Tech Thoughts and World Domination

The Date Gave Microsoft AdCenter's UI Away

2007-07-14T21:18:00.000+08:00

A single tiny flaw on a very important facility can ruin a user's day.

Today I needed to check past figures regarding our search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns at Microsoft Ad Center. I was trying to get figures from 2 months ago and I can't believe how long it took me to figure out how to get the figures for May 2007.

The campaigns list page only lets me view data from a very limited pre-defined list of periods (This Month, Yesterday, Last Month, This Year, Last Year, Entire Time).

Having used quite a number of report applications (Google Analytics, Nielsen Netratings Site Census, Yahoo Search Marketing), I expected a custom date input field (or those fancy date widgets) to be present. But there's none.

So I tried clicking into 'Reports'. My session unfortunately timed-out within 10 minutes while I was writing this blog. I just did a screen capture, and wrote some text. And when I went back it asked me to log on again. And so I did and I clicked into 'Reports' again. Here's what I got.

I tried twice and got the same page. On my third attempt to access the 'Reports' page, a page finally appeared -- without it's CSS / style / decoration. On my fourth attempt, I was successful.

Ah, finally I was able to see a 'Custom date range' option. I clicked (please take note, one more click). And then the custom date fields appeared and I was so excited to type in the date because the form fields looked editable.

But then to my disappointment, I cannot edit the dates. I thought the problem was with my keyboard because the date fields look editable, they are not grayed-out or something like that. But really, my keyboards were fine. I was then forced to click on the date icons (note: 2 more clicks), click three times more to select "May" from yet another dropdown, and then "1", click three times more to select "May" from the dropdown of the 2nd calendar icon, and "31".

And then I tried to select the type of report that I wanted, I do not want the default "Account Performance" report, I want to view "Campaign Performance". So I clicked on the dropdown menu (note: 1 more click), and guess what...

All controls, buttons, submit buttons, were disabled. No, I don't want to refresh the whole page again and click 8 times more to have the whole screen frozen.

It was indeed a terrible user experience.

The leeches of Web 2.0 and why Google is still the devil

2007-06-03T02:24:00.001+08:00

OK I'm hallucinating now. But if the things below do happen let them know you heard it from here too.

I still have yet to gather my thoughts regarding the leeches of Web 2.0 (those hundreds of bookmarking, tagging, news syndication, etc., etc.) and when they will eventually die. I initially foresee that they will die when:

1) When Internet users get a lot more smarter
2) When Google dies or majorly revamps its algorithm
3) Of course, when leeches reach saturation point

I have yet to expound on my theoretical statements above. I hope I will eventually be able to.

***
Google is indeed becoming the devil

On a separate thought, Google is indeed becoming the devil. It came in a form so attractive, so usable. It is genius. Other major players are anticipating its next move. Even viable online businesses with real services or products to offer are becoming so dependent on it. Consumers, Web 2.0 leeches, and spammers too. Soon enough, offline media and offline retail and trade will also be dependent on it, now that Google is creeping into both online and offline advertising. Books and catalogues, maps, newspapers, etc. -- what's next?

Yada, yada, yada... I am not cursing Google. Its offerings to the people (both individual consumers and businesses) are usable. It is affordable and it indeed takes the burden of shelling out loads of money for, say, example, advertising. But would this reach a point when there will eventually be no more other big players out there?

The day music and TV died

YouTube shouldn't have agreed to being bought by Google because this paved way to the eventual, long-awaited marriage of the traditional offline entertainment world with the web. OK -- the eventual marriage of offline broadcasting and the music industry with the web is actually good to us, consumers, but what is scary is that all of them is being planned to be eventually married with Google.

While other record labels and broadcast companies have tried to sue Google for copyright infringement over people sharing their videos, other players such as EMI have already partnered with Google. And the rest (CBS, etc.) doing so, or just ignoring Google and stopping their lawsuits is not far from behind because Google is protected by the DMCA (a copyright act).

"They will all eventually bow and worship the devil."

Epilogue:

My thoughts here are concentrated on online and offline media broadcasting, marketing, and advertising. At this point I still cannot foresee how Google would be able to get into real core businesses (such as production of consumer goods), nor politics, and the embargo of goods by the U.N.

Yahoo will beat Google (The Prophecy)

2006-09-03T18:27:00.000+08:00

If you haven't checked out Yahoo's Site Explorer, please do and you'll see what I mean. I say, geeky doesn't have to be ugly and full of excuses.

Yahoo's Site Explorer (still on beta as of press time) is a neat pack of goodies for webmasters obssessed with search engine rankings (but who wouldn't be when Findability is the super-in thing?). Track your websites' link popularity, cached pages, probe your competitor's websites, manage your feeds, in a sleek, warm, and fuzzy interface design.

So you say what's new -- Google has all of it -- well, yes, and NO. Getting statistics for your inbound links is way a lot better - you have the option to exclude internal links, or only count links pointing to the root domain name. That's neat. The Google bundles everything with their link:domainname query. That is so geeky. And geeky doesn't have to be uhm, ugly. Plus, the numbers do not fluctuate as much. No, do not give me the Google dance excuse.

In Site Explorer, you have a centralized panel to track down your websites, your competitors' websites, your grandma's website's SEO rankings. Sweet! There's more to explore, I haven't fully explored it myself, though. (Hmm, does this make me a liar?)

I don't hate Google
I don't hate Google, I do use it for everything and I truly admire The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine. I use Google to search for everything. I use Blogger which is owned by Google. Google is vastly, scarily successful. But this tremendous success should also come with a lot of responsibility and sincerity. Google owes it to their users and to all webmasters to make their services as usable and as stable -- and not make up "cute" excuses for blunders.

Funny how an enterprise this big can rename data replication and sync as a "Dance", a super change in algorithm as "Florida", etc. Funny how a large decrease in the number of a website's indexed pages can be attributed as the webmaster's fault for not "keeping up" with how Google works. Oh well. Funny how it will take forever for a new website to get indexed in Google while it only takes a few days with Yahoo -- and funny how we seem to all understand and forgive this "oh because there are so many websites indexed by Google everyday, it will take months for your site to get indexed" phenomenon.

The Prophecy
So, the prophecy. Maybe at one point webmasters will revolt and try out alternative search engines or totally give up SEOizing for Google (yes, they are smart webmasters and they know the concept of having a good, organic website, with usable design and quality content). Maybe at one point all those black-hat SEO guys, SEO magicians, frustrated webmasters, will revolt and try to mess up the system. Maybe they will not be revolting against Yahoo, as long as Yahoo doesn't do a dance, an Okinawa perhaps, or make us all wait forever until a new site gets spidered. Heyey!

Oh well. I rest my case. I gotta get some sleep.
Astalavista baby, whatever ever happened to Altavista.

Why GMAIL is the Devil

2004-06-19T22:04:00.000+08:00

It has been said that the devil will come in a form so attractive that you would not be able to resist it... and so came Gmail.

I am a Gmail user but I think that Gmail is the devil :). Here are a few thoughts (that you probably have thought of too) and crack-pot theories about Gmail and paths to its world-domination plans, in random order:

1) Gmail might be secretly forming a Friendster-like chain via its "Invite a friend to try Gmail" scheme. Since a person would only have limited invites that person would definitely invite those who are particularly close to him/her (be it business-wise or relationship-wise). Before we know it Gmail/Google has already formed a veritable (and more reliable) internet users chain, starting from the geekest of the geeks (us), down to the most ungeek (probably the last that will receive a sign up invite for Gmail, that will be my 3rd grandmother -- yes I have one).

2) Will our emails be publicly searchable in the future? Haha! A very remote possibility but since they already have the infrastructure it is just a matter of some big guy at Google going nuts and adding another option "Search emails" to the current roster of "Search Photos, Answers, News..." available to everyone.

3) What's in an email search? Your identity :)
Gmail is trying out a usability experiment that, for me, encourages email users to not be organized and instead to just search, search and search. While their concept of "labels" act as folders too, the ultimate goal is to let the user search (no sort order facility is present within the labels, you cannot sort by subject or name, default sort is date, I think). We have to search because searching triggers their relevant ads program (the ads that appear on the right side) and they earn more more more money.

While I agree that yes, they have to earn their part of the deal for providing us with our 1GB share of space and service, I do not agree with being "identified" with the search. Searching pays them more money (rather than just clicking the emails) now because they have the "Searcher" identified now (as opposed to searching without log-in on the Google.com website, at least with this we are only identified to their service as IP addresses, but hell now we are identified with: IP address, email address, connections, emails, keywords indexed from our emails, email searches!)

UNSOLICITED TIPS FROM THE PARANOID CYBER-SLAVE

1) Never use it for business or legal/corporate transactions, I trust Yahoo or Hotmail more than Gmail ("the devil"), so use those instead if you really have no other email accounts.

2) If you will be storing VERY personal emails, make sure it is not in a Gmail account that reflects your name or a part of your real name ("mypoohbear@gmail.com" would be awesome!).

3) Or use Gmail wisely, have your dozen list subscriptions to fall into your Gmail account. These mails can take the bulk of your .PST files in Outlook, so just use Gmail for lists (like this one!).

4) Last and most importantly: Don't take Gmail seriously (... writing this "article", I think I already do! g*dd*2#$#@!)

Cheer(io)s,

Cheryl

Graduating the Webbies

2003-11-10T14:48:00.000+08:00

Yes, I lost the webbies! For the first time in 6 years I have gone home without either ham or bacon or salami :P Surprisingly enough, I felt as happy as with the past webbies, albeit not as excited. I feel as if, I have GRADUATED the webbies.

GRADUATION CEREMONIES
So I have graduated the webbies (the Philippine Web Awards -ed). Why "graduated"? Well, what happens after graduation is that people congratulate you. They are glad whether you have or you don't have honors. Your family and friends feel as proud as the family and friends of those who has graduated with honors (in the webbies, they are those who won awards). In the webbies, family, friends, friendsters and even strangers give nice words to you even if you did not win (the world is still a good place to live in!). It is nice to see old and young (new) classmates get their awards (medal honors) onstage. It is nice to see people get excited and feel happy. It is great to feel excited and nervous and anxious.

I TOOK 6 YEARS TO GRADUATE
Graduation also means being finished with a phase or a step. For me, it doesn't matter anymore whether I win or lose now. In my case I took so long to graduate, 6 years. For the past years, winning was really everything, and I would feel really, really bad if my website entries are not selected as Best Website, or when they are outvoted in the People's Choice. Before, I would always have something to say when some of my sites lost. But now, all I could say is that - I have graduated the Webbies.

I graduated with some "old" webbies classmates - long time winner Philmusic.com did not get any award for the first time, in 6 years. Philmusic dominated the Music category for the last 5 years. I have defended People's Choice for Personal Website (I have a few thousand fans before -- just kidding) for almost 4-5 years, alternating with the Best Website award under the celebrities category for donnacruz.com (and I vow that donnacruz.com will shine once again in the near future).

BETTER THAN BACON, EGGS AND SALAMI
It feels good every year you bring home a bacon, or a ham, or bacon and ham and eggs (as the case with my 1999 triple whammy!). Now, I did not bring home any of those, but I felt that I have brought home much more -- wisdom-sprinkled experience, new cinammon-topped friends, and the best desert one could ever have: messages from young web developers telling me how I have inspired them to be web developers and how happy they are to be (one has even called me "Morpheus", her mentor).

COMPETING AGAIN
If what I have tasted now is better than Bacon, Eggs and Salami, would I still compete then? Yes and No. I don't really know. This year, I was planning not to join but my idea of developing "IndayXP" really got the best of me and so for the love of the webbies, I have joined again. So maybe if I get to upgrade "IndayXP" into "IndayXP Reloaded" or "IndayXP Revolutions" before next year, expect this website again to rock everyone.

Mabuhay tayong lahat, and my sincerest congratulations to all the winners and finalists!