Duck Duck Go voted best search engine of 2011

According to a reader poll, Duck Duck Go beat Google for best search engine of 2011.    ‘With 48% of the vote, relative search newcomer DuckDuckGo beat out search behemoth Google, who came in with 45% of the total vote,’ said About.com.    Bing trailled at 3 per cent and Yahoo! at 2.    There’s […]

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Not all American hosting companies get it right

While there was a British company that took months to respond to the equivalent of a DMCA complaint (under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act), generally American firms are very on the ball.    There are exceptions. I won’t name this outfit but the weekend’s responses were laughable. March 21: Pirate puts up a copy […]

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Zeiger confronts the U-bahn ads

A while back, in Desktop, I wrote about subvertising. This video, found via Rock Rodgers’ Tumblr, destroys the ads altogether, by means of a mirrored contraption that turns the projected images from a Berlin U-bahn station into rather nice art.    Of course it isn’t legal, but one has to hand it to these chaps […]

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Someone’s doing something right inside Google

The troubles with Google that I’ve faced—privacy breaches, Ads Preferences Manager not honouring its claims, fighting for six months on behalf of a friend over a deleted Blogger blog, Chrome being buggy (but not nearly as badly as IE9), phantom entries in my Google dashboard, unanswered messages—would suggest, to anyone studying business or a graduate […]

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Google humour: the Helvetica search that doesn’t come out in Helvetica

[Cross-posted from Tumblr] Found via Chris Brogan: if you Google Helvetica, Google will deliver the results in your default typeface—in my case, Alia. (If you look at the Snap Shots thumbnails that pop up, they’re in Times.) It’s weird, because I thought a fun trick would be to deliver the results in Helvetica (which is, […]

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Cellphone emails are gibberish

Speaking of technological issues, for the last two months, people using those newfangled cellphones to write emails to me have been sending me gibberish.    I haven’t changed my set-up, principally because Qualcomm hasn’t made a new version of Eudora for a while. So what has changed about cellphones (I don’t know what brand—they are […]

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On networking, all the experts were right

I wonder if peripherals are getting better.    Although I spent 26 hours getting a wireless network up here, it was thanks to Jethro Carr on Twitter, one Facebook friend, two real-world friends, two of their friends, and one forum that got it up and running.    There are a few things that don’t work […]

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Chevrolet’s new Malibu might still look like a Daewoo

I took a few digs at the forthcoming Chevrolet Malibu on my Facebook yesterday.    First: a few things GM got right.    It’s right to put this on a global platform—in this case, the Opel Insignia‘s. It’s also right to make it a world car of sorts, where it can be sold globally with […]

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Apple’s brand evangelism can have a negative effect, providing an opportunity for rivals

What a great post today from Eric Karjaluoto on his blog about Macs v. PCs.    He outlines his gripes on a number of fields and doesn’t believe Apple holds a great advantage any more.    I have to say I agree with him.    On his Facebook, I wrote the following. Well said, Eric.  […]

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