Google mistakenly warns that search results 'may harm your computer'

Google, known for its reliable search results, freaked out for nearly an hour this morning.

If you slept in, you missed it: From 6:30 a.m. to 7:25 a.m., the Web giant warned that just about every one of the pages it delivered in response to user queries "may harm your computer." Clicking on the link generated an error message.

The quick-thinking bloggers at consulting firm L'Atelier grabbed the screen shot at the right and posted it on Flickr (with a Creative Commons license).

Google apologized for the mistake on the Official Google Blog. Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, explained that Google works with a nonprofit called StopBadware.org to identify Web pages known to install malicious software. On search results pointing to sites believed to be harmful, Google appends the warning, "This site may harm your computer." But this morning, that warning appeared on almost all of its search results delivered to users across the globe.

What happened? "Very simply, human error" in updating that list of harmful sites, Google said:

We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs.

Thanks to our team for their quick work in finding this. And again, our apologies to any of you who were inconvenienced this morning, and to site owners whose pages were incorrectly labelled. We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again.

Google, whose search engine is the most used worldwide, generated nearly $22 billion in advertising revenue last year. It will be interesting to see if Wall Street analysts try to calculate how much money the company lost during the 55 minutes it stopped delivering search results.

-- Chris Gaither

Photo: Mathieu Ramage via Flickr

Tweet Congress tracks politicians on Twitter, heckles ones who aren't

Want an easy way to get updates when Rep. Mike Honda posts on his blog or hear about what book Rep. Kevin McCarthy is reading?

Yes, even congresspeople are on Twitter.

Tweet Congress organizes all the congressional representatives who are tweeting their daily lives and provides a timeline of recent messages, state-by-state breakdowns of tweeting politicians and stats about the most popular representatives.

To be honest, the statistical breakdowns are a lot more interesting than the politician's own tweets. For example, only five of California's 55 congressional representatives have Twitter accounts. And of those, Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. George Miller haven't tweeted since the summer. Not so impressive.

Despite the Democrats holding a majority in Congress, 15 more Republicans are on Twitter. But failure to tweet is a bipartisan problem, with only 13% of Congress registered on the website. And that's not counting the Twitter ditchers, who signed up but haven't updated in months.

Tweet Congress provides more traditional contact info and a petition feature so you can bug your Congress member into signing up.

Oh, and he may not be a congressman, but a certain Governator is also on Twitter. (And so are we. Shameless plug.)

-- Mark Milian

Photo: Tweet Congress profiles of two non-tweeting representatives from California, Joe Baca and Xavier Becerra

3-D: Ready for Super Bowl commercials, but not much else on TV

It seems like only yesterday that I was in a Hollywood movie theater watching a football game in 3-D. On Sunday, I'll be at home watching a football game with 3-D commercials. Now that's progress!

Seriously, although the 3-D trend seems to be accelerating, there remain some notable hurdles. First is the lack of standards for how 3-D images are encoded, delivered, displayed and viewed. The DVD Forum brought a bit of clarity to the market this week when it chose technology by Sensio Technologies, a 3-D firm from Montreal, to be the standard for encoding 3-D images onto a conventional DVD. But even that move leaves several pieces in flux. ...

Why are there no cool apps for Blackberry?

We BlackBerry owners who have iPhone envy know that there's never a worse time to be sitting next to an iPhone user than in a waiting room.

You're sitting there, choosing between rereading e-mail on your BlackBerry or flipping through Westways Magazine (yawn). Meanwhile, the guy next to you is playing his iPhone like a flute, sending pictures to strangers in the waiting room and figuring out just what hellacious music they're listening to with his Shazam app. Makes you wonder: Why can't your BlackBerry do that?

It's all about the apps.

Sure, Apple is gaining market share. And sure, more consumers are buying iPhones than BlackBerrys these days. But there are still a lot more Research in Motion smartphones out there than Apple ones, and the BlackBerry isn't just for businesspeople anymore.

What makes the BlackBerry most vulnerable is its lack of cool applications. Apple's App Store is jam-packed with 15,000 of them; iPhone and iPod Touch users have downloaded more than half a billion apps. There's a Google Android App Store, and the T-Mobile G1 phone that runs Android comes pre-loaded with a nifty anagram app, perfect for honing your Scrabble skills.

What's RIM got to offer? I asked the company where BlackBerry users might be able to find some free or cheap iPhone-like apps these days. Its reps sent me to two websites, Built for BlackBerry and BlackBerry Solutions Catalog. The former, which seems to have more choices, showcases free favorites such as Facebook, MySpace and Flickr apps for the Blackberry. But the games category was lacking: Wheel of Fortune, Magic 8 Ball and Guitar Hero cost $6.99 and up. The only thing I could find for free was a trial version of UNO that ran out after a few weeks. There was definitely no cool free Blackberry app like Ocarina that lets you play "Joy to the World" while blowing into your phone.

Tyler Lessard, director of alliances at RIM, defended the company by saying that the amount of apps available for BlackBerry is growing. And apps launched at the Consumer Electronics Show, such as the Slacker mobile music service, SlingPlayer Mobile and Unify4Life AV/Shadow, have proved popular.

"There are thousands of applications available for the BlackBerry platform, and some of the most successful ones are free," he wrote in an e-mail.  MySpace for BlackBerry, he said, had over a million downloads in its first week. RIM plans to soon debut a storefront where users can see all the Blackberry apps in one place, he said..

But in terms of new apps, RIM probably won't be able to match Apple ...

Around the Web 1.30.09: Google Maps kills a deer, celebrities look to YouTube, NEC cuts jobs

-- Why would William Morris Agency want to put its talent and brands on YouTube? LAT

-- The van that takes pictures for Google Maps runs over a deer. The Daily What

-- How can you conduct business from your cardboard box down by the river? With a printer the size of a pen. USA Today

-- The next wannabe iPhone killer may come from Dell (subscription may be required). WSJ

-- Japanese electronics giant NEC will cut 20,000 jobs as the semiconductor business slows. AP via LAT

-- You've probably noticed people listing 25 random things about themselves on Facebook. Those lists can be quite revealing. AllThingsD

-- A win for Sprint -– its argument that consumers can’t bring preemptive lawsuits wins over judges. LAT

-- The Senate’s plan to stimulate high-speed Internet access could also stimulate Verizon. Bits

-- Looking for a company that's not imploding these days? Try Amazon.com. NYT

-- Broadcom reports a loss, says it will cut jobs. TheStreet.com

-- Disney’s ABC will join the ranks of other entertainment giants and cut staff. LAT

-- A drug that makes you tan has been approved for human trials. It's a good thing someone's thinking about the important stuff these days. Wired

-- Alana Semuels

Photo: YouTube: The next silver screen? Credit: AdamJackson1984 via Flickr

DailyCandy seeks your favorite geek hotties

Mark Zuckerberg. Sergey Brin. Bill Gates. Hot or not?

DailyCandy certainly thinks they are. The e-mail newsletter that's famous for promoting clothes, shops and restaurants is holding a contest called Get with the Programmer. Readers can nominate their favorite heartthrob "tech dude." Finalists will be announced Feb. 4, and fans can vote online.

If your nominee wins the title of "Hottest Programmer" when it's announced Feb. 13, you each win an HP Mini 1000 XP edition series netbook computer with an upgraded 60-gigabyte hard drive. Not a bad prize for spilling your guts about your secret nerd crush.

We took a little time out to do an instant-message chat with Dannielle Kyrillos, editor-at-large at DailyCandy. Here’s her take on the photos people have submitted (one programmer was naked, with a laptop covering his "mainframe"), plans for future dork fanfare and why picking a winner is going to be "harder than curing a blue screen of death."

Lori: Hey, Dannielle. You there?

Dannielle: hi!

Dannielle: i'm here!

Lori: Awesome.

Lori: Thanks for taking the time to chat with us today.

Dannielle: what a fun way to do an interview

Dannielle: i love it

Lori: Yes! I think it is super techie.

Dannielle: perfect for the subject!

Lori: So, just in time for Valentine's Day, you launched this contest "Get with the Programmer." Where did the idea come from?

Dannielle: A few weeks ago, we were sitting around the big table in our conference room

Dannielle: Discussing some DailyCandy discoveries whether they'd make good items

Dannielle: that sort of thing happens here all the time

Dannielle: well, the conference room is connected via a glass door to the room where our tech guys sit

Lori: ah ha!

Lori: (we call it a cave sometimes)

Dannielle: since we're all girls we like to tease them and flirt with them

Dannielle: bet they love that...

Dannielle: and suddenly it struck us clear as day --

Dannielle: there are boys sitting in dark rooms around the country who are the absolute heart and soul (and more technically, guts) of their companies

Dannielle: and we thought it's high time they were celebrated

Dannielle: enough funny flirting like we do through the glass door

Dannielle: how about some public recognition on a national stage!

Lori: nice!

Read more of the interview after the jump.

Cash4Gold nabs Ed McMahon, MC Hammer for Super Bowl spot

Please, Cash4Gold, don't hurt 'em.
Photos: Matt Sayles / Associated Press; Jeff Chiu / Associated Press

Cash4Gold.com, the "As Seen On TV" meltdown factory that solicits baggies of your unused chains, rings, coins and earrings in exchange for a bit of quick cash, has kicked a PR field goal. 

The company said today it had signed Ed McMahon and MC Hammer to star in a commercial for Sunday's Super Bowl, one of the last few slots NBC had available. Hammer will bring a veteran's touch to the endeavor, having starred in this Lay's Super Bowl spot in 2005. And McMahon is no stranger to corporate sponsorship himself. In fact, when they finally establish the Hall O' Fame for Eazy Money Infomercials, Cash4Gold may end up right alongside McMahon alma mater Publishers Clearing House.

It's not clear to me whether there's an intentional ironic element here, given that both Hammer and McMahon are famous for their serious financial woes. Hammer blew through a multimillion-dollar fortune in a few years, and McMahon recently contended with a near-foreclosure on his Beverly Hills home.

On the other hand, it could be a brilliant sympathy play. Times are just as tough for these faded stars as they are for average Americans. Which is why, obviously, we should all dross our valuables.

"As a nation, we are in uncharted economic territory, and Cash4Gold’s rapid growth is a clear indicator of our new reality," CEO Jeff Aronson said in a press release trumpeting the signings. “Since the credit and housing market collapses, Americans are feeling strapped for cash. Cash4Gold.com has become the reliable source of fast cash for anyone who needs it, without driving them any further into debt.”

For his part, Hammer seems excited about the whole affair. He sent out a tweet today noting he was on his way to Tampa: "Got to work that SuperBowl.... 'Melting Gold Baby' .... fun commercial !!!"

Let's hope that he was just typing hastily there, and that the commercial isn't actually called "Melting Gold Baby." That would be an immodest proposal indeed.

-- David Sarno

Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore: first Twitter celeb couple

Did you hear the ruckus this morning?

Ashton Kutcher ranted on camera about his neighbor's early-morning construction noise. Amid a flurry of expletives, Kutcher, wearing a cowboy hat, shouted about the 7 a.m. construction, while his wife, Demi Moore, waited patiently inside.

It may sound like a reality TV show in the vein of "The Osbournes." In fact, this is a real morning in the life of these Hollywood stars.

And thanks to the immediacy of Twitter and Qik, the video streaming website on which Kutcher recently broadcasted his Sundance Internet game show, we, the audience, don't miss a moment of the show.

Meet the Kutchers.

The messages started pounding at a time when many of Ashton's 7,800 Twitter fans and Demi's 5,600 followers were going about their morning routines.

"The neighbor doing construction with 6 guys pounding hammers against steel at 7am is no way to wake up!" Demi tweeted.

"I'm gonna kill my neighbor!" Ashton wrote shortly thereafter.

"Baby keep it together there should only be another 5 months of this," Demi wrote. "Calm and gentle baby you can pull out the paint gun later!"

We didn't get to see any guns, but Ashton did fire a barrage of insults on the Qik video , which he tweeted to his fans.

The ruckus attracted some media attention. The Huffington Post blogged about the Kutcher "meltdown," and TMZ got a comment from the neighbor, who reportedly called Ashton "silly."

As I type this, the Kutchers continue to tweet about the hammering and their frustrations with the media coverage. (Whoops, I guess I'm adding to those frustrations.)

"Can't someone have a moment and even a sense of humor about being annoyed without skanky tmz twisting into something it's not?" Demi tweeted this afternoon.

Ashton has posted a follow-up video, reflecting on ...

Social Status: Reddit top user 'qgyh2' sits on the hot seat

Last summer, our Web Scout blog profiled a Reddit user who goes by the name 'qgyh2.' He's the top user on the social news website, which gives him a lot of power over what appears there. Now the mysterious Midland, Mich., maven, who scours the Web for interesting news bits, is finding himself the subject of news on his hangout and on its rival, Digg.

The Digg post "You think Digg has a Power User problem?" hit the site's front page a few days ago, amassing more than 3,200 votes. The post highlights a screen shot showing that qgyh2 had submitted 10 of the top 18 links in the "environment" category.

Qgyh2 is the author of the "environment" category (also known as a sub-reddit). That grants him the ability to moderate submissions. Some users, like the ones in this thread, are upset with the way he monitors for spam. But qgyh2 said in an e-mail that much of the junk is now filtered automatically.

The "environment" sub-reddit doesn't get much traffic, which could explain why one user has such dominance over its top submissions. Also, it's one of qgyh2's favorite haunts. "It is one of a handful of reddits I typically submit to," he said.

Reddit user Illah says dominance by individuals isn't much of a problem on the website. " 'Environment' is a niche reddit with a limited audience," he wrote in the thread. "Most stories have single-digit vote counts."

But all the attention given to Reddit's top-user "problem" doesn't seem to have taken the pressure off Digg's top dog.

Andrew Sorcini, a 40-year-old film editor from Los Angeles who goes by the alias MrBabyMan on Digg, gets plenty of flack for his widespread influence on the website. Users accuse him of duplicating their story submissions (an act they equate with stealing); his more popular reputation lets him elevate stories to the front page, leaving the submissions of less-powerful Diggers to languish even if they discovered an interesting item first.

"I think it's a natural artifact of being successful," Sorcini wrote in an instant message. "The best advice I've been given is to consider flamers [a nickname for excitable people on the Net] as Web terrorists. To address their abuse is to legitimize them, so the best course of action is to ignore them."

In the end, these top users don't seem to be gaining anything besides Internet celebrity. They haven't yet found a way to cash in on their successes.

"I'm just submitting stuff I like," Sorcini wrote. "My wife, on the other hand, wishes there was some way to monetize my ability!"

-- Mark Milian

Around the Web 1.29.09: All Google all the time

-- At Google's D.C. inauguration bash, Craigslist's Craig Newmark said to keep an eye on Google project manager Katie Jacobs Stanton. Booyah. President  Obama just tapped her. AllThingsD

-- Google changes its privacy policy in what could be a red flag for privacy advocates. Digital Inspiration

-- Warning: Not everyone is loving Google apps. The Business of Software

-- YouTube, trying to get all professional after its love fest with user-generated content, is close to a Hollywood deal. NYT

-- Best friends forever until I delete you on Facebook. NYT

-- Jason Calacanis diagnoses a new condition: Internet Asperger’s syndrome. Calacanis

-- My Nigerian payday and other offers I can't refuse are more plentiful now as online scammers proliferate. WSJ

-- The secrets of Netflix's success. Fortune

-- AdMob on a growth spurt raises more money. AdMob

-- Video games see profits migrating east. Venture Beat

-- And now for your moment of zzzzzzz zen. Cute Things Falling Asleep

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: President Obama with economic advisor and Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Credit: Charles Dharapak / Associated Press