ple-e-e-e-ease turn off your adblocker

The wheedling messages from the honest-buck websites have been intensifying of late. Each site presents a variation on the same justification; advertising pays our way, and the more you block the less they pay.  It's a hard dilemma for the free-to-access web. But not a hard dilemma for me. I leave that website and find another which provides the content without complaints my adblocking plugin, or I don't access the content. That is, if I'm accessing the content from home, where I have an adblocker on. If I'm at work, I don't. In common with many people in large offices, when I'm on the office PC, I see the un-adblocked web.

What I don't see is a lot of adverts, though. Many crash the browser, fail to load, or stun the page into immobility while they painfully prepare their aggravating high volume autoplay video and audio content (lovely for the other people in the open-plan office). One of the major local news sites (which I need to access regularly for work reasons) is so prone to over-advertising that any time I need to load a page, I put it in a tab and wait while I do something else. Sometimes the page loads. Sometimes it takes a few times. Sometimes I either forget about that task or give up.

What all the wheedle-messages are missing is  the reason why we all have adblockers on. It's because web advertising is, for the large part, so very, very bad. On some sites, it contains such active content that blocking is simply good hygiene. Even on sites where the ads aren't trying to hack you, they often still run fast and loose with page and site stability, leave your web cache full of candy-coloured crud and jam the pages as they load. The adblocker is there for safety; not because I hate adverts, but because I cannot guarantee that the adverts I am being served will be safe.

Personally, I'm a long-term fan of advertising. As a child, I collected Silk Cut and Rimmel adverts. I stop my PVR to catch anything that looks interesting. And I would happily view web adverts if I was convinced that they were being properly tested, thoroughly checked and  their content curated - ideally to suit the content on the site, rather than stalkerishly and creepily for me (although that does provide the odd dark laugh).

The wheedle-message, though, never addresses this concern. It focuses instead on the immorality of viewing free content - an interesting position to take in an environment where that is the standard transaction. But that argument aside, a company - even one where you like the content, approve of the editorial, and enjoy what they do - the profit margin is not what the viewer will care about, not first and maybe not ever. What your visitors care about is seeing content that is interesting, and won't break the furniture or bust a blood vessel.

Address that concern in the wheedle messages and we'll all lose the adblockers on the next annoying update.

The reasons your website redacted.com is not performing well

The sheer giddy brio of it. The email came breezing into my inbox, purporting to tell me the ten reasons my website was not performing well.  So far, so ordinary. But here's the twist; the website in question was retired over three years ago.

Given that it is part of recent history, and that there is a new website doing much the same thing, the old domain name is still very much owned and earning its keep, deep links carefully redirecting to new content on the new site, the old world seamlessly subsumed into the foundations of the new. So the domain name has an owner and that'll have an owner email address attached, which is doubtless how I got on the list. But why was it sent to me for this web address and no other*?

I think I may have fallen victim to an algorithm. One which looked for owners of websites that seem not to be doing too well on google. And of course it's not going to be doing well on Google; all it's doing is sending all the old readers to the new domain name.

Google does know, of course. In fact, after the last redesign (with a little work from the developers and, er, me setting up a hundred or so redirects) Google had me showing a good face on the relevant terms within 48 hours. It was breathtaking. And a human check would quickly identify the clear data footprint of several sites knocked together, their domain names steadily, one by one, pointing to the survivor site as the others winked out one by one, too specialised or duplicatory to survive the rationalising web.

The content of the email was both fretfully pushy and link-farm generic, a few technical SEO terms thrown in, all wrapped up in a phishy sort of chumminess. The complete lack of company name and multiple other red flags would weed out all but the most busy and naive. I particularly liked the note that they had a host of "ethical" techniques - hinting none-too-subtly that there might also be unethical services available. It assumed I was working in sales, which is really just the business equivalent of saying "my dearest friend".

I batted it out of the joint mailbox at speed rather than reporting it back to the spam filter which should have caught it in the first place. Regretting that now. Hopefully many of the other people on the list reported properly.

*My email address/es is/are linked to ?maybe eight? web addresses. I probably forgot a few.

Gucci/medicaid mashup bot sends me a re-reminder

I've been looking for weeks (well, actually a couple of months) at my cervical smear letter. It's never a pleasant experience and this summer has been busy, and complicated. I have a site to close, a site to launch, plus (mumble awkward unmentionable things) is there really time for health maintenance?

Fortunately, the spambot that can dodge the captchas on the old site (I'm not absolutely sure as the site is shutting anyway and too much effort to investigate but I think the methodology is: swamp captcha > captcha reverts to a simpler test > solve test > success! > site notices captcha has reverted to simpler test > resets captcha > repeat) has a bit of a fondness for medical terminology, and sent me an additional reminder:

Reminder: your cervical smear

Bright tropics, climate motility pregnancies permanently weeps.
Mental scabies; produces drowsy; locally; dextrose.
Contraindicated play: connective watery forward.

These wrapping added occupying autopsy triggering.
gucci bags outlet but use caution under your new skin

Lesions connective alternating emotions manageable.
Incisional resting urination specify systole stricturing.
E: stasis teat regions, polio.

The orogastric frail, syphilitic spoiled services.
A subconscious peristalsis: presses theophyllines.

Uterine spermatoceles appliances, indwelling quiz.
Proteinuria cost-containment, or unrelieved prone trachea.
Avoid continued urgent measured spreading pathway.

An cortical request warn malignant.

Suitably reminded by my robot friend, I have now made the appointment. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the "book nurse" button on my patient portal (though I'm sure it's there somewhere from conversations I've had with other practice users) so had to use a phone, like a little old lady, which I suppose is what I shall become, bit by bit.

the robots are at the door

I'm bringing the casual cover up to speed during a gap in the regular web editor's continuity.  Like all web systems, ours has its little quirks, and though I did a couple of intensive sessions on the way in there are always the odd bits that come out in dribs and drabs as the days go by. 

This morning I caught myself typing the words, "the robots are drawn to the more popular pages or those that have comments on them already, especially if those comments include images or links" by way of explanation following a more than usually unfortunate alert message dropping into the approval box. I adjusted the comprehensibility of the message while handing out disapproval to this comment (and another, considerably less offensive, message selling - a first for me - a gas-powered outdoor heater) reflecting on the sad truth of the matter.

Our CAPTCHAs are quite good. They're probably not robots.

leave me alone with your frivolous segmentation

Two events recently have focused my annoyance on the phenomenon of market segmentation.The first involved an email from a popular mailing list service provider. They'd sent me an urgent email explaining how updates to their system involved changing how certain aspects of their segmentation worked. It's a service that adopts a chummy, familiar tone, which does actually generally work in reducing the colossal annoyance of composing, analysing and maintaining mailing lists. But in this case, the chirpy apology for using the marketing jargon caused a wearying explosion of annoyance. "If you don't understand, please pass it to the person on your team who does deal with such things," oh ho ho. There's a sort of self obsession here which probably makes perfect sense from their perspective; after all, I'm sure they do have a department which deals in segmentation. But for those using their service, is this always the case? Is it not vastly more likely that their customers are juggling not just segmentation, not just this product, but the entire concept of online marketing with a host of other responsibilities and duties? Tread gently when you mock our ignorance of your specialisms; lest you discover where priorities truly lie.

And speaking of lying, the other vast explosion of annoyance at segmentation occurred as a mailing list I had been previously signed up to split into some fifteen-odd sub-lists, most of which I still needed to read. A sweary run through repeated triple-verified sign-up processes ensued as I tried to follow their reasoning (and the lack of a "just send me everything" tick box. Leave me alone with your frivolous market segmentation; mostly if I have signed up to it, I'm interested in it; and if something does fall a touch flat for me, hey, I really do have a nice handy right-there delete button.

the arrogant assumption of dedicated time

Great news! A popular online service tells me. You can now achieve [a list of a variety of things] with all the brand news features in our product and analysis tools. Learn all about it in our new webinar series! Hmm. Let me consult the vast wasteland of my diary. Let me consider all those afternoons that would stretch out in bleak silence, washed with bored and lonely tears.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a vast fan of progress. I love the fact that every item, service and product, no matter how small or slight, has or would benefit from having the careful focussed attention of intelligent individuals improving it. What I resent is the assumption from some larger services that there will be teams of dedicated and specialist people looking after their product. There is simply too much to do for any one service to command such attention, particularly as the gains in using these services are light, and that they cannot be delivered in isolation by anyone attempting to reach a universal audience.

You will get some attention, but frankly anything that requires a webinar series to learn is unlikely to be adopted by any but the most overstaffed and obsessive. Put it in a to-do list please. We'll get to it when we need it; and not before.

will anybody use a ning?

I went to chat to a young volunteer who was keen to support a local youth council/forum group to make a website yesterday. They'd done some layouts in word, and wanted to know about "what was possible"?

It's very much one of those "how long is a piece of string?" questions. If you want to buy a web address, get some web space, and knock together something using the free templates provided, you just can, assuming you've got no problem with shelling out a few dollars, know a bit of html and are prepared to fiddle with the settings a bit. Setting up a blog and sorting out some photo hosting and tying it into a Facebook Group is even easier and completely free.

In fact, it's so easy, that the world is littered with built-and-abandoned websites, blogs, streams profiles and forums. So I asked them a few questions:

• What do you need the website for?
• What are the expectations of the young people?
• How will you maintain it?

They're going back to the group to ask about the first two (they'd already considered the third, well done!). I've also suggested that they ask around the group to find out:

• Which social networking site is most widely used and would they like a group set up?
• Is there a young person with experience of creating websites who could make them a website?
• Here's what I can do for you, is it what you want?

They were, however, disappointed. They wanted me to recommend a short training course that would teach the young volunteer how to make a website, ideally one run by the volunteer's manager's employer. Then she would make the website.

Maybe I should be running one. I'm sure I wrote one, a few years ago.

But, instead, I suggested that they set up a Ning. I'm in three or four, and I think they ought to fit the needs of a group of young people who want something to be:

• Separate from the main social networking sites
• Serious in appearance and use, but easily cutomisable and flexible
• Friendly to multimedia content
• Closed, only accessible to a particular group

I don't know if they'll go for it yet, but the last two groups I suggested it to did not, and I'm still not quite sure why not -- or why I don't use my Nings as much as I should, for that matter.

Although it might have something to do with the comment notification, which irritates me every time it turns up; it says there's a comment, but not what it says. It has that in common with Fiends Reunited; it won't tell you what's going on until you're actually on the site. And frankly, that's not very social.