First, I will share on behalf of The Temple News (featuring LeAnne Matlach and Dave Isaac).

And here’s a quote which, in hindsight, truly concludes my thoughts on the holiday season (as told by me to Dave through Gchat, fittingly):

“it’s awful. very boring. i’ve spent the past two days organizing my itunes and adding album artwork. and for those that don’t have album artwork…i’ve created my own in photoshop.”

So as the holiday season quickly approaches and passes, please keep a few things in mind: Google is still going to take over the world at some point, mostly with the help of Wikipedia. The Wannamaker’s/Lord & Taylor’s/Macy’s Light Show runs until New Year’s Eve. And Garnet Valley, Pa., is as boring over break as Lubbock, Texas, is all the time.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

I was searching the name of a murder suspect from Glen Mills and decided to Google Map his address. I was trying to find out how close he was to Garnet Valley High School, and instead I found Foulk Road, a popular arterial in Bethel Township.

You may notice, Google needs some spell check. And should the image be too small, take my word for it.

What’s worse — the correct spelling of the name is right next to the incorrect.

I’m just glad I could find something wrong with Google.

It’s ingenious, really.

To prevent those e-mails that you’re just not that stable enough to send, Google can now give you a test to ensure that you know what you’re doing.

You better know your math.

The Mail Goggles test feature in Gmail gives you 60 seconds to solve five math questions. You can enact this feature whenever you want — the automatic settings are from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights for those times at the piano bar. Gmail wants to make sure you don’t send that angry e-mail to your boss when you get home.

As you can see above, not all those questions aren’t that easy (except the repeated one). And the time limit is intimidating. There are five skill levels you can chose — above is level 3.

Just another example of how Google is saving (or taking over) the world.

Google’s been around for 10 years. That’s a long time of trying to take over the world.

In honor of the 10th anniversary, Google is showing us what the search was like back in 1999. The most popular searched keyword? Pokemon.

There were only 1,326,920,000 Web pages. Now there are 8 billion.

If you search “Lindsay Lohan,” only 3,000 pages come up. Today, 31,000,000 come up.

How about “Chris Stover“? Only 121. Today? 5,630.

And what about “Perez Hilton“? Today, there are 3,290,000. Back in 1999, there was one.

Oh, how I miss 1999.

Don’t believe me? You probably shouldn’t, since I made that statistic up. After all, when you research something on Wikipedia, you take the same chance as believing anything I say.

But how often do you think to google Google? I mean, the search engine has become so ubiquitous nowadays that the lowercase ‘google’ was added to the dictionary as a generic term meaning “to search using a search engine.” Technically, I suppose, we can google something in Yahoo!

When you google Google, Google’s Wikipedia page is No. 10. Nos. 1 through 9 are Google products with the URLs [insert product].google.com. So, this constitutes one of the 1.7 times out of 10 that the Wikipedia page is no in the top five.

In essence, 1.45 times out of 10, Wikipedia is in the top 10. That means that .35 times, Wikipedia is not an answer. Pretty amazing, huh?

Follow the link to learn what you can learn.

But through Google’s wiki, I learned a lot. And I’d say 83 percent is credible, as the main entry had more than 100 sources with only a few lingering “citation needed”s.

I learned about the corporate history of Google, how the name is a play on words of the term googol, 10 to the 100th power.

I learned about the search engine of Google, the applications of Google, and Google’s Googleplex.

I learned about the art behind the Google logo and how Google is slowly taking over the world through this list of acquisitions and through Gmail (known as Google Mail in some countries).

And, I learned how Google tries to throw us for a loop with its myriad hoaxes and pranks.

I also learned they’re looking for an ad copywriter for their New York City offices. After all, Google has been named one of the top 100 places to work. I’m considering sending my resume.

So what does this all mean? Besides sacrificing your first- and second-born children to the behemoth that is Google, this empire isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Before the year’s end, there will likely be many more Wikipedia pages on the Google applications, events and acquisitions.

Google is the way of the future. In a googol years, Google will still reign.

I was doing research for my humor assignment, where I had to write two pages worth of monologues.  I wrote a joke involving Pope Benedict and wanted to find out exactly how old he is.

I googled (you know, ‘google‘ is officially a word, according to the dictionary) “Pope Benedict,” and the very first response came from none other than the god of Wikipedia.

The Vatican’s official Web site came in second.

Is there something wrong with that?  Is Google going to hell?