goo

I am frightfully excited about the iPhone 5.

I am excited because I hope it will look nothing like the iPhone 5 images and alleged prototypes that have been tossed around by rumormongers -- and will therefore be exciting.

Yet just as my excitement reaches the boundaries of human safety, along comes a report that suggests Apple might be sued over the iPhone 5's design.

Yes, sued.

You see, someone has allegedly already patented the rumormongered design in China. That someone is iPhone 5 knock-off maker GooPhone.

Should the current political convention season have driven you into living in … Read more

World of Goo is a visually stunning physics-based puzzler that lets you create structures out of tiny, elastic gooballs. Think Apparatus or X Construction, but covered in slime.

The idea of the game is to get the gooballs to the intake pipe, which is usually in the sky, beyond some sort of chasm, or otherwise out of reach. In order to do this, you must use your gooballs to create bridges, towers, and other structures from a predetermined starting point. As you might have guessed, it's quite challenging to create something structurally sound from the elastic gooballs. Also, you … Read more

World of Goo is a visually stunning physics-based puzzler that lets you create structures out of tiny, elastic gooballs. Think Apparatus or X Construction, but covered in slime.

The idea of the game is to get the gooballs to the intake pipe, which is usually in the sky, beyond some sort of chasm, or otherwise out of reach. In order to do this, you must use your gooballs to create bridges, towers, and other structures from a predetermined starting point. As you might have guessed, it's quite challenging to create something structurally sound from the elastic gooballs. Also, you … Read more

We'll admit that the first thing we thought of when GooReader was mentioned wasn't Google Books, though that was the second thing. We didn't bother to explore the first possibility, which is just as well because GooReader turned out to be a pretty nice free e-book reader for Google Books. As you know, Google is into everything, including e-books, and in a big way. It offers quick access to millions of titles, many of them free, and helps you manage your e-book purchases. Its animated 3D graphics give the e-books a realistic appearance.

You'll need to … Read more

Back in January, celebrated indie game World of Goo made its iPad debut, leaving iPhone and iPod users everywhere to cry, "Where's my Goo?"

It has arrived. World of Goo is now available for iPhone (and third- and fourth-gen iPod Touch), and it's every bit as good as its tablet predecessor--just a little smaller.

As I explained in my original review, the World of Goo is populated by Goo Balls--cute, squealing little blobs of, well, something. In each level, it's your job to guide them to a specific destination: up a tube, across a bridge, and so on.

The Goo Balls themselves become part of whatever structure you have to build, but if you use too many of them, you won't accomplish your collection goal.… Read more

Google took a somewhat arcane but important step yesterday in improving its goo.gl URL-shortening service, making it available not just through the Web but through third-party software.

Google announced the goo.gl application programming interface (API) yesterday. That makes it possible, for example, to let software such as TweetDeck shorten Web addresses to more easily fit within Twitter's 140-character constraints.

As with other services such as Bit.ly, the goo.gl service can share data about the expansion of the URLs. That's useful for companies that want to know how many people clicked a link in some … Read more

Goo.gl Lite is a free extension that adds Google's Goo.gl URL shortener to the Mozilla Firefox toolbar. When you click the Goo.gl Lite icon, the program automatically generates a shortened URL and copies it to the Clipboard.

Goo.gl Lite installs much like other Firefox add-ons, although once it's installed, we needed to open the Firefox toolbar manager and drag the Goo.gl Lite icon to our browser's toolbar. Clicking Tools/Add-ons let us enable, disable, and uninstall it via the Add-Ons manager. Though the program offered no options, none are needed, since it … Read more

A new virus is infecting Twitter users through the use of URLs shortened by the goo.gl service.

Apparently triggered last night, the virus is spreading as a result of users clicking on links that start with http://goo.gl, Google's URL shortener. TechCrunch is saying that the virus started on Twitter's mobile site and has been growing through different URLs, including http://goo.gl/od0az and http://goo.gl/R7f68.

The virus tries to redirect unsuspecting users to malicious Web sites, according to Techweet, which says that the messages are coming from new, disposable Twitter accounts as … Read more

Jeff's back to complete a week of episodes, and although we don't normally condone eating on the air (because it's gross), we'll make an exception for Wilson's favorite treat--Lotte Koala chocolate cookies! Anyone else see the resemblance? On today's episode of The 404 Podcast, we're delving into the bizarre world of Kindlerotica, aka e-reader pR0n; Groupon is offering $60,000 scholarships to any baby parented by a couple that used a Groupon on their first date; Google's new URL shortener Goo.gl; and a blacklist of words that Google considers too nasty to include in its Instant search feature.

Online coupon distributor Groupon just debuted the most ridiculous PR campaign we've seen in awhile--it's offering $60,000 college scholarships to Groupon babies, and here's how it works. To participate, two people must meet through Groupon's dating Web site Grouspawn, agree to go on a date at a restaurant that accepts Groupon coupons, and see what happens from there.

A Groupon baby is only eligible for the $60,000 scholarship prize if it was conceived on the first date, and proof must be obtained in the form of photographic evidence, credit card receipts, or waiter testimonials. Make sense? There are already 166 members on the Grouspawn Date Assistant, so get on it!

As of Wednesday of this week, the most downloaded novel on the Amazon Kindle Webstore was "Compromising Positions" by Jenna Bayley Burke. As you might not have guessed from the subtle wit in its name, "Compromising Positions" is an adult-rated novel that represents the latest trend in Kindlerotica, or e-porn.

Whereas classic romance novels are traditionally targeted at women, this latest genre is definitely written for men and most of the titles read like text out of Penhouse Forum letters. It's disturbing to think that people are actually reading these stories in public, but the problem may be that Amazon is distributing these stories for free, which explains why they keep popping up on the best-seller list.

None of us really get the appeal, and Jeff puts it best when he describes his visual affinity toward the subject matter. In either case, if you want to check it out, another novel called "Office Slave" seems to be a good place to start....but do everyone a favor and stay out of the subway when you read it, OK?

Speaking of dirty birdies, the 2600 just published the Google Blacklist--Words that Google Instant Doesn't Like, and there are a ton of submissions. Google Instant is a new search feature that shows results in real time as you type. It also relies on predictive results that could potentially save you two to five seconds per search, but that opens up the floodgates on certain words that Google deems universally offensive.

So alongside the standard four-letter cusswords and NSFW terms, there's also a heap of ambiguously dirty words like "golden," "lemon," "teen," and an entire section dedicated to variations on the word "dog." Use your imagination, or just check out the entire list, at your own discretion--this is your official NSFW warning!

Oh, Google also unveiled its own URL shortener called Goo.gl. FYI, we spend less time talking about that than it took for you to read the previous sentence.

Have a great weekend everyone!