Good news for podcasters (of which I am one), with Google tweaking things in order to highlight individual podcast episodes more relevantly for search queries. Note: To pull off the search indexing, Google is automatically transcribing all the podcast episodes it finds. And also note: This new functionality could fundamentally change how people find new shows because podcasts have lacked...
Sorry for the long headline, but it’s required in order to actually explain what is happening. Otherwise, from other sources (like Reuters and Fast Company), you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Australian Government was going to force Google to hand over their search algorithm (Spoiler alert: that is never, ever going to happen). Instead, the real story is they want to check how...
Not before time (via Bloomberg): Amazon.com Inc. will let Alexa users opt out of human review of their voice recordings, a move that follows criticism that the program violated customers’ privacy. emphasis mine Apple has actioned this just recently, and Google has (in EU at least) as well. Still not right that people can opt out (ie they need to take the initiative) – this should be an opt...
Very thorough analysis of the Nacho Analytics demise by Ars Technica (a reminder of what good investigative tech journalism looks like btw). If you’re not familiar with the whole situation, here’s the summary: Chrome Browser extensions (perhaps deceptively) get your permission to track everything you do (recording URLs you visit, content that is on the page etc) and then on-sell that...
Eric Schmidt showed how to lead as a student
If you use the paid version of Google Site Search then be aware Google is shutting it down this year. Here’s SEL with the news. You’ll have to find a replacement, one of which is the free Custom Site Search – basically the same as Google Site Search but shows ads. Interestingly if you go to the Google Site Search page you can still sign up – at least for another month or...
Answer: The Australian Federal Election date is Saturday 02 July 2016.
Interesting that as I write this on 25 May 2016, right in the middle of election campaign mayhem and just over 5 weeks until the next Australian Federal Election, that neither Bing nor Google give me the answer I was wanting when I searched:
And Bing:
Thankfully DuckDuckGo has something more helpful:
Following on from last week’s note about Google banning payday loan ads in AdWords, and their hypocrisy (as clearly highlighted by Aaron Wall), it’s good to see the Wall Street Journal putting the boot in as well.
But for the best part, check out the comments on the article.
Google released a new product today – Spaces – that they described as: a tool for small group sharing. Not exactly an unsolved problem, but given the growth in messaging options, it’s possible there’s benefit if their attempt is compelling or provides some new value. Their reasoning for building Spaces: We wanted to build a better group sharing experience, so we made a new...
Another of Google’s ‘do as we say, not as we do’ moments.
Do as we say: Payday loans are bad.
Not as we do: Aaron Wall sets the record straight. Again.
The masters of PR:
