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Google faces regular challenges as it maps the globe, from privacy lawsuits in Germany to the technical difficulties of mapping underwater. To that list of woes we may now add another: People think it killed a donkey in Botswana.

Recently, it seems, the company began fielding complaints from members of the public and the news media about Street View imagery that appeared to show a donkey in the Kweneng region of Botswana lying prostrate in the wake of a Street View vehicle. CNET's Chris Matyszczyk wrote last night asking for proof the animal survived.

"Because of the way … Read more

I love donkeys.

I have spent vast amounts of time observing them at such far-flung places as Six Flags in Vallejo, Calif., and New Jersey's fine Bergen County Zoo (evidence below).

Donkeys are the only animals that really understand the world. They stand there, stare at you and, in an attempt to commune with your lot, their expression says: "Life's really not all that, is it?"

So when I see a dead one -- or even one that's just prostrate -- tears well in my eyes as if another family member has bitten the dust.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--ViewSonic announced its new series of Windows 8-certified touch displays. The TD40 series consists of the 23-inch TD2340, the 27-inch TD2740, and the 32-inch TD3240 monitors. The IPS panel displays have a 1,920x1,080 HD resolution and were announced at CES 2013, along with ViewSonic's 24-inch VSD240 smart display.

The TD40 series monitors are designed to maximize and enhance the use of Windows 8 on the touch displays. In addition to the professional grade IPS panels and full HD resolution, the monitors use 10-point projected capacitive touch technology that is designed to make the touch-screen interaction … Read more

LAS VEGAS--ViewSonic introduced a new member of its budding Smart Display product family at CES 2013. The VSD240, which will be available in April for $499, has a 24-inch 1,920x1,080-pixel-resolution HD LED screen, ships with Android 4.1, and runs on a 1.7GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor.

The 24-inch Smart Display joins the 22-inch VSD220 in ViewSonic's Smart Display family. These boundary-blurring products have the standard functionality of Android tablets, but with a larger display. The VSD240 includes HDMI and USB ports, SD card storage, and a 1.3-megapixel camera.

The VSD240's features make … Read more

Whether readers want to learn the complexities of how the Mars Curiosity rover was able to enter the Red Planet's atmosphere or just see photos of cats being weird, they can go to Reddit. The social news site announced today its end-of-year stats and it appears that users are frequenting the site at an ever-increasing rate.

Reddit revealed that in 2012 it received 37 billion page views, 400 million unique visitors, and 30 million posts -- not bad for one of the most simple Web sites on the Internet.

The site's user population has skyrocketed since its inception. … Read more

English speakers seem to be interested in action movies, boy bands, and Facebook.

New stats compiled by Swedish software engineer Johan Gunnarsson detail the top 100 most-viewed articles on Wikipedia over the past year. The online encyclopedia doesn't create its own year-end list but does let people read its log files, according to AllThingsD. This top 100 list compiled by Gunnarsson, which comes in several languages, is the first time users can see Wikipedia's most popular articles over the course of a year.

For the English language Wikipedia, which is the most popular version of the site, "… Read more

Google is making it even easier to take a virtual visit to business interiors without leaving home.

Launched in September, Google Business Photos presented Google Maps users with 360-degree panoramas of the inside of businesses, a handy tool for scoping out the interior of a business before going there in person. However, the images were often hard to find.

Starting today, the Web giant began posting the photos to its Web search results page, presenting them along with the business results that appear to the right of requested results. As with the maps product, a simple click on the "… Read more

Google Maps is back on iOS, but this time as a standalone app. You'll find it doesn't look like it did on iOS 5, due to Google having complete freedom with the user interface and design. As such, using Google Maps on iOS is going to feel a bit familiar, yet like a completely new experience.

To install Google Maps on iOS, you'll need to be using an iPhone (3GS and newer), iPod Touch (fourth and fifth gen) or an iPad running at least iOS 5.1. If you're using one of the above devices, download Google Maps for iOS … Read more