What makes you happy ?

A domain of a friend’s expired and it was not renewed. Not good. It was still in the cycle though and for $200 could be recovered from enom. No, not for that much. As it was getting close to being up for grabs we decided to wait it out. This domain only has the .co.uk registered otherwise, and that is to the same person. Still, he really did want it. So I placed two backorders.
One was at GoDaddy, the other at Pool. GoDaddy is $19 upfront and includes the domain. Pool is free to try but then $60 if they get it. Pool is well thought of in this game. I was online and constantly reloading my registrar’s domain search page – I use Namecheap – and saw nothing. I was reloading GoDaddy’s page and all that said was that they had last checked the day before and I knew that the domain was dropping at about 6pm that day.
Pool got it. It’s cost $60 but the domain name is returned. It wasn’t a high demand domain but the $60 is one of those lessons that you learn. I emailed GoDaddy. I said that the backorder had failed and what were my options with the $19 they had. I did not ask for a refund. I was told there are no options. All I can use it for is a backorder. I have 32 domains registered at Namecheap and I have enough in an account there to cover the renewals for the next few months. After doing all the above I’ll not be letting any domain expire. So backordering has no use at all to me.
It’s not that I want the $19 back. If I had been told that I could buy a domain and hosting I’d have been happy. Just hosting would be okay. But no. Bob Parsons has obviously decided that as most people will use backordering just the once it’s a really easy way to lock money in and away from people. It would not cost to move the credit. In fact there is no earthly reason to stop a credit being moved – apart from inflating profits. The amount is not the point – and it is part of the lesson learned in some ways – but the fact that GoDaddy refuse to allow that credit to be used anywhere else in their system is just plain annoying.

When I used to answer people in the wordpress.org forums who asked about hosting I would advise them to stay away from GoDaddy for a couple of reasons – and this event above is exactly the sort of detail that to me demonstrates how they would deal with an actual problem – badly. Come to think of it I don’t think they ever featured on the /hosting page there. Wonder why….

Anyone got Bri’s mobile? I’ve facebooked her because I think she forgot to renew her domain – hence the 404 event.

Google just nailed the PR of this site down to 4 because – and ONLY because – I have text link ads. I’ve said my bit before so I’ll not go on again. I knew it was coming.
Google do not like this because the space I sell on MY blog affects their results. They consider it irrelevant, not targeted. Okay.

One of the first anti-spam tools for WordPress was by Kitty. Essentially it said that if the spammer paid, their spam could stay. I doubt anyone paid, but hey, nice idea. I still have that code.

So – what would Google do if we allowed “text-spam-comment-ads” instead? It’s not like they can penalise for spam content in comments is it ? (Bye Bye Blogger!)

The sole consolation I have is that as a Firefox user with Adblock Plus, G-filter and CustomizeGoogle running I don’t see most ads. So much so that theirs stick out. I’m 6c off the $100 in adsense here so when that hits they will go too.

So Google, what next? You obviously think this is cracked (remember the craptacular nofollow which came about because of pagerank?) so who is the next victim?

Google is an advertising business first, last and everything in between.

“Warning to abusive bloggers as judge tells site to reveal names” says the Guardian Unlimited.
Just one tiny problem – the article mentions 2 forums.
Forums are not blogs, forum posts are not blog posts, forum users are not bloggers.
I honestly thought the Guardian had more of a clue.

Court orders obliging websites to disclose the identity of users posting anonymous defamatory remarks began in 2001.

That may be true, but if we take this blog for instance I can reveal no more than you can see. Sure I have the email addresses but if you are really going to have a go at someone then you shouldn’t use your email. And even then it proves nothing because you can put anyone’s details there. There are a surprising amount that start comments@ blog@ wordpress@ and none are real. So as a blog owner who requires no registration – and therefore a verifiable address – for use I can’t see that I could be held accountable. I’m sure some lawyer somewhere would say that I am. “I” also being “us bloggers”.

But then abuse is the least of it – linking is illegal now.

In this post I name the person that a WHOIS returns as the owner of a splog domain. Here are the emails:

Me: http://ideahustle.com
Why are you stealing?

Him: I’m sorry, what?
That hasn’t been my domain for several years now.

M: “Several years”
It was created 1 year ago.
Whatever, I’ll report the domain as being falsely registered which will remove it for longer.

H: it looks like the domain is down anyway but have at it. I’ll let the guy I sold it too know what’s up.

So he is saying it is not his. But the WHOIS does. So should I believe him and remove his name from that post, or call him a liar by leaving it there? I can’t prove it either way and neither can he – the only evidence is the one thing.
My options:
1. Remove the whole post. This is not a choice I will make.
2. Remove his name. Possibly.
3. Add ‘allegedly’ in strategic places to that entry.

No idea yet.
(And I have no clue how to report false registration details. I just lobbed it in there).

At WordCamp, Matt Cutts said that all Text Link Ads were bad. I blogged about his utter hypocrisy. Yesterday the pagerank for this site was a 7. Today it is a 6. Google have decided that TLA are bad so sites with TLA will be penalised so they stop using TLA.
I’ll say that another way – Google hates competition. They will ruin competition.
Maybe another – Matt Cutts lies about the real reason because Google is greedy. Very greedy.

Other sites are apparently dropping in PR. Google have some new ads rolling soon – ads they can put their own text link ads into. So they are eliminating the competition. It’s as simple as that.
The monolith – slogan “You create, we steal” – has never been clearer. An industry was created and now they are stealing it.

An advertising company is shutting down another advertising company. No matter which way you spin it, that is what is happening.

I hope I meet Matt Cutts again. I really dislike hypocrites.

Edit: Go read that first entry I link to. There are screenshots there. Those screenshots are STILL happening. So they are almost accepting advertising from TLA to get more people to use TLA so more people and companies get angry at TLA and stop using TLA. Way to f*ing go.

Today’s search engines draw the most relevant information to our attention…

No they don’t. They present what they think is relevant not what is the most relevant. That is a significant difference.

and as more data become available online, the importance of search engines will only increase.

Possibly. People may well start to shun them in favour of more local sources and ‘word of mouth’. Bigger is not always better.

In the future, people around the world will likely look for new ways to identify the authenticity of online information sources.

But above you just said search engines will be more more important? Isn’t the job of a search engine to identify authentic sources?

The man who said the above? Vint Cerf. He works for Google. So his answers can’t really be seen as independent can they?

Top quote: That includes the ads that Google are not putting on Youtube? Relevant?

Bottom quote: Google already vets results, already exclude sites and already instantly promote sites. So they would already say their results are as good as they can currently get. Maybe we’ll have http://auth.google.com where we can check a site owner’s web browsing history (so that’s what they do with images from Perfect10), his Checkout record, his newsgroup posting behaviour. Because when he says people will be looking, what he means is Google is working on it right now.. and we all trust Google don’t we? I’m sure people in China trust their results.

That guy may well be important in the history of the internet, but right now he’s Google to the core. Given he’s an employee of the evil-free company should he be? Sure he should chant the mantra but the above is just a bit too far.

And this is amusing:

As an example: it is already a challenge to watch videos posted on the BBC website in 1997.

Imagine trying to watch the same video in 100 years. Or in one thousand years.

Google will be fixing global warming and the widely agreed time that oil will become scarce in 2050 then?

The latest measurements confirm that the world’s oil and natural gas supplies are running out too fast. At some time between 2010 and 2020 the world’s supply of oil and gas will fall below the level required to meet international demand.

The US government is aware that we are about to endure a disastrous international energy shortage. According to Dr James McKenzie, a senior member of the climate change programme at the World Resources Institute in Washington, USA: “That’s why we went to war in Iraq.” The Insider

A thousand years? I don’t think so.

Search engine propaganda.

Site Ads.
Survey Ads.
Classified Ads.
Spam on Walls.
People adding stuff and taking stuff away.
People that can’t spell.
The chance to buy things that don’t exist.
Groups with hundreds of members and almost no posts. (like Orkut)
A frankly horrible layout.

Why do people like Facebook?

And I am there, yes. More because I got a support question from someone wanting a ‘wall’ and I had no idea what one was.

It’s a weird place is facebook. Still, it’ll go away just like Orkut did – at least for everyone outside Brazil that is.

Photos. Take lots and hope you get a good one. That’s the general philosophy I suppose.
In the electronics shop across from the hotel I happened to remark that a Canon EOS he had was meant to be a nice camera. He sniffed a sale and went on a full charm offensive. His end price – complete with 2gb card, protective lens, case was 500 quid. I declined this marvellous opportunity as I could get it through Amazon much cheaper and with no risk of tax on return to the UK. It got me pondering though.
I have a FinePix s5600 which by most reviews (1 2 3) is pretty good so not only is there no point in me getting another camera, there is also every point in looking more at what I have and how to use it. While I’ll just point’n'shoot most of the time there is no reason why I can’t look at things like white balance, field depth, wide angle stuff, macro images and more of the options in the P A S M buttons. But pressing the button is only one part of the deal isn’t it…

I’m pondering taking a photo, publishing it and all the EXIF data then inviting constructive criticism.

A macro shot could cover lighting, angle of the shot, probably other stuff.
A not-macro one could cover white balance, composition, cropping out a good detail and again other stuff. (See how little I know!)

The aim is to not just take a shot but learn from it. Taking a hundred pictures and hoping to get 1 good one is not a problem, but learning a bit so the chances rise to 2 good ones could be worth it. It would be interesting…. and I’ve already bought a domain so it’d be a shame to waste it :)

Keeping the thing – the photoblog – going would also be easier because of the feedback and the desire to keep experimenting.

I’ll probably set it up over the weekend.

Just saw this at the end of a blog entry:

I guess they just want people to think quietly. To themselves. Because they don’t really want to know. There’s a place for rhetorical questions, and this wasn’t it.