Ahhh Coomputer Speak!![/DIV]Try it again
SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0 Magazine) - As a computer-generated news site, Google News doesn't have a sense of humor -- or much sense at all, bloggers have discovered. By posting made-up articles on I-Newswire, a free press-release posting service, pranksters have discovered an easy way to get just about anything in the news. It started when a blogger [A href="vny!://wigblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/how-to-spam-google-news.html" target=_blank][FONT color=#003399]noticed[/FONT][/A] that would-be presidential candidate Daniel Imperato was posting press releases announcing his opinion on events of the day and realized that I-Newswire would post just about anything. Then someone used it to [A href="vny!://www.regrettheerror.com/2006/03/will_ferrell_is.html" target=_blank][FONT color=#003399]falsely report[/FONT][/A] that actor Will Ferrell had died in a "freak paragliding accident." (Bloggers soon confirmed that Ferrell was alive and working on a movie set.) Next, a teenager [A href="vny!://news.stepforth.com/blog/2006/03/google-news-credibility-foiled-by-15.php" target=_blank][FONT color=#003399]claimed he had been hired[/FONT][/A] by [A href="vny!://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=GOOG"][FONT color=#003399]Google[/FONT][/A] ([A href="vny!://cnnfn.investor.reuters.com/Reports.aspx?ticker=GOOG"][FONT color=#003399]Research[/FONT][/A]). After the fake news made the headlines on tech news website Digg.com, the kid [A href="vny!://tomtothevendetta.blogspot.com/2006/03/i-am-so-sorry.html" target=_blank][FONT color=#003399]apologized[/FONT][/A]. Despite the widely reported gaffes, Google News still carried press releases from I-Newswire as of Wednesday morning.
