Category Archives: Internet

Google Really Is Everywhere!

May 21, 2011 Mitch Mitchell 49 Comments

As y’all know, I just got a new smartphone. On Thursday night my wife and I went to a training class on how to use the sucker. We learned a lot of stuff, but one thing in particular has finally convinced me that Google really is everywhere and pretty much owns us; yup, they really do.

To use my particular smartphone to its fullest capability one has to have a Google account. It turns out my wife has a Google email account, which I knew of but she’s never used it. I obviously have a Google account because of Adsense, but it turns out that according to Google I also have an email address, which I never knew because I never set up a Gmail account. They just up and gave me one; I still have no idea how to access it or if I should access it because I’m worried about what might be in there. lol

As I started to think about it I realized that I, and probably a lot of people, are already owned by or used by Google in some fashion. Let’s see how all of this works:

1. Gmail. Okay, that one’s pretty easy to understand.

2. Adsense & Adwords. Once again, pretty easy to understand.

3. Feedburner – many people don’t know that Google owns them as well. So, whenever you create a RSS feed through there you’re working with Google.

4. YouTube – yup, they own YouTube as well. As a matter of fact, I’m now wondering if, when I created my Google account, they gave me the YouTube username that I now “enjoy”, since I don’t ever remember signing up for it.

5. Google Apps – I don’t use any of these, but I know a lot of people do. I’ve read some shared documents that people have stored on Google, and I’m not sure but I think one has to have a Google account to view them, even if they didn’t have a Google account for anything else.

6. Google now has both a browser and its own operating system. And there are still tons of folks using both Google toolbar and Google desktop search; I’m a user of the latter.

7. Of course there’s Google itself, the search engine. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t pony up Google first, or at least at some point during their day if they’re on the computer.

There’s no despair as I write this, just acceptance. There’s also no fear; it seems that, based on the fact that I haven’t played any online poker at all since the government raid, that I’m not really missing it all that much, which means if something happened and Google decided to try to whip my behind I’d survive and find something else to do. Of course they’re not going to do that; who am I to them, other than the fact that they took my page rank away on this blog, as well as the possibility of having Adsense, which I never made any money from here anyway, and they’ve never responded to anything I’ve ever sent them.

I feel like I’m missing something; anyone know what it might be?

Internet

Revisiting Website Grader

December 27, 2010 Mitch Mitchell 24 Comments

Back in June of 2008 I introduced a site on this blog called Website Grader. Basically what the site will do is review your site, which can be a blog, give you a ranking of some sort, then tell you some things about it that you probably didn’t know to give you the opportunity to improve, if you’re so inclined.

When I did this back then, my rank came out at 84; as you can see, it’s ranked much higher now, and that’s out of 100 so I’m not complaining one bit. It adds that I’m ranked #32,194 out of 3,127,474 websites it’s reviewed; I’ll take that, as it puts me around the top 1%.

The weird part is that it ranks this site as a blog differently, since it is a blog. My ranking there is only 74, which is weird. That must be a new statistic, since I didn’t catalog anything like that in the past. It says I have 1,870 Google indexed pages, which is weird since I only have a bit more than 900 posts, and not tons of pages either. It’s telling me I’m missing out on some SEO because I haven’t put anything in my ALT tags, which is probably true. It says I have 14,206 inbound links, which is pretty neat because back then I only had 837.

And it shows me as having a MOZ rank of 5. I had no idea what that was, so I clicked on the link it provided and it took me to a page called seamoz, where I found a page of all their ranking factors that gives you a rank of something out of 10, like Google page rank. It seems that have all sorts of tools you can play with as well; if you’re interested, take a look around.

It tells you a lot of other stuff as well, but I’m not getting into all of that. I will say that Website Grader will tell you some things that you might want to address if you want your blog being seen in a better light. Or not, since it told me I have too many images on this site, and I’m keeping them! lol For kicks and giggles, go ahead and pop your website’s link in and see what it has to say. And trust me, it has some funny things to say to you while you’re waiting for your results.

Luggageguru.com

Internet

Anatomy Of A Scam

December 13, 2010 Mitch Mitchell 26 Comments

This post is actually shorter than it looks. What I’m about to share with you is an email that basically only had 3 brief conversations, but the last bit contains the scam of it all. I wasn’t initially sure until I saw the very last line of the email. Oh yeah, I’m going to post the guy’s email address as well, since I believe it’s fake. By the way, this was a response to a Craigslist posting I have out there locally indicating that I do minor computer repair:

desguy909@yahoo.com

I got 5 Acer Atom laptops that i want to repair, Its just a software problem, I need you to reformat everything for me. I got all the necessary softwares (original) with license keys. How much will this cost me and what time duration? I got external drives for them all. The programs that you need to install on them for me are OS, anti-virus and Micro-Soft Office.

Please write back.

Thanks

Greetings,

I’ll do all 5 computers for you for $225. I can’t tell you how long it’ll take because I don’t know the specs of the computers; size of hard drive, processor speed, even operating system I’ll be wiping and adding back. That’s why I’m going to give you a flat fee instead of charging by time. If this is acceptable, let me know where we can meet after the holiday, since I’m presently out of town.

Thanks for the reply. I am okay with the price i have all the necessary software needed for the service installations…. I will instruct my secretary to prepare a check for you on your name and have it mailed to your address. Send me your full name, address and your phone number so to prepare the check. I have a reliable shipper that will bring the laptops and pick them up when you are done with them. I am looking forward to hear from you, so we can have payment and shipping asap. There is something you need to do for me when you get the check, you will get it cashed and get the shipping fee in the check because it will be included to the shipper in malaysia since the laptops are coming from there. Okay?

NB: Laptops will brought to you when you cash the check and have the balance on the check sent to my shipper and also when you are done fixing them, they will picked up from you

That’s it; that’s the entire email. I never responded. I thought about contacting the local authorities or the post office, then figured what was the point. Instead, I share it with y’all to help highlight the fact that there are scammers everywhere, putting out stuff like this that seems legit, yet when evaluated you just know something’s wrong with it.

If it even has a hint of phony, don’t do it!

Internet

Toolbar Overwhelm

July 14, 2010 Mitch Mitchell 12 Comments

I guess it was time for this post. I know I can’t be the only person who is suddenly hating all these toolbars popping up all over the place. It’s almost to the point where you can’t go to any site or blog without having either the upper or lower part of your screen filled with a toolbar that won’t go away. Heck, even my buddy Sire had one (he might still have one, but it’s not coming up anymore & I haven’t seen him talking about it any).

At this point probably everyone has seen either this picture to the right or something like it. These types of toolbars are bad enough because it seems like every piece of software wants to load someone’s toolbar onto your computer. I already have a search engine I used that I specifically loaded myself; why the heck would I want to keep adding other company’s toolbars onto my computer like this?

You go to a news site these days and there’s a toolbar at the top. You go to close it and sometimes it doesn’t close, just reduces itself to this little tab that seems to be saying to you “go on, you know you want to use me; I’ll just be sitting here until you’re ready”. If I closed your toolbar I’m not going to use it; take it away! And, for whatever reason, Firefox’s Adblock Plus can’t block them; what the hey? Guess I have to find some software or plugin that blocks pop-unders, which is kind of what these things are.

Why are most of these sites loading toolbars? It all comes down to money; it always does. Everyone is getting paid to add a toolbar in some fashion. Software companies, if it’s not their toolbar, are getting paid. Blogs that add toolbars get paid if someone actually uses it. I doubt there’s one truly altruistic company out there putting out toolbars. Heck, even Google’s toolbar, which I stopped using, was getting something out of the deal, mainly tracking people who used it, even on their own computers, so they could target advertising towards them based on their surfing habits. I wonder what kind of ads Google sends to those folks who only search for porn all day, since they don’t accept advertising from adult related sites.

Either way, I have to say that I didn’t purchase this 22″ widescreen monitor so someone could invade and fill up my space with a toolbar. Please, if you’re going to use one, at least allow us to be allowed to totally close it and get it out of the way.

I'm Just Sharing

Category Archives: Internet

Google Really Is Everywhere!

Revisiting Website Grader

Anatomy Of A Scam

Toolbar Overwhelm

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