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New Chrome App Tells Contacts Where You are When You Open Their Emails

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Stephen LamA new Google Chrome browser extension lets Gmail users see when and where users open their email messages.

San Francisco-based tech startup Streak created the app, which opens up a Google Maps-style display and shows the real-time location of message recipients when they open emails.

The message recipient does not need to have the Streak extension installed themselves for it to work. When a recipient receives a message from a Streak user, an “eye” icon on the user’s display will turn green to indicate the recipient opened the email.

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Just When You Thought Google Glass Couldn’t Get Creepier: New App Allows Strangers to ID You Just by Looking at You (+video)

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Photo Credit: Google Glass/FacebookHave you ever seen someone wearing Google Glass out at the bar? Like a real person at a real bar actually wearing Google Glass? If so, you know how absolutely ridiculous they look. Which may be the only factor we have that will stop this:

A new app will allow total strangers to ID you and pull up all your information, just by looking at you and scanning your face with their Google Glass. The app is called NameTag and it sounds CREEPY.

The “real-time facial recognition” software “can detect a face using the Google Glass camera, send it wirelessly to a server, compare it to millions of records, and in seconds return a match complete with a name, additional photos and social media profiles.”

The information listed could include your name, occupation, any social media profiles you have set up and whether or not you have a criminal record (“CRIMINAL HISTORY FOUND” pops up in bright red letters according to the demo).

Photo Credit: NameTag

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Google Announces Contact Lens Glucose Monitor

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Google has announced that it is testing a prototype for a contact lens that would help people with diabetes manage their disease.

In a press release distributed Thursday, the company said that the lens it is designing would measure glucose in tears continuously using a wireless chip and miniaturized glucose sensor. Google says that using the lenses would be a less invasive method of measuring glucose levels than finger-pricking.

It also claims that the more frequent testing would consequently reduce the risks associated with infrequent glucose testing such as kidney failure and blindness.

The contact lenses were developed during the past 18 months in the clandestine Google X lab that also came up with a driverless car, Google’s Web-surfing eyeglasses and Project Loon, a network of large balloons designed to beam the Internet to unwired places.

“We wondered if miniaturized electronics — think chips and sensors so small they look like bits of glitter, and an antenna thinner than a human hair — might be a way to crack the mystery of tear glucose and measure it with greater accuracy,” Google said in its press release.

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Google’s Military Robotics: Humanoid Robots Future of Ground Warfare?

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

Google CEO Larry Page has rapidly positioned Google to become an indispensable U.S. military contractor.

Google recently purchased Boston Dynamics, a robotics pioneer that produces amazing humanoid robots for the U.S. Defense Department.

This development invites attention to Google’s broader military contracting ambitions — especially since Boston Dynamics is the eighth robotics company that Google has bought in the last six months.

Just like drones are the future of air warfare, humanoid robots and self-driving vehicles will be the future of ground warfare according to U.S. defense plans.

There are many other reasons why the U.S. military is on path to become Google’s single largest customer. Likewise these reasons indicate Google has a closer working relationship with the NSA than it acknowledges publicly.

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Google’s Robots Give Amazon’s Drones a Run For their Money (+video)

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Photo Credit: David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Photo Credit: David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Google has snapped up the creator of the world’s fastest running robot and other eerily realistic animal-like machines supplied to the U.S. military.

The internet company’s acquisition of Boston Dynamics is latest in a string of robotics acquisitions in a mysterious initiative led by former Android chief Andy Rubin.

As Amazon readies a fleet of delivery drones, Boston Dynamics is Google’s biggest prize yet in the robot wars.

Among the creations to crawl, jump and gallop from its labs are Big Dog, a four-legged robot that can clamber over uneven terrain such as snowy forests, even when assailed by kicks from its makers, and Cheetah, which claims to hold the record for the fastest legged robot in the world, running at more than 29 miles per hour.

Many of Boston Dynamics’ robots have been developed with funding from the U.S. Department of Defense’s research unit, Darpa, making Google a military contractor, at least for now.

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IRS Using Google Maps to Spy On Taxpayers

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Agents from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are using Google Maps as part of their tool kit to audit taxpayers and organizations, The Daily Caller has learned.

A redacted IRS letter dated Sept. 8, 2011 reveals that at least in one case the IRS’s examiners used photos of a property, obtained through Google Maps, as evidence to revoke the 501(c)(4) status of a homeowner’s association.

“The road consists of a two-mile loop around the inside of the property. It goes not have any sidewalks or bicycle lanes. The examining agent printed and copied a map from Google Maps (www.google.com) into this report,” states the letter.

501(c)4 is a tax-exempt status that includes certain “social welfare organizations,” “local associations of employees,” “homeowners associations,” “volunteer fire companies,” and certain lobbying organizations.

The IRS became mired in scandal in May 2013 after a report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that IRS staffers had singled out tea party groups seeking 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status for extra scrutiny.

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Google Block on Child Porn: At last! Internet Giant Axes Links to Vile Sex-Abuse Websites

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Photo Credit: Alamy Internet search results linked to child abuse are to be blocked across the world in a stunning U-turn by Google.

The world’s biggest media firm has agreed to introduce changes which will prevent depraved images and videos from appearing for more than 100,000 different searches.

The company’s chairman Eric Schmidt, writing in today’s Daily Mail ahead of a Downing Street summit on internet pornography, says: ‘We’ve listened.

‘We’ve fine-tuned Google Search to prevent links to child sexual abuse material from appearing in our results.’

The restrictions, which have been designed to apply in English-speaking countries, will be expanded to cover the rest of the world and 158 other languages in the next six months.

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Creepy Google Glass Pics Without Anyone Knowing? Yes, You Can

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Photo Credit: Chris Barrett/PRserve Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNETI have come to terms with the notion that we will all soon be wearing glasses in order to surf the Web, check messages, and pretend we work at Google.

Some, though, are still concerned that the glasses offer too much opportunity to photograph or film people surreptitiously.

Defenders of the Google faith point out that no, no, you can tell when the glasses are in use. There’s a light that beams to the world.

A twisted few find this unfortunate. They want to be cleverer than thou and more creepy than thou.

May I present, therefore, the very fine Google Glass 3D Printed Sunshade?

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NSA Secretly Tapped Google, Yahoo Data Centers Worldwide, New Report Claims

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Photo Credit: Fox News Massive cloud networks from companies like Google and Yahoo cache and serve up much of the data on the Internet — and the NSA has secretly tapped into the unencrypted links behind those company’s enormous servers, according to a new report from the Washington Post.

By tapping into that link, the NSA can collect data at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, the Post reported — including not just foreign citizens and “metadata” but emails, videos and audio from American citizens.

Operation MUSCULAR, a joint program of the NSA and its British equivalent GCHQ, relies on an unnamed telecommunications provider outside of the U.S. to offer secret access to a cable or switch through with Google and Yahoo pass unencrypted traffic between their servers.

The massive servers run by the company are carefully guarded and strictly audited, the companies say; according to Google, buildings housing its servers are guarded around the clock by trained personnel, and secured with heat-sensitive cameras, biometric verification, and more.

Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw a drawing of the NSA’s hack revealed by Edward Snowden; the drawing includes a smiley face next to the point at which the agency apparently was able to tap into the world’s data.

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Massive Barge On San Francisco Bay Likely Secret Google Facility (+video)

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Photo Credit: CBSThe U.S. Navy had its share of secrets on Treasure Island, but few were better kept than what’s taking place on a mysterious barge just off the island.

The barge, with a four-story stack of shipping containers, is out in the open for all to see. But the project’s purpose has been kept under wraps, and virtually no one wants to talk about it for the record, from the harbor office at Clipper Cove to the Treasure Island Development Authority to the U.S. Coast Guard.

“I don’t know anything about it, honestly I don’t,” a voice on the intercom at the Clipper Cove told KPIX 5. “It’s a complete mystery to me.”

There has, of course, been speculation about the barge’s purpose, much of it centering on the belief that it’s a water-based data center for Google.

KPIX 5 has learned that Google is actually building a floating marketing center, a kind of giant Apple store, if you will — but for Google Glass, the cutting-edge wearable computer the company has under development.

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