Mike Blumenthal

Did you ever hear the one about the Lieutenant in the trenches of WWI that called together his dispirited troops and announced:”Troops, I have good news and I have bad news. Would you rather hear the good news first or the bad news?”. The troops called out in unison: “Tell us the good news! We …

Update 3/9 10:50: The error messages continue to be reported in the forums this morning. The most recent was at 9:39 AM. Google has yet to make a public statement about the error. Obviously, the two beers I suggested yesterday was not enough, or perhaps not enough folks with the problem followed the suggestion. I …

I have received several recent inquiries about the Pending message showing up on more Google Places accounts of late. According to this post by John Audette of 406 Strategies, a local internet marketing firm in Bend, Or. it is a fairly widespread bug. From his post: “Pending – Being Reviewed. This listing needs to be …

Google Places Search on the iPhone and Android now offers an option to show only business that are open. The feature is available in Places search and filters out not just restaurants that are closed but restaurants for which Google is not confident of their hours. I performed the following search yesterday afternoon for Restaurant …

Google Places and Hotpot have had a rough run of bugs of late. It seems that barely is one fixed that another crops to the fore. This was reported to me on February 22 by Plamen. The first 40 characters or so of the review are lopped off. It appears to be affecting any review …

Google is every so carefully dipping their toes in the water of providing real support. They seem to be moving at the speed of the slowest glacier but they are moving. One much needed customer support feature, pushing the reconsideration link directly into the dashboard, was first seen early last summer. The following statement has …

Update: At roughly 10:00 am EST it appears to have been fixed. Last night I went to bed with my blog post about the new Places hotel booking feature in the bag thinking life was under control and all was good in Google Places land. Hah! I awake to an email from Matt Tengler of …

Details about Google Places Hotel booking feature, first widely seen in November, are starting to leak out. Google has been somewhat reticent to make meaningful public comments and provide significant details about it. This Places feature allows users to select a booking date, click through from the Places Page and immediately begin the booking process. …

Is this a test or a rollout? I am seeing this subtly different interface on all Google properties. Is anyone else seeing? Click to view larger: Barry Schwartz just pinged me to let me know that it is a test first seen last week. It is however being reported in New Zealand and Denmark.