Google is currently throwing lots of money at Sky to show big banner ads on Sky’s website for Google’s excellent Chrome browser.
Does Google not know that Sky’s interactive listings guide doesn’t work with Chrome?
“We have detected that you are using Chrome. You need Internet Explorer, Safari 3 or Firefox to view the latest version of the TV Listings”
Doh!
Well I would … if I could find a contact form that doesn’t threaten me with being banned if I use it!
I’ve now received two ’strikes’ in 6 months from YouTube on an account of mine for videos I’d posted a couple of years ago. They’re not explicit or anything and yet – according to YouTube:
The following video(s) from your account have been disabled for violating the YouTube Community Guidelines:
- {Video Name}
Everyone hates spam. Misleading descriptions, tags, titles or thumbnails designed to increase views are not allowed. It’s also not OK to post large amounts of untargeted, unwanted or repetitive content, including comments and private messages.
This is the second Community Guidelines warning sanction your account has received within six months. Accordingly, the ability to post new content to YouTube from this account has been disabled and will not return until two weeks after you acknowledge this message. Please review the YouTube Community Guidelines and refrain from further violations, which may result in the termination of your account(s).
Helpful eh? Of course they’ve also helpfully removed my ability to actually access the ‘offending’ video but having looked at the one in question offline, I really, really don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.
So I thought I’d ask them to clarify what was wrong, but no. There’s no actual way on the YouTube site for me to be able to query this with anyone. How stupid are these people?
Woohoo! Back in July, I posted about keeping my calendars synchronised. And guess what? We’re nearly there!
All is explained in the Official Google Blog:
“…This was my life for a whole year before we started working on Google Calendar Sync, a 2-way synching application between Google Calendar and the calendar in Microsoft Outlook. I was probably the most excited person on the team when we started developing it, because now I can access my calendar at home or on my laptop, on Google Calendar or in Outlook. When I add an event to the Outlook calendar on my laptop, Google Calendar Sync syncs it to my Google Calendar — and since I also have Google Calendar Sync running on my desktop, the event then syncs from Google Calendar to Outlook calendar on my desktop. All of my calendar views are always up to date, and I can choose whichever one I want to use.”
Most excellent! Downloaded and installed. And I can access Google Calendar from my mobile and add appointments from there too.
I’m one of those people – as you’ve probably noticed – who displays adverts on their web sites, in my case, Google’s AdSense ones.
Now these adverts generate income for me whenever someone clicks on one of those links. What happens is an advertiser pays Google to display their adverts on sites where certain keywords chosen by the advertisers trigger their ads being displayed. In turn, Google give a percentage of that revenue to the sites displaying the adverts. I pay for some advertising his way as well.
What I’m noticing more and more these days though is that the revenue from displaying these ads. on my sites is coming down despite the fact that I am displaying ads on more web sites than before and the sites having become more popular.
I’ve never made a lot of money from Google – at its best, I was making roughly a dollar a day which was more or less covering my own spend.
But last month, for instance, my ad. revenues were down by a third. Now we’re talking small beans here with me, but if I were running an online business that relied on Google AdSense for its entire income, I’d be seriously worried.
I wonder what’s causing this squeeze? Ad-blockers? Too many sites chasing too few advertisers?
…depending upon what you use to search.
Or so it would appear.
When I “upgraded” to Office 2007, Outlook “suggested’ I download and install Windows Desktop Search which they suggest is “Best in Class”.
Now I am already running Google Desktop and have been impressed with it.
Yesterday I tried out some Nero software (before removing it again as it didn’t do what I wanted) and that installed another search program that looked exactly like a re-badged version of Windows Desktop Search.
Anyway, I’d had ‘mixed’ results with Windows Desktop Search noting how the number of items searched would sometimes count down, or that the number of items to index would also count down without a corresponding increase in the number of items searched and indeed noting that it would continue to index my PC even when supposedly snoozing.
Couple all that with the way that it only seemed to want to know about the current Outlook post file and it began to take on the usefulness of a chocolate teapot; especially when you take into account the need to keep Outlook post files to an absolute minimum size in the latest version unless you want your system slowed down to less than crawling pace. Outlook 2007: bst avoided!
So the other day, I needed to find some access details I’d e-mailed a client a while back. I knew I wouldn’t find them in my current Outlook post file, so I opened the job-specific post file archive and asked it to search only to find that it hadn’t been indexed and none of the other search facilities in Outlook could help either. So I fired up Google Desktop and instantly found the details I needed…
I looked at the Windows Desktop Search preferences and manually added .pst files – curiously omitted by default – and made sure that the Archives folder was ticked to be searchable and after allowing Windows Desktop Search to catalogue everything unhindered – at the expense of it slowing down my system – I decided to run a little test.
I sent myself an e-mail from my Gmail account (excluded from my Google Desktop search items) with the name “Persephone Winterbottom” in the e-mail body. This came via a POP3 account into MailWasher Pro and thence into Outlook. I then opened an archive .pst file and dragged the new e-mail into it before closing it once more.
After both programs indicated they were up to date, I ran a search for “Persephone Winterbottom”. Now, you need to bear in mind that Google Desktop needs Outlook post files to be open to be searched whilst Windows Desktop Search shouldn’t if it follows the preferences.
And the results? Google Desktop returned a positive on the e-mail within the main Outlook post file. Not so good if you want to actually locate the e-mail in its archive but the program does return its contents within the browser window (which is good enough for me).
Windows Desktop Search still doesn’t seem to acknoweldge the e-mail’s existence whatsover, even days afterwards, so it’s been uninstalled here now.
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