google | More shameless remarks by Larko

Page refrehs in Google +

Friday, August 19, 2011 at 14:24 | Posted in google, internet, social media | Leave a comment
Tags: google

Last night I sent some feedback to Google + about the current page freshing. As I posted it as a public entry at my Google + page I thought it might just as well appear here in the blog. Just for the record, I like Google + a lot.

This is what I told them:

Hi, Google folks!

This is not a technical error but rather a matter of policy concerning the on line updating or refreshing of the Plus page.

Firstly, I have a problem with this new way of lifting up the latest commented posts at my home page. To be frank, I am not interested in comments added to ALL posts. This way it is harder to find the posts and comments that DO interest me. Also, I may miss a number of interesting fresh posts just because a number of much commented older posts keep popping up.

Another issue with update is that I used to be able to peacefully read and write at the spot of the page that I happened to be at. Fresh posts caught my attention only after I had completed what I was doing and scrolled back up to the top again. I very much liked this.

The present situation is that whenever somebody makes a fresh post or adds a comment on an older one my page moves respectively and I must find again the spot where I was either reading or writing. Needless to say that these new posts in their turn take up the position on top of my home page even if they are just comments to a post I was never enthusiastic about in the first place.

My suggestion is to return to the original system or at least make these two approaches optional. I appreciate that the page refreshing is automatic but I do not want it neither to interfere with what I am doing nor to mess with the original chronological order of the posts.

Update (20.08.2011): As it looks now, the “jumping page” seems to have been corrected but the order of posts at home page is still not chronological. I am grateful for the half measure. I would be even more grateful for the other half.

Google are keeping their word

Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 1:17 | Posted in censorship, China, google, internet | Leave a comment

As Google announced yesterday they are no longer going to censor their search results at Google.cn. I can now present evidence that they are worth their word, regardless what the real reason behind their decision was and regardless that I still have trouble understanding that they agreed to censor the results in the first place:

Respect!

Chrome not available for Linux

Wednesday, September 3, 2008 at 1:02 | Posted in browsers, computer, google, internet, linux | 4 Comments
Tags: chrome

Google have launched their open source browser called Chrome. Or short of launched, at least. It is funny that an open source browser is not available for the true open source environment. I hear that Chrome is not going to support Linux until it leaves beta.

Judging from the history of other Google apps, it may well take months or even years before I am going to get a chance to acquire first hand user experience of Chrome. Which is a pity as much of what they have cooked sounds like a treat. Not that I would be unhappy with Firefox. It is the best browser in the World until proven otherwise.

This comic book tells you all you ever wanted to know about Chrome and probably a lot more as well.

Google Earth playing tricks

Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 23:51 | Posted in computer, google, linux, ubuntu | Leave a comment
Tags: google earth

I just installed Google Earth to my Ubuntu 8.04 system. The install seemed to be successful but each time I try to run Google Earth it causes a system restart. I obviously need to do some googling to find out why this happens and how I can fix it.

I would appriciate if somebody could enlighten me.

Finglish according to Google

Monday, May 12, 2008 at 3:38 | Posted in google, internet, languages | 3 Comments
Tags: google translate

Google Translate has added Finnish to the supported languages. That is great. All they need to do now is to figure out how the bot could produce understandable translations.

This is what Google Translate returns as I feed in a passage of my own text:

The proposal is a positive, the fact that it would mean a confessional religious education end of the story. At that time, however, the question arises as to whether it is religion in your subject no longer make any sense. The different religions and their ethical views could be presented as part of the history and civic education. Säästyisi scarce resources; religion is not now such an important asia is not that it will complete a subject taught to justify.

Unlike my original post in Finnish, this does absolutely not make any sense. It does not work any better from English to Finnish either as you can see here and here.

Better than sex

Monday, January 7, 2008 at 5:38 | Posted in China, google, internet | Leave a comment
Tags: sex

What could be better than sex? Maybe China Merchants Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China or China Construction Bank? Or just “stocks”?

According to Reuters, all of the above are more popular search terms at Google China than “sex“. Those must be mighty hot banks.

Then again, if this is the best sex that Google China can provide, I would not expect too much from the banks.

Lech Kaczyński is a prick

Saturday, September 15, 2007 at 20:58 | Posted in Freedom of speech, google | Leave a comment
Tags: poland

It would not be very polite to say that George W Bush is a prick but it would be everybody’s constitutional right to say so both in the USA and elsewhere. I am also within my rights to freedom of speech by saying that the Polish president Lech Kaczyński is a prick. However, I could face prison by making such a statement in Poland.

Google Blogscoped quotes an article in the Polish quality newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza as translated by Ludwik Trammer:

Young internet geek is facing up to 3 years in prison. The man is accused of insulting president Lech Kaczyński.

The young man is said to have written a piece of software creating a Googlebomb to the Polish president’s web site with the keyword “kutas” which is Polish for penis. The article does not reveal technical details which makes the existence of a software somewhat questionable. Most of us know how to make a Googlebomb just by using search anchors although Google claims to have neutralized the bombs. Software or not, the links provided in comments to the entry in Google Blogscoped confirm that a Googlebomb did indeed exist.

The discussion in the comments also reveals that there is a seldom used piece of legislation in Poland which protects the honor of the president and apparently also that of heads of states in other countries and enforces restrictions to freedom of speech. It would technically be illegal in Poland to say that George W Bush is a prick but his honor would be less likely to be protected by Polish police and prosecutors than that of ~~prick~~ President Kaczyński or indeed Rev. Josef Ratzinger in his capacity of head of state in a country called the Vatican.

I am going to watch closely what will happen to the young man who used a Google bomb to make a controversial point. I am also using my own blog space to say that president Lech Kaczyński and his twin brother Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczyński are pieces of a prick and I hope that both of them will eventually be voted out of office. I may or may not enter Poland to see if I am going to be arrested for this statement.

Not a wanking service

Friday, August 10, 2007 at 21:25 | Posted in google, Not serious, odd | Leave a comment
Tags: wacko

This seems to be one of those odd and quiet days since the most popular word appearing in searches that bring in visitors is any combination of “wank” or “wanking”. The most popular single search string, even outplaying “Atze Schröder” and “Hubertus Albers” is “wanking service”!

I am sorry to disappoint you folks but I am not running a wanking service. You just have to look for it somewhere else. In worse case I guess you just have to go and fu…, sorry, do it yourself.

All read

Tuesday, July 31, 2007 at 8:53 | Posted in google, internet, Personal, rss feeds | Leave a comment

My Google Reader with 125 feeds is empty. I have read every item of it. Normally I have hundreds of unread items.

This has only happened once before, for two months ago. Having worked hard like that, I deserve a beer.

My fresh posts in a feed

Wednesday, July 25, 2007 at 16:52 | Posted in Blogosphere, gadgets, google, My other blogs, rss feeds, Web tools | Leave a comment

I have occasionally received feedback saying that I have too many blogs. It would be easier to keep track of my posts if they were all at one place. I plead quilty as charged but I am not going to put all my posts in one blog because everybody might not appreciate a multi lingual blog.

However, to meet the request of being easier to track, my blog templates now show links to my 10 latest posts in all of my personal blogs. Excluded are collective blogs that I either edit or contribute to. Links to those are in the sidebars.

The technical solution is very simple. I just subscribed to the feeds of my own blogs and put them into a separate folder in Google Reader. The folder produces a feed of its own which is distributed as links in the sidebar. The feed may be subscribed to here.

The chronology of the posts may be a bit limping at start since Google Reader does not always manage to sort posts in fresh subscriptions correctly. This is going to sort out by itself, though, as fresh posts appear.

Mighty long G seconds

Saturday, July 21, 2007 at 15:05 | Posted in google, rss feeds, Web tools | Leave a comment

Click for a larger image

I have been trying to add a folder to my Google Reader for about 20 times within as many minutes. Each time I am prompted with this oops notice telling me to try again in a few seconds. G seconds may occasionally be long but it is an annoyance just the same.

However, I would not rush to change my feed reader. Google Reader works great most of the time.

Death sentence for cold callers

Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 4:53 | Posted in google, internet, Not serious | Leave a comment

The Google search arguments through which people get referred to you are sometimes funny. Like this one from yesterday:

cold calling capital punishment

I have written about both cold calling and capital punishment but to the best of my knowledge, never within the same post. So hands up, everybody, if you think that cold callers should be sentenced to death. 😛

No address bar?

Friday, June 15, 2007 at 18:41 | Posted in browsers, google, internet | 6 Comments

I was just browsing search arguments that have brought visitors to this blog. I detected that two visits were generated by an exactly correct URL to an entry in this blog. That is to say that somebody, who already knew the URL, had entered it into Google rather than their browser’s address bar? No “link:” argument, just those URL’s.

Beats me, is there a browser without an address bar? Just to be sure, I also googled those URL’s. And surprise, surprise! Google returned links exactly where you would expect. 🙂

Nothing to read

Monday, May 28, 2007 at 23:32 | Posted in google, internet, rss feeds | 8 Comments

This has never happened before. There is not a single unread item in my Google Reader. At the moment I have 95 subscriptions, 16 of them big media outlets that almost publish an item a minute. The rest is blogs.

Either there is nothing happening out there in the World or I have been working hard to get up to date.