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Hundreds of bloggers were bribed to write posts promoting Google Chrome in recent weeks. The scandal is only worsened by Google's excuse: The whole scheme was dreamed up by the company it hired to help make things popular on the web.
You might want to clear some space on your desk for your forehead before reading any further.
Professional Google obsessive Danny Sullivan revealed yesterday that the web was littered with more than 400 mostly vapid blog posts touting Google Chrome and declaring themselves "sponsored by Google." At least one of the posts helped juice Google Chrome's search engine rankings, in direct violation of Google's own guidelines. And a great many more of the posts were, as Sullivan put it, garbage, reading like they were assembled by computer algorithm.
Google's reply? It blamed the ad agencies it hired, including Unruly, which touts its ability to make web videos popular, and Essence Digital, which helps clients navigate the world of pay-per-click advertising.
One might think the operator of the world's most popular video site and pay-per-click advertising scheme would have some in-house expertise on such matters. But then, maybe Google's experts have better things to do. Building the world's largest internet borg is one thing; having to actually use it is something entirely different.
[Image via stevanovic.igor/Shutterstock]
Source: http://gawker.com/5872727/bloggers-were-paid-to-write-about-google-chrome
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SANTIAGO, Chile?? Firefighters are making progress against a major blaze in one of Chile's most spectacular national parks, the government said Sunday, and the Israeli tourist accused of setting the fire denied guilt.
Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter announced that light rain and diminished winds had helped emergency workers control three of the six areas of the fire at the Torres del Paine park, though the blaze has burned more 48 square miles (12,500 hectares) since starting Tuesday.
A court on Saturday ordered Rotem Singer, a 23-year-old Israeli citizen, to remain in the region while he faces charges of negligently setting the blaze. Officials said he failed to completely extinguish a fire set to burn toilet paper at a camp.
Singer denied responsibility in an interview Sunday with Israeli Army Radio.
Only on msnbc.com
"It's important for me to say that it wasn't me. They've placed the blame on me," Singer said.
He said he was not sure how he became "the main suspect" and was waiting for a lawyer to arrive from Santiago.
If convicted, Singer could face a fine and 41 to 60 days in jail, though Chilean law can allow short sentences to be served outside confinement if the convicted person appears to periodically register with officials.
More than 500 firefighters are trying to quell the fire, which forced officials to evacuate 400 tourists and close the park, famed for its dramatic, snowcapped peaks, through January, damaging the economy of the area.
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Associated Press writer Tia Goldenberg contributed to this report from Jerusalem.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45841169/ns/world_news-americas/
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PASADENA, Calif. ? As planet Earth rang in the new year, a different kind of countdown was happening at the moon.
After a 3 1/2-month journey, a NASA spacecraft flew over the moon's south pole, fired its engine and dropped into orbit Saturday in the first of two back-to-back arrivals over the New Year's weekend.
Mission control at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory erupted in cheers and applause after receiving confirmation that the probe was healthy and circling the moon. An engineer was seen on closed-circuit television blowing a noisemaker to herald the New Year's Eve arrival.
"Everything went just as we hoped. The burn was spot-on," chief scientist Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in a post-mission interview with The Associated Press.
The team toasted sparkling cider, but the celebration was brief. Despite the successful maneuver, the work was not over. Its twin still had to enter lunar orbit on New Year's Day.
The Grail probes ? short for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory ? have been cruising independently toward their destination since launching in September aboard the same rocket on a mission to measure lunar gravity.
Hours before revelers in Times Square watched the ball drop, Grail-A approached the moon and fired its engine for about 40 minutes to get captured into orbit. Deep space antennas in the California desert and Madrid tracked every move and fed real-time updates to ground controllers
About 270 family members and friends of the mission team descended on the NASA campus to watch the drama unfold on a live feed.
"This is great, a big relief," deputy project scientist Sami Asmar told the jubilant crowd.
Grail is the 110th mission to target the moon since the dawn of the Space Age including the six Apollo moon landings that put 12 astronauts on the surface. Despite the attention the moon has received, scientists don't know everything about Earth's nearest neighbor.
Why the moon is ever so slightly lopsided with the far side more mountainous than the side that always faces Earth remains a mystery. A theory put forth earlier this year suggested that Earth once had two moons that collided early in the solar system's history, producing the hummocky region.
Grail is expected to help researchers better understand why the moon is asymmetrical and how it formed by mapping the uneven lunar gravity field that will indicate what's below the surface.
Previous lunar missions have attempted to study the moon's gravity ? which is about one-sixth Earth's pull ? with mixed results. Grail is the first mission devoted to this goal.
Once in orbit, the near-identical spacecraft will spend the next two months refining their positions until they are just 34 miles above the surface and flying in formation. Data collection will begin in March.
The $496 million mission will be closely watched by schoolchildren. An effort by Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, will allow middle school students to use cameras aboard the probes to zoom in and pick out their favorite lunar spots to photograph.
Despite the latest focus on the moon, NASA won't be sending astronauts back anytime soon. The Obama administration last year nixed a lunar return in favor of landing humans on an asteroid and eventually Mars.
A jaunt to the moon is usually speedy. It took the Apollo astronauts three days to zip there aboard the powerful Saturn V rocket. Since NASA wanted to economize by launching on a small rocket, it took Grail a leisurely 3 1/2 months to make a roundabout trip.
NASA's last moonshot occurred in 2009 with the launch of a pair of spacecraft ? one that circled the moon and another that deliberately crashed into the surface and uncovered frozen water in one of the permanently shadowed lunar craters.
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Online:
Mission: http://grail.nasa.gov
___
Follow Alicia Chang's coverage at http://www.twitter.com/SciWriAlicia
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Courtesy Tom McGann
Brave souls are seen participating in the last year's Coney Island Polar Bear Club New Year's Day Plunge.
By Rob Lovitt, msnbc.com contributor
Resolutions, shmesolutions. If you really want to get a jump on the new year, there?s nothing like a plunge into icy water to clear the head, focus one?s attention and put things in perspective.
?You?re totally immersed in this intense experience,? said Dennis Thomas, president of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club, a winter-swimming group that sponsors an annual New Year?s Day plunge?in the Long Island beach community.
?It?s not about work or family or money or any of the other stressful things we deal with every day,? he said. ?It takes you somewhere else so simultaneously, it?s a way to leave things behind.?
Like your sanity? Not so, maintains Thomas. ?It used to be a bunch of old weird guys doing it; now we have 150 members and get about 100 swimmers every weekend,? he told msnbc.com. ?We?re not those nuts on the beach anymore.?
For newbies, the New Year?s Day swim offers a good introduction as the water temperature will be in the mid-40s, relatively balmy compared to the 31 or 32 degrees it?ll be later in the winter. According to Thomas, approximately 1,200 swimmers will take the plunge with another 5,000?6,000 less-adventurous spectators cheering them on.
They should be in good, albeit goosebumped, company as similar New Year?s plunges will take place in Boston, Seattle, Toronto and other cities across the U.S. and Canada. Most are free, although many ask participants to gather pledges for charitable causes.
The Coney Island plunge, for example, is one of 11 mid-winter events that are participating in Freezin? for a Reason, a fundraiser for Camp Sunshine, a retreat for children with life-threatening illnesses and their families. Ranging from an ice-choked lake in Virginia to the frigid waters of Maine?s Casco Bay, the events promise to be heartwarming and bone-chilling at the same time.
Then again, if misery truly loves company, it?d be hard to beat the MSP Polar Bear Plunge?in Annapolis, Md., on Jan. 28, when as many as 12,000 hardy souls will take to the waters of Chesapeake Bay. Now in its 16th year, the event has raised more than $400,000 for Special Olympics Maryland.
The event is part of a day-long festival called PlungeFest, which will feature live music, a pee-wee plunge for the kids ? think wading pools, not open water ? and a beer garden for adults. Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco is scheduled to make a celebrity plunge ? unless, that is, he has to be in Indianapolis for the Super Bowl a week later.
Then again, whether Flacco goes in the water or not, other plungers may be too focused on their own impending immersion to notice. With typical late-January water temperatures registering in the mid-30s, even experienced plungers have been known to get goosebumps before they even get wet.
?As many times as I?ve done it, I still get nervous,? said Kelley Schniedwind, spokesperson for Special Olympics Maryland and herself a frequent plunger. ?You?re standing on the beach, saying, ?Am I really about to do this???
Afterward, though, she?s always glad she did. ?You look around, people are laughing and yelling, and you think, wow, I just did something crazy, it was fun and I survived. I feel really good.?
More on Itineraries
Rob Lovitt is a longtime travel writer who still believes the journey is as important as the destination. Follow him at Twitter.
Source: http://itineraries.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/23/9664644-cmon-on-in-the-waters-ing-freezing
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ABUJA (Reuters) ? The death toll from a bomb attack on a church just outside Nigeria's capital Abuja on Christmas Day has risen to 37, with 57 people wounded, a source at the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said on Friday.
The bombing at St. Theresa's Catholic church in Madalla on Abuja's outskirts during a packed Christmas mass was the deadliest of a series of Christmas attacks on Nigerian churches and other targets by the militant Islamist sect Boko Haram.
"As of just now, the latest death toll from the bombing of St. Theresa's church is at 37. Wounded, we have 57," a senior NEMA official said. The initial death toll had been 27.
The official asked not to be identified because the victims were now in the hands of hospitals and morgues.
President Goodluck Jonathan's office put out a statement late on Friday pledging that "the government will fight Boko Haram, the group of evil-minded people who want to cause anarchy, to the end."
Jonathan held talks on Friday with Mohame Bazoum, Deputy Prime Minister of Niger. Security officials suspect the countries' porous common border is a gathering point for militants, and that Boko Haram may have made contact there with al Qaeda's north African wing.
"The perpetrators pass through borders at will and we have to ensure that there are no safe havens for them in the sub-region," Jonathan said.
He had summoned his security chiefs for an emergency meeting on Thursday to discuss the growing Islamist militant threat and how to deal with it.
National Security Adviser General Owoye Andrew Azazi told Reuters that Nigerian security services were considering making contact with moderate members of Boko Haram via "back channels," even though explicit talks are officially ruled out.
EXPLOSIONS, SHOOTINGS IN NORTHEAST
This year was the second in a row that Boko Haram has attacked churches at Christmas. Its strikes are becoming deadlier and more sophisticated, and suggest that it is trying to ignite sectarian strife in a country historically prone to conflicts between a largely Muslim north and Christian south.
Three explosions struck the northeastern city of Maiduguri shortly after Muslim Friday prayers, but caused no casualties, the military said. In a separate incident, gunmen shot dead three members of a cleric's family.
Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sinful" in the northern Hausa language, has been blamed for a campaign of shootings and bombings against security forces and authorities in the north.
Attacks in and around the capital - including one on the U.N. headquarters in August that killed at least 24 people - suggest the group is trying to raise its profile and radiate out from its heartland in the northeast.
On Tuesday night, unidentified attackers threw a homemade bomb into an Islamic school in the southern Delta state, an apparent sectarian reprisal that wounded seven people, six of them young children.
On Wednesday night, an explosion in a local bar in the northern city of Gombe wounded one person, police said.
(Reporting by Tim Cocks)
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