Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Too Busy to Actually Live Life?

Well... Google is here to help, as always:


Not really.  It's a prank.  From the LA Times:

Links to a bogus website called Google Xistence (ed: Google has flagged this link as a phishing site, see below) have been making the rounds today. The tagline: "Life is hard. Let Google live it for you."
The site resembles a Google product page, complete with YouTube instructional video, and purports to let users plug in their Facebook, Twitter and blog log-in credentials. The service supposedly lets Google live your social life for you -- so you can "play World of Warcraft or Tower Defense."
A Google spokesman confirmed what we had already suspected. "Google is not affiliated in any way with that site," he wrote in an e-mail.
The prankster behind Xistence, Philipp Drössler, didn't run with the hoax for very long. He immediately tweeted a link on the bogus @googlabs account he set up pointing to The Next Web's blog post titled "Google Xistence: We wish it was real."
But Google gave him a metaphorical slap in the face by listing the site on its practically ubiquitous phishing list. The second- and third-most-popular browsers, Firefox and Chrome, ping Google's list when users navigate to a Web page.
About the highlighted bits: that it did.  And I'm just paranoid enough to not tempt fate when it comes to malicious sites, so I didn't open the Xistence page link to see what all the brouhaha was about.  But I think the prank's concept is both funny and indicative of the times.  I'm sure there's a study somewhere that shows how much time we all spend on Facebook, Twitter, and the blogs... either our own or those of others.  Or there should be if there isn't.

5 comments:

  1. That could be my life. I'm trying to wean myself away...

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  2. Buck, have I just missed out on all modern life? I do have a face book account, but hardly use it. What is the point, other than providing a database to snoop on old acquaintances and flames?

    There is a nom da guerre employed on my facebook...

    We all need to go out and play, sometimes. Not healthy to stay indoors all the time.

    As for twitter, I ain't even going there. Twitter might make me seem normal.

    w/v; Skinfem. Cool.

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  3. Lou: Don't fight The Power. ;-)

    Darryl: I gave Facebook a shot but quit after three months or so. I think I might have missed the point. As for Twitter... I'm a passive user for the most part, following hockey bloggers and a few politcos. Twitter IS very useful when something happens and you want real-time updates. E.g., the post-election Iran situation, Haiti earthquake.

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  4. I guess your experience mirrors mine. Your reason for twitter makes sense.

    A friend in Ozzy thinks that Facebook and Twitter are used by governments to harvest and gather personal information, ie; Face Recognition for surveillance cameras. Makes sense, too.

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  5. Your friend in Oz makes sense, Darryl. One can never be too paranoid these days. ;-)

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Just be polite... that's all I ask.