Subscribe to RSSArchive for the ‘Internet’ Category:
Alexa Ranking and Incest
Yes, there is a point to the post title. After neglecting my ‘Comments in Moderation’ section on this blog for a long time, I decided to trawl through the spam to see what was actually there. 10/14 had links to ‘incestuous rape’ videos. Why? Who is gaining from posting these links?
That aside, this website now has an alexa ranking. My site is currently ranked 11,432,294th in…well, the world? Is it the world? I think it’s the world.
Celebrate. Good times. Come on.
WikiWatching
I am really curious as to who sees a news article or something that crops up in the news and instantly thinks to themselves “Oh, I gotta make that addition on Wikipedia, it’s my duty”?
This stems from my reading about the death of Isaac Hayes, at the age of 65.
I read about it on the BBC News Website and this was reported onbly ‘36 minutes ago’. Lo and behold, the WikiPedia article about Isaac Hayes is full of information regarding his death. Not only that but there’s a plethora of editing to ensure the article’s integtrity.
What amazes me though is why people think it’s their duty to do this. Whilst I believe it is a good thing that information is now getting out there to the public domain in one centralised location, isn’t it dangerous to state so-called “facts” on a supposed encyclopedia website when all the facts have not yet been reported or are completely unknown?
The iPhone-y
Oh, look at my post title, I’m ever so witty.
So, I’m probably the only nerd with a habit of disliking anything popular and craze-esque who hasn’t yet ranted about the iPhone. Seeing how last Friday, the iPhone 3G was released, I figured it was entirely appropriate to finally vent my feelings concerning this technological wonder.
Trash. Pure trash. Whilst the potential for Apple fan boys and girls is huge (in terms of monetizing them), Apple still seem to have a rather pretentious following. Admittedly, this is a slight deviation but I’d be curious to know how many male Apple users (with respect to personal computers) also have curly hair and drink Magners whilst watching a foreign film (So as not to alienate anyone reading this, you must tick all 3 of the aforementioned criteria for me to greatly dislike you).
Given Apple’s cult success (and glaringly blatant shortcomings), it was only natural that they’re release another cash cow device for the masses to drool over.
Shock. I was actually reasonably impressed by the iPhone after a colleague in one of my many previous jobs showed it to me. It does look sleek, it does look nifty and it has a nice screen. Then again, my Samsung mobile phone looks sleek nifty and has a really nice screen and has a retail value of considerably less than the iPhone.
That aside, I had no real issues with the iPhone. Yes, it was locked to networks, yes it had software glitches; neither of these two points came as a real surprise to me given Apple’s track record for ‘keeping things in the family’ยน especially when their iPod was considered. However, the realisation that the iPhone only worked on a 2G network was somewhat of a shocker. Here I am waltzing around with my Samsung something-or-other (I genuinely cannot remember the model) with not only 3G network capabilities but HSDPA (as close as we’ll get to mobile download speeds) and a 3.0 megapixel camera. The original iPhone did not even come close to this.
I think it’s a disgrace that the iPhone didn’t launch originally with all the bells and whistles. They’ve brought out the 3G version now and if I had bought the original iPhone I’d feel somewhat betrayed that I’d have to fork out another hundred quid or so to get a phone that works with a better speed, a speed that almost all modern devices currently work at for a lot less.
So, despite my normal disliking of Apple, I was willing to give the iPhone a chance (not to extent of buying one though) and not actually hate it. But I had no idea it wasn’t 3G and had no idea it only had a 2.0 Megapixel camera nor did it work at HSDPA download speeds.
So yeah, I feel better now that I’ve ranted about the iPhone but really, it just seems like a big iPhony (I’m sorry, I did love that pun too much) and a usual i-insertWordHere device to appeal to the more upper-class market that Apple seems to target.
What’s wrong with using a good old Nokia or Ericsson?
Important News
Well, today has been a seemingly slow news day, if you were to go by what the People want to see. Before I sound all preachy and pretentious here, let me first of all say I haven’t really watched the news either today so consider this a non-critical comment, just something I’ve noticed. Let’s, for the sake of argument, assume that what I’m going to talk about is a middle-aged woman getting changed in front of her window and I’m a prepubescent boy with a new telescope for my birthday.
As we can see, more of the ‘lighter’ or ‘whimsical’ news stories are the ones most distributed. The most read category and identical set of stories (at time of writing, not this post but this sentence, which is 10:44pm GMT). So essentially, the hottest news today is that a fat lamb likes to lie on a sofa, a gay bishop was heckled, twat ‘Banksy’ may be revealed but we’ll never know as he’s never going to come out, much to the disappointment of the gay bishop, a referee was drunk and you’re not allowed to pop your clogs in the freezing cold.
In reality, some of today’s proper news stories:
There’s quite a lot of news going on there, enough to keep BBC News 24 presenters actually doing something other than showing live pictures of something only somewhat slightly relevant to whatever news story they were covering. So, let’s see, we’ve got a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah, that must be a good milestone, Pakistani soldiers being killed by militants, that’s important news, stabbings in festivals and a victim of knife crime being named.
All in all, quite a filled sandwich of news. Again, not that I’m suggested we all ought to be tuned into the news 24 hours a day and keep abreast of what’s happening. I’ll be honest, I don’t give a hoot about 99% of the stories above anyway.
But is it possible that people tune into the news just for those ‘And finally…’ moments where a cat got stuck up a tree and the fire engine sent to rescue it got stuck down a well on it’s way there? Why not make two versions of the news, The Serious News and The Silly News? I wonder what will get more ratings. Hmmmm.
Contextual Merchandising Not Always Good
The way the internet is moving with regards to advertising is putting a lot of emphasis on contextual merchandising. The basics of this is that you will get adverts on your web page that is related to what you are currently viewing - Google AdSense is the biggest example of this and it has helped wannabe Internet Entrepreneurs make a fair few bob since it’s inception.
That being said, is it really always a good idea. A few months ago (January 2008 actually) I was randomly browsing the Internet and on Yahoo’s news I noticed that a boy was shot dead in a McDonald’s restaurant in Brixton. Nothing really startling there, given today’s ‘day and age’ (God, I sound so old). Then, whilst perusing the adverts I notice a huge big McDonald’s advertisement offering me a Big Tasty at McDonald’s. A kid just got shot in McDonald’s but upon hearing that news all I oughta be thinking about is, “Hmm, you know what, a big tasty sure does sound great, thanks to that lad in Brixton, I now want to go to McDonald’s.”
It’s utter nonsense. I think it’s somewhat tasteless (and that’s just the burgers…boom boom) to have contextual merchandising picking up feeds from news stories. I mean, on Sky News I noticed an article about how it’s so awful to bit fat, coupled with ‘OMG LOSE WEIGHT NOW!’ style adverts. That surely isn’t right.
I’ll be keeping an eye out now for when contextual merchandising goes wrong. I have only got a screencap of the Yahoo incident:
Apologies for the quality of the screencap but you get the picture.
If you find any examples while trawling the web, let me know, email me a screenshot to neill@bloggyblog.co.uk or post a link in the comments.
Have a good day!
So Much For Privacy
Crazy law suits are nothing new in the USA but for me one the craziest court cases was finished today. In some weird and unfathomably twisted logic, a fat person suing McDonald’s for making them fat has some grounding at least.
Announced today, however, a US court has ruled that Google must divulge the viewing habits of each and every YouTube user to Viacom. They will no doubt peruse all the millions and millions of user IDs, take note of each and every IP address whilst monitoring what they’ve viewed or uploaded onto YouTube. Moreso, despite this being a US court that has ruled this, it is believed that Viacom will have rights to globally inspect what users have visited.
I personally don’t have an account with YouTube but I anonymously view videos, many of which are probably illegally uploaded and many of which I may have some shame about watching - easy people, YouTube doesn’t allow pornography, I am talking about sad cheesy 1980s hit songs.
This is a clear violation of user rights. I do hope Viacom take up Google’s offer to provide an entirely anonymous list of user activity.
However, not to dwell on the negative - there may be some positives that come out of this. We all know about the Rickrolling craze so I’m guessing Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” will feature quite highly in Viacom’s analysis. Maybe they’ll strike a deal with him regarding some form of come back.
We can only hope.
Internet Advertising
It’s been a long time since a money spinning idea has hit the Internet with regards to a paid advertising service. The last big site I can remember that earned the big bucks and got international attention was the Million Dollar Homepage. Since it’s success many many clones hit the market. Now I think the dust has settled on that fad it left me wondering what next?
I’m still convinced that there is huge potential (financial potential) in offering a unique and quirky style of advertising for a company. The obvious reason for the Million Dollar Homepage’s success was down to the global exposure the website got. Had it not hit the blogosphere or been featured on 5pm newscasts across the world (more than likely as part of the ‘And Finally…the world isn’t such a bad place!’ kind of news reports that really questions why some journalists get paid’) then the site would probably have been somewhere between mediocre success to failure.
Some of the clones did quite well. I came across one today offering pixels for $0.25 and they managed to sell about $150,000 worth which for next to no work isn’t bad. I’ve seen quirky variations like BuyANation.com offering you the chance to slap your advert on a country on a globe for anywhere between $49 and $400 - again with about 5 sales so we’re talking about $200 - $1000. Not bad really for little work.
So is the pixel advertising model one that can still be successful given that it has a unique twist? Clones of the Million Dollar Homepage are obviously going to be bemoaned as exactly that, a clone or a rip-off but one good idea often spawns another that is bigger and has more revenue potential than the last.
Thinking cap time as I think now could be a great time to get in on that market. The recent news stories about the guy in Australia selling his entire life on eBay again goes to show that nerdy concepts and computer-geek ideas can still get noticed and once your site or story appears on the news, curiosity steps up.
End of Hiatus
Ah, back to blogging. I returned last week from a good two week break in Tenerife, a lovely island. There won’t be much topical discussion in this post therefore, more of a status update and what have you.
Whilst away on holiday, I learnt that despite previous British misconceptions, the Germans are actually a lovely people, if you can speak a little German. They don’t really come across as rude and arrogant and I haven’t really seen them barge in front of people to get on a bus. I’ve noticed the English do that, mind you. The biggest grievance I have with English speaking people abroad is the expectation that the rest of the world speaks English. Most English speakers can’t speak a second language but yet expect foreigners to be able to speak English, which is absurd. If in doubt and you speak English, the rule of thumb is to shout louder and slower and the more likely it is the non-English speaker will understand what it is you are on about.
Now I have finished a quick bout of xenophobia, time to go through a few things. Everyone who knows me probably knows I try to earn money without really working too hard for things and as of yet have failed miserably. My ‘online income’ has probably amounted to $47. At least it pays off all my domain names. So, part of this blog I’ll keep track of my online ventures, which as of yet I only really have one, which you can have a good butcher’s at here. If anyone has any interested website ideas but may lack to technical know how to get going, feel free to drop me a line or visit NeillBoyd.com, my more professional alternative.
That’s it really for now, I’ll probably be back some point this week with some completely trivial musing about something that’s not in anyway important but hey, that’s just me. Thanks to Sami over at Sami and the City for the backlink and whilst you’re clicking around links, feel free to visit NerdAnger.com, where you can read the latest rants (most of which aren’t actually ranty or angry but nonetheless interesting) about most things nerdalicious.
Enjoy.
