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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Posts tagged ‘2010s’
09.08.2022
The Bing collapse did lead me to look at some of the ancient pages on the Lucire site that the search engines were still very fond of. For instance, the âAboutâ page was still appearing up top, which is bizarre since we havenât made any links to it for yearsâit reflected our history in 2004.
Naturally, once I updated it, it promptly disappeared from Bing! Too new for Microsoftâs own Wayback Machine!
I was always told that you shouldnât delete old pages, and that 301s were the best solution. Iâm enough of a computing neophyte to not know how to implement 301s (.htaccess doesnât work, at least not on our set-up) and page refreshes are often frowned upon, which is why so many old pages are still there.
However, you would naturally expect that a web spider following links would not rank anything that hasnât been linked to for over a decade very highly. If the spider comes in, picks up the latest stuff from your home page, possibly the latest stuff from individual topic pages, it would figure out what all of these were linking to, and conclude that something from 2000 that was buried deep within the site was no longer current, or of only passing interest to surfers.
I realize Iâve had a go at search engines for burying relevant things in favour of novel things, but weâre talking pages here that arenât even relevant. âAboutâ Iâll let them have, but a 2000 book reviewsâ page? A subject index page from 2005 that hasnât been linked to since 2005, and the pages that do are well outnumbered by newer ones? Because, the deletion of âAboutâ aside, here is what Bing thinks is the most important for site:lucire.com:

Google fares a little better. Our home page and current print edition ordering page are top, shopping is third, followed by the fashion contentsâ page (makes sense). âAboutâ comes in fifth, for whatever reason, then a 2005 competition page that we should probably delete (it refreshes to another page from 2005âso much for refresh pages being bad for search engines).
Seventh is yet another ancient page from 2005, namely a framesetâwhich Iâve since updated so at least the main frame loads something current. The remainder are articles from 2011, 2022 and 2016. The next page comprises articles and tags, which seem to make sense.
Mojeek actually makes more sense than Google. Home page in first, the news page (the next most-updated) is second, followed by the travel contentsâ page. Then there are two older print edition pages (2020 and 2012), followed by a bunch of articles (2013, 2014, 2013, 2013), and the directory page for Lucire TV. Thereâs nothing here that I find strange: everything is logically found by a spider going through the site, and maybe those four articles from the 2010s are relevant to the word Lucire (given that you canât do site: searches on Mojeek without a keyword, so it repeats the word before the TLD)? The reference to the 2012 issue might be down to my having mentioned it recently during our 25th anniversary posts. But there are no refresh pages and no framesets.
Startpage, not Google, has a couple of frameset pages from 2000 and 2002 in their top 10 which again werenât linked to, at least not purposefully (they were placed there to catch people trying to look at the directory index in the old days). Thereâs incredibly little âlink juiceâ to these pages. However, âAboutâ (in 10th), and these two framesets aside, its Google-sourced results fare remarkably well. In order: home page, print edition ordering page, the two framesets, the news section, the shopping page (barely updated but I can see why itâs there), the community page, Lucire TV, the fashion contents, âAboutâ.
Duck Duck Go is so compromised by Bing that it barely merits a mention here. Four pages from 2000 and 2005 that no current page links, a 404 page that weâve never even had on our site (!), articles from 2021, 2018, 2007 and 2000 (in that order), and a PDF (!) from 2004. Fancy having a 404 that never even existed in the top 10!
If I had my way, itâd be home page, followed by the different sectionsâ contentsâ pages, then the most popular articleâthough if a couple of articles go (or went) viral, then Iâd expect them sooner.
Both Mojeek and Google do well here, with four of these pages each in their top 10s. But itâs Startpageâs unfiltered Google results that do best, hitting linked, relevant pages in seven results out of the top 10. Bing and its licensees miss the mark completely. If you must have a Google bias, then Startpage is the way to go; for our purposes, Mojeek remains the better option.
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âââ Startpage
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ââââââ Mojeek
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ââââââ Google
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ââââââââ Virtual Mirage
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âââââââââ Baidu
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âââââââââ Yandex
ââââââââââ Bing
ââââââââââ Qwant
ââââââââââ Swisscows
ââââââââââ Brave
ââââââââââ Duck Duck Go (would give â1 for the 404 if I could)
Tags: 2000s, 2010s, 2020s, 2022, Bing, Duck Duck Go, Google, JY&A Media, Lucire, Microsoft, Mojeek, publishing, search engines Posted in France, internet, New Zealand, publishing, technology, UK, USA | No Comments »
16.07.2022

Le dernier.
I see the Le Snak range has now left us, after its US owner PepsiCo cited a lack of demand. I call bullshit, since during 2021 it was becoming increasingly difficult to find them on the shelves. Throttling distribution is not the same as a lack of demand, something you see time and time again with corporate claptrap.
Itâs like the myth that New Zealanders all prefer automatic transmissions. No, not supplying manuals will inevitably force people to change. Has the industry done a survey as I have? Last time I conducted one, in the 2010s, we were still running 50â50, with a lot of people saying, âI prefer a manual, but I had no choice but to buy an automatic.â
Ford is a useful example of US companies citing reduced demand but doing things behind the scenes to ensure it. The line that no one was buying big cars saw to the end of the road for the Australian Falcon and the closure of its Broadmeadows plant. Did any of you see any advertising for the Falcon leading up to that? Or see many Falcons on dealer lots? It seems to me that a corporate decision had been made, and steps taken to guarantee an outcome. Throttle the distribution (âWeâre out of stockâ) and of course demand falls.
Get your tape measures out, and youâll find the Falcon was smaller than the Mondeo (which at that point was still selling) on key measures other than overall length and, presumably, boot volume. The two-litre Ecoboost Falcon with its rear-wheel drive was promoted with all the energy of a damp squid, but it had all the ingredients for success as a decent-handling sedan. But Broadmeadows was an inefficient plant, from what I understand (from hearsay), and bringing it up to speed would have cost more than a bunch of Pinto lawsuits. ‘But there’s no demand for what it builds anyway!’ they cry. Then they can justify the closure.
Go back to the 1990s and the same thing happened with Fordâs Contour and Mystique twins in the US. People were buying BMW 3-series in droves, cars the same size as the Contour. But Ford claimed there was no demand, leading to its US cancellation after the 2000 model year. Reality: I say the Dearborn fiefdom didnât like the fact the Contour was part of a world-car project (which gave us the original Mondeo) led by Fordâs Köln fiefdom. Not-invented-here killed the Contour, and a relative lack of promotion also guaranteed its fate. (Ford would wind up contesting the segment again later in the 2000s with the Fusion and Milan, but put far more effort into promoting them since they were US-led programmes. I actually saw advertising for them in US magazines! I saw a Milan in Manhattan with Mercury encouraging us to try it out!)
If you take the line that anything a big US firm utters is an utter lie, it keeps you in good stead. Use that approach with Facebook, for instance, and youâll find things make sense more often than not. And of course we all knew what Elon Musk meant when he said he wanted to buy Twitter.
Tags: 1990s, 2010s, 2022, Australia, business, car, car industry, corporate culture, deception, Ford, history, internal politics, retail, USA Posted in business, culture, marketing, New Zealand, USA | No Comments »
02.07.2022
Here are July 2022âs imagesâaides-mĂ©moires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month.
Tags: 1960s, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970s, 1971, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1980s, 1986, 1987, 2007, 2010s, 2011, 2013, 2018, 2019, 2020s, 2022, actors, actresses, advertisement, advertising, Apple, Audi, Bertone, BL, book, Boris Johnson, British Leyland, car, celebrity, Chrysler, CitroĂ«n, design, Elle, Europe, Ferrari, film, Ford, France, Germany, GM, Hachette, humour, ITC, James Bond, Japan, Lamborghini, language, magazine, magazine design, Marcello Gandini, Mastodon, Mazda, McLaren, media, modelling, modernism, newspaper, Opel, Peugeot, Porsche, PSA, publishing, Renault, retro, Roger Moore, science fiction, social media, Spain, supermodel, technology, The Persuaders, Tony Curtis, Toyota, Triumph, TV, Twitter, UK, USA Posted in cars, culture, design, France, gallery, interests, marketing, media, politics, publishing, technology, UK, USA | No Comments »
11.04.2022

In 2011, I was definitely on Firefox.
I believe I started browsing as many did, with Netscape. But not 1.0 (though I had seen copies at university). I was lucky enough to have 1.1 installed first.
I stuck with Netscape till 4.7. Its successor, v. 6, was bloated, and never worked well on my PC.
Around this time, my friend Kat introduced me to Internet Explorer 5, which was largely stable, so I made the leap to Microsoft. IE5 wasnât new at this point and had been around for a while.
I canât remember which year, but at some point I went to Maxthon, which used the IE engine, but had more bells and whistles.
By the end of the decade, Firefox 3 was my browser of choice. In 2014, I switched to Waterfox, a Firefox fork, since I was on a 64-bit PC and Firefox was only made for 32-bit back then. A bug with the Firefox browsers saw them stop displaying text at the end of 2014, and I must have switched to Cyberfox (another 64-bit Firefox-based browser) around this time.
I went back to Firefox when development on Cyberfox stopped, and a 64-bit Firefox became available, but by 2017, it ate memory like there was no tomorrow (as Chrome once did, hence my not adopting it). Vivaldi became my new choice.
There are old posts on this blog detailing many of the changes and my reasons for them.
Iâve always had Opera installed somewhere, but it was never my main browser. Maybe this year Opera GX will become that, with Vivaldiâs latest version being quite buggy. We shall see. I tend to be pretty loyal till I get to a point where the software ceases to work as hoped.
Tags: 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s, 2022, Cyberfox, Firefox, history, Internet Explorer, Maxthon, Microsoft, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, technology, Waterfox, web browser Posted in internet, New Zealand, technology | No Comments »
28.11.2021
Jane Pendry in the UK Tweeted this in response to a Tweet about Amazon, and I had to reply:
Jane helpfully elaborated:
You read correctly: Amazon is just as dodgy as the others I’ve criticized publicly. Just that I hadn’t got around to them on this blog, because there had been a lengthy dialogue and I wanted to get more facts. But above is where I’ve got to so far, and it seems I’m not alone.
Tags: 2010s, 2021, Amazon, Big Tech, crime, customer service, ethics, law, Twitter, UK, USA Posted in business, globalization, internet, technology, UK, USA | No Comments »
23.10.2021


A decade separates these two incarnations of Lucireâs shopping home page. Some Facebook gadgets were added during the 2010s and the magazine cover was updated, but it was woefully out of date and needed to be refreshed.
Itâs very unusual for us to go into the less-frequented pages in Lucire and adapt them to a new template before doing a major one such as the fashion index page. But sometimes you go with the creative flow, so it was the turn of the âNewsstandâ pages plus the shopping home page, which hadnât been updated in seven years (and most of it hadn’t been touched for ten).
Needless to say, on the latter, almost everything was out of date. Weâve removed the links to the shopping directory, which last existed to support the print magazine as it was in the mid-2000s. Since then, we havenât really had a shopping section in print, and we ceased to update it much online.
What was disappointing to note, after my lament about the disappearance of so many fashion websites earlier this year, that even more had closed down, so much so that the three âNewsstandâ pages have come back down to two (as it was in the 2000s). There are still some that have not been updated in years, but we have maintained the links for historical purposes.
Poking about the directories did lead me to lucire.com/xp, a framed page with content for our mobile edition in 2000 that was compatible with Plucker. Long before cellphones became the norm, we were already catering for portable devices. I knew we had a Plucker edition, but had forgotten about the xp directory till tonight.
The copy on that page reads, âLucire Express was the hand-held version of Lucire, powered by Plucker. With more recent developments in syndication and content management, support for Express has been discontinued.â
It seemed logical that cellphone browsers would be developed to reduce the content of high-res pages to make them readable, but that is yet to happen (unless one goes into a simplified view mode). To think that programmers found a way to do that in the 2000s. How times have changed, with what appears to be a slowing down of innovationâforcing us to adapt to the technology (developing mobile-friendly themes in-house) rather than the other way round.
Tags: 2010s, 2011, 2021, cellphone, design, JY&A Media, Lucire, publishing, redesign, technology, trend Posted in design, New Zealand, publishing, technology, Wellington | No Comments »
02.09.2021
Here are September 2021âs imagesâaides-mĂ©moires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month. It sure beats having a Pinterest.
Sources
The 2016 Dodge Neon sold in México. More at Autocade.
IKCO Peugeot 207. More at Autocade.
Double standards in New Zealand media, reposted from Twitter.
The cover of the novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Nice work on the use of Americana, which does take me back to the period, but I’m not convinced by this cut of Italian Old Style. I just don’t remember it being used that much.
Daktariâs Cheryl Miller as the new Dodge model, in her second year, promoting the 1971 Dodge Demon. This was a 1960s idea that was being carried over with minor tweaks into the new decade, and it didn’t work quite as well as the earlier Joan Parker ‘Dodge Fever’ advertisements (also shown here in this gallery).
House Beautiful cover, January 1970, before all the garishness of the decade really hit. This is still a clean, nicely designed cover. I looked at some from the years that followed on House Beautifulâs website, and they never hit this graphic design high mark again.
That’s the Car and Driver cover for my birth month? How disappointing, a Colonnade Chevrolet Monte Carlo.
French typesetting, as posted on the typography.guru forums.
Read books, humorous graphic reposted from Twitter.
My reply in the comments at Business Desk, on why it made more sense for me to have run for mayor in 2010 and 2013 than it would in 2022.
Seven years before its launch, Marcello Gandini had already styled the Innocenti Mini. This is his 1967 proposal at Bertone.
JAC Jiayue A5. More at Autocade.
Phil McCann reporting for the BBC, reposted from Twitter.
Car and Driver February 1970 cover. As a concept, this could still work.
Tags: 1960s, 1967, 1968, 1970, 1970s, 1971, 1972, 1974, 2010s, 2015, 2016, 2019, 2021, actress, Aotearoa, BBC, Bertone, book, Brexit, British Leyland, Business Desk, car, celebrity, Chevrolet, China, Chrysler, Dodge, FCA, Fiat, film, France, GM, graphic design, Hollywood, humour, IKCO, Innocenti, Iran, Italy, JAC, Lamborghini, layout, licensing, magazine, Marcello Gandini, marketing, mayoralty, media, MĂ©xico, modelling, modernism, New Zealand, Peugeot, politics, PSA, publishing, Qatar, racism, retro, Saudi Arabia, Sawahel Aljazeera, Stellantis, technology, The New York Times, Twitter, typography, UK, USA, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in business, cars, China, design, France, gallery, humour, interests, leadership, marketing, media, New Zealand, politics, publishing, technology, typography, UK, USA, Wellington | No Comments »
27.08.2021
A couple of years ago, friends in Wellington, who own a businessâletâs call it Xâwere approached by a US company with the same name, though in a slightly different industry.
They wanted my friends to give up their page name facebook.com/x to them, and suggested that they should be facebook.com/xnz.
No suggestion of payment, just a âyou should considerâ, and if I recall correctly, something to do with how much bigger they were.
This was a really strange argument from someone in the US where their cultureâs often based around the plucky individual taking on bigger players.
How many myriads or even millions did CondĂ© Nast pay to get style.com from Express all those years ago? If youâre that much bigger, maybe you could have afforded it? Or maybe you were just being cheeky, thinking you could get something for nothing. Well, not quite nothing. A little bit of bullying.
Basically, taking away all the legalese and wank designed to make my friends hesitate, the Americans were upset that someone got in there with a Facebook page name years (nine years, if I recall correctly) before they did. How dare these Kiwis!
âHow should we respond?â asked my friends.
âYou can either (a) ignore them or (b) tell them to go to hell,â I advised. I think they chose (a). After all, thereâs no point replying to one-sided rudeness.
Iâm reminded of this story because of emails from another US company recently and, again, stripping away the rudeness and implying I was a liar, boils down to them not really liking their First Amendment. Not when someone else exercises it fairly.
Americans arenât alone in being dicks about something but these particular two companies sure donât like other people doing things that they can equally do. They trotted out a level of rudeness from the outset that you seldom see from their country, where regular Americans try their best to be nice.
A third case was from the UK, where we received a threat from the agent of a fading celebrity whose crowning achievements were probably some soap opera and shooting for FHM in the 1990s. I donât recall the circumstances in depth but I can tell you that that woman has not had much coverage since, by us or any other publication. Choose the wrong people, and you flush your goodwill down the toilet. Who’d touch you now, when there are plenty more stories that we can pursue with fewer headaches?
I donât know where the rudeness comes from, but I presume itâs a superiority complex that hides the fact that their arguments bear little merit. The result is that they damage their brands or their client’s reputations in the process.
If you encounter it in business, then it’s a cinch that they don’t really have much to stand on. They feel bullying is their only means, because if they argued it rationally or faced the issue honestly they wouldn’t get what they want. It’s worth keeping an eye out for, and not waste your time on.
Tags: 2010s, 2021, bullying, business, correspondence, email, Facebook, friends, law, legalese, reputation, UK, USA Posted in business, culture, publishing, UK, USA | No Comments »
11.08.2021
Originally noted at NewTumbl, this is the sort of stuff that can annoy me in films.
This is a scene from Rocketman, where Elton John (Taron Egerton) arrives at the Troubador in Los Angeles in 1970. Car people, spot the problems.


If you’re like me, you’re going: Elton’s in a 1978 Lincoln Continental Town Car, thereâs a 1981 Chevrolet Caprice going by, past a parked 1975 Ford Thunderbird and a 1980 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. Not being American, I may be off by one model year, but my point still stands.
To think they re-created the posters, the extras’ clothes in the ‘I’m Still Standing’ video, even the fur coats, but they couldn’t source a few motors. I really liked this movie, and scenes like this throw you out of its finely constructed world and you realize it’s just a film.
Tags: 1970s, 2010s, 2019, car, Chevrolet, film, Ford, GM, history, Lincoln, retro, USA Posted in cars, culture, USA | No Comments »
11.08.2021
Here are August 2021âs imagesâaides-mĂ©moires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month.
Sources
Volkswagen Gol G4âmore at Autocade.
The fake friends of social media being the junk food equivalent of real friendships, from this post by Umair Haque.
Stay at home, wear a maskâgeek humour shared from Twitter.
Thaikila swimwearâseems to have an interesting history.
More on the Fiat 124 Sport Spider here at Autocade.
Jerry Inzerillo, first male on the cover of an issue of Lucire anywhere in the world, in this case the August 2021 issue of Lucire KSA. The story can be found here on our website.
Tags: 1960s, 1970s, 1990s, 2000, 2010s, 2011, 2021, actor, advertisement, advertising, Bali, Brazil, business, car, celebrity, COVID-19, culture, fashion, fashion magazine, Fiat, Ford, France, Google, humour, Indonesia, internet, Jerry Inzerillo, Lucire, Lucire KSA, magazine, Mazda, newspaper, Otosan, prediction, publishing, Renault, Sean Connery, society, Turkey, Twitter, UK, Umair Haque, USA, Volkswagen Posted in business, cars, culture, gallery, internet, publishing, USA, Wellington | No Comments »
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