Subjects:
Xmas Roundup
Google's "Supplemental Results" will be integrated into the main database after some major engineering feats, so that they never run out of results as long as some people place ads and others search. Javascript is still evil. And now that social bookmarking sites gathered a lot of traffic, in order to expand, they have to fragment that again. Merry Christmas and all that.
Power Tripped
When I said a few days ago us old folk had to make do with the internet to share knowledge I thought it was obvious that Google's "Knol" was something to be wary of rather than embraced, because terms can be changed, together with intentions.
Graywolf put a lot of effort into explaining what appeared to be obvious, but maybe not every content producer thinks far enough ahead.
Google Cleanups
Feeds, often showing up in Google search results instead of or sometimes even in addition to [and better positioned than] the corresponding HTML pages will now be removed according to Google's Webmaster Central Blog.
Allow people to contribute data and there will be abuse. Now Google's Toolbar allows spoofing.
A Matter of Semantics
In a Technology Review interview Peter Norvig of "AI: A Modern Approach" fame and Google's director of search quality explains why they're not even considering natural language queries. Some people find that surprising.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19868/
Content is King
Yet One More Way to create usable content. Although at the moment there are some unanswered [or unasked] questions.
Beware of Geeks bearing Gifts
All those promoting Online Computing as the next big thing seem to forget one issue: whom do you trust. Would people really upload all their data to some servers in an unknown location with unknown security and unknown issues? Don't think so. It's less a technical than a trust issue. And it's not because people have anything to hide. It's because at some stage there will have been enough abuses for trust to collapse.
Toolbar Sense
Google's Toolbar added a few features when confronted with a page that's no longer available. Even the very last one in the long list can't really be objected to.
Another Fence to be Whitewashed
Just last week I mentioned whitewashing fences when Google announces its creatively named scheme "knol" [a unit of knowledge], allowing users to create content. The challenge, so the announcement, "was to find a way to help people share their knowledge". Old folk will remember that we had to make do with the internet for this.
Government pwned
Using unsanitised data on the web is as dangerous as executing unknown code from unknown sources. You get an even fiercer mix when pairing the two. Even Governments can't help then. In fact, nobody can.
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/100630
Wikipedia Whitewash
Although Wikipedia is at the moment probably more popular then ever, it may have peaked, or created its own downfall, if you listen to some people. And they're certainly not the first, not by a long shot.
Maybe it's time to invent the next system, which, like the most famous ones, Dmoz and Wikipedia, gets people to queue to be allowed whitewashing fences.
Historic Google Page Modifications
The interweb is abuzz with claims that a canadian ISP modifies HTTP data delivered to clients if those data are Google start page. The screenshots show how a notice is inserted at the top of the Google page alerting the user to the fact that his bandwidth limit is almost up.
Old Hat, Seth Finkelstein points out.
Addiction Fix
As reported by users of various forums Google has a fix for those who would like to see more Adsense ads. Unfortunately, those with Javascript turned off in their browser will remain ad free.
Google Hijack
Most people believe it's a strange Google bug that leads to Google's title, description and addresses being shown in first place, when you enter the domainname paintyourlife.com without any qualifying syntax.
Strangely, the source code of the page in question contains the following line:
<!--# include file="checkIP1_new.asp"-->
Tea Break Fiction
The stuff used to be called Short Stories. In book form I never liked short stories, even if written by some of my favourite authors. And then I came across the subject of Flash Fiction, that is, fiction which aim to deliver a "maximum of meaning with a brutal economy of words", so short, that it's just long enough for a few minutes excitement, and - given the right set of skills - easily produced and linked.
http://darrylsloan.wordpress.com/fiction/mind-out-of-time/
For the sophisticated break there's no better delight than the quintessential Englishman's. Still, at yet another end of the spectrum there are people who prefer to indulge in reading and re-reading the very shortest of all.
New Google Trouble
Now that non natural links have been dealt the blow that has been overdue for a long time, subdomains are next in line. "Subdomains", for those who don't know, are multiple hostnames within a domain and in addition to the www. host. And subdomains have been used in the past to have more than the normally max two pages in the result list.
Matt Cutts now says that subdomains are no different from any other path name on the main host, thus limiting the number of results in virtually all cases to two URLs per Domain. Apparently the new system has been in place for about two weeks without any complaints.
Outsourcing
You can now outsource part of the web page creation process to Google, who just introduced an API for Chart Creation by simply using a parameter laden URL, which is quite an elegant solution. If you start using this offer bear in mind that there's a limit of 50,000 requests per day. And that Google will know, yet again, a little bit more about your site.
Ask and ye shall Find
Ask.com released a "reality snapshot of what people were truly looking to find" over the past year. As if we didn't know.
Online Healing
Some years back Google received praise by its marketing sprouts for providing an answer to a search query which suggested that the emergency a searcher suspected might be real. "I kept thinking, 'you only have minutes...' I found a site that listed symptoms. Indeed, I was having a heart attack."
No, really, this is true, as you can read in a message from Ann.
Now Google has been superseded as a medical reference.
Truth Detector
If you ever need to know if something is true, this truth detecting flowchart has the answer.
Meta Directive
Google's Webmaster Central Blog clarifies the use or uselessness of various Meta Tags, explaining which are and always have been superfluous, and the few that still can be helpful. I don't know if unavailable_after:[date]: is obeyed - I bet it is treated like 404s: as long as someone links to an address Google believes it's proper to consider a page for inclusion in its results irrespective whether it still exists.
X-Header Tags
One more place to stuff lots of instructions addressed to spiders comes from Yahoo, whose spiders now obey a set of newly introduced HTTP X-Headers. The one somewhat useful application I can see is the exclusion of specific file types such as PDFs by adding an HTTP Header for those site administrators who sprinkle Files all over the place instead of organising them according to need and purpose.
Flash 9
Adobe introduces its Flash Player 9 as .tar.gz or .rpm and with a .yum repository file. It's available for OS X and Windows Home computers as well.
Iphone takes over the Internet
The Iphone, according to the WSJ, is the most frequently used mobile browsing device, having more market share than all other mobile phone browsers combined.
Browser Problems
People are wising up:
Microsoft doesn't want to produce a standards-compliant browser. It doesn't want to produce a standards-compliant anything. It is only interested in furthering its monopoly by lock-in. I'm sure the IE7 team is under strict orders never ever ever to produce anything that comes close to being able to run nontrivial CSS, Javascript or anything else "out of the box". It wants developers to abandon competing browsers and push their customers to use IE. That was the strategy behind the mutilation of Java, the pushing of possibly the most ludicrously insecure plug in system every known in the computing world (better known as ActiveX), and that's its purpose in making sure that IE, no matter the iteration, doesn't play well with CSS.
And:
Personally, I put whoever's in charge of Microsoft's IE product development team on the same moral level as spammers. Much in the same way spammers end up wasting your time and gumming a fantastic common resource, Microsoft's product wastes the time of thousands of web devs and holds the web back.
Time to remind people that even for Windows there are perfectly normal Open Source and commercial browsers; there's no need to continue to use outdated, crippled and risky technology.
Google Breakup
A Professor Hermann Maurer at the TU Graz in Austria warns in a 7 Mb PDF study how Google is a threat to mankind. The fact that Google, as a latecomer, was able to succeed only because it didn't copy the [many] errors of its competitors, and because the target audience, suitably distracted, appears more gullible every day, seems not to register. Or maybe it does?
Even the fact that many queries return Wikipedia pages at the top is not to be tolerated, says the good professor. He ignores, that Wikipedia, as it's already happening to the ODP, is its own worst enemy, because people are involved. Still, he believes firmly in state control, as if this would be somehow more benevolent and unbiased than a monopoly which came about only because everyone else failed. Regards to George Orwell.
More Link Commerce
It's almost embarrassing watching Google labouring the point that buying or selling links is not desirable. Especially if one sees how many seem to be not detected [or tolerated?]. If this goes on much longer, people will regard it as nothing but posturing.
Nasty Surprises
Google's Online Security Blog asks for Help in finding "malware". Google could do a lot [more] to help themselves by treating Redirects differently. More so by proper page analysis.
If you did look at one of the pages purged last week because of the malware infestation it could cause on unsuspecting and unprotected users, it's obvious that the page itself contains no more than utter rubbish. No one speaks or writes like that. And if they do, they're either locked up. And I'm sure Google of all bodies will have the ability to discern what is expressed meaning and what constitutes just a list of words, from a large list of totally unrelated subjects.
Bad Neighbours
I'm still surprised sometime how trusting and totally blind some parts of the internet culture are operated. But it is probably a consequence of discipline not being cool, which leads to some happenings totally surprising users who would have never believed such things possible:
http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/11/30/zoho_bug/
© Copyright 1998 - 2008 Klaus Schallhorn.