Once again, we’re reporting on a phishing scam. But this one’s a biggie. Here’s an email.

From: Googlemail Service <servingusers@gmail.com>

Date: Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 7:41 PM
Subject: Legal Notice

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

The Gmail Team is working on total security on all accounts and because of this security upgrade, we require all Gmail members to verify their account with Google.
To prevent your account from disability you will have to update your information by clicking the reply button and filling the space below.

Contact Phone number:
Date Of Birth:
Country:
Pass  Word:

NOTE: Account owner that refuses to update his or her account within Seven days of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.
Thank you for using Gmail!

The Gmail Team

This message is a complete and utter lie. We have to stress here that you SHOULD NOT REPLY to this email, and you should delete it immediately. You will not loose your Google account. Please, if you get this email, delete it and tell your friends to do the same. Exploring Tech would like to thank @Shaun_R for the tip-off.

Namco’s famous Pac-Man turns thirty today, and in honor of the little yellow ball thing, search giant Google has replaced their logo with a representation of the game, with the borders within spelling ‘Google’. This is not unusual, Google often replaces their logo with so-called ‘doodles’ to celebrate anniversaries and events, but this time there’s something different. Google’s Pac-Man logo is playable. Simply press the ‘Insert Coin’ button (formerly ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’) to play, and use the arrow keys. Push ‘Insert Coin’ again to get Ms Pac-Man, who can be moved with the ‘wasd’ keys. I just completed a level myself, before writing this post. So, what are you waiting for? Play Pac-Man!

>> Google Pacman Homepage (Archived by google)

The following article was written ages ago… it may not be accurate today. But read it anyway, I put a heap of work into it back in the day.

Google is a search engine; everyone knows that – but how does it actually work. In this article, we will delve into Google’s behind the scenes, from how they crawl the web, to how results are shown to you.
(more…)

Google is planning to stop supporting older browsers, such as Internet Explorer 6. Over the course of 2010, Google will update it’s Google Apps suite to HTML5, meaning older browsers such as IE6 will be unable to support the new standard. Google will start by updating Google Docs from March 1, 2010. Other apps, such as Mail and Calendar, will be converted later in the year. Those using older browsers are advised to upgrade, and will get a message when they use the Google Apps later in the year.

>> Google Apps admins should have received an email, no word yet on wether this affects normal Google Accounts.

Google today released a preview of the Google Chrome OS…

I don’t have much to say at this point, except that I’ll probably do a review of it over the next couple of days…

Also, there’s a great article detailing the installation of it in a virtual machine at http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/19/guide-install-google-chrome-os/

Google has introduced a new feature to it’s popular ‘Google Docs’ application. The application now allows multiple documents to be converted, zippped and/or downloaded at the same time. This feature comes in from Google’s new idea of ‘Data Liberation’. Google believes that you should control your data, and not your applications.

>> Google docs
>> Google blog post

One thing that makes Google great is the ability to search for non-html files, especially PDFs. Today, Google added the option to view PDFs in the browser without the need to load Adobe Reader. The PDF reader is different that the old ‘View as HTML’ option in that it retains formatting. Sounds cool, and it is sure to make searching for PDFs faster.

>> Quickly view formatted PDFs in your search results (Official Google Blog)

Happy 11th birthday to our favourite search engine: Google! Google turned 11 today, at least that’s what the doodle on the front page said. Strangely, there’s no word on the blog, but the day’s still young. Anyway, happy birthday google!

>> Google (as if you didn’t know how to get there)

Web giant Google announced today its new Sidewiki project. Google sidewiki is a sidebar that you can enable whilst on any page. In this sidebar, you can comment on the page, add helpful insights, add relevant links etc. Whenever someone comes along with Google Sidewiki enabled, they can open the sidebar and see your comments on the page. Seems pretty neat, but how’s Google going to control the trollers? Either way, I’m sure they’ll figure out something…

>> Google Sidewiki Blog Post (Official Google Blog)
>> Download Sidewiki
>> Official Twitter Feed

Recently we posted about the change with google layouts, I suspected there might be something more. It looks like Google’s doing some tweaking. The search box on the front page has been made bigger. I don’t like it – just make it an option Google! We suspect a greasemonkey script has already been written.

>> Google (official google blog post on the subject)
>> As promised, the greasemonkey script (userscripts.org)