Google proof

September 28, 2005 8:51 AM

Hide text.
posted by caddis (42 comments total)

posted by missbossy at 8:58 AM on September 28, 2005

Uh-oh, an image in the FPP? MetaTalk in 3... 2... 1...
posted by letourneau at 8:58 AM on September 28, 2005

Now, how to retroactively replace everything I ever posted between 1995 and 2002?
posted by stopgap at 8:59 AM on September 28, 2005

posted by jefbla at 9:00 AM on September 28, 2005

posted by chunking express at 9:00 AM on September 28, 2005

So now I can uninstall the gimp
posted by zouhair at 9:00 AM on September 28, 2005

Good find, bad post.
posted by soyjoy at 9:01 AM on September 28, 2005

I am not impressed. Anyone who would ever have a use for this would know how to use GIMP, Photoshop, etc. What's the point?
posted by TurkishGolds at 9:02 AM on September 28, 2005

posted by Armitage Shanks at 9:02 AM on September 28, 2005

Also, not being able to set the background color is a serious weakness.
posted by delmoi at 9:03 AM on September 28, 2005

Metafilter: completely illegible
posted by Pollomacho at 9:03 AM on September 28, 2005

Maybe I'm paranoid, but if I wanted to hide something, I wouldn't type it into a box on a website that says "Throw in your text and hide it!" I could do the same thing more safely by scribbling weird text on a piece of paper and using a digital camera.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:04 AM on September 28, 2005

posted by blue_beetle at 9:04 AM on September 28, 2005

posted by mazola at 9:04 AM on September 28, 2005

This way has the benefit of OCR being able to read it.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:05 AM on September 28, 2005

Not to mention, it doesn't seem useful, if all the wierd-text anti-bot registration protections out there imply such images are easily OCR'd...
posted by nomisxid at 9:05 AM on September 28, 2005

Here's a Google image search that will quickly fill up with images of text people thought they were keeping private. That should be interesting reading if this ever becomes a popular service.
posted by scottreynen at 9:07 AM on September 28, 2005

posted by Emperor Yamamoto's Eggs at 9:09 AM on September 28, 2005

posted by blue_beetle at 9:10 AM on September 28, 2005

other html goodness

http://www.natural-innovations.com/wa/doc-charset.html

this will give you the codes for special characters

(i was looking for the ellipsis)
posted by MrLint at 9:10 AM on September 28, 2005

posted by jonson at 9:10 AM on September 28, 2005

"Hide your wallet, sir?"
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:12 AM on September 28, 2005

I've often wondered why one can't search for the occurence of a specific image. Image searches in google for example find images that accompany a specified text and the image retrieved is hit or miss. It seems that the code, or whatever the image is actually comprised of, could be recognized and searched for. If my computer can copy an image and save it, then why wouldn't it be possible to tell google to find the digital stuff that comprises the image somewhere else on the net, assuming another copy also exists?
posted by anticlock at 9:14 AM on September 28, 2005

posted by Malor at 9:15 AM on September 28, 2005

posted by If I Had An Anus at 9:16 AM on September 28, 2005

Aww, I suck
posted by If I Had An Anus at 9:17 AM on September 28, 2005

That's it; I'm converting my site to CAPTCHAs. Imagine if we all did that: Google would have to hire thousands of people to crawl sites.

"Spider" will be a job description and pay $9 an hour.
posted by kurumi at 9:17 AM on September 28, 2005

anticlock.... image searching like that is comming. Image recognition is a field that gets a lot of research dollars. Google video will probably one day let you search for apples in video clips.
posted by sourbrew at 9:18 AM on September 28, 2005

posted by shawnj at 9:22 AM on September 28, 2005

For posterity, in case this thread (and metafilter) survives the existence of HideText, the original FPP says:

"Would you like to post something on the internets that is not text searchable, won't get Googled later on?" (in an image).

Then missbossy says, "I suppose it will be necessary to post all replies in this format. So now what?"

And off it goes from there. My "contribution", just above, was to embed a text image in marquee tags.

Ok, posterity. Hope things are better then than they are now.
posted by Malor at 9:23 AM on September 28, 2005

posted by wakko at 9:26 AM on September 28, 2005

I don't want to be exposed to imagined text.
posted by OmieWise at 9:27 AM on September 28, 2005

posted by shoepal at 9:30 AM on September 28, 2005

posted by swift at 9:32 AM on September 28, 2005

posted by zouhair at 9:34 AM on September 28, 2005

On the other hand, Verdana > Arial...
posted by andreaazure at 9:34 AM on September 28, 2005

Well, the solution I've been using is much simpler and I'm sure someone could code it too: Replace occasional characters with international equivalents which are human-readable but machines see as an entirely different word:

fück Göogle!
posted by vacapinta at 9:36 AM on September 28, 2005

By the way, I think its totally cool that the gif shows up in the Live Preview box! #1, you are #1!
posted by fenriq at 9:38 AM on September 28, 2005

* ...until HideText becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of Google, of course.
posted by spock at 9:41 AM on September 28, 2005

Doesn't work with Lynx.
posted by brownpau at 9:43 AM on September 28, 2005

From the site:

Q: This is all swell, but how do I know if you guys are not peeping into my stuff?!
A: We've got better things to do, really. We're just not interested.

Ha. Like come on. And they suggest using Hidetext to send private stuff and passwords to people over aim/msn.
posted by bobo123 at 9:47 AM on September 28, 2005

posted by pyramid termite at 9:48 AM on September 28, 2005