Year: 2004

Sinker swim

Shortly after hitting a high result of hit #10 for sirens, the Sirens website plummeted: first to hit #155, then to #376, and now out of the first 800 results. I’m at a loss to explain this: all of the pages on the site are still in the index (including some I specifically told Googlebot not to spider, but that’s another story) but Google refuses to show them in its search results. Could it be that the first rule of Google rankings is: you do not talk about Google rankings? A little research says no, but that leaves me with no cause for the broken search and nothing I can do about it.

This isn’t the only search I’ve seen behave similarly, but it’s the one closest to my heart. Fortunately, I’ve come across a tool that uses Google’s own algorithms to show that it’s an error on their side. Search Sinker returns Google searches to all their former Googly goodness. It seems that repeating words in a search string emphasizes them, so Sinker fills up the string with a term you deem most important: instead of sirens, it will look for sirens sirens sirens sirens sirens sirens sirens sirens sirens sirens. Using this technique, sirens3.com appears in a (rightful?) place of hit #12… not bad considering the last thirty pages updated on the site haven’t even been crawled. It doesn’t solve the problem that the general public will never find the Sirens’ site, but at least now I know it’s not because of anything I’ve done.

The so-called brandyupdate has put the Sirens back in a more reasonable place, at (appropriately for the date) #14.

Dear Kristin

Dear Kristin,

It was a pleasure to meet you briefly tonight, and doubly special that the occasion wasn’t the (deserved!) ass-kicking in a dark alley you promised after I posted this.

I’ve listened to Root, Heart & Crown quite a bit since July—as seems appropriate, it’s in the same rotation as Motel Darlene—but it’s not the same as actually seeing you perform live. I think that may have been the reason for my initial reaction… I wanted the disc to duplicate the festival experience (sans swords, of course). You’re a fantastic guitar player, yet somehow that doesn’t come across on the CD: there it’s just another part (albeit a good one), but at Home County and again this evening it’s Kristin Sweetland playing.

Missed you (and Darlene… can’t say enough good about her either) at the do afterwards… next time, huh?

Thanks again for putting on a great show.

Crumpet-scramble

Michael Quinion’s recent entry on the origins of the term bun fight reminds me of the only person I know who uses the term in everyday conversation. John introduced a few interesting phrases to the QA department when we worked together, such as the (Newfoundland-based?) term fill your boots. Perhaps his most valued contribution to the language at work, though–certainly the most memorable, as it’s still in use months after his departure for greener pastures–is the jargon term PTFOE, pronounced put-foe. I won’t define it in polite company (giving the population of the web more credit than it’s due, I’m sure) but simply point out that I recently discovered this somewhat similar French version that I’m going to adopt as an alternate definition when asked: protocole de transmission fondue-over-ethernet.

Sound the Sirens, Angie’s in town

Sirens have been nominated for this year’s London Music Awards in the Folk/World/Celtic category. They won the fan-voted award last year, and nothing would be better (in my ever-so-unbiased opinion) than a repeat… in other words, go vote! (And while you’re there, consider a nod to The Cartwheels, John Noubarian, and Project Sing! That’s right, I have no shame in campaigning.)

Even better, Lively’s own Angie Nussey has a gig on the 16th at the Ugly Mug. Apparently I didn’t write anything about last October’s great, though infamously poorly-attended, solo show… she’s a wonderful live performer and no slouch on her CD, Circumstantial Overload, either. Really, come on out… when have I steered you wrong?

Shame

Regarding shame, apparently Microsoft has none. Not only do they plagiarize the content of pages from Google–as well as the HTML code and formatting–they have the gall to claim copyright on it. And they make it worse: to wit,

Original semantically-marked-up version: <h4>Googlebot: Google's Web Crawler </h4>

Crappy Microsoft code: <FONT size=5>MSNBot</FONT>

Update: I was about to call Google on the same thing–copying the BackRub FAQ–until I realized that Google is BackRub.

57 channels (give or take 600) and nothin’ on

Two new entries today in Tim Bray’s TPSM series. He’s started his actual analysis of and against the candidate predictors Management Approval and Standardization. Again, I mostly agree with his rankings and explanations, except for iTV.

The first predictor, Management Approval, shows nothing more clearly than that one of these things is not like the other. Unlike twelve of the fourteen technologies he’s evaluating (the other exception being VRML) iTV doesn’t have much use, and hence little visibility, in a general corporate IT setting; management approval is about as applicable to iTV in business as it is to four-slice bagel toasters. In the cable industry, however, iTV doesn’t exactly sneak in to an MSO without a lot of involvement from higher-ups. As for being featured in Forbes more than once, Google begs to differ. iTV at least rates the same 7 as the WWW, albeit in a specific domain.

In his Standardization analysis of the iTV space Bray shows a little of what I complained about initially: his view of the tech seems to be limited to the early 1990s. Today’s iTV tech is, if not dominated, then at least highly influenced by standards, and is becoming more so every day. It’s been said that the nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from, and iTV certainly proves that rule. It deserves at least the same 3 rating that UNIX/C receives for Posix work, which while useful has never been central to the story; modern iTV is hardly a proprietary offering from a single vendor with poor developer relations (although certain implementations remain so), and thus probably rates about a 5 for the similarity of current settop developments to the Browser Wars.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Bray’s next pseudo-random topic will be Investor support, and predict that the results will begin to coalesce. (It’s not that far, really… he almost states the latter in the last paragraph of Standardization.)