Want to make your people searches on Google more accurate? Take a look at this professional Google search guide, published by Our-Picks.com —

Pro guide to Google searches. Part I

The Observer reports on a Google smart phone & PDA that will hopefully make mobile web search and local search as natural and efficient as using a desktop or laptop computer –

Google is on the move. The internet giant has held talks with Orange, the mobile phone operator, about a multi-billion-dollar partnership to create a ‘Google phone’ which makes it easy to search the web wherever you are.

The collaboration between two of the most powerful brands in technology is seen as a potential catalyst for making internet use of mobile phones as natural as on desktop computers and laptops.

Executives from Orange flew to Silicon Valley in California for a meeting at Google’s headquarters, or ‘Googleplex’, to hold preliminary discussions about a joint deal. The companies believe that they have an affinity as brands that are perceived as both ‘positive’ and ‘innovative’.

Their plans centre on a branded Google phone, which would probably also carry Orange’s logo. The device would not be revolutionary: manufactured by HTC, a Taiwanese firm specialising in smart phones and Personal Data Assistants (PDAs), it might have a screen similar to a video iPod. But it would have built-in Google software which would dramatically improve on the slow and cumbersome experience of surfing the web from a mobile handset.

A source close to the talks told The Observer: ‘Google are software experts and are doing some amazing work compressing data so that the mobile user gets a much better experience. They don’t know so much about mobiles, but they are eager to learn from Orange’s years of experience.’

Among the potential benefits are location-based searches: aware of your handset’s geographical position, Google could offer a tailored list of local cinemas, restaurants and other amenities, and maps and images from Google Earth. It is believed that the Google phone would not go on sale before 2008.

Source: The future for Orange could soon be Google in your pocket

A recent post on TechCrunch discusses some new “geographic web” features that have been added to the Google Earth search engine. The features include geographic information pulled from Wikipedia as well as pictures from a geographic photo sharing site called Panoramio.

Source: Google Adds The Geographic Web To Earth

Google has announced that they are ending their question and answer service “Google Answers”.

Source: Google Blog

Hedir.com has published the following trick in their web directory that shows Gmail users how to find out which sites give away their email addresses to spammers.

When you give your email address to a website, you hope that they don’t sell or trade your address to a bunch of spammers. Well if they do, here is a simple way to see what sites are responsible for what particular piece of email. This requires you have a Gmail account.

If your Gmail login name was username@gmail.com and you went to samplesite.com to fill out a registration form, instead of just entering username@gmail.com as your email, enter it as username+samplesitecom@gmail.com instead. When Gmail sees a “+” in an email address, it uses all the characters to the left of the plus sign to know who to send it to. In this example it would still send it to username@gmail.com.

Now whats cool is if you search Gmail for username+samplesitecom, you will see all messages that were sent to that email address.

To see who is responsible for sending a specific message click the Show Details link and you will see the complete address.

The Journal Times is reporting on how the Racine County Sherriff’s Department used Google Earth to find the growing location of a drug dealer’s marijuana plants.

From the article –

The investigation began Friday after Racine County Sheriff’s deputies pulled over Dean Brown, 37, of Racine, near highways 75 and 20, according to a criminal complaint. A deputy smelled marijuana as he approached the car, and discovered 18 pounds of freshly harvested marijuana in the car’s cargo area. The marijuana, stuffed in two large garbage bags with heavy stems poking through the plastic, was worth between $63,000 and $140,000.

Brown was arrested for felony drug possession, but that was just the beginning of the investigation. Deputies found a GPS unit around Brown’s neck with coordinates to areas throughout Racine County, the complaint said.

On Saturday, Metro Drug agents plugged coordinates saved in Brown’s GPS unit into Google Earth, a searchable compilation of satellite images available through the Internet. By entering the coordinates, agents were able to find the locations in Racine County programmed into the GPS unit.

Source: Sheriff’s department uses Google Earth to pinpoint marijuana fields

Azstarnet.com reports the following facts and information on how often people search for other people on Google ( “Googling” ).

If you haven’t yet popped your name into a Google search box to see what turns up, give it a try. Others will.

A recent survey found that 77 percent of recruiters use search engines to learn more about job candidates. Will they like what they find?

Maybe you started dating that next someone special. Want to bet that he or she is checking online to see if you’re as special, or as single, as you say?

Every day, there are upwards of 50 million searches for a proper name, according to Search Engine Watch. People Google themselves, their friends, old school chums, potential new mates, former co-workers and that girl you dated when you were 16.

If your name doesn’t pop up somewhere, you live in a cave and have not been seen by anyone in the past 15 years.

Source: They’re Googling you — so look good online

From a BBC article on a new Google feature that will alert web surfers about unsafe web sites –

Google has started warning users if they are about to visit a webpage that could harm their computer.

The warning will pop up if users click on a link to a page known to host spyware or other malicious programs.

The initiative comes out of a larger project cataloguing programs that plague people with unwanted ads, spy on web habits or steal personal data.

Google is one of several companies trying to act as an “in-flight adviser” to ensure people stay safe online.

You can read the entire article @ Google warns on ‘unsafe’ websites.

In yet another example of how powerful the Google search engine is, the Korea Times is reporting that The Korean Ministry of Communication and Information has detected over 95,000 resident registration numbers that are obtainable on the Google search engine.

From the article –

The Ministry of Communication and Information said that it has detected 95,219 South Koreans’ resident registration numbers that are open for fraudulent use on Google, the world’s most widely used Internet search engine.

The number of possible victims swells to 903,665 when those whose ID numbers are partly exposed are included, the ministry said in a report, after conducting an online inspection last week.

Google will be asked to remove the leaked personal information and the whole cleaning process will take up to two months, the ministry said.

“The resident registration number is a very important piece of private information that should be protected by law. However, as Google is a foreign operation, there was no way to enforce the law to it,’’ the ministry’s official Oh Jin-ho said on the phone. “We invited Google’s Asia-Pacific representative (to meet with us) in June and explained the urgency of the matter. He gladly agreed to cooperate with us.’’

Oh said that most Korean Internet portals and search engines are now observing the government’s instructions on the privacy and protection of personal data such as the resident registration number.

The 13-digit registration number is widely used as the means for personal identification at banks, service companies, government offices and many Web sites in South Korea. As it is easily obtained by using Google, the stolen registration numbers were often used in creating false IDs in various forms of cyber crime.

Even the ID numbers of South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun and prime minister Han Myeong-sook had been freely circulated on the Internet until last month, when United Liberal Democrat lawmaker Ryu Geun-chan brought up the issue, saying that the president’s personal numbers had been used 416 times for online verification and 280 times for adult verification at x-rated Web sites, probably by someone other than the president himself.

“Right after Ryu came up with the issue, we sent an e-mail to Google to ask it to remove the president’s ID numbers,’’ said the ministry’s official Oh. “There was no other way but to send e-mails to Google every time we found someone’s personal information exposed on the service. But with the completion of the automatic detection program, it will be much easier from now,’’ he said.

As an extreme case, the ministry found that a 24-year-old citizen, identified as Lee, had his ID registration number exposed on 927 different Web pages.

Google has launched their own online “help desk” with a new feature known as “Google Help”. Google Help provides online answers to common questions and solutions to common problems for all Google services.

You can find answers to issues about web searching and browsing as well as uses for Gmail and Google Earth and Google Maps.

You can access Google Help @ www.google.com/support.