Bring back the human-curated web directory

Wayback Machine/Archive.org Nostalgia, with the Open Directory Project. This archived page from 1999 isn’t even the original. I still remember when it was called Gnuhoo in 1998.   Where have all the web directories gone? It seems we need them more than ever, since Google is so poor at ranking websites (while it funds the […]

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This surely makes it blatantly obvious that Bing is near death

Here’s a site I’ve always liked: Techdirt. It’s incredibly influential, and reports on the technology sector. Mike Masnick’s run it for the same length of time as I’ve run Lucire (25 years, and counting). And when it comes to Bing’s index collapse—or whatever you wish to call it—it’s no more pronounced than here (well, at […]

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Wide of the mark

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet, e.g.:    Anyone alive during this period will be wondering, ‘Where’s Altavista?’    Just on visitor numbers, as opposed to visits per month, they were doing 19 million daily in 1996, 80 million daily in 1997. Goodness knows how many searches we were doing per day. Yet […]

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Tumblr is dead, long live NewTumbl

Postscripts: click here to read why I’m considering ceasing to post on NewTumbl, in November 2020. Click here to read about NewTumbl’s encouraging response in December 2020. And, just over a week later, how the site really has become too puritanical for its own good.     Tumblr is dead, long live NewTumbl.    I […]

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Social media: not the evolution you might have expected

I’m getting a buzz seeing how little I update social media now. Around February 2016 I began updating Tumblr far less; I’ve gone from dozens of posts per month to four in December 2017 and seven in January 2018. (Here’s my Tumblr archive.) Facebook, as many of you know, is a thing of the past […]

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I found a new search engine (after Google signed me up to another mystery service)

I’ve a bit more reason to moan about Google of late, after a few more dodgy happenings on the site.    But before I do, some good news: I found a very good search engine. And it’s not Bing.    Ironically, one of the alternatives to Google search that I liked was Yahoo!, but even […]

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Autocade grows to 1,100 models: slowly but surely

Some weeks ago, as we neared this milestone, I planned to write a small blog post on reaching 1,100 cars at the Autocade site. And to show that these milestones are not rigged, we wound up with a fairly ghastly motor at that 1,100 mark. Nissan Cherry (E10/KPE10). 1970–4 (prod. unknown). 2- and 4-door sedan, […]

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It’s hard finding the old stuff on Google

My Wired for March 2010 arrived today (things take a while to reach the antipodes), with the most interesting article being on the Google algorithm. And hold on, this isn’t a Google-bashing blog entry.    Steven Levy’s article was probably written before the furore over the Google Buzz privacy flap. And it points out how […]

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