1,636 karma · joined February 2, 2011
Notch has been in very close contact with the players of the game throughout development, and has a keen sense of what this mass of people is looking for.
TEST: (Straight A/B test for an online retailer in the women’s clothing market)
Control: Coupon code on the first page of the checkout process.
Variation 1: Coupon code removed.
Results:
Control: 3.8% conversion rate. (967 sales / 25,489 unique visitors)
Variation 1: 5.1% conversion rate. (1,276 sales / 24,991 unique visitors)> Plaintiffs believe their decisions to disclose or not disclose information is their decision to make.
> To avoid being tracked online Plaintiffs used and relied on their browser controls.
> It is contrary to standard practices to use DOM local storage instead of cookies.
If you are going to put down a practice as a "hack" or "repurposing" why not quote the standard?
http://dev.w3.org/html5/webstorage/#user-tracking
Very clearly it states:
> A third-party advertiser (or any entity capable of getting content distributed to multiple sites) could use a unique identifier stored in its local storage area to track a user across multiple sessions, building a profile of the user's interests to allow for highly targeted advertising.
To me: any effort by plaintiffs to protect their privacy is moot, especially attacking local storage practices, when it is known that it can be used for tracking.
W3C puts the control and responsibility back in the user's hand:
> There are a number of techniques that can be used to mitigate the risk of user tracking, all involve user agent/browser settings.
So in my mind:
- Plaintiffs (or their browsers) did not enough to protect their online privacy.
- Plaintiffs complain about the abuse of local storage practices, when tracking through local storage is a very real option.
- Plaintiffs can configure their user agent to not accept these cookies.
As for information sharing between sites: this I could see as bad, if proven. But a KissMetrics-wide unique ID doesn't proof that such information is shared.
Even with all security efforts in place, a user can still be tracked (By IP and browser/system settings), and this data can still be shared. I do e-commerce profiling, and while I don't really need a flash cookie, I also don't really need your permission to scan my own servers logs: it was you who made the decision to disclose that information to me.
> However, user tracking is to some extent possible even with no cooperation from the user agent whatsoever, for instance by using session identifiers in URLs, a technique already commonly used for innocuous purposes but easily repurposed for user tracking (even retroactively). This information can then be shared with other sites, using using visitors' IP addresses and other user-specific data (e.g. user-agent headers and configuration settings) to combine separate sessions into coherent user profiles.
Only users with a coupon code know this URL. The URL parameter won't show up in a Google search, because the canonical is in place. The coupon code works only for that session and will automatically show up on the checkout page.
Works very well for us.
Trying to be an "app" or not: For me, it is about the courtesy of respecting my main OS settings. It is about introducing accessibility concerns by overriding system settings such as demonstrated in this active bug report from 2008: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=92
> They aren't going to, and shouldn't, waste their time
It looks like they are going to, and really should fix this bug report. Improving the usability, interoperability and accessibility of your "app" or "operating system" is not a waste of time. You'd have a hard time backing that up.
While in this case it is simple user preference, in other cases it could mean an accessibility concern, or even give room to malicious attacks: With all these custom browser skins, pop-ups over the HTML body (link destination on hover) and no clear divide between window and application, users won't clearly know the difference between interaction with the browser, and interaction with a smart malicious website.
With smart design one could make the bottom browser toolbar appear to be higher, and control the top half with your website. Fake plug-in install modal windows etc.
On the one side, they offer quality articles and have quality resources. They seem to favor the hackers.
On the other side, this article was written by Kevin Poulsen, who had a part in turning over a whistleblower and journalist source to the authorities. Kevin Poulson has made himself too related to anonymous and WikiLeaks to be regarded as objective on these matters.
I know that isn't reason to judge any article of his, but the extra care I'm forced to take when Poulson is involved (consider his sources, morals and agenda), leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth and an inability to enjoy reading this article.
Google may also show aggregate +1's in their search results in the future (so social proof right in the search results):
>>And even if none of your friends are baristas or caffeine addicts, we may still show you how many people across the web have +1’d your local coffee shop.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/1s-right-recommendati...
>>For instance, your +1 could appear as part of an anonymous aggregated count of the people who have also +1’d the same thing
http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/static.py?hl=en&#...
You make it sound like there is no responsibility and accountability in pseudo-anonymous cooperation.
How about real names on license plates? X-Box live accounts?
Enforcing real names is _not_ always a good thing. They already have my IP and the police can demand my ISP for my personal data; not just a stalker, impersonator, or any fraud.
Enforcing real names on 4chan will solve nothing, and likely make matters worse (in your view): It would create a more vibrant Freenet or Darknet where people are a lot more anonymous and 4chan seems civil by comparison.
- Many non-sanitized SQL queries fail,
- buggy URL or HTML parsers create code like:
/spring-in/
<meta content='Spring in 't Veld ...
- Added smart quotes "Spring in ’t Veld" from Word or Rich Text Editors cause problems with sorting and identity consolidation.
- Stripping the quote character trips a 2-letter requirement.
- etc.
It is unlikely that people will name their son
Robert';) DROP TABLE Students;--
> If you choose not to have search engines index your profile, your profile itself won't appear in Google search results. However: * Your profile will still remain visible to anyone with your profile URL.
From: http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/static.py?hl=en&#...
If we all had vanity URL's that spelled out our name, our private profiles could be accessed by just guessing the URL.
Now your private profile is only visible to those that know your specific URL and Googleplus ID.
I also think vanity URL's, name changes, name squatting and celebrity verification is too much manual work for Google's liking.
> I’ve seen folks spend thousands of dollars per month on links or advertising on a site simply because ‘the site has a great PageRank’.
Me too, so if you are a site that thrives on advertising or link revenue, PageRank remains very important.
Avvo.com said that when their PageRank rises, so do the number of business development calls. Even when PR and business dev calls are not correlated, the perception is still very real.
For larger sites having a higher PageRank also means deeper crawls, longer crawls and faster recrawls (I've heard it influence rich snippets and sitelinks too.). Not something to measure like it is the holy grail of marketing, but it is something to keep an eye out for, even if it just to check if you are not ranked 0 (which could mean a serious problem).
I wouldn't put my money where my mouth is, if PageRank doesn't matter, I still prefer links from higher PageRank domains. PageRank might be dead, it is not buried yet.
The biggest fear claimed by some writers of the legislation, and perhaps a justified one, is that cookies can (are?) be used to discriminate. If I remember correctly they cite a case where a large publisher could sell the cross-domain surfing behavior of people to insurance companies, recruiters, marketing bureaus or that it can be seized by the police, or leaked to hackers. It is akin to the reason why security cameras, if facing the public, must have a disclaimer sign with: "I am recording you". The cookie must inform the user: "I am tracking you". Right now, most users are unaware cookies even exist.
I agree my surfing behavior should be private, but I don't agree with the strictness and ambiguity of this law. The intentions may be right, so I don't expect them to even enforce it. As long as you don't violate the WBP ( Dutch Data Protection Act from 2001) you are ok IANAL.
That does mean if you build a recommendation engine in Holland you must comply with the WBP (secure architecture, handing over specific user data on request to a user, etc.).
One way to combat this is by using a hash. A salted hash that is untraceable to a user, but build from its IP, allows you to track the user, without the police or hackers stumbling upon personal data. Advertising and user tracking could apply this same principle.
As for the exodus, I believe it doesn't matter where your company or server is based, it is about doing business in Holland that matters for this law.
My BS-meter went way up, when I scrolled down and saw the charts that conveniently "verified" the sentiment on Hacker News. I hope they don't think I typed this message, because I am depressed and lack compassion.
In my opinion saying "Happy fathers day" or having a Google Doodle is one thing. Putting it like a reminder in a personal setting, when you for example don't want to speak with your abusive father, is another.
I don't think you should diagnose people like that over the internet. Anyway, it is not a crime to have daddy issues and it certainly shouldn't be used as an argument not to post tickets.
> If I was her father I'd be glad she didn't call
This made me angry reading it. This is a really hurtful statement and telling of your personality. I won't use this statement to diagnose you, but please reread what you said there, and ask yourself if it was necessary.
> stop using a service provided to you for FREE
Gmail isn't "free", it gathers information for targeted advertisements. Facebook isn't "free" and even it was completely free that doesn't dictate we can't complain about insensitive actions or privacy violations.
> deal with the fact that most fathers, sons, and daughters like each other
Because OP on the ticket didn't like her father? It is a weird fact to force me to deal with, just for using a "free" service.
> the really great part...
That isn't a part of the story at all, more like a weird gloating I don't understand how it fits in.
To me this _is_ a mistake. It is a feature that made Gmail less usable today for some. Who did this feature benefit? Those that didn't care about their father enough to forget to call and need the call-to-action? I bet your wonderful kids wouldn't need a reminder so what did you get out of this feature to give kudos?
Often this would happen: Client or user finds an image through Google Image Search on another blog or website, with unclear copyright. Then the client or user would upload this to the server. Then the client, or me, would receive a letter from a (GettyImages) lawyer: If we would please pay for the full licensing right of that 160x160 pixel image.
Thinking about it, I find accommodating to these services can lead to nothing but trouble: Either legal trouble, or hit-and-run users stealing your images, because you paid for higher resolution.
I hope I can separately block this Google service from Google Image Search. Although Google Image Search isn't as good to webmasters as it used to be (especially for those that rely on advertisement clicks) and the users it can send can be negligible: Ranking higher in Google Image Search seems to correlate to ranking higher in Google Web Search.
If it is part and parcel of Google Image Search, I might reconsider my robots.txt directive for Googlebot-Image. They just now opened this up for the public, but it is likely they are already using this internally to gauge (media) quality factors on-page.
P.S.: It would be interesting to see what happens when Google doesn't partner up with GettyImages or iStockPhoto, like in the early days of TinEye you could abuse that service to find the same stock images without watermarks, on the sites of people that already paid for that image.
P.P.S.: Now you can add RDFa or Microdata to mark up your images with a copyright statement, what would happen to sites that host copyrighted images, tagged "not for reproduction"? Google should be able to find the canonical image and "punish" those that don't comply with its copyright.
Let us say we both link to http://schema.org/docs/search_results.html#q=test and http://schema.org/docs/search_results.html#q=product .
Since it is a hashtag we link to, all the link juice will get consolidated in the search page, which passes it on to the rest of the site.
If we had linked to http://schema.org/docs/search_results.html?q=test and http://schema.org/docs/search_results.html?q=product we would have created two (low-quality and near-duplicate) pages in the google index.
The same principle applies to pagination. If you can do javascript pagination #page=2 vs. dynamic pagination ?page=2 you are nearly always better of with the hash pagination. If you do it right, you get the benefit of a single page, with the added bonus of being able to bookmark a certain page and having browser history working.
Microformats should never invalidate any doctype as they are just class-names.
Microdata can be used in valid HTML5 doctype pages.
RDFa can be used in valid xHTML+RDFa doctype pages.
If your website employs an SEO or webstandardista, you should already have your sites marked up with metadata. Reviews and rich breadcrumbs etc. have been around and supported for years now.
I suppose that since Google wants to solve these problems algorithmically first and foremost, that many of these structures already get recognized. Right now you don't _have_ to mark-up your breadcrumbs, for them to still appear as rich snippets on your search result listing. Google recognized the structure without added mark-up.
For now, I will build the new types in my CMS like a good web developer. That won't cost me any time in the future, and now I'll have a way to separate myself from those that won't add schema's or metadata to their mark-up. So, at the end of the day, I just got more expensive :)
But you don't have to use microdata or microformats; you can still use this schema with RDFa on an XHTML page.
You should be able to express everything in Microdata _and_ RDFa. I don't think RDFa is semantically richer than these other formats.
Battery life should increase. Because we have 4 cores, we can run them on lower voltages. So overall, our plans are, and we expect to have better battery life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhDmQCOyXrU
The power consumption and battery life should be akin to the Tegra 2.
Now we have previews in the search results, so we know for sure that Google renders websites.
Next to detecting hidden spam or javascript layout changes, I presume this rendering can be used to produce a waterfall of the site loading process.
So while Google does this with a HTML5 feature in modern browsers, internally it should already have:
- page speed scores
- render scores (perhaps render time)
of all websites in index, regardless the browser their users use.
That is how I think Google measures site speed; it uses these known non-HTML5 factors for ranking the fastest websites.
Like in the article it could be far more likely to have a 1 follow a 1 (like markov chaining probability) than another number, making the string A more probable and therefor containing less information.
The overarching notion to me seems to be (Kolmogorov) complexity. The size of the smallest program that can reproduce the string/word/utterance denotes the complexity of that string/word/utterance.
We use less complex words more often, not because they are shorter, but because their optimal compression ratio (not the number of morphenes, but their order and complexity) is shorter than other words. The program to produce it in our brains is smaller and simpler.
You can safely call the Skype extension evil malware, if your giant call-to-action phonenumber is forced to be written like this: 012-34[span style="display:none"]_[/span]5678 or it becomes hijacked by a video chat program.
This thread starts at 2007 and goes downhill from there: http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=78380 (Look at the meta tag solution, that works for a while, but doesn't work in XHTML strict. Microsoft and Skype definitely deserve each other)
I find there is also a divide between HR/recruiting and the lead developers. Once I had two interviews at a company. The first one from HR and a second one from the lead developers.
The attitude of the developers made me think they didn't have much say into the whole process. They did ask the best (read hardest) questions. This interview order seems fine, though questions like:
how many lines of codes did you write in language X? If we ask you to build Y, could you, and how would you go about it? If there is a problem in the weekend, and we call you, would you come over to fix it?
Could perfectly be asked in the first round of the interviews. And if you really want to be sure that a person will come to the office, if need be, then maybe plan the contract meeting at midnight on a saturday :)
One thing I noticed while last searching for jobs is the apparent inconsistencies in job listings.
Pre-requisites like: PHP and Ruby, Web standards and Flash, thorough understanding of javascript (jQuery plug-ins), Photoshop or Illustrator and version control, familiar with Linux and .net.
At first I ascribed these pre's to unskilled job listers, but maybe this is the start of the negotiation process? - "I do know X, but have to work on Y" - "That is fine, have you thought about salary yet?"
Is this really a thing in recruiting, or am I seeing things?
You say you wrote 100 articles a month for over a year. Were these all quality posts? Even a site like smashingmagazine with a very general subject and a team of writers can't output 3 articles a day. If you were to put the time and effort of 3 articles into 1 article, does that help in the number of links the piece attract and the times it is shared?
I understand that you spend time each day to update your blog, but if that is not original research, do you believe to be rewarded more than "amateur" status? How many people do you think write about Justin Bieber? How many of those blogs should rank in the top 100 for Justin Bieber terms?
Next up: Could you become an affiliate of Apple for your Apple product site? Really unlikely as your domain name violates their TOS and trademark. Why should Google allow a site to advertise for Apple products, when Apple wouldn't allow that same site to do the same? Apple doesn't consider you an expert, they consider you a legal hassle. And are you really an Apple expert? Or do you just own some Apple products and keep up-to-date?
Also your shareasale footerlink should disqualify you for Adsense, as dofollowing an non-editorial affiliate link is against the Quality Guidelines.
I'd agree that the denying of Adsense was (obviously?) wrong, if this is all there is to the picture. As for looking at ipad information on the internet, after a manual inspection of that site, I, as a user that cares for quality and relevance, don't need any of the results on justanotheripadblog.com in my top 100.
The order of relevance, discovery and editorial quality seems to flow from:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-20023976-233.html
>
http://ipadinsight.com/ipad-tips-tricks/how-to-make-airprint...
>
http://www.info4arab.com/how-to-make-airprint-work-with-just...
With a lot of intermediate steps.
iPadInsight.com is not a cheap scraper site, but is it a site that does original research, beyond rehashing what is hot in the industry? I think Panda might have judged correctly in not assigning higher rankings to this site.
The site seems to have had a canonical problem with the comments in 2010, inflating the site size in index to * 10. The depth of these comments is usually not much more than: "Great! Interesting Article! Love this! Thank you!" and might just as well have been auto-generated.
Also the shareasale footerlink "Thesis Theme for WordPress" alone, might disqualify you for running Adsense, as you dofollow an affiliate link (and this is not allowed in the webmaster quality guidelines).
The trademark inside domain name might be another issue.
Validation offers little business value. My reply was perhaps a bit old-fashioned. Why eat your plate, when you can only eat desserts? But validation is a prerequisite for accessibility. Accessibility may or may not add business value -- like an architect that designs houses for people between 190 cm and 165cm might not ever face a problem.
I think Pingdom is not about page speed, but ping speed. Things like javascript resources won't be downloaded in parallel right now, no matter the Pingdom score: combining your 7 jQuery plug-ins will increase page speed.
You really need a front-ender for the exciting stuff, I agree. A statistician with front-end experience would be even better.
I understand that in iterating fast like you are, you might leave some crumbs, to move on to bigger and better things. But also in practice, as a good front-end developer, part of a good team, it is possible to validate and speed-optimize even the largest of sites.
And the multi-functionality you rightfully demand from a front-ender, you can extend to every scrum team member. That means if the front-ender hands in a valid template, back-end devs should take care (know just enough) to not invalidate it.