Google-town, social soldiers and our computer future

05/03/10 posted by Liz Niland

An unlikely pin-up for social media success, a 79-year-old mayor from Kansas has lead his people into the online future by renaming his city Google, temporarily replacing the much less flashy Topeka. Following in the footsteps of the Pope, almost-octogenarian Mayor William W. Bunten has encouraged tech-savvy youth to get online and support his push for a berth in Google’s experimental Fiber for Communities ISP program.

Originally the idea was for the name change to last for just one day. After speaking to his fellow councillors though, it was decided the change should stay for a month. And don’t think this is just one of those call-me-Google-because-I-said-so situations; according to Mashable, a local man received a champion of character award - on behalf of Google, Kansas - for rescuing two juveniles from a burning car.

We’ve warned before about being careful of what you tweet for, but there’s one soldier that obviously doesn’t read this blog. While US soldiers are now allowed to use Twitter and Facebook to their hearts’ content, a carefully-planned raid by the Israeli military had to be cancelled due to a revealing status update by a social-networking soldier. Sentenced to 10 days in prison, the Israeli soldier will surely be thinking twice before posting his next status update.

In other Google news (about the company, not the city), Europe’s chief Googler John Herlihy has provoked discussion with his suggestion that, within the next few years, we’ll be doing all our currently computer-based work and activities on our iPads, assorted tablets and smartphones. “In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs.”

Here at Sharkey Media HQ, our web design and development team aren’t ready to give up their desktop machines just yet. While we can certainly see the end for the at-home desktop computer, we are yet to see a tablet that makes us want to hand over our workplace iMacs.

And another thing we won't be handing over anytime soon?

Honey the Office Dog