. As my archive grows ever larger and more intimidating I'm gonna have to watch out and make sure new strips don't devolve entirely into references to things that happened hundreds of strips ago.

Also you will be pleased to know that in a fit of holiday cheer I have ordered my legal team to allow David Willis' various websites to continue operating even as I pursue legal action against him for his heinous, impertinent theft of my characters. I expect to literally own him by the end of the year, but I figure I might as well allow him the small mercy of pretending he still controls his own fate.

(Before you email me THAT LAST PARAGRAPH WAS A JOKE. Some of you people have no grasp of the concept of sarcasm.)

One last thing: this coming weekend I will be in Austin, TX for WEBCOMICS RAMPAGE! I've never been to Austin before, I hope some of you will show up and say hi. That would be rad.

See you tomorrow!

for tsgeisel, zpdiduda, abditus, cortneyofeden, ef2p and any other friends interested in Jewish culture (and easily amused):

Ellen Kushner's latest project (see pic)

I've been following her progress on Twitter. Been interesting, if I lived closer to NYC, I might!

(p.s. Someone tell foolsandirish to buy tickets and take his dad, for a lark!)

NOTE TO SELF:

If it is snowing outside, you may want to bring some kind of hanky/towel/cloth to wipe off the snowflakes that inevitably settle on your camera lens. It is also good to realize this before you get back inside after taking pictures.

But hey, it looks like the camera managed to function despite this.

Frozen water falling from the sky? Surely you must be joking.