Tag Archives: Google

Dumb Google

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With all the information that Google has about me you would think they would know better than this:-

Obviously they only take in the fact that my computer is sitting on a French network rather than my Google account which shows my address/bank details etc are in the UK. All stupid really when I could easily spoof the network address with a VPN.

So much for local intelligence.

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Eating in or out?

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Spurred by reading this on CNET “he heard Google’s Marissa Mayer whisper that in these times of infinite woe, more people were googling “recipes” than “restaurants.” I thought I would give it a try using Google Trends, and for the UK it seems correct:-

As you can see there a been a definite reduction for the search term restaurants compared to recipes commencing around 2008 for the UK

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Spam and overnight success

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After reading the excellent post “Overnight success takes a long time” by Paul Buchheit on the history of gmail it stirred my memory into why I use gmail. The answer is this prominent  button:

Before gmail came along. Spam was a real problem for me, as you can see from the last  10 MINUTES worth hitting the gmail spam filter.


and its totally relentless, a 10 minute snapshot any time day or night is the same!

So full marks to Google for letting me use gmail on all my email accounts and also to be able to access them by IMAP and POP so I can read them on my iPhone and Thunderbird.

Oh and I’m sure FriendFeed will eventually be a huge success! Follow me there as geofones.

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Computing the future

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Computingfor the future - Andy Hopper

Interesting talk by Andy Hopper tonight on Computing the future.

I especially liked his comments on setting projects for his PhD students. they have to be more advanced than what Google or Microsoft are doing but not totally science fiction stuff – A hard job these days I reckon.

Other interesting points was that 2-3% of the worlds energy is consumed by server farms. So the proposal is to put the server farms by the windmills and solar plants since data is so cheap to transmit.  Servers need to get more intelligent so that they run closer to 100% utilisation (rather than current 30%) by switching themselves off etc.

He forsees the world running on simple low power terminals. Yep. bring back  the Wyse50‘s :-)   But more likely to be mobile phones! Especially after his trip to Soweto to see how they are using phones there.

Also discussed the idea that every moving object would have a sensor hooked into a vast database so your phone could be measuring CO2 etc.

Digital Alternatives

A revealing chart showing global hectares available per person and current usage levels with the USA standing out as usual.

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The Google monopoly!

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Just looking at my Google Analytic figures for the past 30 days:-

Search Engine referrals Sep15 - Oct15 2008

Looks like Google has a bit of a monopoly to me!

The real reason for looking at my analytics was to see if the link Steve Pavlina gave me has made any difference to my readership.

Referrals from stevepavlina.com

Looks like about 160+ folks wandered over to see my Wordle review of Steve’s new book. So not as many as I thought would.

Will be interesting to see if the link from such a high PR (Page Rank not PR like Ellee does) page will make any difference to my Google rankings for Geoff which has been suffering lately :-(

Here is the  corresponding data from Sally’s site. She gave me 7 links last month resulting in 47 visits.

Referrals from SallyInNorfolk.com

Referrals from SallyInNorfolk.com

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Steve Pavlina on Truth, Love & Power

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I originally discovered Steve Pavlina‘s blog when searching for public speaking, several years ago using Google. His blog led me to Toastmasters which I then discovered met in a hotel literally 100 yards from where I live in the UK!.

Since then I have followed his experiments with great interest using his blog as a model for everyone I meet who is interested in blogging (I have now introduced over 20 folks). A lot of what he says resonates with me particularly his attitudes to food (I became a vegetarian about 10 years ago) thinking and life in general (My favourite experiment was his experiments with polyphasic sleep, I’m convinced it drove his wife, Erin, nuts). Some things I disagree with like his attitude to mushrooms which he doesn’t view as a fruit and somehow considers them undesirable, this to me is weird for someone who is a convinced raw foodist.

I jumped at the chance of getting a free, prepublication, copy of his new book, Personal Development for
Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth (Hay House;
October 15, 2008), in exchange for writing this review. I was dismayed when the book arrived in pdf form rather than as a hard copy. So in true Pavlina fashion, how could I turn this setback into a positive outcome. The answer; do an electronic review, here it is:-

This is the full text of the book, 101,365 words according to wc (excluding external quotations), as processed by Wordle. I then ran the full text through a text analyser to discover the most frequent phases etc which is where the post title of truth love and power comes from, it is used in the book 111 times! The top two individual words are to, you.

The wordle sums up the book beautifully and is for me an excellent review. The book itself looks a good read (although without its physicality its impossible to review since a lot about buying a book is the form as much as the content)  and I’m sure it will be succesful, although for my part its more interesting following Steve on his journey through life.

Note to publisher: None of the text files used by wordle etc have been stored

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