SPOTTED - London Underground - Google Maps

I was having a read of the lovely London Underground blog and came across this post about Google Maps and its issues with Tube stations.  I almost feel like Google Maps is committing a hate crime by changing names, languages and sometimes completely omitting some stations from its maps. Oi, Google, what did we ever do to you?

It's been irking me for some time now that Camden Town Station is M.I.A. according to Google Maps

Come on out Camden Town Station, we know you're there!

But now I've come to find that Google's also making our stations have nonsense names in Japanese, rebranding stations to businesses in the area and apparently we have a bit of Germany in West London. Not even to say the least, but we've also been shafted on public transport guides built in to Google Maps in comparison to other major cities.

What the deuce Google Maps?! Quit being so city-ist and put London back on the maps (so to speak).

Read more about Google Maps' discrimination on London here: http://london-underground.blogspot.com/2011/06/south-ken-tube-sponsored-google-maps-on.html

Google Rules them All

This post is not academic of any sorts.  Just me showing how blown away I am by the Google Lords.

You ever have a song stuck in your head but you can't remember who sings it, what key it's in, any words to it - just random noises or parts to the song?  This happens to me all the time, my brain works in mysterious ways. It's normally along the lines of 'that song with the triangle' or 'the song that sounds like that other song that sounds like a race car anthem'.  Believe it or not, other people think this way too!  Most of the time when I use those bits and bobs in a simple Google search, I find what I'm looking for!

It's happened again and I was blown away by the results.  It started when I began listening to Temper Trap.  They played at Glastonbury this year, but I didn't see them.  I did however hear them at the end of every set.  "Sweet Disposition" seemed to be the song playing at every stage when a band wasn't actually playing.  Although Glasto was over the summer, I didn't get the Temper Trap album until about 2 months ago.  I love it, I think they're a great, fun band to listen to. But something about their sound reminded me of a band from my past.

I couldn't put my finger on what this falsetto voice made me think of for the longest time.  After a month of this torment, I began to visualise the music video of the band that I was thinking of, but I couldn't get much out of that.  Today I finally decided to type in what I did know into Google and see what I could get. I knew it was a band from 1998 (I remember times in my life by music, I have a soundtrack, I know it's weird..), I knew it was set in a mall of sorts, and there was an escalator.  So I typed into Google: "music video 1998 escalator shopping mall" and this was the first result:

I wasn't alone! Someone else was trying to remember the song too! So I'm then taken to see EXACTLY WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR!

Yes Temper Trap's Fader in some ridiculous way reminds me of an updated version of New Radicals' You Get What You Give, which apparently also used to be the Glasto stage song.  So maybe I'm not the only one that made that connection.

I'm just glad that those few search words put me out of my musical misery! 

Ariel on Google+

UAE Bans Communication

Recently, my boyfriend left for two weeks to Abu Dhabi to visit his family.  Normally, when he leaves we at least exchange Facebook messages if he can't text or e-mails if we're really desperate.  I was a bit surprised when he'd been gone for a week-and-a-half and I had yet to hear from him!

I'm not sure how I, social media uber geek, forgot about the dramas they had with Blackberry and didn't put 2+2 together.  But this was just a mobile phone, it didn't explain why there were no e-mails going through either.  However, we were able to communicate through his Hotmail account. A quick Google search and I found an article saying that they were possibly blocking Google mail thanks to the reintroduction of Google Voice! As progressive as UAE likes to make itself, one can forget that they have a [somewhat valid] concern for smart phone capabilities.  The boyfriend also has a Skype based phone, which would explain why his phone would not work at all - VoIP.

Because of the UAE response to this form of communication, it reminded me of something I mentioned before (I haven't archived my tweets so it's a bit hard to find).  I was concerned that studying politics and focusing on social media would be an unlikely pair.  However, the more I work in this industry, and the more governments respond to social media's existence, I realise that they are quite compatible.  I think while my educational background taught me focus on countries such as China, India and Iran as the major political actors, my interest in social media is linking those concerns with the Google, Apple and Microsoft issues of the world.  The further we move with social media and Internet technologies, the more involved politics will become in these matters.

How worried do you think the UAE should be of Internet communication?