London -- In a surprising turn of events, besieged with an epidemic of phishing attacks on its academic networks, Oxford University took drastic measures: It decided to temporarily block access to Google Docs for 2.5 hours on Monday, after a dramatic increase in phishing attacks trying to harvest academic email credentials using bogus forms hosted on the service and has said Google should share some of the blame for the outage.
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Mountain View, California -- The NFL season may be over now, but Google's Street View cameras are always active that have journeyed to the Grand Canyon, under the sea, and to the top of ski slopes, and over the weekend added some pretty interesting, interactive, 360-degree imagery of Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Indianapolis Colts, to its Maps service.
For those armchair viewer as well as those in the faraway land, Google brings a novel way to explore an NFL stadium without paying the $100 average ticket price: Google Maps today introduced Street View for Lucas Oil Stadium, better known as the home of the Indianapolis Colts. This is the first time the Web giant has mapped the inside of an NFL stadium, and it is the first U.S. sports venue to get the Street View treatment in Google Maps.
Lucas Oil Stadium, as seen in Street View... (Credit: Google)
“Together with the Colts and Lucas Oil Stadium, we are truly delighted to give you, the fans, a behind-the-scenes look at the home of the Colts, and enable anyone to 'visit' the stadium from wherever they may be,” Google Maps product manager Evan Rapoport, wrote in a blog post Friday.
However, the company announced that the plan was made possible due to collaboration with the National Football League's (NFL) Indianapolis Colts. Through this arrangement, Google Maps now offers users a VIP, 360-degree interactive tour of the team's stadium, Lucas Oil Stadium.
As part of its ongoing mission to create the most accurate and usable map of the world, Google decided to take it things a step further by recording what a professional football team's stadium looked like. The company says that it has captured a variety of views, including allowing users to view what it is like right on the football field, look at the VIP suites and concourses, and check out the locker rooms.
The interior of Lucas Oil Stadium... (Credit: Google)
The idea of photographing the stadium was the search engine's idea. In order to photograph the Colts' stadium to Google Maps, the Street View team showed up on a day where no sporting events were planned and proceeded to document using two key tools: the proprietary Street View trolley, a roving pillar on wheels that has a camera mounted on top of it, and more traditional tripods used for capturing the 3D imagery.
Through the use of its Trekker camera, the Google Maps team was able to get a rather realistic view of what it’s like to be inside the stadium. “We had the stadium as most people would never get to see it,” said Rapoport. “We got to go in on an empty day. You got a feeling of what it might be be to like to own the place.”
Amazingly though, with the new imagery, you can virtually walk the tunnel and down the field toward the end zone, just like the Colts players do every season. You can also check out what it is like inside the Colts's locker room (right), or explore the stadium's three concourses and suites, including the Quarterback Suite, a field level suite, and a lodge-level suite.
In fact, users can access Street View by clicking a link to it following a search for Lucas Oil Stadium in Google Maps, or by dropping the orange Pegman figure onto the stadium from the map view.
A view from the stadium terrace... (Credit: Google)
Apparently, the football stadium is the latest in Google's relentless mapping of sometimes hidden places, which follow ski resorts, the Grand Canyon, North Korea, and the Great Barrier Reef.
“We are just really, really thrilled about the level of enthusiasm that people have for Street View,” Rapoport said. “People are always asking us to bring Street View to new places, whether it is in new countries or famous places around the word.”
For those interested in checking out the stadium, they can go to Google Maps and do a search for “Lucas Oil Stadium” or “Colts Stadium”. Also, more sports venues are likely on the cards. However, getting inside requires Google to work with them individually to get permission and coordinate the shoots.
France - When Google instituted a new privacy policy early last year, European regulators instantly warned that it was likely illegal under European law. Now, in a fresh legal fracas, global web search giant is under pressure EU watchdogs plan to take action against Google by this summer over the web giant's current privacy policy, French privacy regulator CNIL has said.
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San Francisco -- Relentlessly striving to spruce up its services, search engine titan Google has again taken a step further by empowering users the choice to export the data and save it locally on their computers. Google Takeout is a service by Google that now offers extended support for those of you with a Blogger account and/or a Google+ page account to save some of their data to a local system. (more…) 
Mountain View, California - In a surprising turn of events, early this week Google announced that it has rolled out an update for search on Android that brings in fresh data, and adds sheeny new features to its spookily knowledgeable Google Now service that pushes it into the future with smartphones that are true assistants.
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Mountain View, California - When Google+ was introduced, all that Google could brag about were Circles, the "revolutionary" new way of safeguarding your buddies in groups. But today, an elusive update to Google+ now claims to have made it easier for users to find their friends and colleagues who may have recently joined the social network. Google on Monday unfurled a new feature, - The Circles icon has now been renamed to "Find People." (more…) 
Mountain View, California -- In a surprising move to expand its online video services into the living room, Google has signed a deal with free-to-air UK satellite TV service Freesat to add a dedicated YouTube app for customers, ensuring that they will be able to access millions of videos without the need for an additional device, as it continues to position itself as a platform for premium, broadcast-quality content.
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