Grasshoppermind

First there was Blog and Ping. What was initially a legitimate method for informing blog indexes (such as Technorati) of new content, was rapidly morphed into an automated and dubious technique used by some internet marketers to drive their websites up the Search Engine page rankings. And this worked (for a while) until Google et al. caught up and altered their ranking algorithms.

Blackhat search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques often involve the creation of huge blog farms of autogenerated pseudo content all linking back and forth to each other. These useless (to the reader anyway) blogs have become known as Splogs= Spam+Blogs.

Another technique which will be recognised by anyone who has run a genuine blog for any time are Spam Comments - again designed to create backlinks from authoritative page ranked sites to the website that was being SEO’ed. Indiscriminate use of specifically written comment spamming programs has resulted in this widespread nuisance - which because most people now use REL=NOFOLLOW for their comments - no longer provides any benefits to the users of this technique.

Now we are beginning to see exploitation of Web2.0 tagging in the drive for higher search engine rankings. Automated Tag and Ping programs have been developed and released(and no I’m not going to link to them). Now we will see the automated poisoning of tagging which will reduce its effectiveness and lead to greater amounts of Splog in our feed readers.

Will we see a new round of Splogs using this method? I believe that we will, because the short term gains will appeal to the ‘get rich quick’ mindset that makes up one segment of the Internet Marketing community.

Ultimately another round of countermeasures will be produced which will reduce Tag and Ping effectiveness… and so the cycle will continue.

New scientist has this old article about MyLifeBits, a piece of software designed so that you can record your life. You can store conversations, emails, video, etc. A google style indexing system gives you the ability to search back through your life archive.

Since 2002 when the article was written, we have much cheaper storage, mini video cameras, HSDPA and locative based technologies that are enabling a greater degree of granularity for recording than ever before. Allowing indexing by date, time, location, people. The security and privacy concerns are also greatly elevated by this type of application.

You can find out more about the project at Microsoft’s Project Page for MyLifeBits

As of 29th March 2006, the Isle of Man is to be listed in the ISO 3166 countries list as a country separate from the United Kingdom. I would love to think that this was anything to do with my contacting Microsoft to get them to add Isle of Man to their website address forms. The truth is that due to concerted efforts from government representatives of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man over a period of five or more years, the ISO have agreed to make the appropriate changes to the countries list known as ISO3166-1. As many websites utilise this database for their pull down list of countries it seems that the Isle of Man will begin to be listed as soon as they refresh their databases.

I have just received an update from my contact at Microsoft, who says that it’s likely that the Isle of Man will be added first as a County of the United Kingdom. Whilst technically this is inaccurate, it’s closer to our goal of being able to fill in address information on Microsoft sites accurately. Later they hope to be able to make changes to their systems to allow the Isle of Man to be entered as a separate country, although this will take a lot longer as there are a lot of sites and databases that will need to be changed. I’m impressed with how Microsoft have responded to this request so far, I’ll post again on this subject when we see the changes happen.

Oh Well, one week has already gone by since I emailed Microsoft, and there’s been no response. Not good so far. Microsoft’s SPAM filter probably ate it.

I’m trying to contact anyone in Microsoft who can help me to get the Isle of Man set up as a country on their website forms. Email addresses, telephone numbers, etc. all gratefully accepted.

UPDATE: I followed up my email with a phone call, (Microsoft don’t give out direct numbers, so I went via the switchboard) and I actually got through to a person, not their voicemail. They are investigating who within Microsoft can deal with this.

Today I came across a problem that people in the United Kingdom, or United States, or any large country for that matter would never come across.

I could not select my country, the Isle of Man when filling in a web form.

Now actually this is not unusual as there are very few websites that recognise the Isle of Man as a separate country. But on Microsoft’s site, and in particular on their Mystery Solved Licencing promotion the problem was exacerbated because I had to choose a county as part of my address. This effectively forced me to put in an inaccurate address - not good for me, or for their marketing database.

So I decided to see how agile a company the size of Microsoft could be, in answering and hopefully soving this problem.

So, today 2nd March 2006.
Found a phone number from their website (0870 60 10 100) and called their switchboard.
Very helpful, gave me another number which I rang. After a five minute delay I got through to someone who gave me the email address of the “person who deals with that promotion”. So far so good. So I sent an email explaining the situation and now we wait and see what happens next!

Let’s see how this goes over the next few days/weeks…

This morning I found out the reason for the two week delay. Dell cancelled my order. Just like that, with no email to let me know why. So I spent the obligatory 30 minutes playing call centre tag and got the order back on track. Next time I’ll record the tag game and make a podcast out of it. It shouldn’t take five phonecalls to find out what the problem was.

and hello, I’m back. Sorry ’bout that, promise it won’t happen again, etc.

The Isle of Man has received the first commercial HSDPA network in Europe allowing islanders to download at speeds of up to 1.4Mbps. But that is of course just the start as the network is upgradeable and as such they could be seeing speeds of 10Mbps by 2008! [From 0Gravity]

The Isle of Man was also one of the first countries with a 3G network. It’s size and easy access to UK lends itself well to small technology trials of this nature. Let’s hope that the proposed takeover by Telefonica does not stop this from taking place.

Mark Russinovich who runs Sysinternals has posted an outstanding example of computer forensics. After discovering a Rootkit on one of his own computers, he set out to determine how it got there. The cause of his problem? He played a copy protected CD (from Sony) in his computer. It turns out that Sony’s implementation of the DRM copy protection scheme breaks computer misuse laws in several countries! I suspect that the fallout from this story is going to cause a huge problem now for Sony. Go and have a read of the comments on his post and you’ll see what I mean.

Whew! it’s been a busy few days since my last post. I’m in the middle of setting up my own business and this has required a lot of my attention. A LOT! If anyone ever tells you that putting together a business plan is easy, then they are lying…

Over at the Google Earth Blog, Frank Taylor asks whether people are Making Money via Google Earth. Well I’m not sure that there is sufficient take up of Google Earth to replace web stores (yet). But several insights in his post resonate with me.

-Firstly, Google Earth lends itself brilliantly to location based items. I used an example of this in my earlier post Howto geotag anything. I created a Tagzania account to list several items for sale that were relevant to my location (Isle of Man). Once the KML file is opened in Google Earth, you will see some links to DVD’s and Books etc. If you click on these, you get taken to Amazon using my affiliate links. (I used ElfURL to keep the links nice and manageable)

- Secondly, The Network Link in Google Earth allows that content to be dynamic. If I add additional items for sale in my Tagzania account, these will also be displayed next time you open up Google Earth. The Network Link IS the Killer App of Google Earth

The main problem is that first someone has to find your Network Link and then load it up in Google Earth. If Google Search adds KML output for geotagged items, then we’re in business!

How about it Google?

Updated: Added link to KML file

Andy Fowler created a Google Earth script that displayed geocaches via Google Earth. Andy’s script was well written and was responsible for raising awareness of geocaching. Given the massive interest in Google Earth, it would seem sensible for geocaching.com’s owners to encourage innovation like this. However, Geocaching.com have asked Andy to cease and desist.

Clueless.

Now I know why the google bot was sucking up my bandwidth!
Google’s Blog Search looks pretty good, and the entries are pretty much up to date. In Web 2.0 fashion you can subscribe to your search terms via RSS or ATOM like Technorati.

Bill Beaty quotes this strange forcefield phenomenon encountered at a 3M factory…

David Swenson of 3M Corporation describes an anomaly where workers encountered a strange”invisible wall” in the area under a fast-moving sheet of electrically charged polypropelene film in a factory. This “invisible wall” was strong enough to prevent humans from passing through. A person near this “wall” was unable to turn, and so had to walk backwards to retreat from it.

Bill goes on to speculate whether you could turn this on its side and sleep on it! Now while this could be pretty comfortable, I’d be too worried about the huge scary moving parts to sleep.

Easier to follow is the sensationalised account of this phenomenon over at the ESD Journal. I like the contrast between the two articles, which are obviously for different readerships.

If your connection devices can be tracked, would you want to be tracked?
Extremetech have an interesting article on some of the privacy issues.

Simple, short and inspirational stuff from Steve Jobs.
In a recent address Steve Jobs commented on three things: Connecting the dots. Love & loss. Death.

http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~hypertxt/decisions.html

Grasshopper minds instictively understand the 80/20 rule.

So 20% of your effort gives 80% of the results, but the remaining 20% of results takes the last 80% of effort. So that’s why we’re not finishers!
Never mind, as Stafford Beer puts it, “If it works, it’s out of date”.

allwords have it as:
grasshopper mind - noun

1. A mind that is unable to concentrate on any one subject for long.

What are the symptoms? Starting things one never finishes? Jumping from one thing to another? Generally speaking there is a lot of negativity surrounding the concept of the “grasshopper mind”. If you can find some positives, then please let me know. It can’t all be bad? can it?