April 1st is NOT the Day to Introduce a Google Maps Based Product

I received the following snippet from Google Alert yesterday and I was forced to do a double take   NordicTrack Introduces Fitness Equipment Merged With Google Maps 7:06 pm today NordicTrack introduces iFit Live powered by Google Maps, the first product that merges fitness equipment and Google Maps technology. If you’ve always wanted to run the marathon route …

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Google Officially Ends Support For QR Code in Places

Google is obviously moving strongly towards NFC (near field communications) as their technology of choice for closing the loop of the “last mile” in the local link between consumers and Google. They have built the NFC chip into their new Nexus and they are testing NFC in both a payment and POS environments. They used …

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Why Sec 230 of the Communications Decency Act Needs Amending

Yesterday, the All Facebook blog published a story titled Family Sues Facebook Over Photos of Daughter’s Corpse. From the article (bold is mine): A couple in New York is suing Facebook after a paramedic posted photos of their daughter’s dead body on the social networking site. Martha and Ronald Wimmer’s daughter Caroline died two years …

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Google Maps: Geo Data Quality & Time to Fix

Update 7:30 PM 3/29: Reader Penguinopus reports that Google has fixed the mapping error that was directing folks to drive down an unfinished section of the Intercounty Connector in Maryland. Time to fix ~ 102 hours. (And that was over a weekend). The Baltimore Sun reported on Friday, March 25th around noon that Google Maps …

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Responding to Fake Reviews – Return of the Dentist

Earlier this month I ran an article 5 Tips for Responding (or Not) to “Fake” Reviews that described the terrible situation of a dentist whose personal life had become the subject of reviews. When we last left this saga, the dentist was not fairing well in the drama to clear his name. The post generated …

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Google Places Dashboard: QR Code MIA, Good riddance!

The printable QR Code that directed folks to your Places Page that Google offered up in the Places Dashboard went missing last week. A number of posters have turned up in the forums asking where it went, wondering how to print out the QR Code for their Places Page and lamenting its absence.  Google has …

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Graphic: How an SMB Solves a Problem in Google Places

As I read of Google’s newly stated public commitment to better customer service in Google Places, thoughts of a myriad of current issues swirled through my head. After mentally struggling through 10 or so current Places problems, the miasma settled around this one issue that I thought I could use to illustrate what an SMB …

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