slamboard

Edit:

I removed this post because I wasn’t happy with my first attempt at creating a screen cast.

In it’s place, I am going to have a reminder.

Archive.org is very useful for reviewing the content that was on a website in the recent, or less recent past. Being banned from accessing the URL of the current website does not impact your ability to look at content that has been archived by third parties, including Google.

I was just checking out one of many online businesses that claim to operate on Christian principles. I am skeptical but respectful of this practice. Basically, I consider it a branding decision and the degree to which it is ethical is entirely dependent on how well they follow through with that promise. Actual churches don’t always measure up, so it is highly probable that many ‘Christian’ businesses register fairly high on the hypocrisy meter.

This particular Christian business seemed okay and what caught my eye was that they felt it was necessary to have a front page disclaimer related to advertising. The most prominent advertising was coming from Google.

Many webmasters and bloggers put contextual ads on their sites and take a buyer beware approach. These ads are so ubiquitous that we tend to feel zero responsibility for their content. Maybe we are wrong.

I get a trickle of traffic coming to this blog based on searches for lingerie. I have done a handful of reviews on online stores that sell the stuff. I do not pretend to be an expert on lingerie and I may have even misspelled it at some point, which accounts for the search engine traffic that I get from people who are looking for pictures of lingeri.

The image above has been transformed for the purposes of satire (I put the text version of air quotes in all by myself).

Scientology is paying for advertisement on YouTube. YouTube is owned by Google. Google has been criticized in the past for its cooperation with China. Tom Cruise pumped money into China while making Mission Impossible III. Supposedly scientology is committed to making human rights a reality around the World. That must be why their most famous member injected $10 million into a totalitarian country that is the most famous human rights abuser.

Google is too big and too powerful. That is the opinion of various netizens and some of them feel strongly enough about the situation to try to boycott Google. I am not one of them. Google is indispensable to me for a number of reasons. I am frustrated enough with the Google attitude that I get a little giddy when I see them miss out on an opportunity to extend their domination.

Today I am happy because T-Mobile chose Yahoo over Google for its mobile search. This is a European story and one quote has more enough quirky UK figures of speech to fill the boot of your lorry (did I say that right?).

If you are like me, you don’t use the salad crisper in your refrigerator. The advanced operators on Google are kinda like that. I remember using similar commands when I was doing abstract searches on a cd-rom database at school back in the 80s. I am just mentioning them on here because I figure that there might be a few people like me who didn’t even realize that they were there. I think I might start using the allintitle: operator from time to time.

I went to a diet site that I was thinking about possibly reviewing and I found myself slightly offended by the degree to which the web designer had attempted to make the Google Ads look like content. I don’t want to be accused of hypocrisy, I have ads by Google on this blog. They are placed on the page in a very conventional way. I have seen a discussion in the blogosphere in which someone said that a page looks naked to them without these standard, unobtrusive contextual ads.

Anyway, I don’t put ads inside the body of my blog posts, even though that is an accepted practice. The website that I am criticizing has a landing page in which the title indicates that a list is to follow. The title even has a colon at the end. Immediately below the title are a series of ads. When the content starts below the ads, they are almost identical in size and format to the ads. It seems deceptive and dishonest to me.

Below the jump on this page is a long form sales pitch for the Magnetic Diet, which seems to be a scam.

I am way late in making any kind of commentary about John Chow getting manually punished by Google for his not not evil ways, so I won’t bother. I will focus instead on page two of the Google search query for John Chow. It contains an entry for John Chow’s MyBlogLog page and the text blurb is written by John Chow. It is the highest ranking page over which he has any editorial control. His holiday wishes are expressed on this page at this time. I suspect that JohnCow.com is getting more Google traffic than MyBlogLog.com/buzz/community/JohnChow/, but every little bit helps.

The URL for my full name is taken, but I really need to make a point of getting domains for my kids. Having a your name as a URL is a tremendous asset if you don’t blow it by ticking Google off.

I was a bit dismayed when I saw a blogger telling a bald faced lie on the official Google blog. If you read the official Google blog and you truly believe that NORAD tracks Santa with Google, I have some news for you. There is no Santa Claus. Your parent or legal guardian wrote that letter from Santa apologizing for not being able to get a Wii

So, the Official Google Blog is Encouraging people to contribute knowledge to the Internet by creating what will hitherto be referred to as knols. The big selling point for this shiny new thing is author recognition. I have the same name as an author and playwright that is moderately famous. I actually wrote him to ask about maybe obtaining the URL that is my name when he is done using it. He changed the subject to politics and music. He is one of those Baby Boomers that treats his web presence like something obligatory rather than his primary vehicle. I somehow doubt that he will be contributing any knols.

I don’t think I will be either. I am not an expert on anything. I think a lot of knolwriters in the near future will not be experts. The benefits of being an expert have been drawing boring and dim human beings to the field of expertise ever since the days of Egyptology, and probably before that.