After getting through today’s challenge there’s only three days left of the Bourne Ultimatum game. What will we do until the next movie challenge comes along? Google should just go from one movie to the next with these challenges. There has to be enough movies in the pipe to warrant a continual stream of games like these. They don’t take too long, are fun and engaging.

Day 12
We’re back to Nicky Parson’s Dater Notes profile and particularly scanning her pictures in the image filter.

Hint: Don’t forget there are three image filters, A, B and C.

We got another break over the weekend, which means this will be another full week of the Bourne Ultimatum game. Here’s the schedule:

Monday July 30 - Day 11
Tuesday July 31 - Day 12
Wednesday Aug 1 - Day 13
Thursday Aug 2 - Day 14
Friday Aug 3 - Day 15 = it’s over

Day 11
Ugh. A crossword puzzle. What’s next, Sudoku? Good thing Bernice stopped by this morning and told me to not bother actually doing the crossword puzzle.

Hint: via Bernice:

LISTEN to the video that David Strathairn does when you log-in…then use those nifty tools we have … clue: it’s a city name.

Thanks Bernice!

Woohoo, my o-fer Bourne sightings streak has come to an end! Today in the Bourne Ultimatum game it said that two of my cameras had seen Bourne. Now, you can stop chuckling at my plight, Nathan Let’s see if I can get a streak of sightings going the other way, like the rest of you playing. Although I must admit your idea about trying to keep the streak going of least sightings was intriguing.

Reader, and self-confessed part of the “crew”, Bernice got to see an early screening of Bourne Ultimatum last night and left her glowing review in yesterday’s comments: “It’s a wild ride and will leave you tired. It rocks!” Her complete report along with some additional hints for today’s mission can be found here, no spoilers.

Day 10
Today’s mission isn’t anything new really. Just go follow the links from the last two days at priceless.com and Google Groups and look at Ross’s clues which are provided by the message transmitter. In fact, today’s answer was the one I thought was yesterday’s answer originally.

Hint: Look at the pictures in Google groups carefully.

A depressing night here as the Seattle Mariners dropped their sixth game in a row. Hopefully I don’t go 0 for 9 with Bourne sightings. I don’t think I will, so let’s get an earlier (earliest for our coverage anyway, but probably late for Bernice) start on today’s Bourne Ultimatum game.

Day 9
Back to another IM conversation with Simon which leads to a Google Groups post to find out where he’s at.

Hint: When you reach the Google Groups list look for the picture circled and the general area around that, not the circled area specifically.

Good luck to all players!

I’ve been lax in mentioning — and being successful — in the second part of the daily Bourne Ultimatum game missions. The mission part we’ve covered since day one but haven’t discussed the placement of the security cameras in an attempt to catch sightings of Bourne along the way. You’ll note from the green circled text in the graphic below that after pressing confirm players are given the opportunity to place a camera in the surveillance area of the agent console below.

On today’s puzzle there are several different map locations to choose and then click “save” if you guess correctly which camera then a Bourne sighting will be awarded. This is the second puzzle and so far I’ve 0 for 7. You only get one opportunity to complete this challenge after clicking the confirm button, so don’t forget this secondary challenge.

Day 8 map locations include:
- London tower
- St Paul’s Cathedral
- Waterloo Station
- London Eye
- 10 Downing Street

How are you doing with the sightings? How many do you have? Looks like I went 0 for 8 with my guess of London Tower today.

Day 8
Supposedly operative Simon Ross can’t get to Dater Notes and instead is leaving clues publically about Bourne’s whereabouts through the site priceless.com.

Hint via Bernice again (man, she must wait up at night for these to be released):

“We go to a new web page [following the link in the agent console encrypted message]. Find Simon … click one of the pics … there are only two read the handwriting on the left going up and down of the passport, read the typed letters and numbers in the center, put into IM, get bored because there is no further communication until tomorrow, sigh.”

Time to jaw a bit about the off camera and on camera star of Bourne Ultimatum: Jason Bourne played by Brad Pitt Matt Damon.

I’m not sure what Brad Pitt sees in Angelina Jolie, his off screen love interest. In fact, I’m not sure what most men see in her. Jennifer Aniston, Pitt’s ex-wife is a lot more attractive than Jolie. One thing about Aniston is that she doesn’t seem very happy. Howard Stern talks about Aniston’s smirk a lot. She does seem like she’s unhappy a lot which I can’t imagine why (paparazzi? too much money? too much beauty?). Whatever the case, it seems like since Jolie and Pitt were in that Mr and Mrs. Smith flick it has spelled doom for the Brad and Jen romance. Ok, enough celeb talk — unless you want to weigh in on these thoughts in the comments area of course — let’s get to Day 7 of the Bourne Ultimatum game.

Day 7
We finally get to use the image filter in the agent console today. I was wondering when we’d get a chance to use that. Did you know Dater Notes has a newsletter?

Hint: Search Google Images for “treadstone all lies” and enter the image URLs into the image filter.

Update 7/24/07 9:19am PST: Why do I keep mixing up Matt Damon and Brad Pitt? My comments on Brad Pitt stand, but my bad for confusing the two and I’ve corrected thanks to Eric in the comments below.

Looks like Google threw us a curve by having the Bourne Ultimatum game take a break over the weekend. A message in the indicator read: “Login Monday to receive your next mission.” Depending on what part of the world you live in, Monday might have come faster than others. Received a comment here yesterday afternoon PST that somebody had already beaten the mission. This break should have given players who didn’t get in yet a chance to catch up and/or spend time reading the new Harry Potter book that came out Saturday.

Since the Bourne Ultimatum movie launches August 2, I’m thinking this weekend won’t be treated the same. Here’s how the schedule would work:

July 23 - day 6
July 24 - day 7
July 25 - day 8
July 26 - day 9
July 27 - day 10
*July 28 Saturday - day 11 (or alternate day off again)
*July 29 Sunday - day 12 (or alternate day off again)
July 30 - day 13 (or day 11)
July 31 - day 14 (or day 12)
August 1 - day 15 - end game (or day 13)
August 2 Thursday - (or day 14)
August 3 Friday - Bourne Ultimatum launches in theaters everywhere (alternate day 15 and end of game)

* the weekend of July 21-22 the game didn’t run, so it’s possible Google will not run the game July 28 or July 29, and that would make the game end the day the movie launches in theaters everywhere. Makes sense.

This weekend my wife and I caught the new Adam Sandler movie and saw a preview of Bourne Ultimatum right before it started. Looks like Bourne figures out who he is according to the preview. The Simpsons Movie this coming weekend and Bourne Ultimatum the week after that. Looks like lots of buttery popcorn in the future!

Day 6
We’re supposed to combine tactics learned from previous missions including instant messaging and watching a video for a phrase to type in, this time focusing on the videographer Mustapha Nayet.

Hint: Use the instant message with the codeword in Nayet’s profile to get the YouTube video location to watch for the phrase. If you have trouble pasting the video URL (404 messages), look closely at the format of any working YouTube video so the format makes sense. Tricky Google, tricky!

As this is being written the markets are just getting started and I’m listening to the recording of the Google (disclaimer: I own GOOGle stock) Second Quarter 2007 Earnings Call. CEO Eric Schmidt starts out sounding robotic, like he was reading from some prepared script.

- 13,786 employees. That’s the number CFO George Reyes points to that Google had ending the second quarter. Analyst commentary around the increase in some 1,500+ employees — somewhat disturbingly referred to as “head count” (what’s wrong with the word employees?) — seems to be more negative than positive, questioning if the expense was necessary in a quarter that was “seasonally slower.” In short: why are they hiring more people, creating more expense, when business isn’t as good. It’s the equivalent of running out too many employees during the slow times. Running a search company isn’t like running a restaurant. An emphasis on hiring new talent that do something for the future doesn’t compare to staffing during peak times. But it wasn’t only engineers that were hired, these numbers also included marketers and other job classifications.

Google contends that despite budget overspending on new hires, the hires they made were necessary and they were excited about the talent they acquired.

- universal search. Sergey Brin pointed out that search results now include videos, images and other results which he deemed a major breakthrough for the search. I like how this has been implemented.

The earnings call reminded me of the fight scene in Rocky IV where Ivan Drago gets cut and Rocky realizes that Drago is human and can be hurt. Google is human too, yes.

Kevin Kelleher writes:

Yes, Google made more money than ever before - no surprise there. And, as you’d expect from an ever-larger company, it did so at a slower rate. But the revenue growth rate was disarmingly slow: 6% higher than its last quarter. That’s the lowest quarter-on-quarter revenue growth that Google has shown since it went public. Is that what you’d expect from the company that’s causing Yahoo so much pain? Hardly.

Google can’t keep recreating its outstanding results forever. Although today might be a bit rocky, I suspect the stock price will ultimately bounce back and continue to grow because Google didn’t have a bad quarter, they just didn’t have as good a quarter as analysts expected.

Wow, can you believe the Bourne Ultimatum game is already one third over? Seems like we are just getting started.

Day 5
A new Dater Notes profile to view for today’s challenge: Mustapha Nayet. We’re supposed to figure out the locker code by watching his YouTube surveillance videos. I’m with reader Bernice who left a comment on yesterday’s game, this one was pretty easy.

Hint: Today’s hint comes in part from reader Bernice who writes:

it’s numbers.

To which I’d add, watch the last video for the numbers. You can put it together.

Day 4 of the Bourne Ultimatum game had me knotted for awhile.

Day 4
Today I was stumped trying to figure out where Treadstone’s Nicky Parsons is “located now.” Her Dater Notes profile including zip code indicate New York, NY, but that is not the answer. Confession: I got the answer with help from my friend Lestat. Two brains are better than one.

Hint: Use Google web search on the names in Nicky’s picture gallery.