Empty Handed

Google Maps has a cool new feature (well, I’ve only just noticed it) where you can create personal maps with notes and locations, and publish a public URL, or generate a Google Earth KML file.

I’ve created a Fishing Map, with all of the local fisheries I either use or am planning to take a shot at.

Toby was quite taken with this video, but was quite peeved that I couldn’t get the baby to get up and walk around.

I’ve been using Google Talk for a little while now, more or less since it launched. One of the reasons I prefer it over MSN, Yahoo and even Skype is that it’s nice and quiet, by which I mean not many people use it – precisely the reason many dislike it, I suppose. I got really fed up with using MSN (is that what it’s called?) because loads of random people added me to their contacts list the whole time, and then tried to talk to me! Can you believe it!? Also, loads of people who, shall we say, weren’t random had me as contacts, and also tried to talk to me, which I didn’t really like either. Anyway, it got to the point where I would log on, but never make myself visible, like going to the pub and hiding in the corner – actually, a lot like going to the pub and hiding in the corner. Then along came Google Talk to the rescue. Now, the only people on my list are people I really want to communicate with, and a lot of types that I know who cling to their hotmail accounts and refuse to see the @gmail light can’t get me. Hah! I think that’s a pretty good indication of whether I want someone on my IM list, to be honest – if they prefer to stick to the crappy Hotmail web mail or Yahoo or Freeserve or whatever when they could have the GMail web interface, I don’t want to share the web experience with them very much at all, because they are web idiots. This doesn’t mean I don’t want to interact with them in real life, obviously, just that I don’t really want to be chatted at or chain emailed by these types who don’t take the web too seriously, really.

But today, I’ve had a completely random contact request on GTalk. The same address tried to get me to be their friend several times, so it doesn’t seem particularly accidental, and the email address used doesn’t look like it would belong to anybody I’d be likely to know, or, in fact, anybody at all. I’m guessing that this is as a result of Google opening up the GTalk network to non-Google-Mail addresses. The address (27832355627@mxit.co.za) looks like a spammer address, or is certainly of that type. What’s puzzling is what would happen if I added them as a ‘friend’? Spam chat? Does this sort of thing go on on the other, larger and better established networks?

(edit: Of course it does – I’m such a web idiot! And it’s pretty obvious that a spimmer will try and do all the stuff they normally try by spam, just in the chat. Like, oh, yeah, I’m gonna download a file that 27832355627@mxit.co.za sends me. Anyway, it’s obviously a big problem, just Google for spim and see for yourself…)

Curiously, in the same day, I got a weird SMS from The National Lottery – well, the message isn’t weird, it’s the fact that they sent it to me (and probably thousands of others):

Sat LOTTO TRIPLE ROLLOVER jackpot is an est £20 million. Outlets shoud [sic] display their Double Rollover POS until new Triple Rollover POS arrives later this week.