dangerousmeta!, the original new mexican miscellany, offering eclectic linkage since 1999.

TechCrunch: Google Brings Street View To The Ancient City Of Petra.

The Coke machine opposite, sort of jars the senses. Like walking into the Hagia Sophia, and having AC/DC’s “What You Do For The Money Honey” playing ...

The Verge: Gmail will soon alert users about unencrypted emails.

FYI.

Bruce Clay: Is Google about to Kill Its Penguin? Is It the End of Link Spam?

“This tactic was so effective that it literally changed the face of the Internet. Blog spam, comment spam, scraper sites – none of them would exist if Google’s algorithm didn’t, for quite some time, reward the acquisition of links (regardless of source) with higher rankings.”

SERoundtable: Google’s John Mueller - Don’t Follow Big Sites SEO, They Often Get It Wrong.

Not a surprise, really.

Re/code: Autonomous Cars and Their Ethical Conundrum.

“one can imagine many types of ethical issues that a self-driving car will encounter. Understanding how the engineers, philosophers and ethicists design the final algorithms that sit at the heart of these autonomous vehicles will be very important to the success of these automobiles.” Denise McCluggage and I spent an afternoon debating these permutations, and came up with no solid Asimov-style ‘robot rules’ for driverless cars. I joked that perhaps a driverless car might contain a charge to blow itself up, in an answerless situation. I received a snort in response.

Later: I’ve got it! EJECTION SEATS.

Register.UK: Google uses humans as Matrix-style ‘data batteries’ – Open Xchange CE

Brilliant observation.

AppleInsider: DuckDuckGo takes shots at Google, says tracking isn’t needed to profit.

“Most of the money is still made without tracking people by showing you ads based on your keyword, i.e. type in car and get a car ad. These ads are lucrative because people have buying intent. All that tracking is for the rest of the Internet without this search intent, and that’s why you’re tracked across the Internet with those same ads.”

Moz: Why I Stopped Selling SEO Services and You Should, Too.

Fantastic article. Right on the money, IMHO.

SER: Google Recommends Keeping 301 Redirects In Place For One Year Or Longer.

“... if you’ve moved your site, and we have been able to recognize that your site has moved, which might take maybe a half a year, maybe a year or so, then at some point, you can take that redirect down. The thing to keep in mind there is that if there are still links to the old version of the URL, then chance are, we might show the old URL too, if you remove the 301 redirect.” What a hot mess.

SER: Google Says They Never Index All The Pages.

Only ‘important’ pages.

Wired: Google Announces It’s All Grown-Up With Alphabet’s New Logo.

I get stuck at the lowercase ‘a’. Another sans-serif trying to look important; as if there aren’t enough out there already. You’ll be hard-pressed to tell if this is about the company, or an infographic scadged from Sesame Street. I keep seeing Elmo or Ernie poking in his head from the right ...

Google is now “Alphabet” ... ?

Here. Just waiting for the tidal wave of ‘what this means’ articles to start overstuffing my RSS account ...

Later: The NY Times announcement.

Bit later: Go to Google search, enter “Alphabet”. This news already dominates the search term. Wikipedia on the alphabet is moving down page two, as we speak. Gonna be hell for Playskool and other learning outfits to get any traction with learn-the-alphabet toys. So far, “Alphabet Soup” is unaffected.

The Creative Cloud menu bar app continues to be a pain ...

It will load on bootup, but no graphics will display. So I fire up “Activity Monitor”, quit it, and restart to get a functioning version up and running.

Of course, things are worse elsewhere. I’ve got Google Chrome running with a single tab open, and it has so many “Chrome Helpers” open you’d imagine it’s actually phalanx of geriatrics needing wheelchairs, walkers, colostomy bags, adult diapers, etc. etc. What’s the browser of choice these days?

Giving Postbox another go (Mac app).

I’ve been expanding into other email addresses, and Gmail is just too damned slow for modern email work, no matter how good their spam filtering is. Outlook.com is better these days (speed-wise). I purchased a Fastmail account back a while ago - very quick - I may restrict it to business-only work. I’ll let y’all know how I get on with Postbox. It’s a nice catch-all, that can save stuff to Evernote with a click.

SERoundtable: Google - We Check To See If Your Mobile Site Vastly Different From Desktop.

Of note to desktop/mobile designers: “For now, I suspect they flag these cases and send a manual action reviewer (web spam fighter) to take a closer look.”

Register.UK: Google unhooks ‘social network’ from YouTube.

“Given the lack of interest the platform has generated over the last four years, this move could prove the beginning of the end for Google+.”

Mashable: Google will shut down Google+ Photos next month.

FYI. If you have anything unique stored there, copy off your stuff sooner than later.

SERoundtable: Google Is Hiring SEOs.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA ... the Ouroboros, the snake devouring itself ...

SE Roundtable: The Next Google Panda Refresh May Not Pick Up On Your Site Changes Today.

“... if your site was hit by the last Panda update and today you decide to refresh all your content by having experts write the most authoritative and useful content pieces, it still may be too late. Google may have already ran all the data for the Panda refresh but they have not yet pushed the release.” Offered if you’re the sort who worries about such things ...

SERoundtable: Google Issues Mass Manual Actions For Thin Content Over Weekend.

“Thin content?” Really? Good grief. Beware whom we give power to.

SELand: It’s Official - Google Says More Searches Now On Mobile Than On Desktop.

“Google groups tablets with desktops. So this is just smartphones and does not include tablets.” I wonder; I suspect ‘bicoastalism’ effect again (better cellphone coverage than our rural areas). I have yet to see any of my client sites (responsive or otherwise) rise above 25% mobile use; Google search results are single digits within that 25%.

SERoundtable: SEOs Prepare For Twitter Integration Into Google’s Search Results.

“For now, it seems to only show for trending keywords, so you need to keep an eye on Google Trends.”

SERoundtable: Most Still Don’t See Significant Changes In The Google Mobile Results.

At this moment in time, 60% see no difference.

PS Blog: Will Google’s Mobile Friendly Changes Impact Your Photography Website?

Finally, someone admits it in plain English: “Google’s change will only affect the search results initiated from mobile devices (not including tablets). Desktop searches will remain unchanged. Further, it only applies to individual pages, not entire websites.”  Too many designers are being mealy-mouthed about the specifics, trying to generate ‘panic’ business.

Later: SEOBook, “The problem with going early is you eat the expense upfront, while the rewards are still unknown.”

Google “Mobilegeddon.”

I suppose, because I’m more interested in a site’s information than its mobile-friendliness, I should think about using Bing or DuckDuckGo instead. If they’re going to deprecate a good source because of mobile-unfriendliness, I want nothing to do with them. I want the info, regardless of format.