Month: April 2006

Google truly is an internet phenomena. Here’s a company that started with absolutely no business plan for making a profit but grew into a company with billions of dollars of cash on hand (As of March 30th, Google had $8 billion in the bank).

With so much cash at it’s disposal Google is free to play around with dozens of new ideas – some of which might turn out to be quite brilliant, others which will turn out to be real losers. The crazy thing about Google is that while many companies are extremely secretive about what they are working on, Google is quite open about many of their projects (don’t get me wrong, they are also quite secretive about bunches of them too).

You might think of Google Labs as Google’s sandbox. Google Labs, reachable at http://labs.google.com/ is where Google posts links beta versions of products that their scientist and engineers are working on – some of which are neat as hell, others of which will never see the light of day.

Many of Google’s current offerings started out at the Google Labs site. I first started using Google Desktop when it was a beta product at the Google Labs site and it’s changed the way I store and find things on my computer. I know longer have to worry creating folders or files with recognizable names to store things on my computer. I can just dump everything into My Documents then use Google desktop to search for them when I have to access the file.

Google Earth is another neat product. Google Earth is a collection of satellite and aircraft photos from all over the world that you can access on your computer. Most of the earth is covered and you can see enough detail to usually be able to pick out your own home. If you live in a major metropolitan area, you can get some pretty detailed views of your home for example (Marilyn, I can easily pick out the octagonal deck addition to your patio – the hottub is partially in the shade so it isn’t as easy to pick out). Google Earth is wild because you can take panoramic tours of various locations (the Grand Canyon and Chicago River tours are particularly interesting). Google Earth also has a community of users who use Google Earth’s forums to tag interesting items on the photos (talk about mundane – there’s a ton of people committed to finding flying airplanes and their shadows in the photos).

Google Earth turned out to be such raging success, that the Labs now have a Google Mars where you can zoom in on the Red Planet using photos taken from various Mars Missions.

Some others interesting offerings curently in beta include Google Video, where you can search for videos by keywords using the familiar Google interface.

One that I want to try out but haven’t gotten around to it yet is Google Page Creator which proposes to be an easy way to create your own website (Marilyn – you might want to look into this a bit as a possible way to build a site for Dawn).

That’s a quick glance at Google Labs. Try it out. Also check back every couple of months. New and interesting stuff shows up all the time.

Pandora, UncleLar’s mWow I, turned out to be a way practical contribution so this week I decided to go the complete opposite. I think I can comfortable say that no one will find this week’s honoree the least bit practical.

First a little background.

What exactly is a “Numbers Station”? The answer to that supposedly lies in the intriguing world of spies. I’m not talking about the Tom Clancy, John le Carré fantasy world of spying. I’m talking, at least supposedly, real world international spies.

Numbers Stations are shortwave radio frequencies that intermittently suddenly start broadcasting people reciting seemingly random streams of numbers, words, or letters. In theory, they are coded messages that governments use to communicate with their spies in the field.

England’s Irdial-Discs record label recorded a collection of these broadcasts and released them in a four CD set called the Conet Project. The set is available for purchase at Amazon.com.

Now before you think I’ve gone completely wacko and entered the world of conspiracy theorists, there is substantial evidence to support the theory that these stations are in fact spy based. Here’s some reputable journalists’ remarks re Numbers Stations.

The Washington Post: “The Shortwave And the Calling”
Salon: “Counting Spies”
Chris Brand: “Numbers Stations”
and, lastly, a real life spy, Thomas Wagner, mentions Numbers Stations in his tome about escaping from East Berlin.

Interesting you say (or maybe not – afterall the mundane has to come in some time) and you are even asking “Is there any way I can listen to these stations without paying the £39.99 for the CDs.

Yes, I answer, with UncleLar’s mWow II, The Conet Project – Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations. Check out a couple – I’m sure you’ll find them quite mundane. 🙂

One interesting followup. Evidently, the band Wilco, is a fan of Numbers Stations. They sampled one of the stations for the album “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”. Wilco looped a female voice, supposedly a Mossad agent, repeating the phrase “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” for a minute and a half during “Poor Places” a track on the “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” album. That led to an interesting lawsuit. Irdial Records sued Wilco for copyright violations. Now I’m not exactly sure Irdial can claim ownership of an anonymous female reciting a phonetic alphabet over the public airways but the suit was settled before it ever went to court with Wilco was forking over some royalty payments to the record company.

While there’s little doubt that this mWow is mundane, I hope I’ve made it a little bit interesting. Now go “enjoy” the recordings.