Entries Tagged 'Uncategorized' ↓

Well, well. We have a new firestorm brewing in the online world of companies overly obsessed with SEO and other acronyms: Google’s Search-Within-A-Search ! I can only say that this is the time when site owners who are particularly worried about it just need to do one thing, and that is start promoting other search sites. The biggest problem they face with the B.S. they call SEO is that there are today only 3 or 4 real contenders for web search. If they want to really, truly have a fair shake, they simply need to invest in and promote other search sites. Everything is concentrated in Google. It’s like trying to get TV ads out, but the only purveyors are the major networks or the local cable company. Remember the days of the yellow pages? Particularly before the breakup of Bell Telephone? There was ONE BOOK. And that is exactly where we are today with Google.That’s not all bad, because Google generally tries to do good things for everyone online. I really believe they try their damnedest to be as egalitarian as possible. The flaky wankers who really don’t like this are the companies who would be happy if they could BUY the rights to be the exclusive result returned for search words!!! Funny how this works, isn’t it?So, there it is. All you retailers and e-commerce giants and people who don’t pay for AdWords ads… …go out and build a better search! Or even just better market a so-so search engine. Microsoft didn’t get where they are today by always building a better mouse trap! Marketing. Google did get where they are by building a better mouse trap, but that was in the wild and wooly 90’s dot-com bubble era.

As you can see, if you have been here before, there is a new look. Modified from the ShadedGrey wordpress theme, all I did was insert my own header graphic and change the header font to Arial.New year, new look, why not. 

Hey, here’s a brilliant idea. Sue the shit out of intelius.com and other sites in the market selling personal information online. How? Well, you won’t get any money, but I bet a group of lawyers could make out like gangbusters. Sad thing is, that industry would probably continue to sell you up the river. It could be construed as some sort of misrepresentation or fraud to give out or sell your information. Essentially, they’re doing something with your identity that you would not authorize and they’re making money from it. You could even say they owe you money… It might even be easily concluded that by not verifying the purpose or background of those desiring your information, they are abusing you and even endangering you. Simply by them making your personal information more available than you would, and by profiteering with it, they could easily be defined as assaulting you. They’re causing you to fear for your safety and potentially actively endangering you, and worst of all, they’re making money doing it. Extortion? Racketeering? Criminal negligence? Organized crime?

The new Safari 3 beta has some nifty new features:

• Better JavaScript support: Google Docs now works with Safari 3!
• Command+F will bring a search bar for searching the current page’s content (like in Firefox, unfortunately, the command to close that bar is another key)
• Option to save all open tabs as bookmarks.
• Option to open all tabs/windows from previous Safari session. Great for when bad sites crash the browser with heave scripting (javascript and flash).
• Tabs are now drag-and-drop, so you can rearrange them as you like!
• In the File menu, options to Mail the Contents of the current page (Command+I), or Mail a Link to the current page (Command+Shift+I), very cool.
• The Bookmarks window now also has a little search bar.

Those are just the ones I found in a few minutes of looking. All of these things are useful and things that people wanted. Now we just need developer tools like Firefox has, but better.

Good Job Apple!

The recent tragedy at Virginia Tech is just one more high-profile reason why the USA needs to ban firearms. It’s time to join the rest of the civilized world. People don’t need guns in the USA unless they’re going to kill other people.

eRuby means embedded ruby; embedded in xhtml, that is. The result is often a file with the .rhtml extension, Continue reading →

Viacom, and soon the rest of the TV and film industry, has officially sued Google. They didn’t do it when it was YouTube. There was no money to pay for the suit. They will win it. No problem. Well, it had to happen sometime. It’s been a free-wheeling ride for about 2 years now. Heck it was parallel to the original Napster. Like the old Napster, it’s even caught on in countries that don’t speak English officially but who crave the content!!

Once again the industry has realized that there is and was a desire to access audion and video content on demand. What remains to be seen is how much consumers are willing to pay for such a service, if anything. Best supported by ads embedded, like in TV, but even that is doomed by DVRs.

Goodbye Google stock valuation? That too, remains to be seen. Google has done some great things, but Berkely or MIT it ain’t. When the decline begins, expect it to be big. The only thing that made Google successful was its advertising program. Otherwise it’s a big mess waiting to get pounced on just like Yahoo. It’s very similar to the Japanese mega-corporations before the bubble burst in Japan 15 years ago. The failure of banks led to the big sucking vacuum sound of companies shrinking.

The server was down due to a power problem at the hosting datacenter. Now up again. Thankfully.

I just tried something called YouOS
It is strange. Perhaps because it is Continue reading →

The abhorrent practices of domain squatting, tasting and kiting are picking up now more than ever. Partly, thanks to Continue reading →