Rattleblog: Tales from the blogosphere

31-01-2007

by Damien Mulley

This week's Rattleblog looks at the latest developments at Google and how the Nintendo Wii could help you lose weight.

Remember the huge news when AOL acquired Time Warner for obscene amounts of money? Where is AOL now? There was a lot of talk that it was to be split into parts and sold off piece by piece, and slowly since the virtual split with TimeWarner, this has been happening. AOL sold its music business to Napster, and has sold many of its European businesses off last year too. Yet Techcrunch now reports that AOL has spent USD900 million on European marketing company Tradedoubler. Left hand not talking to right hand at AOL HQ?

Conspiracy theorists put your tinfoil hat on and get ready for the robot invasions. It is a well accepted fact that robots will one day rule the earth and enslave humanity. The Matrix is a glimpse into the future, not just fanboy entertainment. Engadet reports that we are one step closer to helping out our robot overlords with the new Nintendo Wii controlled robot arm.

And the Wii will keep us fit until they arrive. The WiiNintendo blog reports on a guy who, by doing nothing different to his eating and lifestyle habits except playing Wii sports for 30 minutes a day, lost 9lbs in 6 weeks.

Moving from real-world doomsday fantasises to the virtual world. The 3PointD blog disclosed that IBM is now building a virtual world store in Second Life for Sears, which will allow prospective customers to go and view how their homes would look with items from the Sears catalogue.

The Eirepreneur blog reveals that Google is now moving into the area of virtual world advertising with its acquisition of Adscape Media, a specialist in advertising in games and virtual worlds like Second Life.

Staying with Google, and bringing in the new Apple phone, it seems that Google too wants in on the game, and is apparently looking at bringing out its own phone. Reports from Engadget say that a phone called "Switch" may be on the cards from the "Don't be Evil" Google and Samsung.

Given that the Devil wears Prada, perhaps the nemesis of the Google phone will in fact be the newly released (according to BoingBoing) Prada phone?

It seems to be election fever in the tech world these days. Joel Cere reports that Google Video has teamed up with the second biggest TV channel in France to create a dedicated website that will feature video coverage of the French Presidential elections.

NewTeeVee reports that the Huffington post, a group blog for political writers, will host an online Presidential debate for the 2008 US Presidential race.

Even in Ireland, a new blog has sprung up with the ambitious aim of interviewing every Dail candidate after this year's election. The Dail 30 blog will be tracking down every TD and interviewing them. Expect more and more bloggers to watch every move of our hard-working and underpaid politicians.

And lastly, some oddness. It seems that Google likes to keep its staff thinking no matter where they are, including the bathrooms. It was revealed this week that Google has placed coding tips above the urinals in all their bathrooms. This blogger wonders is this the first step in placing advertising panels in bathrooms? Just think what those targeted ads will say!

Damien Mulley is an Irish blogger and works as a technical writer in Cork.