It’s Google’s new strategy to get on the front page of TechCrunch

Honestly… who cares? A slow news day doesn’t mean ‘ZOMG LOOK AT THIS LITTLE IMAGE WHAT COULD IT BE’. Come on Arrington, get your shit together.

aha..at last my experiment worked..I was trying to put that pixel on Gmail page since 4 years..and after 4 years of hard work I am finally succeeded. Gmail has files a case against me to put this box down…but I will not stop until they pay me US$1.098 Million. That is the amount I used in this work..Thanks TC for covering my hard work here.

It’s a sign of extra-terrestrial life

It’s a page-curl

Is TechCrunch copy/pasting?

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-07-03.html

It looks like you can peal of the page… I guess they’ll release Skins for Gmail soon ^^,

For some reason (probably sandbox restrictions) Google is using Iframe communication instead of Ajax communication for some actions.

Here’s what it is, and the iFrames are causing it and are mentioned in CSS.

Here is the 4 iFrames:

The CSS for them is:
.invfr{position:absolute;left:0;top:0;z-index:-1;width:0;height:0}

Put all this on a HTML document and view it on your browser, a page curled box appears. It just the browsers rendering of floating iFrames.

Its a new Google service called “G-Spot”

A few of us on Gmail UX had seen this for quite a while. To think it became a post on TechCrunch is actually quite humorous.

Maybe it is their new integration with Pheltup?

It’s clearly a sign that I had way too little to do this weekend. I actually read this then had to view it in each of the 4 browsers on my machine. It’s there in Safari and FF but not in IE or Opera. Therefore my conclusion is that it’s something that should have been there, just like this comment.

It’s the G Spot of web browsing.

Slow news day? For some companies, it only takes 100 pixels to make the headlines…

But, you asked for a conspiracy theory, here’s mine. Remember the milliondollarwebsite.com? This is EXACTLY the size of the smallest pixelad you could byu there. So, perhaps itäs a new monetization scheme for Google. Is billiondollarhomepage.com registered? The real question here is who bought this space, and how are they planning to use it.

It’s the G Spot of GMail.

The Net 2 starring Sandra Bullock.

Google use a iframe, load another google page there to get more pageimpressions. Why? Only for the alexa chart. They get nervous about facebooks alexa chart performance

I just saw noticed this in my gmail the other day but since I always have gmail in my first tab I figured it was something to do with firefox 3 and never looked past that.

To be honest they most likely did it to draw up discussion about it like it is doing right now. Maybe it’s going to signify gmail peeling away from the old and perhaps a new gmail skin or feature is coming.

I think they are testing how well Gmail works within a frame. Could be linked to making Gmail work on iGoogle with the newly released big canvas functionaliy, whereby Gmail will be a widget and when you click a mail or some other object on the page the big window appears and you can use gmail in it’s full form.

Remove the style ‘.invfr’ from the general gmail stylesheet, and you end up with 3 large squares above the Gmail design, 2 empty but one containing the words ‘Copyright 2002-2008 Google Inc.’ - the source for this frame is a bunch of Javascript. The other two have no or basic (unimportant) source.

See this for yourself in Firefox with the web dev toolbar; when logged into Gmail, edit CSS and simply cut it all out. You’ll see the boxes.

What’s it for? A way of delivering Javascript without it being viewable in the usual view source, in my opinion.

Shirt? Make mine an XXL

My GMail is themed (in Firefox), so I don’t have that little gray box.

http://userstyles.org/styles/8205

With the FISA vote pending, google’s data crunching bots have determined that the new law will be passed, and this bot is collecting ALL YOUR BASES BELONG TO US data to be passed to George and his cronies……

or perhaps its the new viacom personal information collection system in compliance with the latest in court orders……..

cheers
obi

I’d say it’s a sneak-peek at the GHole. Google is constructing its own black hole with the intention of speeding up their mission of collecting all of the world’s information in one place. The GHole will suck in anything and everything. Everyone’s GMail and Google queries are already being absorbed into the current beta-GHole that we’re seeing in the upper-left corner. The GHole will be expanding by .000000314 every single day (as GMail storage expands), without us being aware of it. Google knows that it’s all about relative change and not absolute change - so they will be increasing it by more and more as the GHole expands, making sure that the proportion is small enough that we can’t see a change as we visit Google every day and throw more information into the GHole. This will reportedly complete G’s mission statement of collecting all of the world’s information in one place by 367.4% - profit numbers for quarterly earnings will follow accordingly.

Nothing special.
1. its a counter
2. its a symbol of older page - maybe gmail has been in previous versions black (lack skin) (like http://www.blackoogle.us/)
3. maybe gmail gona be an offline program (i am not sure, if already is) and that is a symbol of new age

Anyway, outside is midnight and I am really curious why I am commenting a post about 10×10 pixel picture in gmail…

It’s a javascript that checks browser type & os.

@69, you don’t have to do all that. You can just do “save as” in firefox to save the iframes. Firefox saves the page as a.htm.

I am trying to go through the javascript, but it’s heavily obfuscated with an automated obfuscater/optmizer.

Plus it’s very hard to run javascript with breakpoints ect…
I am trying to check it in place with firebug.

It’s a smudge of pixelized pigeon shit - remnants of Arrington’s failed attempt to follow Rock Doves using Google Earth’s new animal migration features. Pigeons don’t really migrate, Michael, they are happy wherever they can encroach on humans. Were you to follow the great porcupine herd in the North Slope of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, your search would have yielded better results. But the pixelized procupine quill might be more painful. So stick with the smudge. While you’re at it, write another ten blogs about twitter. Twitter this, twitter that.

Speaking of Twitter, here’s a practice SAT question for those of you with kids taking classes at Stanley Kaplan: Arrington is to Twitter like… A) Hearst is to the Spanish American War B) Judith Miller is to 9/11 C) Robert McNamara is to the Gulf of Tonkin D) Mad Money’s Jim Cramer is to Hornbeck Offshore Services (HOS).

(the answer is D)

Its a NSA Spy cam wich reads our emails and sends all data to NSA central.

Can’t believe you did not know this

It’s a web bug/tracking pixel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_bug

-Eric

You have been e-mailing Google since Wednesday about this? Why?

an embedded tab feature that is not yet operational

If you look at the javascript for the js iframe what really stands out in it is that it’s making divs and embedding a flash player.

src=”im/sound.swf”

Way back when I used to make web based email software, which is what first started me on Perl and later PHP, we had a mod that would read your email to you with Microsoft Agent. There was a lame wizard that would do text-to-speech and other dumb characters.

I can’t take hours to de-obfuscate this javascript, since there is a lot of it, but I can take a stab and say I think they are either trying to play sounds to enhance the web client through flash, and they need the iframe to hide the flash player, or they are doing text to speech for email or they are implementing gtalk into the gmail with flash audio.

You can’t put flash in a div and hide it that setting the style to none.

That is my guess.

1. If you ask me it’s a clever marketing ploy to get everyone talking and it seems to be working very very well, hats off to the guy who thought up this one.. Nothing like a bit of curiosity to get a whole load of free media coverage.. hehe

2. It, could also be a new highly advanced screencam, which allows Google to spy on us whenever we use Gmail, I stuck some bubble gum over the block just in case

3. It could also be a subliminal message: http://flickr.com/photos/terra-cam/2643005853/

Well only time will tell

It’s the way the browser renders the floating iFrames with 0 height and width. It makes it a small dot, and all four frames together made a 4×4 box.

And the dot is in the CSS, under “.invfr”.

Just try to make a four iFrames with the CSS properties of “invfr” and you will get the same effect.

The reason IE doesn’t show it, is because it renders 0 by 0 pixel iFrames differently.

It is part of the McCain/Gillmor energy plan, called no pixel left behind. By dimming the upper left corner of all G-mail users screens we can now harvest and triage enough energy to bring back the Twitter track G-talk gateway, allowing big oil to off-shore drill for the next tens years, which by then Ray Ozzie will bring back Hailstorm, fully realizing the Silverlight Mesh gesture stream.

Scary… Hawkins’ was so right… Black Holes do exist

I have to commend TechrunchIT to discover that.

This is seriously the dumbest shit I have seen in a long, long time. Even for TC and even for the weekend, this is a new low. The guys at Google are seriously probably laughing their asses off at the blogosphere for all the speculation and conspiracy theories, when in reality, it’s probably just a display bug.

This is why non-techies think that web 2.0 is irrelevant. Get a life, folks.

who cares?

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BTW:

ITS A BUG-

” We’re on it. Thanks for the heads-up!

Michelle
Gmail Guide Blue ”

http://groups.google.com/group.....7fea9b1b28

It’s a diversion so nobody realizes there is a giant pink arrow too!

It’s a glory hole for conspiracy theorists!

if I had just one wish, it would be to know the address of every commenter who says “slow news day”. Then I would come to all of your houses and kick you square in the balls.

Hmmm strange maibe its not an error i think…

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http://www.onehotwallpaper.com

Simple. It’s a scratch n sniff pixel area. It’s just another one of Google’s innovations. Simply scratch the image to reveal a fresh monitor scent. You guys are making this way too hard.

I put Wite-Out on it and it went away.

Obviously it’s his Noodly Greatness revelation throught mighty all Google.