Year: 2008
Stitching Together Some News….
Since I have no insight into ads or Google’s financial numbers, I can post this. I post this on my own, and have no idea what my employer thinks…
Last month, Markus Frind reported on his blog that his adsense click-through-rate “declined by 60% in the last 2 months”. Content providers that make lots of money through pretty liberal placement of fairly useless advertising have been complaining. It’s no surprise that they are disappointed; who wouldn’t be.
This week, Google’s 10K report says:
“…the main focus of our advertising programs is to provide relevant and useful advertising to our users, reflecting our commitment to constantly improve their overall web experience. As a result, we may continue to take steps to improve the relevance of the ads displayed on our web sites and our Google Network members’ web sites. These steps include removing ads that generate low click-through rates or that send users to irrelevant or otherwise low quality sites and terminating Google Network members whose web sites do not meet our quality requirements. In addition, we may continue to take steps to reduce the number of accidental clicks. These steps could negatively affect our near-term advertising revenues…”
Advertisers seem to be heralding the news (see comments), as you would expect.
Typing Without Training Wheels
When you learn to ride a bike, you start with training wheels. Over time, you learn to ride without the training wheels, so you take them off.
If you really want to be a good typist, you ultimately need to get rid of your training wheels – the backspace key. Sounds absurd, right? Try it. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you can become a better typist. At home I have a special keyboard driver which allows me to change it. I mapped my backspace to ‘x’. But I don’t have that ability here at work…. I’ll have to figure it out somehow.
There is a secondary effect as well. I find that by not having a backspace option, I think more about what I write before I write it. I can’t tell if I’ll be a better author or code writer without the backspace key, but you’ll know I’m more deliberate.
I know, you think I’m crazy. Try it!
Spreadsheets on the web aren’t spreadsheets
Doing Valentine’s Day Right
This year, Valentine’s Day landed on Thursday. Valentine’s Day is a day where we buy lots of perishable presents – flowers, candy, etc. So of course, the stores have all the Valentine’s Day items at 50% off even today… they don’t save until next year.
By celebrating on Friday instead of Thursday, we had the luxury of going out on a weekend night instead of a weekday night. But I also saved 50% on the gifts. Totally cheap? Probably; but I bought twice as much stuff…. I think I’ll do it again next year. Unfortunately, Feb 14, 2009 is a Saturday. So I’ll have to come up with a new excuse for waiting an extra day…
Katrina Was a Long Time Ago
Hurricane Katrina struck the US in August 2005. That’s 2.5 years ago. Today, FEMA is finally kicking people out of 35,000 trailers from that event. Occupants of those trailers are mad at FEMA. They’ve been living in the trailers for 2.5 years while simultaneously claiming that they want to sue as a result of their health problems from living in the trailers. If they know of the health problems, they should, uh, maybe leave?
This raises several questions.
First, why are these people getting free housing for 2.5 years? Free housing is not a federal responsibility. 2-3 months should have been the limit for people to find new housing.
Second, why should we provide housing even for temporary relief? If you provide victims with nothing, they can’t sue. If you provide them with trailers that they claim are unhealthy, they can sue you for being negligent. These people are whiners and users. No matter what you give them, it’s never enough. Fine, give no federal aid anymore for this type of tragedy. It’s better than dealing with the ungrateful.
Of course, the lawyers are to blame; the American Bar Association even set up a whole website to help the “victims” sue somebody. Not sure who to blame? Ask the ABA!
If the victims had any money, I’m sure a smart lawyer would help me sue the victims. After all, why did I have to spend billions of tax money just because these people were too dumb to move out of a flood plain which nature clearly wants to cover with water? Don’t spend money on the levy; this will happen again.
Silicon Alley Insider
One site that seems to be consistently worth reading is Silicon Alley Insider. Henry Blodget just seems to be the most rational and consistent writer around. If you don’t read his stuff, you should.
Should Have Guessed
If a company wanted to buy your company, and you’re not really excited about it, what would you do? Of course, you’d just ask for a higher price. If you end up bought, you feel good that you made the deal better. And if you don’t get bought, you are still happy! We should have known this is exactly what Yahoo would do!
Burned by Facebook
I wrote a blog this morning about how Josh had used Facebook to learn more about the Yahoo attrition. While I was writing that, he must have been busy writing his public apology titled, “How to lose fans and (falsely) influence people“. Turns out not only did Facebook burn it’s users, but it burned him too. Due to Facebook’s aggressive advertising, he accidentally put pictures of people that *currently work at Yahoo* onto ads which read, “Leaving Yahoo!”. Of course, there is no indication that these poor folks had any intention of leaving. Yikes! Not only is that a gaffe, that’s just plain wrong!
None of this is Josh’s fault. This is Facebook’s broken platform.
Facebook Privacy Flaws Provide Insight into MicroHoo!
Late last year, I stopped using Facebook when I witnessed them giving my personal information to advertisers.
The clever advertiser, Josh Koppelman, has exploited that data again to gain insight into potential employee turnover due to the MicroHoo possibility. The data is not statistically accurate, but it is definitely an interesting indicator.