Cormac Moylan

It’s extremely rare to see Google change anything on their homepage. Today they added a link to donation splash page for victims of the recent Myanmar disaster.

Join the recovery efforts mobilizing around the world to assist cyclone victims in Myanmar. Your donation to either of these organizations will help survivors of the cyclone and other natural disasters rebuild their communities, and their lives.

Google are drumming up financial support for Unicef and Direct Relief International by providing a Google Checkout service for donation lodgements to both of these organisations. I wonder if Google will match the donations they receive via this service?

Either way it’s an excellent gesture.

You can read more about Google’s response to the Myanmar disaster on their official blog.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thank you for visiting! Cormac

Last night I went to check out Iron Man the movie. I’m a bit of a Marvel comic enthusiast. I have seen many of the recent Marvel revivals. Some have been flopped, some have been outrageously brilliant.

Iron man is outrageously brilliant. It’s an epic movie. Robert Downey Jr brilliantly portrays the flawed super hero. Jeff Bridges is excellent, as he always is, as Robert Stark’s right hand man. The special effects are unbelievable as well. There are times when you see CGI stuff and it can be quite impressive but the CGI stuff on Iron Man looks so realistic. The script is solid. The dialog is as you would expect. It has the perfect blend of action, adventure and light comedy.

The only disappointing things about the movie are the lack of a decent soundtrack and Gwyneth Paltrow. A decent soundtrack can make a world of difference to an action movie. Just look at what Rage Against The Machine did for the Matrix movies and Moby for the Bourne Movies. Sadly the soundtrack is absent from Iron Man. As for Gwyneth Paltrow, bah.. What is she doing in a comic book movie? Her acting was grand but every time she appeared on the screen I expected her to break out into Jane Austin or something.

This is the official trailer..

(sounds like Pearl Jam are playing in the background)

Related:

• Iron Man Rock Solid No.1 in Debut
• Iron Man, pure gold for Marvel
• Iron Man’s $100M-plus Debut

…the lack of a search box on Google’s Custom Search Documentation website.

If only there was a quick way to search through all of that documentation, eh lads?

Any ideas on how a search box can be implemented? Maybe Google should ask these guys about putting a search box on their CSE page.

I don’t generally use MSN for search. I find their engine to be as useful as window wipers on a submarine. But for one reason or another I needed to do a MSN search. I couldn’t believe it when I saw that they had auto populated the search bar with a search term!

So far MSN have suggested that I search for ‘2008 Presidential Campaign’, ‘Mariah Carey’ and ‘Funny Pet Videos’. Why would I want to search for that crap? Surely it’s my choice what I search for, no?

What’s even worse is that a crappy flash animation is played over the search box which tells you how to use the search box! A magnifying glass shoots across the screen and gives a brief demonstration that you need to click the magnifying glass button to complete your search. Thanks for the demo guys! I would have never figured it out.

Unfortunately I have to wait until the animation stops playing before I can click in the search box to remove the auto populated crap. But what’s even worse is that the animation actually breaks the search box! If you’re using Firefox on a Mac, you can’t actually click in the search box at all both before the animation plays and once it completes! I had to switch browser to Safari in order to do my search.

Good work MSN. Nice ‘feature’.

Do you have a sexy voice?
Parlez-vous anglais?
Are you a gent, a lady or both?
Do you want to do a voice over for a podcast?

I’m looking for a short ‘You’re listening to the ‘X’ podcast. Check out ‘website.com’ for more’.

Leave a reply if you’re interested or mail me.
 

So a few months ago Microsoft invest a few dollars in Facebook.

It’s a bit of an irony then that Facebook don’t have Internet Explorer listed as a ‘cool’ browser.

The browser wars have never been tighter and I’m sure MS would prefer if one of their partners didn’t exclude them from a list which features their main rivals.