Likes to think

All those CAPTCHA lovers out there, shed a tear. Yet more loss of security!!

Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail’s CAPTCHAs are broken down by spammers.

Not that we didn’t know that, but still - the figures aren’t good.

I downloaded AVG 8.0 about a week ago. It’s great, easy to use and very quick.

I spotted however, that the new Link Checker that works while you search with sites like Google, Yahoo and MSN – doesn’t seem to do what I’d like it to do.

I’ve looked at the HTTP requests going to and from Google when I search, and it looks like AVG are checking nearly every single link on the search page. “Great” you might think, “fantastic, I can feel safer while surfing”.

From looking at the HTTP requests, it seems that each link is being followed (included sponsored links) with no change in use-agent requests, or the like. This means that it appears to be throwing artificial
clicks every which way.

Does anyone know more about this?

Am I worrying over nothing?

Or goes AVG, Google, Yahoo and MSN all handle data a little differently for these requests?
I’ve disabled the Link Checker for now – but that doesn’t stop the millions of other web users out there with AVG installed – from taking away AdWords credits and fudging my stats.

Anyone?

I’ve decided to make a new theme for my blog. The old one was nice, but I didn’t make it myself.

I wanted to make something to organise my work a little more like I wanted it to appear. Thus, you’ll find my new ‘beta’ layout here now.

I’ll be making a few modifications, but essentially what you see is what you get.

Advertising is, for the most part, an essential Internet activity. You can’t get away from it; someone needs to pay the bills. But how should you do it, or how shouldn’t you?

We often hear about how content is king; and it is.

You can get people, and search engines to love your site with relevant and useful content. But what search engines see, and what your users see is drastically different.

Search engines, for the most part, don’t see good design. When I say good design, I’m not saying “good coding”, I’m saying good feel. Good coding is another topic, good feeling however, is about helping the user around your site.

As an author of a novel, for instance, you need to be concerned with grammatical detail that doesn’t obstruct your readers pace. You build tension, excitement and most importantly; understanding of the concepts (or characters) you’re writing about.

Websites, being much more colourful, have more tools to work with. They also have many more tools to work against them.

Some sites use excessive fancy scripts that add all sorts of layers to their users experience - only to have them leave when they get bored from the lack of new-ness. As that trend dies down, and sites become more focused and minimal, we see and trend in advert intrusion. Don’t get me wrong, many users see adverts as intrusions anyway. Now, however, it’s more than just being there that causes issue - it’s them being in-the-way instead of by-the-way.

Newspapers have this down, for the most part, to a fine art. You can read what you’d like to read without being thrown across the page in order to keep the flow of what you’re reading. Sure, there are advertisements all over the place - but they don’t stop you mid-sentence. They don’t get in middle of a paragraph and stop the flow of the writer. They sit gracefully along side the content in support of it, not a bullying intrusion to it. You do find teasers though, when a little is given on the front page, and then you’re told to go to a certain page. Notice though, that when this happens, you’re being moved to another page because they’re is an issue with economy of space; not because it’s an opportunity to advertise to you.

Just to demonstrate whats good and bad.

Here’s something really bad.

Notice how the words get broken up off the line that you wanted to read from, and get squashed in an ugly attempt at making money.

But what about the good way? What I’m going to do is finish this paragraph and start a new concept, just like a well written text should read.

Above, you’ll find an advert - and hopefully, you didn’t find it too obtrusive. That’s because I placed it between the long pause you have after finishing a paragraph, as opposed to mid-sentence after a comma, or mid-paragraph between two adjoining sentences that are use to support each other. It is part of another foe par though: too many adverts in one space. Thankfully, they’re not proper adverts - they’re just images I made to demonstrate my point.

Well now, that all being said. Here’s the real one: