If you’re feeling a bit bored on this dreary Friday, here’s an amusing way to momentarily distract yourself: let Google guess your age and gender based on your previous searches. Apparently I’m guilty of searching like a dude, whatever that means, but it did manage to correctly guess my age range (25-34) and general interests (entertainment news, TV shows, visual art/design, and shopping). Kind of creepy.

But this isn’t all fun and guessing games. As Max Read at Gawker points out, the black magic at work here is directly related to the company’s “new thing where they ruthlessly violate your privacy,” aka its consolidation of 70 separate privacy policies into one giant policy that allows it to combine information gathered about you across various properties — and there’s no opting out! If you don’t like it, your only option is to close your account. It just got way creepier, right?

Oh, Google. Every time we start to think you’re just a big, shiny, corporate machine, you find a way to make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Case in point: as of yesterday, if you search “let it snow” on Google, the internet will grant your wish, and you’ll be treated to a special winter wonderland on your screen. Not only will it flurry with perfection, but you’ll be able to play the windshield game, and scratch your name (or, you know, your crush’s name) in the frost. This is only one in a number of humorous Easter eggs brought to us by Google, but we daresay it’s one of our favorites. So if the weather outside is frightful, but your fire is so delightful, and if it doesn’t show signs of stopping, but you’ve bought some corn for popping, well, the only thing left to do is let it snow.

Remember a few years back when a blogger called Firmuhment created an illustrated guide to different websites as food? We absolutely loved it. Now Caldwell Tanner of CollegeHumor has gone the equally entertaining, although far geekier route, and assigned some of the Internet’s most popular destinations with corresponding Justice League characters; for example, Facebook with its “utility belt full of newsfeeds, sidebars, and other pointless gadgets,” is Batman, “an eccentric young billionaire whose company is used by basically everyone.” Arch nemeses? 4Chan and Tumblr. Now that you get the gist, click through to find out if you agree with the rest of his picks. Read More »

Whether or not you personally enjoy Facebook’s new Timeline design, it certainly makes one thing obvious: nothing tells the story of who we were at any given moment better than what we were posting about online. Perhaps that’s why we always find Google’s Zeitgeist roundups so fascinating; by examining the most searched names of the year, we get a handy snapshot of what dominated the cultural conversation — at least on the Internet. Yet as with Timeline, the results can be both a bit confusing and embarrassing. Take for example, this year’s most frantically searched topic, Rebecca Black of “Friday” fame, with the strange bedfellows of Google+, Ryan Dunn, Casey Anthony, and Battlefield 3 filling out the top five. Hopefully we haven’t scared you off yet. Click through to see the most Googled people, places, and things of 2011 distilled into a handy clip, and if you’re interested really getting your hands dirty digging through the various top 10 lists, head over to the official Zeitgeist site. Read More »

Today, at a major media event that is being broadcast live on YouTube’s Android channel beginning at 5pm EST, and is inexplicably taking place at Mr. Brainwash’s studio in LA, Google is expected to debut the final version of its recently-launched Google Music cloud service, as well as an online download store that’s akin to iTunes. So what does this mean for you? We’re glad you asked! Click through for a quick roundup of what we know so far, as well as some speculation by industry types about what could be unveiled during today’s announcement. Read More »

1. Billie Joe Armstrong would like for “that kid in Twilight,” aka Robert Pattinson, to star in the upcoming film adaptation of Green Day’s Broadway musical, American Idiot. “He’s a good actor,” he told Perez Hilton. “There’s still more to come with that kid.” Right. We’re sure that his rabid teenage girl fan-base has nothing to do with it. [via NME]

2. The producers of My So-Called Life have sold a new hour-long drama to Fox that’s called Confessions of a Contractor and is described as “an alternative soap that focuses on what happens when you mix desire, jealousy, and home renovation.” Yuck. [via THR]

3. Perhaps hoping to compete with NBC’s upcoming show with Snoop Dogg, CBS has signed a deal with Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst to star in a new sitcom. The show, which Durst also plans to produce, “centers around a rock legend looking for balance between his high profile lifestyle and trying to raise a family.” Double yuck. [via Deadline]

4. Lady Gaga has won a lawsuit against animated singer Lady Goo Goo, a character from the kid’s game Moshi Monsters known for posting parody performances of Gaga’s songs, such as “Peppy-razzi,” on YouTube. [via Guardian]

5. Hulu is no longer for sale. The reason? As Vulture explains, potential buyers like Yahoo, Google, and Apple were understandably uncomfortable with shelling out $1 billion when the site couldn’t guarantee long-term rights to its current lineup of TV shows.

Bonus Buzz: Russell Simmons Offers To Pay For Zuccotti Park Clean Up

While Google Maps with Street View has been known to photograph things that are out of the ordinary, Google Books isn’t something you’d think capable of doing the same. The Art of Google Books by Krissy Wilson aims to “recognize book digitization as re-photography, and to value the signs of use that accompany these texts as worthy of documentation and study.” Check out some of the inadvertent artwork from Google Books, including crinkled pages, library-book checkout stamps, marginalia, and more.

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Social media sites are sort of like totalitarian regimes: They want all our attention, and they want it now! They want to legislate the particulars of our interpersonal relationships! They want to take away our privacy! Friends, they have photos of us embarrassing ourselves while drunk, and they have the power to destroy our lives by disseminating them to our potential employers! So it’s kind of brilliant that Aaron Wood has created a series of three propaganda posters for Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. We haven’t seen fit to join the latter yet, and its slogan kind of makes us glad we’ve abstained.

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1. Hot on the heels of the news that Google+ has reached the 10 million user mark, GOOD reports that Facebook has been allowing law enforcement officials to snoop around people’s accounts without their consent. Maybe it’s time to make the switch?

2. Edward Norton is currently in talks to play the villain in Tony Gilroy’s The Bourne Legacy. Considering that the film is already set to star Jeremy Renner, we’re suddenly finding it a lot easier to accept that Matt Damon will not be returning to the franchise. [via The Playlist]

3. Last night during the Foo Fighters set at the iTunes Festival in Camden, Dave Grohl stopped playing to eject a fan who had gotten too rowdy. Watch a video of the incident here.

4. After failing to make mortgage payments for more than a year, R. Kelly may lose his multimillion-dollar mansion in the suburbs of Chicago. Is it wrong that we kind of hope that he writes another operetta about this? [via Rolling Stone]

5. Ted Danson is going to be taking over for Laurence Fishburne on CSI. But have no fear, Bored to Death fans, he will reportedly remain a series regular on that show as well. [via E!]

Bonus link: Angry Birds Coffee Art

Earlier today Google announced that it’s partnering with iRiver to release an e-reader that looks a lot like a first generation Kindle, but will give users direct access to the Google eBookstore, which has more than three million titles available for free download. It should also be able to check out books from your local library. The device hits Target stores on July 17th, and will retail for $140, which is what you’d pay for the Kindle 3 or the Nook Simple Touch. What remains unclear is whether or not it’s worth as much.

“Aside from the Google eBooks integration, obviously the most interesting selling point will be the crisper text that the higher-resolution display delivers,” writes David Carnoy at CNET. “But with more e-ink readers moving to a touch-screen interface and a more compact design without a keyboard, the Story HD’s design faces the problem of seeming marginally dated at launch.” Zing! Do you take this as a sign that Google is officially tapped out on new product ideas, or do you plan on checking this e-reader out? [via Business Insider]