Bing has tanked

Well, folks, here’s someone who’s done the maths. The stats in the last post suggested as much but the sample was so small. Maurice de Kunder at WorldWideWebSize.com has a definitive graph:     His methodology is explained at his site. I’d say late May or early June was when I noticed Duck Duck Go […]

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Putting the search engines through their paces

One more, and I might give the subject a rest. Here I test the search engines for the term Lucire. This paints quite a different picture. Lucire is an established site, dating from 1997, indexed by all major search engines from the start. The word did not exist online till the site began. It does […]

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More evidence that contextual advertising is better than creepy, programmatic behavioural ads

Cory Doctorow posted a link to his collection of links at Pluralistic for August 5, 2020. The first one’s heading piqued my interest: ‘Contextual ads can save media’. It’s worth having a read, especially about the BS behind behavioural advertising (i.e. surveillance advertising) and the ‘real-time bidding’ that so many ad networks have been trying […]

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The most likely explanation: Google doesn’t like academic reports that harm its interests

TechCrunch/Creative Commons 2·0 I summarized this article to my friends as: ‘How can we trust Big Tech? Google didn’t like hearing the truth from an intelligent woman, so they forced her out.’ And my friend Cathy pointed out it’s a woman of colour.    And if you take the basic position that Google lies, just […]

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Trading identities in the 2010s: when corporate branding and personal branding adopt each other’s methods

Above: Brand Kate Moss was probably seen by more people when the model collaborated with Topshop. In 1999, the late Wally Olins sent me his book, Trading Identities: Why Countries and Companies are Taking on Each Other’s Roles, a fine read published by the Foreign Policy Centre that argued that countries were trying to look […]

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Autocade turns four, and it’s about to get its two millionth page view

It’s hard to believe but Autocade is four years old this month. In fact, its actual birthday was some time last week.    It’s been busy at work, so Autocade has received a little less attention in the last 12 months, though things were buoyed when Keith Adams (of AROnline) added a whole bunch of […]

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Hopefully the last Firefox 3 blog post

Since discovering that Firefox 4 Beta 13 is stable, I have spent less time with Firefox 3·6, the buggiest, most oft-crashing program I have ever used in 30 years of computing.    But I used it today enough times to net myself five crashes, though this is above average. The ‘unmark purple’ bug that plagued […]

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Firefox 4 Beta 13 passes my tests

Firefox 4 Beta 13 works, and I have not found any bugs with it.    I may be wrong, but I believe this is the last beta before release.    What’s amazing is that the bugs I have been complaining about for a long time have each been fixed. In other words, the reporting system […]

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Facebook’s profile change benefits Digg

Earlier today, while sorting out revisions to a piece I’m submitting to the Journal of Brand Management, I discovered that the new Facebook profile layout no longer has my collection of links.    Once upon a time, you could save your links to Facebook and they’d all be there, in a list, shown just below […]

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Slowly but surely, Autocade gets to 1,250 models

Autocade hit 1,250 models today, with a car that’s slightly unusual to non-antipodean eyes: Ford LTD (FE). 1984–8 (prod. unknown). 4-door sedan. F/R, 4089 cm³ (6 cyl. OHV). First LTD series with no V8s, with EFI six as standard, delivering 120 kW. Alloy head as with Falcon; electronic engine management, called EEC IV, delivering more […]

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