One of the flip-sides to the whole Wikipedia drama is that it seems to have sent a surge of traffic to ReadWriteWeb, which in turn pushed it onto Yahoo Buzz. Some of that traffic made its way back to NowSourcing as well.

I started to read some of the comments on ReadWriteWeb but to be honest I am tired of the whole issue now. I never expected the whole thing to blow up the way it did and in a mental sense, I’ve already moved on. My next article for NowSourcing will be out soon and I am busy preparing other articles for other blogs.

The bottom line is that I wanted to make a point. I made that point and then I moved on. Certain people chose to drag me back for a fight and I chose to defend myself. But now I am marching on again to new subjects and new discussions.

Onwards and upwards!

Technorati Tags RWW, wikipedia, Yahoo

Posted in Yahoo, wikipedia No Comments »

photo credit: rustybrick

Yahoo’s “Unlimited” Email Hits Its Limit

It seems that Yahoo’s “unlimited storage” claim was bogus.    The Wall Street Journal discovered that when you get to 55,000 messages, the system starts to seize up and go all wobbly on you.

Kudos to the WSJ for its investigative journalism (some real Watergate-style stuff there!) but let’s face it - who in their right mind stores 55,000 emails in their email account?   I am struggling to get past 2000 and I have 4 years worth in my account!     What is the WSJ storing?    Spam mails?   Pizza delivery confirmations?

Nevertheless, it’s still good to see Yahoo getting Yahooed by one of their own products again.

Technorati Tags email, Wall Street Journal, Yahoo

Posted in E-Mail, Yahoo No Comments »

I’ve been following the Microsoft-Google lovers tiff with some amusement. I am totally staggered by the amount of irony and hypocrisy flying about the place from the two companies. They’re acting like two spoilt kids who have had their cool toys surpassed by something bigger and better. The whole merger proposition with Yahoo has also lit up the blogosphere. Nothing like Microsoft making unsolicited bids on a rival to get people’s adrenalin levels pumping.

I am a big Google fan but I have to say here that Google is looking really bad with all this complaining. It’s so blatantly transparent that they have considered themselves the untouchable number one company on the internet, with their popular brand name and bottomless bank accounts. Out of all that have come some really amazing products but on the other hand, it has bred arrogance and complacency, the same way that Microsoft was in the 1990’s, after they had crushed Netscape and they were the dominant force on people’s PC’s. Ironically, it was Google who toppled Microsoft off their pedestal back then. Could history be about to finally come full circle with Microsoft exacting their revenge by knocking Google down a peg or two? Could we see that absurd Google stock price tumble just a bit?

Let’s face it, Google is not in a position to lecture anyone about monopolies. They seem to be trying to be all things to all people at the moment. They are indexing everything from books to selling trends. They are buying up smaller companies in a big buying frenzy, as if someone is about to come along and clean out Google’s bank accounts in the next day or two (”EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!“). So who’s creating the bigger monopoly here? Google or Microsoft? It’s hard to tell them apart these days.

But in my view, Microsoft isn’t squeaky clean in this ongoing drama. In response to Google’s complaints of another monopoly coming along, Microsoft retorts with “Google has amassed about 75 percent of paid search revenues worldwide and its share continues to grow“. In other words, “don’t lecture us about monopolies when you’re doing it yourselves”.   Fair enough.

But Microsoft seems to be overlooking the fact that Google gives users a choice which they could either accept or reject.  That’s how they have managed to amass 75% of paid search revenues.  Microsoft makes it sound as if there is a law which forces everyone to use Adwords.  No-one forces you to use Adwords.   Adwords is an excellent advertising platform and that’s why people have chosen to use it.  They take one look at Microsoft’s inferior  AdCenter and then decide Adwords is much better.

Let us also not forget that Microsoft built up their web browser monopoly by FORCING people to use the Windows operating system.   Plus they have been a bit Johnny-come-lately to the paid search game.  So I don’t think that it is a very fair statement to say “well Google has 75% of the search revenues so we can do whatever we want”. Google has got there by giving people a choice and being innovative. Microsoft on the other hand doesn’t believe in giving people a choice - they would much rather prefer to shove their products down people’s throats and stifle the competitors.

Then Microsoft comes out with that Redmond wants to buy Yahoo “merely to create a “compelling number two competitor” in search and online advertising“. Talk about Under-statement of the Year 2008! A “compelling number two competitor”? I think a combined Microsoft-Yahoo could potentially become number one and this is precisely why Google is getting their pants in a tangle over this whole episode. Think about it - Windows Vista, MS Office, Flickr, Delicious - all under one roof - and that’s just for starters.

Search Engine Journal speculates that the real reason why Google may be worried is because Microsoft will use their partnership with Yahoo to muscle their Office applications onto the web in direct competition to Google Docs. But what is wrong with some competition? If Google truly believes that their product is better then they should make more effort to spruce Google Docs up and convince us that it is the best. At the end of the day, users will decide which one is the better of the two - Google’s or Microsoft.

Google’s protests are baseless really. Search Engine Watch calculates a combined Microsoft / Yahoo merger to occupy 34.6% of the market while Google will maintain 61% of the market. So a Microsoft-Yahoo merger wouldn’t spell the beginning of the end for Google. It would just set up a powerful rival for the future and Google doesn’t want that.

Really, at the end of the day, the only people who will be really affected by a Microsoft-Yahoo takeover will be the shareholders - they will see a rise or drop in their shareprice. But for everyday internet users like you and me, we may start to see some innovative products come out of all three companies as the battle heats up for the loyalties of users.

But now it seems that the possibility is on the table for Yahoo to outsource some of their search to Google. If that deal goes through, will we hear howls of protest from Redmond?

You know what just popped into my head?   That the internet is so full of enormous egos.   When one company does something radical, the others complain.   Is Google’s real problem that they realise they were not quick enough to jump in there and buy Yahoo first?    Is it just wounded pride that’s the problem here?

Technorati Tags acquisition, Google, merger, Microsoft, Yahoo

Posted in Google, Microsoft, Yahoo 2 Comments »

I’ve been reading some interesting posts today on how Yahoo and Gmail are planning to shift people from social networks back to the email inbox by essentially making the inbox the next new social network. Dubbed by some as Inbox 2.0, this could be the next evolutionary stage of the email inbox.

To me, email is the backbone of the internet but to others, it’s “so Web 1.0!”. People who I try to get in contact with will only communicate through their Facebook profiles and won’t give out actual email addresses. I mean, come on! Some of them claim never to check their email or even have email at all (which is a bit of a fib as you need an email address to set up a Facebook account in the first place plus you need an email address for virtually every web service available).

So this attempt to break this “Facebook culture” is welcomed by me as I really don’t see what all the Facebook hype is about. Yes I have a Facebook account but I maybe check it and update it once or twice a week. Not like the guy recently reprimanded at work for spending 4 hours a day on Facebook or the student who declares he can’t be a student without Facebook. As the Techcrunch author points out, only hard drugs has the same kind of loyalty and hold over people.

So how will Yahoo and Gmail get people to come back to the inbox? Well Google, true to form, are keeping their mouths shut and Techcrunch opines that Yahoo’s “plans” are all over the place. In fact Yahoo’s plans remind me of a Japanese Kamikaze pilot - aim for the target and hope for the best.

The plans basically involve news feeds with status messages about your friends (very Twitter-ish), profile pages for you and your friends, and the third one actually made me laugh out loud - email algorithms will decide who your most-emailed contacts are and put them to the top of the inbox list. It made me laugh because Gmail already has a “most contacted” feature and most of my “most contacted” list are people I haven’t contacted in months while people I email every day don’t even make the list. So I hope this new algorithim they are working on is better than the current one.

I am personally very sceptical of anything that Yahoo does as they tend to rush stuff out without thinking long-term. They are also rather obsessed with seeing what Gmail does and then rush out their own version to keep up. Before starting anything new, Yahoo should improve their existing services, such as their email. They claim their email is vastly improved but to me, it is still bloated with “in your face” advertising and clunky page layouts. So how can they start integrating social networks into a product which still needs a lot of tweaks done to it?

I’ve just received an invite in my email inbox for the new invite-only Yahoo social network, Mash. I’ll give it a whirl and report back soon.

Technorati Tags email, Facebook, Gmail, Google, mash, social, techcrunch, Yahoo

Posted in E-Mail, Facebook, Gmail, Google, Twitter, Yahoo No Comments »

I figured writing about the blog migration process from Blogger to Wordpress would help Yahoo customers who are trying to do the same thing, as moving this blog over to Wordpress was harder than I thought. The phrase “third time lucky” really applied in my case because after two unsuccessful attempts to move to Wordpress, I was ready to stay with Blogger. But upon the third successful try, I realised that all my previous problems were due to Yahoo.

For a start, they do not allow the uploading of a file called “.htaccess” which is what you need if you want to use the WP-cache or if you want to set up blog re-directions. Just type in “Yahoo + .htaccess” into any search engine and you’ll see that this is a widely contentious Yahoo policy.

Secondly, Yahoo offers an automated Wordpress set-up process for anyone who has signed up with Yahoo Webhosting. But this is not as generous as it seems. For a start, the current version being offered is Wordpress 2.0.2 (so they are pushing an outdated version at paying customers) and to rub salt into the wounds, they try to dictate to you how your permalinks should be set up! If you fail to use of their permalink structure suggestions, they block your customised permalinks by refusing to allow you to upload the .htaccess file. The lack of this file means that your customised permalinks are broken and you are virtually forced to go back to one of theirs. So I was forced to do a quick hack job by adding “index.php” to the beginning of my blog pages. I’ve been told by a reliable source that this will have search engine positioning implications. But at the end of the day, I can live with that if the blog works properly.

The biggest thing I hated about the whole automated Yahoo process was that it did not allow you to set the blog up at the root folder. The root folder is the name of the blog so my root folder would be http://www.betterthantherapy.net . Along with many other bloggers, I want people to be able to type in that URL and be taken directly to the blog. But Yahoo demanded that I set up the blog in a sub-folder such as http://www.betterthantherapy.net/index . You want to refuse, Mr Blogger? Then we’ll just cancel the automated process and delete the blog! Ka-POW!

So in short, they push outdated software at you, dictate how your blog should be set up, ban certain files from being loaded to your domain and then they charge you $11.95 a month. I don’t know how you would react to that but it really got my back up until I was in a rage. I intensely dislike being pushed around - and having to pay for it as well!

I was lucky the third time because I had Aibek from Make Use Of to help me out. We started by completely wiping the entire domain of all Yahoo-set up files and then we downloaded and installed the Wordpress 2.3 software directly from the Wordpress website (well, Aibek did. I just watched and learned). You will need a FTP program to move the set-up files from your computer to your domain - FileZilla is my favourite. Aibek set up a new database and did his magic. I have to admit he lost me part-way through so I just trusted his judgment to get it right. Maybe he will blog about what he did one day so we can all learn how to do it ourselves. I hope so!

Once the Wordpress files were uploaded to the website, I then had to choose a theme (a design for the page). This is harder than you might think as there are thousands of templates out there to choose from. Some are for sale while a lot of others are for free provided you keep the designer’s link at the bottom of the page. I must have went through about 20-30 possible themes, all of which looked great on the designer’s website but which absolutely sucked when I got it uploaded to the website. As one person remarked on a website, “most Wordpress themes look like they were designed by a crackhead with a set of crayons!”.

Then I went through a Goth period and wanted an all-black website but I was advised that would turn a lot of people off. So Aibek came to the rescue once again and recommended a very nice theme called “Cleaker“. I went with that one, mostly because I really liked the design but also partly because I was so tired of the whole process that I just wanted to choose one and get it finished. But I really like the theme now. It kind of grows on you!

Many tweaks and little problems later, the wrinkles were ironed out and the blog was finished. Once it is installed on your website, the key is just to go through all the options and get it the way you want it. As many people pointed out to me, “if you don’t like something on Wordpress, there’s a plug-in to change it.” Plug-ins and widgets are what makes Wordpress great as you can virtually make the blog do whatever you want. In fact I am stunned that I stayed with Blogger for so long when all these fantastic tools were at my disposal here at Wordpress. I mean, I was completely ignorant about trackbacks when in actual fact it is the backbone of blog promotion! So you can see the steep learning curve I had to quickly get used to.

But I decided to leave my old blog where it was at Blogger and start afresh here at Wordpress. The main reason is that any permalinks and comments at Blogger should be kept and maintained, and moving the blog would have broken them all. But to be honest, I was glad because the thought of manually moving over all 248 posts was not an appealing one. The old blog will always be up and available if anyone wants to see it. I just won’t be updating that one anymore.

But I really love Feedburner. As well as ensuring that my RSS subscribers don’t have to change anything at their end, it also formatted my blog title for me, which was one of the sticking points. Feedburner is an amazing tool and should be used by every blogger.

As more of the migration experience comes back to mind, I’ll blog about it again but this is basically everything. In short, Yahoo doesn’t make things easy with their various policies but that is probably why they have such a reliable uptime with their servers. I guess if you want big reliability, you have to sacrifice some things, but my once-perfect image of Yahoo has been tarnished a little. They could, if they cared, make the whole Wordpress set-up process a little easier and relax some of the restrictions a little. I was ultimately lucky in that I had someone skilled enough to help me but what about all the people out there who have no-one to help them? How many incorrectly formatted blogs are out there because of Yahoo’s restrictions?

Technorati Tags .htaccess, Blogger, cleaker, feedburner, makeuseof, migration, set-up, Wordpress, Yahoo

Posted in Blogger, Wordpress, Yahoo 6 Comments »