Day six of the Google boycott: if The New York Times isn’t safe from blacklisting, then how can we be?

11.04.2013/06.19

It’s day six on the Google blacklist for Lucire. And no, we still don’t know what they are talking about. StopBadware doesn’t know what they are talking about. Our web guys and all our team in different parts of the world don’t know what they are talking about. Today, I decided to venture to […]

Chrome continues to block sites although Stop Badware clears them

09.04.2013/10.34

I’m pleased to note that the Stop Badware people have manually analysed jackyan.com, lucire.com and autocade.net, and cleared all sites at 8.01, 8.01 and 10.01 a.m. GMT respectively. Google, however, is still showing this to Chrome users as at 9.10 a.m. if they visit the Lucire website: I am not surprised. […]

How Google can get it wrong: an expert on malware gives advice

/01.09

Frustrated with ongoing Google’s false accusations over our websites, I joined the Stop Badware community today (Badware Busters), and got some sensible advice from a Dr Anirban Banerjee of www.stopthehacker.com. He had checked what Google was on about, and noted that it was still making the same accusations it did on Saturday—when we know […]

Google can’t ﬁnd any more problematic pages, yet continues blacklisting

08.04.2013/11.00

Google continues to throw up big red flags to anyone visiting Lucire’s website today, although its own Webmaster Tools page reveals that it has not found any problems since Saturday: Given that we had sewn up the server on Saturday, and deleted every instance of the hack, then Webmaster Tools’ inability to find dodgy […]

Here’s more about Google Adsense delivering malware and malicious code

07.04.2013/04.32

I wasn’t too far off the mark with my last post. It’s not unlikely that what was placed into our site by hacking during the small hours of Saturday morning was Google Adsense code: here’s an article entitled, ‘Google AdSense Potential Source of Malware’ at Resources for Life. While ours was more serious, because […]

Google clears our ad server of any malicious code, but continues to block our sites

06.04.2013/23.46

All of the sites that carry advertising from our ad server (ads.jyanet.com) were blacklisted by Google yesterday, including this one. In fact, Google still blacklists them, despite Google and Stop Badware clearing the server of any problems. Here’s the kicker: the code that was injected by hackers appears to be Google Adsense code. If […]

What Is a Brand? Well, there is one we’ve relaunched …

05.03.2013/13.18

My good friend and colleague Stanley Moss has written a new book, What Is a Brand?, which provokes some thought on the question in the title. Those who know Stanley and have followed his work know that each year, he issues a Brand Letter, which closes with various definitions of branding. If there’s […]

A fresher Lucire (the web edition) for 2013

05.01.2013/11.51

When Lilith-Fynn Herrmann, Tania Naidu, Julia Chu, Tanya Sooksombatisatian and I redesigned Lucire in 2012, we went for a very clean look, taking a leaf from Miguel Kirjon’s work at Twinpalms Lucire in Thailand. I’m really proud of the results, and it makes you happy to work on the magazine—and just pick up the finished […]

Another milestone: Autocade reaches 2,000 models

30.12.2012/13.22

The last few times Autocade reached a milestone, I blogged about it, and since this one is a bit of a Duesy, it deserves to be recorded. The car cyclopædia has reached 2,000 models, with the Opel Kadett D getting us there. It also passed 2½ million page views during December—I noticed it […]

A look back at 2012: from an Italian Job remake to a royal pregnancy

17.12.2012/01.02

Last year, it was quite humorous looking back on 2011 and what appeared on my Tumblr. And since my decade summary in December 2009 was a bit of a hit for some of you, I thought it might be worth a review of the year. In case you thought you missed out on much from […]