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Added on 4 Jul 2013. Last read 1 month ago.

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This feed currently contains the following newsitems (total count 1126):

    • New Zealand’s 3G switch-off: you might be fine despite the warning messages
      • I had been concerned that I was getting messages from One NZ (formerly Vodafone) telling me to change my phone because 3G was being killed off. The Australian 3G switch-off made things more concerning, since there are Aussies with virtually new phones being cut off, and the one thing they have in common is that [...] Read More... from New Zealand’s 3G switch-off: you might be fine despite the warning messages

    • Keep your corner of the ’net clean
      • There is a lot of disinformation when it comes to politics—and now you know why it was important for me to get rid of the disinformation about me. No, it’s not because anything written about me could have affected an election. But it is about a medium that takes effort to stay clean and usable, [...] Read More... from Keep your corner of the ’net clean

    • How to deal with the shrinking, independent, human web
      • I alluded to this earlier this year when we redid JY&A’s links’ directory, but Joan Westenberg confirms it with some real stats. Once upon a time, the web seemed limitless, but now ‘we’re trapped in digital zoos built by tech giants. Google. Facebook. Amazon. Apple. Microsoft. They’ve carved up the web into their private empires, [...] Read More... from How to deal with the shrinking, independent, human web

    • A bronze at Best
      • I’m proud to say I had a small part to play in Pīwari te Kaitiaki, which took out a bronze in the Social Good category at the Designers’ Institute of New Zealand’s Best Design Awards. My role was helping realize the translated version in te reo Māori, and it was an absolute joy to work [...] Read More... from A bronze at Best

    • Google doesn’t have to be terrible—it just chooses to be
      • Do Google results have to be so terrible? No, because here’s GMX, who licenses Google results, and their top 10 results for site:lucire.com. There are some framesets (which regular Google loves), but more of the pages in the top 10 are top-level and current. One note: turns out some of the framesets were [...] Read More... from Google doesn’t have to be terrible—it just chooses to be

    • The new disinformation posts may have stopped, but there’s tidying to do
      • In the businesses I’m actually involved in, there aren’t that many unsavoury people. Maybe in the early to mid-2000s I came across some hangers-on in the fashion world. But SEO, wow, there’s a great deal of unscrupulousness. I’ve seen their con-merchant emails since the late 1990s—all the more reason that being grouped as one of [...] Read More... from The new disinformation posts may have stopped, but there’s tidying to do

    • Lucire turns 27, while Autocade’s origins are even older
      • Lucire turns 27 tomorrow (at the stroke of midnight NZDT as the day ticks over to Monday). After prompting by my friend Richard MacManus, I wrote a piece to mark the anniversary. Though after the song and dance of our 25th anniversary two years ago, I’ve kept it low-key. Meanwhile, I’ve thinned out some [...] Read More... from Lucire turns 27, while Autocade’s origins are even older

    • Semrush’s continued dishonesty, and potentially one fewer outlet to expose them
      • Is this why Search Engine Land refused to run our release about Semrush? Because now, Semrush is their parent company, and they would have known that the deal was happening when they received the release. We also now know that I was right about what was going on—and the biggest names in the search engine [...] Read More... from Semrush’s continued dishonesty, and potentially one fewer outlet to expose them

    • A tribute to Helen Baxter, 1973–2024
      • [Originally published in Lucire] Not only did we lose Mandi Kingsbury last month, we lost a good friend of this magazine, and a dear personal friend, Helen Baxter, who tragically took her own life aged 51 on September 23. This is a reminder that physical changes to one’s health can manifest as depression, and to [...] Read More... from A tribute to Helen Baxter, 1973–2024

    • Where is brand Aotearoa?
      • One thing holding back exports from Aotearoa New Zealand is the absence of a true, authentic national brand. I said this even back in the days of the 100% Pure campaign, which was much lauded. I cynically asked: can we really claim this when France and Germany outspend us on the environment as a percentage [...] Read More... from Where is brand Aotearoa?

    • Google results are old
      • That Google seems to get older and older. Here are the top 10 for site:lucire.com as of October 10, 2024. The home page isn’t there, and maybe that’s OK. But what is there is the index.html file to the 2000 folder, which was put there to catch any programming errors (e.g. forgetting to [...] Read More... from Google results are old

    • Continuing the disinformation removal and bot blocks
      • Call me an idealist, but I think people should stop using those search engine copy massaging programs, write like real humans, and expect the technology to bend to us, rather than the other way round. That’s how we still conduct business. There are still disinformation pages out there, but no new ones since I called [...] Read More... from Continuing the disinformation removal and bot blocks

    • Blocking the Semrush bots
      • It’s not enough to block just Semrush’s bot, SemrushBot, in one’s robots.txt, since they have a whole bunch of them. We’ve usually allowed all bots but with “AI” and Semrush’s terrible programming that wasted hours of my time every day for nine months, there are certain parties no longer welcome to crawl. To block Semrush [...] Read More... from Blocking the Semrush bots

    • Quick test of index size on the occidental search engines
      • Google really doesn’t like this blog. When I do a site: search, it still puts HTML pages up top, often pre-2010, and as of yesterday, it trails Mojeek and Bing in terms of the number of pages in its index. Who knew? Google being last of the three. It got me wondering how [...] Read More... from Quick test of index size on the occidental search engines

    • Here’s probably how Semrush linked concepts—and got it totally wrong
      • When you have been on this disinformation-busting journey for nine months, you can work out how Semrush got everything so wrong. Here’s one item, a bunch of SEO tools, and if you read the description, ‘Google SEO Xiaoyan’ is in the copy. Probably deeply questionable, which is why Google offers it for Chrome. [...] Read More... from Here’s probably how Semrush linked concepts—and got it totally wrong

    • If it’s important, you can depend on Google to act as censor
      • We know Meta’s not on the side of justice or democracy, as it shows over and over again, and OnlyKlans’ fascist leanings are obvious. Google pretends that it’s all about the algorithms when we know it’s not: for years it would censor anything critical of itself when I posted to my old Google Plus account. [...] Read More... from If it’s important, you can depend on Google to act as censor

    • Forgetting humanity: the desperation of tech
      • How very interesting to see that the disinformation posts about me have stopped going up since I called out Semrush on their own subreddit. For four days I’ve not found any new ones on Google. The timing tells me that Semrush can, contrary to its response, adjust keywords, especially after learning the sheer hell their [...] Read More... from Forgetting humanity: the desperation of tech

    • Forty-eight hours without new disinformation—dare we hope for seventy-two?
      • Now isn’t that interesting? After posting about Semrush on their Reddit, where their error is laid bare for all to see, I have now had a blissful 48 hours where there were no new disinformation posts about yours truly pop up on Google searches. So much for Semrush claiming that it could not remove a [...] Read More... from Forty-eight hours without new disinformation—dare we hope for seventy-two?

    • Autocade reaches 39 million page views
      • Here we are, 39 million page views on Autocade, as the stats’ counter ticked over to 11,361,125 earlier today (which we add to the previous installation’s 27,647,011). It’s two months, 16 days since we were at 38 million, and as July and August were leap months, that’s 78 days. Last time it was 50 days. [...] Read More... from Autocade reaches 39 million page views

    • “AI”? Facebook’s bot city has already been around for a decade
      • I’m surprised that people are surprised that this is where Facebook is going. In the words of my friend Richard MacManus, in reference to this interview with Mark Zuckerberg in The Verge: ‘Mark Zuckerberg basically just confirmed that your feeds will soon be full of AI-generated content. Another reason the fediverse needs to exist: so [...] Read More... from “AI”? Facebook’s bot city has already been around for a decade

    • If you’re still writing disinformation after all this, then tech is your master, and you are the slave
      • If you peel away the technobabble of what Semrush said to me on Reddit, basically their algorithm messed up when it included an unspaced version of my name. It wasn’t trending. It was just an extrapolation made by an algorithm that, unfortunately, had a very negative consequence for me. But it also didn’t help [...] Read More... from If you’re still writing disinformation after all this, then tech is your master, and you are the slave

    • The trials of removing disinformation from Bluehost
      • Here’s a company that seems to protect sploggers and disinformation spreaders: Bluehost. One of the disinformation splogs had a Cloudflare account, which hid their real host. I filed a DMCA report, as this splogger was stupid enough to use my photo. These seem to get through the Cloudflare system better than things classified as ‘other’. [...] Read More... from The trials of removing disinformation from Bluehost

    • Semrush finally explains how my (unspaced) name wound up in their system
      • Posting on Reddit has elicited something from Semrush, with Vic on their team writing this in response to me. Hi Jack, sorry for any confusion—I’ve been discussing the case with my team internally to make sure we’re all on the same page. Our system aims to predict trends using various signals, but sometimes unexpected patterns [...] Read More... from Semrush finally explains how my (unspaced) name wound up in their system

    • Losing your number-two position when switching to HTTPS, 31 months on
      • In 2022, when the Jack Yan & Associates site went to HTTPS—though some parts of it were on that even in the 2000s—it fell from being second place in Google to below 30th for a search for my name. However, the accepted wisdom was that HTTPS sites outranked HTTP ones on Google. The “experts” all [...] Read More... from Losing your number-two position when switching to HTTPS, 31 months on

    • On the Semrush subreddit: ‘How the Keyword Magic Tool made my year hell’
      • Since emailing Semrush got nowhere, and sending a release to the search engine press got nowhere, maybe posting to their subreddit might work. Of course, it might get deleted. It might even make things worse and spark copycats. Who knows? But what choice do I have after nine months? How the Keyword Magic Tool made [...] Read More... from On the Semrush subreddit: ‘How the Keyword Magic Tool made my year hell’

    • Semrush, according to a customer: ‘Their data made no sense’
      • From a user on Reddit, _cth_. Need I say more? Semrush doesn’t care about how bad their product is, or the effect it has on the public. Here’s someone paying US$14,000 for junk, so imagine how bad the data must be for the free or lower-paying users. I would be surprised if this [...] Read More... from Semrush, according to a customer: ‘Their data made no sense’

    • Exporting with intent
      • As it’s the 50th anniversary year of ABBA’s win at the Eurovision Song Contest, I checked out Channel 5’s documentary on the subject. There was a lot I already knew from having visited ABBA the Museum in the summer, where one exhibit celebrated the milestone. As I wrote in Lucire, the pre-ABBA world for the [...] Read More... from Exporting with intent

    • Carry on designing
      • Journeys through time are fascinating. Earlier this week, I looked at some of the websites we liked from the Jack Yan & Associates links’ section. In many cases, it was a trip down memory lane, as some sites still had their 2000s layouts. Sadly, this could mean that a few of them will disappear in [...] Read More... from Carry on designing

    • Bringing the JY&A links’ pages into the 2020s
      • After 21–22 years, we’ve redone the links’ pages on the Jack Yan & Associates website. The old template dated from 2002, and, oddly, while cellphone browsers from a decade ago could by default enlarge the type to suit, modern ones can’t. (I’m still waiting for the software developers to incorporate the Bitstream technology from the [...] Read More... from Bringing the JY&A links’ pages into the 2020s

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