Bostonians are my favorite stupid people

So Boston was recently freaked out by a guerrilla marketing campaign for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie, thinking it was terrorism. I know. That is being covered elsewhere, by people more skilled than me. I just wanted to point out, you can buy "I survived 1/31/07" t-shirts.

I wanted to say to Chris, a huge ATHF fan who recently moved to Boston - that must hurt a little.

Update: from an IM with Chris:
honestly Im too embarassed about how the city handled it to talk about it much :)
I was donating blood at mass general hospital when this broke and I was like 'Whats Err doing on the news'

I also wanted to embed this video:

People Love Gavin Newsom

Someone (maybe Colin?) recently told me they thought Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Fran, was electable on a broader scale than one hippie city, whose name is used to add serious disdain to the already hated word 'liberal'.

He's loved by Streetsblog, and bothers Bush, so he's a winner in my eyes. But dammit, it just came out, he cheated on his wife - with his campaign manager's wife! Talk about a bad boss. Now, while I'm sure no true liberal can start hating Newsom, I'm sure a lot of people will agree with this, from the article:

If it were a matter of Newsom having an affair with a single woman, that would be one thing, but to go behind a trusted aide's back and have an affair with that person's spouse, certainly makes Newsom seem unprincipled," one person wrote. "It's not a matter of sexual prudishness; it's a matter of trustworthiness. Newsom failed this one badly. I supported him until now, but he's lost a lot of my respect.

Update: Admission video - Bill Clinton's lesson was learned by someone.

Google...going down? No.

I apologize in advance. This is a really long post about Google. Move on if that's not your thing.

So, of course Google's not going down, not anytime soon. Still, I'm so committed to various Google services, everything about Google is on my radar.

Currently I use Google Base, Blogger, Bookmarks, Calendar, Co-op (for the custom search engines), Docs and Spreadsheets, Gmail, Notebook, Picasa, Reader, Personalized Search, Talk, Video, Alerts (SO underrated), Desktop, Earth, Finance, Maps, News, Toolbar for Firefox, Mobile Maps, Mobile Gmail, SMS services, Blog Search, Notebook, and occasionally, Trends. Phew - I'd link to the sites for those services, but that would take me all day.

It's been great, and is getting better, as these products get more interwoven (note the Google Reader links, and NYC Food Search on my Blogger blog). So I'm a little sensitive to the "Google is going down" sentiment, I'm smelling the first whiffs of.

It started with a post at the Micro Persuasion blog, titled "Wikipedia is the next Google." The premise being, as Google is taking down Microsoft, Google is ripe for being taken down. While I'm a fan of the Micro Persuasion blog, and Wikipedia, that argument is silly. Just because Google has far it can fall, doesn't mean it will. Wikipedia is a great reference, and I use it all the time, and I find it mostly credible. Still, it is subject to getting hijacked, aka "Wikiality" and speaking of, its content for Stephen Colbert is probably more extensive than for most American Presidents. So while Wikipedia is good for searches on nouns and prevalent topics, you couldn't use it to search for lyrics, such as "I'm as serious as cancer when I say rhythm is a dancer." I'm also Googling stuff to research this blog post, not using Wikipedia.

I came across another post, viewing the "Wikipedia vs Google" battle in terms of open source, vs for-profit. His point - Wikipedia has more useful information about San Francisco than a Google search. From the post:

If I want to learn about San Francisco, I could type 'San Francisco' into Google and see what Google’s computers spew out. I can trudge through the results and hopefully find what I want if I spend enough time.

Well, that really depends on what you're looking for. Wikipedia isn't going to give you information about a restaurant in San Francisco, suggested itineraries, a street corner in San Fran, or any "fat tail" information. If you Google San Francisco, there are links to further refine the search, by topic.

What people are missing is that where Google may be vulnerable is its attempts to take down MS Office. Frankly, I use Google Spreadsheets, and it is crap compared to Excel. Also, I dislike both Word and Google Docs. So when I read about the Zoho Notebook buzz, it seems like this is the only service I've seen that would replace anything I use by Google. More on Zoho to come.

Update: Here is the Zoho Notebook Announcement video, on YouTube.

Not Enough Raf-Looked-Over Content?

OK, There is even more stuff for you to check out now. On the right, I'll have links to stuff I find interesting or funny. Just another way that Google kicks ass, is by providing the functionality, through Google Reader, very easily. Basically, if I tag stuff as I read it, it'll appear on the right. Very simple.

Of course, this is great for my lazy-writing-effectively-re-blogging habit. So be it.

In wholly unrelated news, I created another custom search engine, for teachers, with the help of KS. If you know someone that needs to search for lesson plans, I'm including the link here, because the site is otherwise unlinked-to.

Teachers' CSE

This, of course, follows my NYC Food Custom Search, which is frankly, good stuff. You can search on the right, but here is the link for the homepage:

NYC Food CSE