Welcome to Google’s Screenwise program, the kind of creepy Internet monitoring that’s 100% voluntary and we’re fairly sure isn’t going to last for a year, because there are only so many visits to RedTube they’re willing to log.

The program is, of course, completely voluntary, and comes in two flavors: peeping in your windows and staring at you over surveillance cameras.

OK, OK, the first part of the program simply requires you to download a browser extension, and it nets you a $5 Amazon gift card and more money every three months.

The second, which actually pays some real cash, involves actually installing a Screenwise Panel into your home network to track everything you do on the web. For that, you get $100 up front and $20 a month until you can’t take it any more or the program ends.

Personally, we’re wondering if this is a good idea simply because the vast majority of users will either change their clicking habits, or the normal people on the Internet trolling forums of TV shows they hate and looking at Sasha Grey videos won’t sign up for this. It’ll just be nerds, grandmas, and the shameless.

Although come to think of it, that’s a pretty good cross-section of the Internet.

Screenwise [Google]

Not sure if everyone has been keeping track, but every new flagship Android device that Google releases has been accompanied by YouTube shenanigans featuring ninjas. Here’s the very first one, for the Nexus One, which I still think is the sexiest looking Google phone to date (as well as the best looking handset that HTC has produced period)…

And then for the Nexus S (again, lol at Samsung for refusing to allowing their device to be called the Nexus Two), you had this fourth wall breaking effort that I unfortunately cannot embed for technical reasons. And most recently, for the just launched Galaxy Nexus is this…

It’s an actual game that you can play, via YouTube. And it’s not half bad! As far as these kinds of things go, it’s actually pretty decent. It definitely has that old-school, NES vibe (you’ll definitely be reminded of TMNT and Battletoads).

But it also plays pretty damn well to boot; virtually every other effort of its kind always falls short in the playability department. Punching and kicking is crisp, as is grabbing and tossing foes aside as well. It’s hardly deep, but its three levels will keep you entertained. For those wanting more, there’s a free Android app that seriously picks up right where the YouTube version leaves off.

BTW, been working on an iPhone vs. Android piece for a while now; unfortunately, the Android phone I’m using is no longer the hottest Google phone on the block, but given the rapid fire pace in which such devices are released, I guess it can’t be helped. Look for it by the end of the week!

And now you can add “prank calls” to that list, because Google Hangouts is officially the Internet’s payphone. Except they’re free.

Well, any number in the United States and Canada are free; international calls aren’t supported yet. But if you want to call a friend from a Hangout in Hangouts With Extras, or that one convenience store where you’re convinced the dude will eventually have a stroke on the phone, you click “Invite”, then click the Phone tab, punch in the phone number, and then Google handles the rest.

We see this technology serving some incredible roles in our future. Now, which name do we use first, Hugh Jass or Mike Hunt?

A New Extra for Hangouts With Extras [Google]

Why, exactly, do we need this? Well, supposedly it offers more protection than your average heavily encrypted website, but it also allows you to use, say, NFC solutions offered by MasterCard’s payment partners (read: Google Wallet) on your computer with minimal trouble. Because we need methods to spend more money more quickly on the Internet, guys. That was absolutely crucial.

Intel and MasterCard to offer Ultrabook users ‘safer’ NFC checkout via PayPass [Engadget]

Why? The short answer is that your cable bill will never go down: cable companies are charged retransmission fees by networks, and they pass that cost onto you, along with whatever they please since federal rules give many of them a monopoly on areas for cable TV. The net result? Cable companies are starting to lose subscribers, as people in cities realize that they can get the same reruns off of Netflix Streaming for eight bucks and people without jobs realize they can do without seeing “Keeping Up With the Kardashians”.

The big roadblock has been that companies that strung the cable pretty much get total control of it. So, Google is just stringing its own cable.

Oh, and this isn’t even including Apple’s supposed new Internet TV, or the work Google has been doing elsewhere, OR the work Google’s been doing in online video, OR Amazon’s attempt to get every single episode of every single TV show up on their site digitally for two bucks a pop.

One thing is for sure: if you want to ditch cable, tech companies are welcoming you with open arms.

Google Ponders Pay-TV Business [Wall Street Journal]

There was a lot of speculation about Google Music when it launched. It’s kind of pointless to run a cloud service if you’re not going to sell people music. Even Google’s mighty ad power can’t made streaming lots of data for free or cheap profitable. But Google, having a pretty rough relationship with pretty much any company, was having real trouble getting the music companies to play ball and nobody was sure if they’d actually have a store or if they’d be taking Google Music out back with Pa’s shotgun this time next year.

Apparently, that’s done with: Andy Rubin, one of Google’s senior vice presidents, mentioned at a conference yesterday that Google was close to ironing out a deal and that their music store would include “a little twist.”

What, precisely, that little twist is, though, is up for debate. This is the music industry we’re talking about, so it’s probably nothing quite as exciting as, say, letting you burn a CD directly from the cloud. Maybe you get a free t-shirt?

Google’s ‘very close’ to launching a digital download store with ‘a little twist’ [Engadget]

Useful:
• Notifications can be seen without you having to unlock your phone, which is handy if you’re fumbling to get your phone out every time you get a text message.
• The keyboard, already rock solid, has been improved massively. The targeting has been overhauled to allow more precision, the suggestions bar has been streamlined, and there’s inline spell check.
• Speech-to-text is now word-for-word: no more dictating a sentence like “This stupid phone won’t recognize speech” and getting back, “Tis hoop did bone wrecked a nice beach.”
• If you use Chrome, your bookmarks automatically sync on your phone. If you don’t, Google hates you.
• The camera takes pictures instantly: no five-second wait for the flash to go off or the shutter to click.
• You can send somebody a form text message with one swipe, so if you get a call while you’re busy, you can politely beg off without stopping what you’re doing.
• A data tracking tool that actually breaks out which apps use the most data, which means you can figure out why you’re blowing past your cap constantly.
• Copy and paste has been overhauled: finally you can just highlight and drag around text if you need to.

Neat:

• Lots and lots of NFC (near field communications) features are available, the problem being NFC is still pretty new to phones, and a lot of it is stuff phones already do. Sorry, Google, not impressive that you have to use a custom chip to share info. iPhones do that by fist-bumping.
• The camera has a “panorama” mode: fire it up, wave it left to right or up and down, and it puts together a huge picture for you. Which we predict 99% of Android users will use precisely once, but it’s still cool.
• Gestures have been cleaned up and made simpler, although we’re kind of wondering just how much simpler you can make them. Still, it’s nice that it’s been made a bit more useable.
• Folders are easier to create; just stack stuff together. Still, how many folders do most people have on their phone?

Big Whoop:

• You can take a screenshot of your phone now. You know, because that’ll be useful.
• The lock screen now can use facial recognition software. Apparently, swiping your finger across a screen was so agonizingly difficult and hard to understand that Google just decided to give a “Ya FACE!” option to unlock your phone. Sure, it’s cool, but was this really a problem that needed solving?
• The default typeface has changed to something called ‘Roboto’, so every font nerd will be yelling about it for months.

In short, the overhaul makes 4.0 look pretty good. You’ll be able to get your hands on it early next year.

The Best New Features In Android 4.0 [Gizmodo]

So it seems like a good time to remind you that, even though this is the Internet we’re talking about, and even though it’s still the closest thing computers have to the “wild west,” you still need to make sure you’re not a total rebel.

Because, as a 10-year-old Netherlands kid learned over the past week when he signed up for Google+ despite not being old enough (13 is the minimum age), if you don’t abide by Google’s Terms of Service AND Google+’s Community Guidelines, you could end up in some really annoying trouble.

Why? Because Google+ is — duh – attached to your Google Account.

That means Google+ is attached to your Gmail account, your Google Reader account, your YouTube account, your Google Docs account, your Google Calendar account, your — well, you get the point.

If you use Google a lot (and you probably do, like the rest of the world), then you need to remember that if you do something that violates those rules, you’ll lose your entire account.

What violates those rules? Well, nudity/sexually explicit content does, of course, and so does hate speech. But if you violate something relating to a copyright law (I dunno, post an NFL video that’s not from the NFL?) you could get booted.

If you engage or promote dangerous or illegal activities — and, by the by, there’s absolutely no clarification about that, so don’t start talking about wrestling alligators! — you could get kicked off.

You can’t impersonate anyone, sigh.

And you can’t have a racy profile pic; Google says, “For example, do not use a photo that is a close-up of a person’s buttocks or a woman’s cleavage.”  (Yes, it would be interesting to see what they would do if you made Ween’s “Chocolate and Cheese” album cover your profile pic.)

The point is this, though: we’re dealing with something far more powerful than Twitter or Facebook now, because those were simply one-stop locations for your social networking. Creating a new profile at Facebook or Twitter is a ball-breaker, but it’s not a dealbreaker.

Losing every email contact and every calendared event and every important document you’ve ever created online? Whole different ballgame, people.

For instance, you can set up your Facebook account with the URL  “Facebook.com/StinkbreathMcGoo.” Or whatever your name is.

But not with Google; the fear is that it will automatically identify too many Gmail addresses to potential hackers.

So, instead, why not use GPlus, the not-associated-with-Google URL shortening service that will let you create a custom domain name for your Google+ account?

I did, and now you can access my Google+ account at GPlus.to/Brinson … instead of me telling you that you should come check me out at plus.google.com/u/0/117464987762256792708.

All it requires is the domain name you want (GPlus.to/StinkbreathMcGoo should you be so inclined) and your Google+ account number, which you can easily get by going to your profile and looking in the URL for the really long number.

This is also something you can do via Bit.Ly — or whatever URL shortener you want — but the GPlus denotation makes it a little easier to remember what you’re handing out.

How To: Get Your Own Google+ Vanity URL – [Mashable]

You, dear reader, need to double-check whatever’s on your Google profile.

Like, immediately. Why?

Well, it’s going to be the very first thing that anyone finds when they search for you on the web.

For instance, I take pride in people’s ability to find me on the web. I’m not like the most-searched blogger/writer in the history of the planet or anything, but if family, friends and angry readers go looking for my email address, I want what they find to be decently presentable.

Because Google owns all our searches, though, guess what’s the brand-new, No. 1 result when you search for “Will Brinson”? Yup, you got it — my Google profile (aka my Google+ profile). This is a BIG change from years past, when Facebook, Twitter and, naturally, WillBrinson.com were the top results.

And, conveniently, there was a search engine update yesterday … just in time for Google+’s launch! Remember, we might love what Google does, but we don’t always have to trust them.

At any rate, here’s what I suggest for you. If you’re a person who doesn’t want people searching for them, go to your Google profile and make it as private as possible. (This is just like where you make your Facebook profile private.)

If you’re a person who doesn’t care one way or the other what people find about you, go to your Google profile and at least clean up what’s there — I got my narcism on one day and found out that I hadn’t edited mine, and there was some stuff on there from like six years ago, and I was terrified. So double check it.

And, finally, if you’re like most normal people and would LIKE something that exists when people search for your name, go fire up your Google profile, make it public and update it with all the relevant information you want.

Google+ might not destroy Facebook anytime soon — or, won’t, but whatever — but that’s not going to stop them from deciding what the first result is when you search for everyone’s name.

For those of you that haven’t used it yet, don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, or still use Hotmail, let’s break down why this new feature is awesome. And, actually, if you use Hotmail, just get out. Go on. Get.

See, the “People Widget” takes every conversation you have in Gmail and yanks the people out of that conversation, so to speak, and puts them on the right side of your email. To make it a little simpler, here’s a pic from the Gmail Blog:

As you can see, what happens is that when a user opens an email, the people who are included on said email appear in “chat form” on the right side at the top of the page.

This is crucial since probably half of Gmail chats stem from an email that you sent to someone, or a group of people and you’re taking the discussion “offline.”

Now, accessing someone on the thread doesn’t involve scrolling all the way down to chat and then scrolling all the way all your contacts until the person you’re looking for pops up. They’re right there on the right.

Additionally, Gmail will access, in some cases, “Mail From This Month” right below the person’s contact info. That’s pretty self-explanatory — it’s old correspondence with that person! — but it’s a pretty nice addition if you use Gmail for work often.

That’s because you’ll see conversations/emails that might not have been followed up on, be able to check access to that person’s calendar (which could be awkward — KNOW YOUR CONTACTS, PEOPLE), and check out documents you’ve collaborated on.

All-in-all, it’s a quicker, easier way to get to certain Gmail/Google features that you use on the reg, but probably hate accessing at certain times.

And that makes it a welcome addition.

Like, in your browser, dawg.

Basically, what happened is, Google created Angry Birds as a Chrome Extension.

So, if you use Chrome, you can install it and whenever you open a new tab, you’ll be tempted to stop doing work and go play Angry Birds.

If that thought is to scary, or if you don’t use Chrome, you can simply go to Chrome.AngryBirds.com and play there whenever you’re so inclined to not do work.

Make sure you allow it cache your information so you can play when you’re offline (no, seriously, you want that, all scary privacy things aside — imagine gamechanging a six-hour car ride for your kids).

Play Angry Birds Online – [Google Chrome]

Look, there are plenty of reasons to hate shortened RSS feeds.

Maybe you’re like me and you end up with about 40 tabs open in Google Chrome by 11 in the morning. Or maybe you hate truncated feeds because you don’t get to actually read content without visiting a site. (Except for Guyism. You should visit this site. And click on as many ads as you can every time you stop by. And while you’re being generous, swing on by my site too, please.)

Whatever your reasons for hating them are, Super Google Reader is here to save the day by eliminating the pesky need to actually give websites traffic.

Now, if you don’t use RSS feeds, well, you’re probably going to read this post and, like my father, say something like “Super Google Reader? Sounds like the name of your fantasy baseball team, dork!”

And that might sound like my fantasy baseball team name, dad, but it’s actually a stupendous utility. Why? Well, it converts your RSS feeds to the desired format of your choice, and it does so in a customizable fashion.

Install it on Chrome and you get three choices: 1) normal, 2) readable and 3) full.

The first is, duh, normal. Nothing changes.

The second, readable, means you get all the text on the feed that you were expecting anyway. This is my preferred choice, because there are lots of feeds that I read that I hate clicking over-and-over again just because they’re truncated. Instead, I get a pretty picture and all the text.

And the third, full, gives you the full-on webpage. This is alright, and it’s nice to read good sites in the manner that they’re meant to be read, but it’s also a bit of a pain because of load time.

The brilliant part about Super Google Reader, though, is that you get to choose which of these you utilize for each particular feed, so you’re not stuck on any particular style of feed.

Just remember to click when you see my name.

Super Google Reader Converts All RSS Feeds Into Full Feeds – [Lifehacker]

It’s a wild, wild world out there if you’re Googling for a recipe. The safest bet is using something like the Epicurious or Food Network, but if you’re stuck without, the gnomes at Google are doing their best to help you with “recipe search” options.

Witness above — a search of “chicken parmesan” not only lands a pile of recipes that’s pretty difficult to sort through. Yes, you can trust the Food Network, but maybe it’s a different style of recipe (from a weird cook) or maybe it’s a really fattening version of chicken parm.

Just hard to tell — until now.

Because, as you’ll also notice, there’s a pile of search options in the left column. Most notably “cook time,” “calories” and “ingredients.”

Want to keep your recipe under 300 calories? Done and done.

Need to whip this puppy up in less than an hour? Easy as pie, son.

Don’t want mozzarella cheese on your chicken parm? NO PROBLEM, YOU SPINACH-LOVING HEDONIST.

But you get the point — no longer should your desire to cook without actually owning a recipe or a cookbook be hindered by different websites’ ability to create strong SEO.

No, sir, now Google is freeing you peruse even the weirdest and smallest of sites when you go to slap together your dinner for the evening.

Just kidding, it was. Because Google listened to me and created the extension that will help you rid the world of all SEO evil.

So, while I hate firing up a bunch of screenshots again, let’s just run through this real quick one more time. You want to know about O.J. Simpson getting attacked in prison, so you Google “OJ Simpson Attacked.” Here’s the results (sans the

Ah, nowpublic.com and topix.com. Those HAVE to be superb sites full of useful information and no spam links whatsoever. Wait, actually, they’re total blogspam. So let’s go ahead and click “Block topix.com” and “Block NowPublic.com” and … POOF:

There are a couple potential downsides to this, I suppose. 1) If you’re someone who writes on the Internet for a living, and you actually write about O.J. Simpson getting attacked, you’ll no longer be able to tell where you shake out in the general public’s view of a search term. (The general public spends Valentine’s Day Googling “Olive Garden” — they’re not the type to be installing Chrome extensions because they know better.)

And 2) Google can continue to provide Google Ads to these spam blogs — which are not just a source of revenue for the sites we all hate, but a source of revenue for Google too! It’s not a problem if the entire world starts using Chrome and plugs in this extension, of course, but that’s not happening.

Which means while it’ll be easier to surf the Internet for “hot” terms, Google will still be making straight bank off of these sites who churn out meaningless content.

This isn’t exactly unreasonable, considering that coughing up $5 per mag on the iPad PLUS ~$50 for a print subscription is the least fiscal thing in the history of the world.

So, good news comes today, as Time, Inc., announced that they’re bringing an “all-access” digital edition of Sports Illustrated to Samsung Android and Galaxy phones.

“This is a significant step in delivering Sports Illustrated’s award-winning journalism to sports fans everywhere and in any way they want it,” said Mark Ford, Time Inc. EVP and President of its Sports Group. “The new subscription options give consumers flexibility and convenience they desire and ensures that our multiple revenue streams continue to grow.”

Yeah, it’s still lame as hell that they can’t bring the magazine to the iPad — I don’t actually subscribe to SI anymore, but I WOULD if I could read it on my iPad.

(Quick aside: I don’t get how people say they can’t use their iPads and/or call them worthless. In fact, I’d list 10 reasons right now why it’s awesome, but I might just work that into a feature for next week so people will stop complaining.)

Here’s the skinny on the subscription costs, according to their press release: you can buy a print/digital combo subscription for $48 annually or $4.99 a month (and, imho, that’s kind of a steal). Or you can just buy the digital subscription for $3.99 a month.

That’s probably also a steal — I have roughly five million old SI issues at my parents house (locked away with a huge pile of baseball cards so my mother can’t discard them) and, honestly, a lot of those covers bring back memories.

Sometimes douchey memories — I was a Duke fan growing up! — but memories nonetheless. And so I think there’s something cool about holding onto those physical copies. But I’m not sure if it’s worth the extra $1 a month and decreased storage that I’m not longer afforded in my adolescent/living-on-my-own years.

Of course, it won’t matter to me (unless someone sends me a free Google or Samsung device anyway!), because it appears that Apple and Sports Illustrated are a ways off from finding a middle ground sufficient for providing iPad and iPhone subscriptions.

This, unfortunately, became a Catch-22 situation because helpful, awesome sites (like us!) can use SEO to reach a broader audience and that’s good for everyone and yet it became a way for spam sites to pummel your search results with utterly worthless information.

Sometimes, it’s not a big deal, like when you search for news about Jerry Sloan, who just resigned as head coach of the Utah Jazz. You get Google News results for Yahoo! Sports, ESPN and CBSSports.com. That’s the stuff you want to be reading, and there’s no chance that shoddy spam bloggers can infiltrate the first page of Sloan’s search results.

This becomes entirely more problematic when you’re looking for something a little more obscure, like, say, information about the 17-year-old with whom Mark Sanchez was getting his freak on. That’s because there’s a chance you might search for something like “Sanchez 17-year-old,” which happens to be the eighth-most popular search on Thursday.

In case you’re not aware, crap like Entoogle.com (OMFG I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW THAT I WROTE FOR THEM!), Babble.com, RealEstateRadioUSA.com and Khabrein.info (which has an entry title, “Mozilla Firefox 4 beta 11 and Mark Sanchez 17 year old girl friend,” SMDH) pollute your ability to find useful information by whoring out to whatever Google is finding.

There are also content farms that stem from people with tons of money (Bleacher Report stands out in the sports realm) that don’t provide the substance you want when you search for “Jenn Sterger,” unless you’re actually looking for a 10-picture slideshow that explains why the Brett Favre scandal is awesome for her.

Using that as an example, let’s (finally!) get down to business and figure out how to search for something without having to wade through a pile of crap. First, search for whatever you want, in this case Jenn Sterger.

Okay, see that purple link at the bottom? That’s probably not relevant to you, unless you love pointless slideshow explanations with intermittent newsletter pop-ups. So, let’s say you hate B/R and want them to die a slow death get out of your SEO results. Why don’t you try searching with this term — “jenn sterger -inurl:(bleacherreport)” — instead?

BAM!

Adios, amigos. But wait, there’s more! Maybe you think that Deadspin is a vile group of smut-peddling dirtbags. (You may be correct, or you may not be. That’s your opinion.) And as a result, you don’t want to read what they’re spitting. How about you try and search for … THIS! Er, this: “jenn sterger -inurl:(bleacherreport|deadspin)”

In case you haven’t figured it out, the “-inurl(sitename|sitename|sitename)” command basically filters what you don’t want out of your Google results.

You might hate Entoogle, you might hate Bleacher Report and, hell, you might hate WillBrinson.com. Whatever. I’m not offended, because I get a bajillion hits a day anyway, loser.

And yes, there’s a downside to this. Namely, having to type that little “-inurl (sitenameyouhate)” after your search results. But what I recommend doing is building up a list of terrible sites you never want to see again and saving them as text document using either Notepad (Windows) or Text Edit (Mac). Whenever you start searching stuff, pop it open and copy it into the window. It’s a little bit of extra work but it’s certainly not as tedious as wading through the muck of results that you can end up dealing with on a normal basis.

Either way, you’re now armed and prepared to go forth and find out what porn star is having sex with which famous person, all while avoiding spam sites with Google’s search.

Lord knows they won’t be fixing it any time soon — especially since all those peddlers of worthless information just so happen to use Google Ads anyway.

I don’t know that for a “fact,” because right now it only recognizes a few things (namely: books, CDs and video games), none of which are present amid the stack of beer bottles in my hotel room.

But that’s only as it relates to the product scanner offered on your iPhone; there’s also a voice recognition gizmo in there that kicks ass.

For instance, I told it “The Last Waltz” (I’m a big Band fan, thanks for asking), and it fired up results for the reviews for the DVD, the CD, the CD box set, the poster of the show, the poster of the DVD Box Set and any number of other things.

(Quick aside: if you haven’t seen “The Last Waltz,” it’s the only live DVD besides “Stop Making Sense” to ever score 5-stars x infinity for its excellence, so you should totally check it out.)

In short, if you’re thinking about buying something, you should probably stop, calibrate and listen to Google Shopper. It don’t cost nothing and it gives you a pile of reviews.

This is particularly true if you’re a fan of randomly purchasing iPhone apps; do you honestly trust Apple to give you the best “Best Of …” list? Because you shouldn’t. That’s coming from an Apple apologist, too; it just doesn’t make any sense to arbitrarily agree to the blind ratings system they offer.

Because if that was the case, we’d be living in some sort of communistic commune whereby you’d all be forced to either a) subscribe to my NFL podcast or b) own iPhones on a single service provider.

Okay, wait, those are terrible examples. Still, the smart thing to do here is to follow Wu-Tang’s advice and diversify your bonds, son. Get Google Shopper. They already own your search engine soul, so losing your shopping identity isn’t going to make you feel any worse.

Click for full-size

Well, it’s long been thought that Jews control the media so it makes sense that they would be the ones to make us fear sharks. But what do they have to gain from it? The answer: Shark Week. Jews love Shark Week. Matzo ball soup and Shark Week, really those two things. Pretty sure that was Chapter Two in the Torah. Right after that part about how to get good at managing finances and why penises look the Unibomber when they have foreskin.

No Google, I did not mean that! [Reddit]

The best Google Super Bowl parody ad that hasn’t been made yet: Roman Polanski. Work on it, Internet. Some of us need to learn how to dodge statutory rape charges laugh.

Tiger Woods Google Parody Commercial [Nextround]