Google's new "Privacy Policy" in action

I was searching the web yesterday, doing some research on a certain product for work. Obviously, I was signed into my Google account at the time.

A few minutes later, I visited a web site featuring "Ads by Google," and what did I see? Yep, an ad for the product I'd be searching for earlier! Now, this could have been a coincidence, but I doubt it, and I think it's really cool!

Ever since the announcement of Google's new privacy policy came out, people have been bitching no end about it. I don't understand why.

If you think about it, the vast majority of Google's revenue comes from advertising. Every time you click on an "Ad by Google" on a random website, the company pays Google - and Google pays the website owner. If this wasn't so, we'd have to pay Google directly for all the wonderful services they provide for us... how else would they stay in business? What's more, the system I've just described has helped countless individuals and small businesses justify the cost of maintaining a presence on the web, something they would never be able to afford otherwise. I, personally, host a couple websites containing Google ads. This very blog that you're reading is supported in part by Google ads!

Google used to (and still does) target the ads that people see based on keywords on the page on which they appear. The logic being that if someone were browsing a web site about cars, they'd be more likely to click on ads appearing on that website, that are about cars. This logic works in theory, but falls over in practice, where the average person views many different pages in any given day.

The new system is way better. Combined with the old system, it keeps track of everything you search for while signed into your Google account, as well as the things that you share, comment on and "+1" on Google+. Using this information, Google believes it can show you ads that you're more likely to click on.

It's still not perfect, but I say anything that can help to make the web more engaging and valuable to me has got to be a good thing!

So what's the problem, anyway?

January Analytics

I checked the Google Analytics for my blog this morning (31 January 2012), and I found some pretty interesting things that happened in January.

For the first time in history, there were more visits from the United States than South Africa. It seems I've gone international!

Also for the first time in history, Firefox beat out Chrome as the top browser from which people visit my blog, and Internet Explorer didn't even feature.

The most popular search term was zuma deluxe ubuntu lucid. I searched for that term, and I found that it leads to an old blog post I wrote back in June 2010, titled Running full screen games under Wine, with Visual Effects enabled. But, it only showed on the second page of the Google South Africa search results, so whoever it was, was obviously very desperate to find an answer to their question! I hope it helped...

Incidentally, I had forgotten all about that article, so I found myself wondering whether President Jacob Zuma was now using Ubuntu Lucid Lynx!

The most visited page for the month of January 2012 (not surprisingly), was the only article I had written in January, Thoughts on web apps, but it wasn't the first page that most users found. The first page that most users found (and thus ended up browsing to the web apps article) was in fact Gmail blocks my mail as Spam. I wrote that article in November 2010! Evidently, this is still an issue that frustrates users.

Google Analytics is definitely a very interesting tool....

Thoughts on web apps

I recently read this article on MyBroadband. It's all about the browser, and how it's evolved from a mere window to the web to the computing platform it is today. The author talks about how he accesses all his e-mail from www.gmail.com, he uses ChromeDeck for his social networking needs, and is using Google Docs more and more.

My response? I always did, I still now, and I think I will probably always, hate web apps!

In fact, I'm always looking for ways to spend less time in a browser.

• Why visit www.gmail.com when you can have the super-fast super featured Thunderbird (and use IMAP) running natively in your Operating System of choice?
• Why use an extension of your browser when you can have the super-fast TweetDeck running natively (well, under AIR) in your Operating System of choice?
• Why visit docs.google.com when you can have OpenOffice (or any number of other free office applications) running natively in your operating system of choice--saving to your DropBox folder, of course (for which you have the native client installed and never visit www.dropbox.com)?
• Why use a web chatting service when you can have KVIrc/mIRC/IceChat/whatever your favourite IRC client is, and chat on IRC servers?

The list goes on and on. It even grates me to have to open my browser to write this blog post, except that Linux does not yet have a suitable alternative to Windows Live Writer. This is not what the web was designed for!!

An (native) app for everything, and everything to its own app, I've always said!

Google+ Now Supports Google Apps

But there's no way to migrate back!

A couple months ago, when Google+ was still invite only, I got an invite from one of my colleagues. I signed up, using my Google Apps account at communicate.za.net.

A few weeks later, Google Apps "upgraded" their accounts, and we were all forced to migrate to the new account system, which would allegedly give us access to a wider range of Google's products. But Google+ wasn't available for Google Apps anymore.

I was told to create a normal Google Account (which I did, an account at gmail.com), and that I could migrate my Google+ profile from my communicate account to my gmail one. I did so. Last week, I get an e-mail from Google+, saying that Google Apps is now supported again.

But dash-nabbit, I cannot seem to find any way of migrating my Google+ data back from my gmail account to my communicate one!

Oh well, I never used Google+ much anyway. I guess I'll just delete my Google+ profile from my gmail account, and recreate it from my communicate one.

Phishermen are Stoopid

I was cleaning out my spam folder in my Gmail yesterday (I do it about once a week). One of the mails I saw as I was scanning through, was a mail from "IRS" with a subject of "Your Tax Return."

I'm not an American, so I didn't click on it. But I could see an American of slightly lower intelligence clicking on the mail to find out what it's all about.

Then I saw another mail (probably sent an hour or two earlier), from "Internal Revenue Service" with a subject of "Your Tax Return."

Hmm.... I've seen this before in my spam folder with mails trying to get me to confirm my banking details and such (by the way, in case you didn't know, you should never ever click on any links in any such e-mail!). I've often thought that phishing mails might have more success if they didn't send the exact same e-mail three different times on the same day, from three different "From" display names.

2011 South African ISP of the Year

MyBroadband just announced a poll to decide the 2011 South African Internet Service Provider of the year. The nominees are: Afrihost, Axxess, MWEB, Openweb and Web Africa.

If you are with any of these ISPs (or would like to be with any of these ISPs), then I would urge you to go here and vote. You do need an account to vote, but it's really easy (and free) to create one. MyBroadband don't ever send spam, and there are other cool incentives to keeping an account there.

My vote went to Afrihost. I guess I'm really biased, because the only other one of those ISPs I've ever belonged to was MWEB, and that was back when I was still on dial-up! Still, I have been thoroughly satisfied with Afrihost for the two years or so that I've been with them. I can't remember a time when they've experienced any downtime. I've had to deal with their call centre maybe three times (via e-mail), and each time--even over a weekend--my query was resolved in an absolute minimum of time! Plus, their CEO, Gian Visser (Follow him on Twitter here) is a great guy! He always responds to his mentions, and occasionally throws out Twitter competitions where you can win great prizes. He's always engaging with his followers.

I hope I've convinced South African ADSL users to go and vote, and I hope that I've given you some idea of who to vote for if you haven't already!

My, but people can BITCH!

I got a newsletter from Hellopeter.com yesterday. It was the first newsletter I'd received from them in a long time. Anyway, they said that they now had a Twitter account (@Hellopetercom). I thought "what the hell?" and decided to follow them...

Wow. Just... wow! They tweet every single report made on their site, as its made. Not only is this uber information-overload, it is really eye-opening. Since yesterday I've lost count of the number of reports that have come through my TweetDeck--and I think I've seen two compliments! People drone on about the most mundane, pointless things. I've used Hellopeter myself a few times to complain, I must admit, but only as a last resort. And I've logged a few compliments in my time as well. I understand it's human nature to complain, but why do people find it so difficult to say something nice every once in awhile? Obviously, any company's stats on Hellopeter will be heavily skewed, because of this phenomenon.

Honestly, I think they need to enforce some kind of ratio, where you have to write at least one compliment for five complaints or something. But then, the site will never get used.

Then of course, there's the exhorbitant fee that Hellopeter charges companies to allow them to respond to those complaints. Don't even get me started on that!