Question - 683

This is a new fad. What are they doing?

Question - 622

Hi all!!! This is Dinesh taking over for Raghu in his absence. Irregular updates and obscure trivia shall be the norm as always. Identify the blanked out portion in this airport shuttle.

Answer: This is the wiki-wiki shuttle bus that operates at the Honolulu airport in Hawaii. Wiki means quick in Hawaiian. The author of the first wiki, Ward Cunningham, was amused enough by the name to name his project after it. Wikipedia came much latter. Matti Tapaninen, Kapinjal Chowdhury, Kani, Jaggi, Krithi and Ajit got it. Well done.

Question - 579

What does this map depict? (courtesy: Manix)

Answer: United States of Autocomplete. Google's autocomplete feature applied to the names of each state (as of Dec 3, 2010). AJ, Krithi, Dinesh, mekie, and jamie got it. Nicely cracked.

Question - 574

Which organization's logo?

Answer: Wikileaks. Dinesh, matti tapaninen, Anand, v.chandrashekar, Krithi, mekie, Iam, Divya Shankar, and bhawsheel got it.

Question - 539

What is shown? The red square in the middle is text blanked out by me.

Answer: This is the 3-D logo of Wikipedia unraveled and spread out. The red square is the distinctive 'W' in English. The N/A in the image represent the hole in the logo. Ramki, Devadutta D Ghat, tsp, Iam, Krithi, Anurag, അവസ്ഥാന്തരങ്ങള്‍, nitinsunny and Kamal Rathi got it. Well done.

Question - 480

Connect. (Hint: Hindi)

Answer: The elephant logo belongs to the HathiTrust, which is in an alliance of several universities that have a partnership with Google Book Search to digitize all their books. Hathi is the Hindi term for an elephant and was used because elephants can remember. Hotmanoj and Hirak got it. Great job.

Question - 393

Today's question is courtesy Ramki aka Sriram. Identify him.

Answer: This is Wikipedia's cofounder Larry Sanger who has since left it and gone on to found Citizendium. His main grouse is that Wikipedia lacks credibility since anyone can edit its articles. ajaalgujaal and Srivats got it. Well done.

Question - 389

What phenomenon gets its name from the controversy surrounding this picture?

Answer: The house belongs to Barbara Streisand and the picture was taken as part of a study on erosion of the California coastline. Streisand sued to have the photo removed from the web and the resulting popularity made the picture far more famous than it originally was. Since then, the Streisand effect has come to refer to this kind of negative publicity resulting from censorship. Mrinalini, Rithwik, P, Manix, Iam (who has moral & other issues in answering the Q), mysore, and Sweta got it. Well done all and to set the record straight, Iam asked this question in the quiz club a while back.

Question - 296

Shown is a simple example of a particular algorithm. What is the algorithm?

Answer: This demonstrates Google's pagerank algorithm which calculates the search rank of a page based on the number of links into the page and the origin of the incoming links. raklodramA, Schmetterling, Iam, Rajesh and Srivats got it. Well done.

Question - 253

The xkcd strip is a reference to what?

Answer: This is a reference to everyone's favorite encyclopedia Wikipedia where "citation needed" is a frequently used disclaimer in many articles. The comic strip doesn't satirize any particular speaker as far as I know. Srivats, Vetti, nice try and Trevor Burnham got it. Well done.

Question - 235

Shown is the start of a Japanese video game with English subtitles. Identify the dialogue that has been replaced with question marks in one of the frames.

Answer: Keeping with the poor translation of the previous frames, the blanked out subtitles read "All your bases are belong to us". The phrase became a huge internet meme and keeps appearing in many places (for instance, when youtube is down for maintenance, the homepage had this phrase). Tsp, Adi (thanks!!!), Kr!sh, Arvind, Srivats, Iam, Rajeev, Vetti, Avi, Divya and nice try got it. Well done.

Question - 83

Identify the visuals and their significance.

Answer: This is the Trojan room coffee pot at Cambridge. A bunch of computer scientists tired of walking to the coffee pot only to find it empty set up a camera that captured images of the pot every few seconds and made them available at the world wide web. Thus was born the world's first webcam. The second visual shows the final visual taken by the webcam before it was turned off in 2001. Hirak, Iam, QoD and an Anon got it. Well done.

Question - 27

Today's question is courtesy Hirak.

MC, an artist made this for her graduation project. However, she kept the location a secret. This was for two reasons:
a) It's the way the game is played.
b) A particular process that is key to this project of MC is dependent on a secret schedule maintained by 'X'.

What is X and what exactly did MC do? (MC is the initials of the artist).

Answer: Melanie Coles painted a giant image of Waldo the clown from "Where is Waldo" series of children's books on a rooftop in Vancouver and invited people to find him using Google Earth. This would also give an idea of the schedule employed by Google for taking the satellite pictures. Cracked by Divya, Iam, QoD and Rajesh. Well done.

Question - 24

This car and countless others like this have been scouring the streets of the US, France and Italy since May 2007. Identify their purpose.

Answer: The vehicles are Google-operated for taking pictures for Google streetview. Pablo, QoD, Hirak, Mekhala, Raghu, Iam, Trevor Burnham, Divya, Mihir, Rajeev and an anon got it. Well done. Good to see some veteran members of Quizclub who have graduated making an appearance here.