I had a somewhat bizarre automated email from Bebo reminding me that it is Kate Modern's birthday on the 1st October.
Kate Modern is of course a fictional character in an online soap opera - but she is also dead, having been murdered at the end of series one. There's a good clue to this in her screen name: RIP Kate.
So if Bebo can't suppress birthday reminders for fictional dead people, it makes me wonder how well their system works with real dead people.
Staff Blogs
Archive September 2008
It's dead Kate's birthdaySeptember 29, 2008 by Mike Teasdale
Digg-style voting to choose questions for Presidential debates?September 28, 2008 by Mike Teasdale
There have been interesting calls from a prominent group of Internet movers and shakers for questions at future debates between McCain and Obama to be decided by an 'open' system of voting, rather like Digg.
On the face of it, this would be a more democratic way to decide the agenda for the next set of debates - an agenda which is currently being decided pretty much at the whim of the media host.
But given the efforts that some people put into spamming links into Digg, perhaps what this would really do is hand control of the political agenda over to a cabal of social media professionals.
MSN adCenter labs finds Gordon sexier than DavidSeptember 24, 2008 by Mike Teasdale
I'm speaking at a seminar at Fox Williams tomorrow, partly covering the subject of tracking techniques in online advertising.
So I had a quick look at the Demographics Prediction tool at Microsoft adCenter labs. Â This experimental tool predicts a user's age and gender from online behaviour, including the search terms they use.
The search term 'Gordon Brown' yesterday shows a strong female orientation and an average age of searchers between 18 - 24. Â So Sarah clearly has some competition for that lovable lump!
Meanwhile, smooth and supposedly sexy David Cameron is actually attracting more searches from older men, with an average age of 35 - 49.  So for all of the podcasts and new logos, it looks like his core appeal is still the Tory heartland.
Gordon Brown tag cloudSeptember 24, 2008 by Mike Teasdale
Here's a tag cloud (generated in the ever-wonderful wordl.net) of Gordon Brown's speech to the Labour Party conference yesterday. Â Will be interesting to compare it with David Cameron's big speech next week.
Knol ranking high on Google shock!September 16, 2008 by Mike Teasdale
Jason Calcanis is stirring things up nicely by pointing out that Google is ranking content on Knol - Google's new wikipedia-beater - extremely highly after only a few days of operation.
His screen grab on Flickr shows Knol coming in just behind Wikipedia for searches on "music in Capoeira". Matt Cutts commented on Twitter that the results need time to bed down - but funnily enough repeating the search in the UK this morning shows Wikipedia edged down to fifth, behind both Knol and Youtube! (screen grab below)
Jason no doubt hunted long and hard for a search that shows Wikipedia being 'unfairly treated', but he does raise some serious questions - as Google moves into content creation and management, can they be trusted not to give their own properties an undue advantage.
The sun is shining and I'm on holiday next week, so I'm going to err on the side of hopeless optimism and say that they will. The integrity of the algorithm is just too important to be sacrificed simply to support another potential outlet for Google Adwords - once we stop trusting Google's search results, the golden goose really is dead.
Google-Yahoo attacked by US trade associationSeptember 8, 2008 by Mike Teasdale
There I was in a post-Chrome haze thinking warm thoughts about Google, when the FT spoils my mood by reporting on the first major attack on the advertising alliance between Google and Yahoo.
The Association of National Advertisers in the US, which represents major advertisers like Wal-Mart, General Motors and Anheuser-Busch is objecting to the tie-up between the two internet giants. Â The ANA notes that:
"a Google-Yahoo partnership will control 90% of search advertising inventory and states ANA's concerns that the partnership will likely diminish competition, increase concentration of market power, limit choices currently available and potentially raise prices to advertisers for high quality, affordable search advertising."
The alliance will also impact on UK advertisers. Â My view is that the alliance will particularly drive up the price of niche terms on Yahoo!, which are something of a bargain at the moment compared with the same traffic on Google.
Google Chrome - first lookSeptember 2, 2008 by Mark Rochefort
Last night Google “mistakenly” released a comic book presentation of a their new Chrome browser application. Well it certainly got the buzz going and has whetted my appetite to give it a whirl. Less than an hour ago, Google made the download available and I’ve just been in a live walk-through (that hung my Firefox - oh the irony!), looking at some of its major features. In a nutshell - it is quick. More later…
[UPDATE: The verdict - it is fast. Much more screen space. Ideal for web apps. Won’t replace Firefox/ IE / Safari. Yet.]
Google Chrome – first lookSeptember 2, 2008 by Mark Rochefort
Last night Google “mistakenly” released a comic book presentation of a their new Chrome browser application. Well it certainly got the buzz going and has whetted my appetite to give it a whirl. Less than an hour ago, Google made the download available and I’ve just been in a live walk-through (that hung my Firefox – oh the irony!), looking at some of its major features. In a nutshell – it is quick. More later…
[UPDATE: The verdict - it is fast. Much more screen space. Ideal for web apps. Won’t replace Firefox/ IE / Safari. Yet.]