• Google Realtime Search Goes Offline As The Deal With Twitter Expires

    // Gradly // blog, google, News, Rants & Raves, Social Networks, Tech., Twitter No Responses

    Google’s agreement with Twitter to carry its results has expired, taking with it much of the content that was in the service with it. Google has this explanation:

    Since October of 2009, we have had an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results through a special feed, and that agreement expired on July 2.

    While we will not have access to this special feed from Twitter, information on Twitter that’s publicly available to our crawlers will still be searchable and discoverable on Google.

    As for other features such as social search, they will continue to exist, though without Twitter data from the special feed.

    Our vision is to have google.com/realtime include Google+ information along with other realtime data from a variety of sources.

    Google Realtime Search had carried content from a variety of services beyond Twitter, including Facebook fan page updates, Quora and Gowalla content, Check out the full source list:

    • Twitter tweets
    • Google News links
    • Google Blog Search links
    • Newly created web pages
    • Freshly updated web pages
    • FriendFeed updates
    • Jaiku updates
    • Identi.ca updates
    • TwitArmy updates
    • Google Buzz posts
    • MySpace updates
    • Facebook fan page updates
    • Quora
    • Gowolla
    • Plixi
    • Me2day
    • Twitgoo

    Still, as said, Twitter was the by far the most dominant content within the service. It’s unclear why the agreement was allowed to expire. Twitter has this to reply:

    Since October 2009, Twitter has provided Google with the stream of public tweets for incorporation into their real-time search product and other uses. That agreement has now expired. We continue to provide this type of access to Microsoft, Yahoo!, NTT Docomo, Yahoo! Japan and dozens of other smaller developers. And, we work with Google in many other ways.

    For its part, Google said:

    Twitter has been a valuable partner for nearly two years, and we remain open to exploring other collaborations in the future.

    Twitter has largely outsourced the service of Twitter search longer than a few days to Google, a deliberate decision so that Twitter could focus on other search features, such as its new Top Tweets feature

    You can certainly understand why Google+ has become even more important to the service now. While Google has gotten by largely without social signals from Facebook, having its own data from Google+ gives it insulation if it now has to get by without Twitter signals, as well.

    [via searchengineland]

  • Google+ Official iPhone App Is Awaiting Apple’s Approval

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Facebook, Gadgets, iPad, iPhone, News, Social Networks No Responses

    According to Google’s Erica Joy, an official Google+ iPhone application has been submitted to the App Store, and is currently awaiting Apple’s approval.

    The news came via Erica Joy’s Google+ account, in an update that read:

    For all my iPhone using friends: the Google+ iPhone app has been submitted to the App Store (no, not today, sometime prior to today) and is awaiting approval.

    Google+, a brand new social network, launched recently, and it is something to take on Facebook dominance in social networks. If you were lucky enough and have got your hands on an invite you will definitely find a cool and refreshing new social network.

    If Erica Joy’s update is anything to go by, we can expect a Google+ application to hit the App Store soon. and hopefully a universal app for iPhone and iPad for a real Facebook competition.

  • Michael Bay Uses Recycled Action Sequence in Transformers 3 From ‘The Island’

    // Gradly // blog, Movies, News, Rants & Raves, Scandal, Tech., Youtube 2 Responses

    Say what you will about Michael Bay, but he is a filmmaker who knows how to maximize the bang for the buck. He is often criticized for using too much product placement, which gives him millions of dollars more to play with than he would have otherwise had access to. so you can’t really blame the guy for re-using footage from one in another, more particularly the guys has used some footage from 2005 “The Island” and reuse it in Transformers 3 Dark of the moon.

    Filmmakers often use stock footage to save money from traveling to capture an exterior of a city, house or location. Its a very common occurrence which you likely never notice. Bay has used stock footage in most of films, sometimes borrowing shots from his earlier movies . Watch the clip below which shows that Bay recycled shots from an action sequence from The Island in Transformers: Dark of the Moon:

    And by the way, it’s not the first time Bay has done this. In Transformers, a shot of an aircraft carrier that was borrowed from Pearl Harbor.

    [via /Film]

  • The Real Story Behind The iPad 2 Jailbreak Leak

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Featured, Hack, iPad, Jailbreak, News 3 Responses

    Most of you know by now that Comex’s long-awaited iPad 2 jailbreak was leaked. As the hacker was putting the finishing touches on JailbreakMe 3.0, the PDF exploit was leaked to the world. Someone publicly posted the new JailbreakMe files, and the links spread around the web like wildfire.

    The original dramatic story heard was that a trusted beta tester leaked the files. That would have meant Comex was betrayed by someone he trusted, adding insult to injury. but according to iDB this is not what actually happened. Here’s the real story behind the iPad 2 jailbreak leak…

    20 year-old Ryan Lobbins is a computer science major from Arizona. Lobbins took to his blog yesterday to clear the air regarding his part in the leak of Comex’s exploit.

    “Am I responsible for the leak? Indirectly, yes. Did I leak it intentionally? Not really, I only intended for 1 or 2 people to try the files to see if they worked. The person who leaked it was Will Sayer, and him only. He released the files, sent off the info to news sites not me.”

    As it turns out, Lobbins isn’t a beta tester and never said that he was. The entire story seems to have been cooked up by the same person who posted the original links to the unfinished jailbreak.

    “I was playing Star Craft with some friends reading Comex’s Twitter updates like every other person waiting for the jailbreak. This is when I had a crazy idea just to search a site he posted in a previous tweet.”

    During his search, Lobbins came across Comex’s bannerbomb exploit for the Nintendo Wii which led him to believe this was Comex’s site. As he continued to pour through the directories, he came across a folder named saffron that grabbed his attention. Low and behold, it was Comex’s new JailbreakMe.

    “So what would you do if you stumbled on a website that had all the data for the jailbreak people have been waiting months for? At first I wasn’t sure what to do, let alone believe I found the files. The only true indication that I found them was all the pdf files, deb files named after different iOS devices, and a php file.”

    When Lobbins went to try the jailbreak on his iPad, it didn’t work. So the computer science major made copies of the files to try on other devices. He then uploaded the files to his personal site before going on vacation.

    The night of July 1st, while on holiday, Ryan’s curiosity got the better of him. Here he had Comex’s new jailbreak software, which didn’t work on his iPad. He wondered if it worked at all. He got in touch with someone he had met through an iDevice forum named MultimediaWill, and sent him a link to one of the uploaded PDF files.

    To his surprise, it worked. It quickly did jailbreak his iPad and installed the all-too-familiar Cydia icon. According to Lobbins, Will swore up and down he wouldn’t leak the files. But judging by the mayhem that ensued yesterday morning, he was lying.

    So there you have it, that’s how the infamous iPad 2 jailbreak leak unfolded. By now, most of the links to the leaked files have been removed, and the community is still holding vigilant for the real iPad 2 jailbreak.