News reports coming out of Germany say that this massive insect escaped its underground lair sometime in the last couple of days and has been terrorizing rural areas. Witnesses claim the creature is at least 50 meters in length and can snap a person in two with its powerful jaws.

All attempts to contain the beast have proven fruitless and the German government has sent out an international plea for military aid. Large cans of Raid^® are also being accepted.

Google is celebrating its eight birthday today with this tasty cupcake logo. It got me wondering what their logos from past birthdays looked like. Here are 2005, 2004, 2003 and 2002. It seems they didn’t have special logos for previous birthdays.

If you would like to read more about Google’s early days, you can read their official history page.

I think I’ll go have a cupcake in their honor.

(I really need to stop finding reasons to indulge my pastry habit.)

It seems Google is interested in making their services even more user friendly and is willing to pay you for your help. The article at ZDNet goes a bit into Google’s usability history and also quotes large portions of their User Experience Research FAQ but never actually links to the study’s sign-up form.

Being amazinly picky, I would love to try this out. I have a definite knack for finding annoyances and inefficiencies in apps and sites I use frequently. Considering how many people must have signed up after this was Dugg, though, I wonder if it’s still worth trying to get into the study.

All the news outlets are buzzing about this. Is Mark Zuckerberg about to become the next obscenely rich internet entrepreneur?

Will this affect Facebook users other than maybe having to deal with more ads?

Will Facebook’s recent privacy issues have an effect on this deal?

Tune in tomorrow¹ and find out.

¹My imaginary lawyers insist that I clarify that tomorrow, in this context, does not necessarily mean tomorrow in the classical sense of the word.

It appears that Google has not received the ruling they were hoping for in their copyright case against the Belgian media. Not only have they been forced to cease indexing French and German-language news stories through Google Nieuws België, but they have finally posted the entire court ruling on their Belgian front page which they had been fighting.

Here is a screenshot of the page in question for those of you who may read this after the five day court mandated period has passed.

Google plugs phishing hole via ZDNet Technology News

Google News to appeal Belgian copyright decision via The Register

Yahoo! spooks investors with talk of an advertising slowdown via Guardian Unlimited

Google regains ground in U.S. search market via News.com

A Google Trial Ties Ad Position to User Behavior via ClickZ Network

Over on Google Operating System (relax, it’s just the blog’s name, not some secret project by Google) there’s a post about using Google Suggest as a Calculator from Firefox 2.0’s Search Bar. I’m ashamed of myself for never tried this before.

In case you were wondering, it actually does compute that.

It’s a shame that the answer doesn’t show in the results drop-down like that on the actual Google Suggest site. Would save having to submit the request. It’s not like there are ads or anything on the results page.

Normally when it comes to search interfaces I opt for the “simpler the better” approach, but Live.com’s Image Search with all it’s flashy Ajaxy goodness makes me happy. Maybe it’s the fact that you still see the image results on the left side, next to the framed source page, after having clicked on an image.

Let’s do a comparison:

A search for hedgehog on Google Image Search.

The same search on Live.com Image Search.

What can I say, I like hedgehogs.

To celebrate Banned Books Week 2006 (September 23-30), Google has set up a special page on Google Book Search listing books that have been challenged or banned through the years.

I’m rather surprised at some of the books listed, and not so much about others. If you’re interested in why some of these books drew the attention of the uptight book-banning types, there is a handy list provided by the American Library Association. Some of the reasons, such as for Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, are rather humorous.

I’m definitely going to have to add some of these to my reading list.

Those of you who have been beta testing Windows Vista have probably already seen it, since it’s the default homepage for IE7, but Microsoft’s Live.com has come out of beta.

As you can see, Microsoft has learned a bit and no longer has a default homepage so filled with junk that you can’t figure out what you want. It’s quite sparse, don’t you think? Even Google has more stuff than that on their front page these days.