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Is Google becoming an OS? This article at Microdoc has been making the rounds. It suggests that Google is becoming some kind of “Knowledge Operating System”. I don’t think so. Maybe the Web itself is becoming something of a meta-operating system, but that would make Google an application launcher at best. Quite useful – essential in fact – but easily replaceable.

Google content-targeted ads have expanded the AdWords system to non-Google sites. This new program has been creating quite a buzz among Webmasters. Google has teamed up with some of the big ad networks to run the Google ads across their member sites. I’m running these on my biggest site and they’re the highest-paying banner ad I’ve seen in over a year. Even metafilter uses them. Can Google revolutionize online advertising or is this just a fad?

(Wired News)- The probable winner of the “less practical than segway” award, the Sony SDR-4X is going to be heavy competition for Honda’s ASIMO in the “2-foot-tall humanoid robots that cost as much as a Mercedes” category. Is there really a market for these or is this just a game they’re both playing to inflate stock prices?

I visit the Urban Legends Reference Pages at snopes.com often, and yesterday I stumbled across the Lost Legends page. There are some very entertaining ones there, and after incredulously reading several of them, I learned a valuable lesson about the importance of verifying your sources.

Robert Cringely’s latest article presents an idea to prevent spam: charge a nickel a message. Others have suggested this before. My response summarizes the approaches to spam prevention and where this one fits in. (more…)