Well, yesterday Google did just that, announcing a “mute this ad” feature that it will roll out across its network over the next few months. The feature does what you might expect it to do – it stops a particular ad from “following” you around the web. It will look like this:
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I’ll admit it, I’m one of those people who has a Google News alert set for my own name. Back in the day, it meant a lot more than it does now – the search results used to pick up blog mentions as well as “regular” news mentions, and before FacebookLand took over our world (and eschewed Google’s), a news alert was a pretty reliable way to find out what folks might be saying about you or your writing on any given day.
Like most folks who maintain a reasonably public conversation, I now watch Twitter’s @replies far more than I do Google news alerts. Of course, Twitter doesn’t catch everything, so I never unsubscribed from my Google News alert.
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Saturday presented an opportunity – two beach parties on the other side of where we live, the first out in Bolinas, a small, quirky beach town that values its isolation from the rest of Marin, and the second at Muir Beach, some ten miles by road south of Bolinas.
The opportunity was this: I got to ride to Bolinas, and take in some new trails I’ve always wanted to ride.
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I had one of those kind of days yesterday that reaffirm my belief in our industry, in its people, and in the work I do.
It’s not easy to sit here and write, much less write a book, and I’ll admit lately my faith (and my productivity) has flagged – there’s so much work left to do, so little time in which to do it, and so many other things – Federated Media, conferences, board positions, family, new business ideas – competing for my attention.
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If you’ve been following this site for a while, you’ll remember my experiment earlier this year with posting pictures of wine, bike rides, and other “life” things. Many of you liked those posts, others, not so much. (Here’s one example.) My reason for posting these photos was pretty simple – I prefer to have my content emanate from my own site, rather than be bound to Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or some other third-party walled garden. If I could figure out a way to post stuff to my own site, then I’d share it out to those services, but keep the content firmly planted in what I call “The Independent Web.”
But I knew not all of you wanted to hear about my rides or consumption of wine, so I created feeds that filtered out the non-work related stuff. Alas, that wasn’t enough. I heard from a lot of you that you didn’t like my site clogged up with the pictures, and I don’t blame you. Having a website should mean having flexibility, so I’ve created a section of the site, which I’m calling “Four Letter Words,” for posting personal stuff. You can find it here.
The main RSS feed for Searchblog will include only posts that are *not* tagged with “Four Letter Words,” and the main site will only display my typical industry-related stuff. But if you want to check out the other side of my life – one of my favorite four letter words, along with life, wife, kids, bike, and wine – check it out. And thanks for coming. Means the world to me.
First up, let’s get a bit of wine entered into my personal Database of Intentions (and I’ll pin these to my board as well). We had this nifty Chappellet 2002 Cab last month, and I’d encourage anyone within reach of a bottle to open it, immediately.
A couple of days ago Google released its latest “Transparency Report,” part of the company’s ongoing commitment to disclose requests by individuals, corporations, and governments to change what users see in search results and other Google properties such as YouTube.
The press coverage of Google’s report was copious – far more than the prior two years, and for good reason. This week’s disclosure included Google’s bi-annual report of government takedown requests (corporate and individual requests are updated in near real time). The news was not comforting.
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(image) I know you all know that Apple has cut a deal to integrate Facebook, because of the relentless coverage of Apple’s developer conference this week. However, I just saw this story from ATD:
Apple’s Ping to End With a Thud in Next Release of iTunes
And thought to myself – “Hey, didn’t I predict that a while back?”
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This past week’s industry tempest centered around Microsoft’s decision to implement “Do Not Track” (known as “DNT”) as a default on Internet Explorer 10, a browser update timed to roll out with the company’s long-anticipated Windows 8 release.
Microsoft’s decision caught much of the marketing and media industry by surprise – after all, Microsoft itself is a major player in the advertising business, and in that role has been a strong proponent of the current self-regulatory regime, which includes, at least until Microsoft tossed its grenade into the marketplace, a commitment to implementation of DNT as an opt-in technology, rather than as a default.*
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