Archive for December, 2005

Kudos to Michele

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 23/12/2005
in Blogging and Search Engines
. 0 Comments

Serious kudos to Michele Neylon of Blacknight Solutions (an Irish hosting co.) - Michele was quoted in an article in eWeek where he slates Google’s customer service:

Michele Neylon was once very happy with Urchin Software Corp., which provides a service to analyze Web site traffic.

But ever since search giant Google Inc. bought Urchin in March, he’s changed his tune. His problem is with Google’s customer service.

“If you choose to deal with Urchin in the Google era, you will not get any personal attention and will have no indication of who you are actually dealing with. For all I know, all my e-mails could be answered by a computer,” said the managing director of Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd., a Web hosting and domain registrar.

Sock it to ‘em Michele!

“no banner ads on the Google homepage” - Marissa Mayer

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 23/12/2005
in Search Engines
. 0 Comments

I see the post I published earlier this week wondering if Google were now going to have banner ads on their site after their puchase of a stake in AOL has bee answered once and for all by none other than Marissa Mayer (Google’s VP of Search Products & User Experience). In a post on the Google blog, Marissa said:

There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.

That’s about as straight an answer as you can get, I reckon.

Thanks for clearing that up for us Marissa - now, how’d you like to be interviewed for a podcast?

Marc Canter podcast published

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 22/12/2005
in Interviews, Podcasting and Technology
. 3 Comments

I finally got around to publishing the Marc Canter podcast - phew! It has been a hectic week - Christmas week, house move, and recording interviews with Marc Canter, Vint Cerf (Chief Internet Evangelist for Google) and Fergus Burns (CEO of Nooked) - look out for the Vint Cerf and Fergus Burns interviews to be podcast in the next week or so.

I’m off out tonight for some well deserved drinks with the Cork brigade of the Open mail list.

Updated to correct the spelling of Marc’s name in the post title - thanks Michele!

Are Google selling out?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 20/12/2005
in Search Engines and Technology
. 13 Comments

We’ve all heard the reports that Google are buying a chunk of AOL - no doubt to keep their business and probably to stop Microsoft from buying them up! But now, the latest story to hit the wires (New York Times) is that Google are going to start running banner ads in search results!

Google originally set itself apart and thus made its name by only having text ads - this, if it does happen would be a major step backwards for Google and may push users into trying out their competition (MSN and Yahoo!) - why not? What is Google’s unique selling point now?

Hopefully this is a kite flying excercise which will get shot down by negative reaction from the Internet…

Podcasts moved mp3

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 20/12/2005
in Podcast
. 4 Comments

Podcasts moved

Artist: Tom Raftery IT

Duration: 1:15

Created: Tue, 20 Dec 2005

Location: Cork

Category: Speech

Producer: Tom Raftery

Director: Tom Raftery

Actor: Tom Raftery

This is a quick post serving two purposes:
1. The first is I am posting an mp3 alerting people who have subscribed to my podcasts here to the fact that the podcasts have moved to PodLeaders.com (if they haven’t visited the site and aare simply subscribed through iTunes or the like they may be wondering why the long break between interviews!) and
2. I am trying out Structured blogging! This post is being created using the Structured Blogging WordPress plug-in available free from the Structured Blogging website.

The mp3 to alert people to unsubscribe from the podcasts here and subscribe at Podleaders.com is available for download here.

Moving house

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 18/12/2005
in Personal
. 2 Comments

We are getting ready to move to our new house (finally!).

Packing furiously today and moving tomorrow (Monday). If all goes well, I should be back posting Tuesday!

Fingers crossed.

Tom Raftery’s Social Media is Digg proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache!