Tag Archive for 'google'

How has Google Changed Your Life?

Published on September 27, 2009 in Baby Boomer. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .


googlebirthdaylogo

Google is 11 today. Some people doubt that and even argue with it.

What’s interesting about the logo change is that Google’s (Google) official birthday is somewhat disputed: some often declare the company was born on September 15th 1997, the day the Google.com domain was registered. Meanwhile, Google filed for incorporation in September 1998: the papers were filed on September 4th, but Google has been known to celebrate on both September 7th and September 27th.

Google says, it depends on when people want their cake.

Mashable asks readers how Google has changed their life.

I remember when I first heard about Google. It was a breakthrough moment. I don’t remember what I used for search before Google, it’s been that long ago.  I started on AOL so it was their search. After AOL it probably was Yahoo.

But Google search was the first time I was excited about a “discovery” that I shared with everyone I could. It was just so much quicker and such a simple design!

Search alone has changed my life. I’m smarter because I Google search everything that doesn’t pass the smell test. I’ve quit using the dictionary to check spelling. I’ve seen pictures that I never would have seen before (both good and bad!)

I make money from Google. (But their stock slump GOOG is very depressing.) I thought Google Ad Sense might give me enough money to buy a box of cigars from time to time. Now it’s providing much more than that.

Google owns YouTube.com, of course that has had a huge impact. I watch more than I upload. But I do upload and share from multiple accounts.

Gmail: I used Eurora for email. But when Gmail came out, I changed. I am much more organized and have multiple email addresses – that all come to one in-box!  I can respond from the same in-box using the address to which the mail came or change the email return address.   Filters and labels and the labels are fantastic. (Google cancelled by SerqeyBrin@gmail.com account tho’ – didn’t like that the slight change to Sergey could be used for nefarioius purposes, which of course was my full intent.)

IM: I IM regularly, but only with people I am acquainted with. However, Nancy and I have not IM’d each other from the same room – yet.

Maps: OMG, what a time suck. Especially with Street View. I used to be a big Mapquest.com user, but now Google Maps is just so much more robust.  Grandad has in ingenious use for Google Maps. When on holiday, he searches out public parking in a town, gets the the longitude and latitude and plugs into Roger. Seems to get his holidays off to a nicer start. Street view is just so much fun. I just now found out they have Street View of the hometown where I grew up. The link is the former family homestead. I hadn’t checked in ages. (Post coming up on how this tiny town has changed!)

Google Reader is more important to me than any other feature. I have a whole crap load of RSS feeds. I started out using Bloglines, but switched to Google Reader because of the ease and it integrated with Gmail. I hardly visit websites or blogs anymore. If you don’t provide a full RSS feed, I probably won’t visit your site regularly. (Hint to those who think a truncated feed is smart: it isn’t. The few of us that still use RSS aren’t ad clickers anyway. Switch to full RSS feeds and will come by to comment, so you will grab those pageviews.)

OK you get the point…

Happy Birthday Google!

Make Easy Money Online

Published on June 27, 2009 in Blogging, Education, Money and Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .


Want To Make a Living on Google Money?

AdAge has a good post about how Google’s promotion of making money online is undermining their brand…

In a world of double-digit unemployment and old-line industries in mid-collapse, here’s a sales pitch tailor-made for the times: Get Paid by Google.
Millions of people to visit sites such as Kevinlifeblog.com, Scottsmoneyblog.com, Maryslifeblog.com and Googlemoneytree.com, all promising some variation on one theme: We’ll teach you how to make thousands of dollars from Google, and you never have to leave home!

And don’t forget “Get Free Money from the Government” or “Government Grants.”

Make money in 5 Easy steps
1. Find a high paying affiliate program which sells a product about how easy it is to make money on Google.
2. The program will just charge for shipping to get the credit card details, and make most of the money through back end reverse billing.
3. Create a “blog” complete with fake comments about how you lost your job. Write about how the program you are affiliated with made you thousands of dollars.
4. Do keyword research to find freshly desperate and unemployed people.
5. Create ads targeting those people and market them through Google AdWords.

Easy Money Artists ***ARE*** Affiliated With Their Easy Money Scheme

“As Google is not affiliated with these sites, we can’t comment on individual claims,” a [Google] spokesman said.

Nice try, but Google is affiliated with such make money online offers, since they create the distribution channel.

Google gives webmasters this guideline “Your site’s reputation can be affected by who you link to.” Why shouldn’t it apply to Google as well?

As long as Google has 30%+ profit margins they are making a BUSINESS DECISION to run these make money at home ads. They could spend 1% of revenue on getting rid of earn money at home ads, and “Google will send you money” (if they wanted to), but they choose not to.

Google keeps running the ads because they want the revenue. And they know exactly how much revenue comes from scamming consumers with these ads.

Help Fix This Issue

Google has not put up consumer warnings and lots of consumers are getting ripped off, I think it’s fair for bloggers to alert people to these “work at home” and “Make thousands from Google”, “Get Rich Quick” and “Money from Google” ads.

It’s a Bing Thing

Published on June 5, 2009 in Technology. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Soon, if not already, you will be yelling at the television because you are sick and tired of hearing about Bing, the new search engine from Microsoft.

I don’t know how much television time can be purchased for $100 million, but that is what Microsoft is investing to convince you that Binging is better than Googling.

Bing is being touted as a “decision engine.” What??? Never mind, that’s irrelevant and the reason you will be yelling at the television…

Since I’m an owner of Google,  I wasn’t even going to give Bing a shot (pew-pew, bingggggg) at getting my search engine business. Besides I like AdSense and without Google there is no AdSense and I would miss the monthly checks.

But Sergey and Brin never returned my email, and actually stopped me from using SerqeyBrin@gmail.com, and Bill Gates is a Prick, so screw ‘em. I tried Bing.

I read Offbeat Travel and how much she liked Bing.

Did you ever google something and find a whole lot of sites that have gamed the google system and have no content? I’ve researched small towns and ended up in contentless sites that have asked me to put in what I know of the city.

Yes. I. Have.

I hate those spam blog sites (splogs.)

Bing has a very cool feature that shows you a snippet preview of the site/blog  just by mousing over the result. It gives you a  pretty good clue of what the site contains without having to load the page. And splog sites are sloooooow.

I also like that Bing has a short preview of videos. My attention span is pretty short, sometimes that preview is enough for me.

The Smart Guy doesn’t like that he can’t find things yet on Bing. I think Bing will get better. Microsoft might have waited another week to keep the indexing machine running at full tilt to find the kajillion pages on the web, but then there would have been a uberdillion more. As soon as they have all those abandoned blogs indexed then Bing will get around more often and the search may improve. Then again, it may not.

I’m not 100% committed to Bing, but it’s the only other option I have in my search box. No Yahoo, Mahalo, Dogpile, etc. and especially no Ask.com because I hate their commercials and sponsorship on NASCAR.

I’m not crazy about the name Bing, but if they stick too it, they should do OK. Free tip: Try to avoid this Windows naming fiasco:

  • 3.0
  • 95
  • 98
  • CE
  • ME
  • XP
  • Vista
  • 7

Bing is not a terrible name, with the right tag line. Bing! The Found It Sound.

But please, please, stay away from using the term Binging.

Free tip to Google: Buy Twitter, it’s pretty useless, but people sure do talk a lot about it. I bet you could figure a way to get those little AdSense ads into my tweets.

UPDATE: I just ran across a vertical site that is attached to Bing, it’s Bing Travel. I knew Microsoft would screw it up.

By aggregating Expedia, Cheap Tickets, Cheapoair, Priceline and Booking Buddy on the Bing Travel site, travelers can not only search for flights and hotels but book without ever leaving the search engine.

My ownership in Google can only grow. Why would these sites buy advertising on Bing, when Bing is going to serve them all to me at once when I search for the best deal in Bangalore?

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Fun With CAPTCHA; Including the Most Difficult CAPTCHA Image In the Universe.

Published on November 12, 2008 in Baby Boomer. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .


Google ™ loves CAPTCHA, which puzzles me because Gmail Beta ™ does a fantastic job of sorting out Spam.  I don’t understand why it won’t do as great a job on blog comments. Google(tm) runs Blogger(tm)/Blogspot(tm) which hosts a whole caboodle of blogs. But they insist ™ that before I ™ can comment, I have to decipher a mumbo-jumbo of letters and numbers.

I hate CAPTCHA and I don’t even care if they are deciphering and digitizing the Great Books of The World via CAPTCHA.

The toughest CAPTCHA is courtesy of Dvice.com.

Editor: Peter Pachal
editor@dvice.com

doesn’t respond to my complaints and therefore shouldn’t even have comments enabled because he is too busy spinning his propeller beanie. Nyeah.

What’s really odd is that if I look at his blog using FireFox, the preferred browser for propeller heads, the CSS doesn’t fully render the page. And they are giggling and saying, the dipwad has ____________ turned on/off and doesn’t even know it.
Well, Nvidia-lovers, I don’t have anything turned on/off that effects/affects (pick correct usage) any other blogs I visit. nyeah.
IE/Safari:

FireFox:

The toughest CAPTCHA in the local universe!   Note: There is NO IMAGE. Tough, tough CAPTCHA.

I also like to have Fun with CAPTCHA ™. When a CAPTCHA shows up, I like to make up words and definitions. I’ve noticed that Google ™ CAPTCHA is now more “word-like.”

Word Verifier: SWasi; n. the act of walking after visiting Tower of Terrier. eg: “When I came off the Tower of Terrier, I was all swaysi.

Turns out the joke is on the people who use CAPTCHA to prevent spam. The spammers won. Quite a while ago.

Breaking Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail’s CAPTCHAs, has been an urban legend for over two years now, with do-it-yourself CAPTCHA breaking services, and proprietary underground tools assisting spammers, phishers and malware authors into registering hundreds of thousands of bogus accounts for spamming and fraudulent purposes.