Tag Archive for 'google'

NOTICE: my GMail account is down

Just FYI, Google has mysteriously locked my personal GMail account, around 8pm last night (Friday) for no apparent reason. I’ve already sent in the “please reactivate” form, as well as asked a few Googlers to investigate.

No, I have no reason to believe there’s a password compromise, and no, I wasn’t doing anything naughty with that account, so one presumes it’s an odd bug with Google’s security procedures.

Drat – I wish I could see the IP login list for my account. I’m pretty stable at where I login from, so any theoretical hack attempts would be pretty obvious if they didn’t disguise IP. But I really have no idea why I’d be a hack target.

Sigh.

“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.”

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.
I’m half crazy all for the love of you.
It won’t be a stylish marriage, I can’t afford a carriage.
But you’ll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two.

With Google’s new CADIE technology improving search results even more today, I’m surprised that more people haven’t figured out there are now new ways to improve your search results. For example, I don’t even need to mention names to get more search hits, since it’s obvious who CADIE might want to meet.

More importantly: I hope to update my commenting system to take advantage of Autopilot so that I can keep the conversation going with all of my readers.

Separately, Opera’s new Face Gestures is worth a second look.

Monkeys Test Google!

Their new Chrome browser cartoon (excellent read, BTW) proves it on pg. 10. Did they get the ASPCA to monitor the monkeys’ conditions, I wonder?

I’m on Google now

I purposefully haven’t linked to my blog except in private emails to friends so far.  And I lazily haven’t bothered to update my home page at all; it’s quite embarassing.  Nor have I updated my ASF homepage at all, which used to (well, a while ago) be the top hit for my name for some reason.  But now googling just my name finds this blog – or rather, the RSS feed for it – as the 10th hit or so.

Now I have to figure out who linked to it – someone on Technorati or one of the aggregator/pingback sites, or someone in their own blog.  Actually, that’s not important: I really need to start posting interesting content for all those folks who now read this now that they can find it in google!  Whoo-hooo, I’m famous!

Yeah, right.  Actually the one nice thing about an unusual name (especially the combination) is that the great majority of hits are relevant and either written by me or are about me.  Although I am a privacy minded person, I’m completely used to the fact that anyone who can spell my name (which is not necessarily an easy skill to learn) can find out so much about me.  That’s partly because I do try to write with at least a certain level of style, and also because it really only tells a tiny part of the whole story of Shane.  Heck, even my ASF involvement – much of which is explicitly public, because that’s how the ASF works – is completely skewed.  Not that the past 2 months shows it, but for the past 3 years nearly all my ASF work has been on the very few closed lists that they keep.  Kind of odd: I went from automated tester and developer/release manager to being an organizer and PR person.

(Brief pause while I hang my head in shame in case any ASF folk are reading this and wondering where the hell I’ve been the past 2 months – I really do plan to come back soon…)