11,500 creatives sign letter decrying AI internet 'scraping'

11,500 artists, writers and other creatives have demanded a change in the way AI is 'trained' by gobbling up all the copyrighted material on the internet and regurgitating it as its own. You may know that the various AI bots such as ChatGPT and Bing's Copilot are trained using existing material on the internet created by 'creatives'. 

These people have the copyright to this material which has been totally ignored. These creatives are complaining bitterly as they have a right to do. As they should because this is mass theft. Mass breach copyright on a scale that has never been seen before. 

The scale is unimaginable as it concerns everything on the vast internet. The storage compacity of these bots is beyond comprehension and the servers cost huge amounts of money and power to run but the dominant internet companies such as Google and Open AI have the kind of resources required.

The letter is incredibly compact. Here it is. It beautifully summarises the problem. It is also contained in a tweet which is published here too. Please sign the letter if you are one of those who have lost out.

Click this to go to the place where you can sign the letter.

“The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.”

Today we’re publishing a statement on AI training, signed by 10,000+ creators already:

“The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.”

Signatories include… pic.twitter.com/AqVaEThMs4

— Ed Newton-Rex (@ednewtonrex) October 22, 2024

There are a number of active lawsuits running at this time in fighting what has been described in one as "systematic theft on a mass scale". AI scraping will lead to more litigation for compensation and injunctions to stop it I predict. It has dramatically harmed hundreds of thousands, probably millions of websites, some terminally. It has cost the jobs of many thousands of website workers. And nothing is being done about it except this brilliant letter and some litigation. There should be mass uproar.

People should complain through their actions.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins. Also, sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified. And, I rely on scientific studies but they are not 100% reliable. Finally, (!) I often express an OPINION on the news. Please share yours in a comment.

Why Google search results are often irrelevant and just 2-3 pages long

THIS IS MY OPINION, NOT HARD FACT, EXCEPT FOR THE FIRST-HAND OBSERVATIONS: For those who are interested in internet search results, the recent change to Google's algorithm has been shocking. Sometimes Google only lists 2 pages of search results whereas in the recent past it was dozens of perhaps hundreds. Now 30 websites or even 24 are listed. Sometimes less. And most of them are irrelevant to the search query!!

Reddit is the top-ranked site for Google. Reddit is a forum. A huge site on all manner topics and discussions but often the discussions are frivolous and silly. Just a list of wisecracks and often not very informative. A platform for budding comics.

Featuring Reddit.com as the font of all wisdom is going to certainly lead to irrelevant search results. But it isn't just Reddit. Google now features website in search results which do not hit the search term on the head. They are at best obliquely relevant. Poor basically. Google knows this but it doing nothing about it an apparent act of self-harm. 

Why is Google doing this? It looks like a massive backward step for Google. 

For me it IS a massive backward step for Google which now incorporates AI into its search engine. To me it looks like a failure as AI is not adding to the quality of Google's search engine but detracting from it.

CAVEAT: If you are testing Google search its results vary massively between being logged on and logged off and if you have set for personal search. When I am logged off from Google and personal search if off, the search results are better. This may be a bigger factor than I had realised.

I have been trying to figure out what is going on as these changes have buried or effectively destroyed hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of smaller websites as they are no longer listed at all by Google. They've become invisible. As Google dominates internet search at around 85% of searches, if a site is effectively delisted by Google is is consigned to a black hole of everlasting oblivion.

Working on these websites become almost pointless as so few people visit them. Some hits are possible by promoting your site on social media but it is a poor substitute to being ranked on page one of a Google search.

The reason for these apparently destructive and backward changes is mostly to do with AI which is so much more efficient at web search.

Ask AI - such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini - for details about a topic that you are researching and it will do the work that you would have done in one hour, in 30 seconds. And write it up for you; nicely packaged often in bullet lists unless you instruct it otherwise.

Game over for search engines and listed websites.

People these days are asking AI for answers and details and even for full articles which they copy and past. Or they ask AI to create an image or a full video. These products are proving very popular on social media.

At lot of the internet content (information articles) are now written by AI. There are big dangers as AI becomes incestuous, feeding on its own information which was stolen from millions of websites. The quality takes a nose dive.

But the guys who run Google realised that Google search has almost become redundant. These days you hardly need Google search as you can get all the info you need from ChatGPT or other AI bots.

And as almost no one goes beyond page one of Google search results why list more than 3 pages? The Google guys and ladies realised this and that's why Google search has changed dramatically. The effective internet has SHRUNK bigtime.

The victims are website owners who've seen visitors drop by up to 90%. This means a loss of Google Adsense revenue which in turn means less commission for Google.

Google features Reddit.com as it is a forum and you can't replicate the form format in an AI bot's response. It relies on real people.

Personally I feel despondent about all these negative changes as I see them. My sites are almost dead. What I am doing here is a waste of time but I am bored so it occupies me!

I feel that the current journey of dramatic change of internet search is going to end badly. And I feel that more websites other than mumsnet.com should sue the AI bot owners for compensation as they have scraped the internet like a trawler scraping the bottom of the ocean for fish. Billions of dollars of it.

Website owners need to get together in large numbers and protest. Revolt against the injustice of these arrogant and unfair actions by the masters of the internet.

Perhaps Google is also very concerned about being sued by the American authorities for being a monopoly. They want Google broken up. Perhaps Google is paving the way for that.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins. Also: sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified. Also, I rely on scientific studies but they are not 100% reliable.

Tech gurus should be prioritising the development of AI to reliably detect child abuse images and block them

Huw Edwards' recent arrest for possessing child abuse image, several of which were category A, the worst kind that were sent to him on an app on his phone brings to mind the question as to whether AI can detect these images and prevent them being transmitted over the internet in one form or another. 

AI should be able to detect these images and block them thereby curb the activities of these paedophiles. AI should also be able to provide evidence on the people transmitting these images and creating them. 

One commenter on the BBC said that AI could stop these images. But my research came up with a different answer.

My research using AI came up with the following:

Absolutely, tech gurus should prioritize the development of AI to reliably detect child abuse images.

Given the rapid evolution of technology and its misuse for nefarious purposes, AI presents a crucial tool in combating this horrific crime. Here's why:

• Scale and Speed: AI can process vast amounts of data at unprecedented speeds, enabling the detection of harmful content before it's widely disseminated.
• Accuracy Improvement: Continued development can significantly enhance AI's ability to differentiate between innocent and harmful images, reducing false positives and negatives.
• Proactive Approach: By staying ahead of the curve, AI can help prevent the creation and distribution of such materials.
• Supporting Law Enforcement: Advanced AI can provide invaluable support to law enforcement agencies in investigations and prosecutions.

However, it's essential to approach this challenge holistically. While AI is a powerful tool, it's not a silver bullet. A multi-faceted approach involving:  

• Stronger laws and regulations
• Increased public awareness
• Collaboration between tech companies, law enforcement, and child protection organizations

Is equally crucial for effectively addressing this issue.

Challenges and Techniques in AI Detection of Child Abuse Images

Challenges

Developing AI capable of reliably detecting child abuse images is a formidable task due to several factors:

• Image Manipulation: Sophisticated techniques like deepfakes and image editing make it increasingly difficult to identify authentic and manipulated content.
• Data Scarcity: A limited amount of publicly available labeled data for training AI models is a significant hurdle.
• Ethical Considerations: Accessing and processing sensitive images raises ethical concerns about privacy and potential harm to victims.
• Real-time Detection: The need for rapid identification of new and evolving threats requires AI systems capable of real-time analysis.

Potential Techniques

Despite these challenges, significant progress has been made in developing AI solutions. Some key techniques include:

• Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs): These are particularly effective in image recognition tasks, capable of identifying patterns and features indicative of child abuse.
• Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs): GANs can be used to generate synthetic images for training and testing AI models, addressing the data scarcity issue.
• Hashing Algorithms: These can be used to create unique identifiers for images, allowing for rapid comparison and detection of known abusive content.
• Federated Learning: This approach allows multiple organizations to collaborate on AI model development without sharing sensitive data, addressing privacy concerns.

Additional Considerations

• Human-in-the-Loop: Integrating human experts into the AI decision-making process can improve accuracy and reduce false positives/negatives.
• Continuous Learning: AI models should be continually updated with new data to adapt to evolving threats.
• Transparency and Accountability: Clear guidelines and regulations are essential to ensure responsible AI development and usage.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Social media tempts teenagers to skive and the family cat benefits!

High rates of school absence because of Internet addiction in teenagers leads to social media tempting teenagers to skive, stay at home, and as a consequence be company for the family cat. 💕😊 - if there is one.

If a person is prone to stay at home no matter whether they are a teenager at school or a worker at work, they will be with their cat more often and it would be an antidote to what I see is a major problem with domestic cats: separation anxiety as their owner is at work all day and the kids at school.

The story is about Internet addiction in teenagers concerns skiving and not going to school but for me this is as much a story about that as it is about keeping the cat at home company. 💕🙄

A study decided that teenagers skive as mentioned. It found that teenage girls seem to be more vulnerable to this than boys and more vulnerable to excessive use of the Internet. The more often a teenager uses the Internet the more likely it is that they are addicted to it.

The research took place in Finland. They took data from a national biennial survey. They asked children how much they neglected friends and family and failed to eat or sleep because of their time online. They asked how anxious they were when they weren't online.

Just over 2% of the more than 86,000 children in the school years eight and nine (aged 14 to 16) in Finland who participated were found to use the Internet excessively. Girls were 96% more likely than boys to fall into this category.

3 to 4% of the children reported high rates of absence from school. Those who spent excessive amounts of time on social media had a 38% higher risk of truancy. They also had a 24% higher risk of medical school absences.

The researchers decided that digital media may be tempting teens to stay at home and avoid school which affected their learning. The research is published in the British Medical Journal's Archives of Diseases in Childhood.

As you can see the study was based on self reporting from teenagers. They may have overestimated or underestimated the amount of time they spent on social media online.

Excessive Internet use is not the same as addiction. There is no agreed clinical definition of Internet addiction. It was suggested by another scientist that the research does not help understand the effects of Internet use in children.

But as mentioned above, I would suggest that there is one benefit if there is a family cat. They have some company and social media Internet addiction can remove the problem of separation anxiety for domestic cats.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

The Internet is bloated and repetitive. I'll tell you why.

The Internet is too big and too repetitive in 2023. It is suffering from acute bloat. In human terms it is morbidly obese and it is still guzzling crackers and processed foods. No one is managing it. It is a product of human competition without controls. This article will be a victim of the bloated Internet. Hardly anybody will read it. I'll be lucky if it is read a hundred times. It's basically a waste of my time.

You will see hundreds of thousands of articles on any one subject. What's the point? You will see millions of articles answering your questions that you have put into Google's search box. There are far too many websites and they repeat each other. They regurgitate the same stuff endlessly.

The Internet has become boring in its repetitiveness. It's a great wall of words and pictures, each one the same as the other. And authors in an effort to beat other authors of articles sometimes make them longer and longer to the point where they are unreadable because most people want to find answers quickly on their smartphones. If you've written a 3000-word article no one is going to get to the bottom.

I've painted a black picture but the Internet has got worse because of this constant competition by the owners of content websites. And the competition is to be visible which turns on search engine optimisation - SEO.

If there are 3 million websites with the same article on the same topic, they are all chasing the top five slots in Google's search engine results on page 1. Only the top 10 of those websites featured on page 1 of Google's search results get clicked on. All the rest are in the dark. They are a waste of space. The clog up the internet.

The tip of the iceberg in terms of Google search results is a tiny tip and below it is this huge mass of words and pictures. The problem, as that websites are chasing an almost impossible objective to be visible in the vast ocean of words.

They do this by trying to optimise their webpages from a search engine perspective. And that tends to create a very bland page written for a 14-year-old which is very repetitive and written in simplistic ways.

It's almost as if the Internet is destroying itself by becoming more and more bloated. It's like a huge overweight man or woman who is still guzzling on unhealthy food. Becoming sicker and sicker.

Piles and piles of repetitive semi-dead pages. Google tries to be fair and operates a kind of time share system which recycles websites to the top from time to time to give them some air time. But it is small fry.

It's the same with social media. Millions and millions of Facebook pages chasing a bit of visibility but hardly ever if ever achieving it. People try more and more desperate things to get seen.

They might rebuild their website but rebuilding a website doesn't really do anything. It might produce a short improvement in visibility for a while, for a short while but that soon fizzles out. And as all the content has been written there's nothing more to say.

That's the truth of it, there is nothing more to say except provide news. News always changes but even that becomes boring because news, too, can be very repetitive. You will see hugely repetitive news stories. And the news media run out of stories so we get these ridiculous click bait articles about a black panther roaming around the Buckinghamshire countryside in the UK or some other idiotic article.

And there are many websites which simply publish click bait articles. They provide misinformation and there are millions of pages like this. This just serves to degrade the Internet.

Back in the day, about 15 years ago the Internet was far less competitive. And before that it was even newer and fresher. The website could actually lead the way on something and be different. Now it is impossible for a website owner to be different because it's all been done before.

All you can do is write good articles with good content but, you know, content runs out. When it's all been said and done all you can do is repeat, rinse and start again. Repetitive, the same, boring, and web surfers are drowning in trillions of words seeking information and entertainment.

Google wants the Internet to expand which is fair enough because they are a business. They want to expand because they can make more money in advertising revenue but their objective is almost self-defeating. And it must get harder and harder for Google to provide good search results and harder and harder to index the trillions of website pages accurately and fairly as the Internet becomes ever more bloated and repetitive and samey.

It's time for a change but there is no way to change. Artificial intelligence (AI) has been promoted as being revolutionary and something that will improve people's search results and help them find top quality information quickly but I don't think this is actually happening.

AI simply feeds off the Internet to provide answers to questions. It is delving into the massive pile of the Internet and summarising what it sees. AI is good at summarising things. It provides a good précis of what's been said but the information that AI provides is very bland and very safe. It too is repetitive and boring.

Perhaps the size of the Internet should be limited. Perhaps there should be a neutral, independent and international organisation which governs the Internet and limits its size. Only the best sites should survive. All the rest should go to the wall to help create an Internet which is clear, sharp, precise, manageable without click bait. The survival of the fittest. Darwinism in action.

What should be on the internet? Here is an example. An inspiring story in a short video. A great woman. Her efforts are almost invisible on the internet. She should be at the top. That's another issue. Good things drown in the ocean of words, videos and pics.

Are today's teenagers better for cat welfare than previous generations?

It's worthwhile asking whether today's teenagers, in developed countries, are going to improve cat welfare or not. They are the future. We depend upon them to make improvements in domestic and wild cat welfare and it needs improvement. So what is today's teenager like compared to past generations?

It seems to me that there are two major influences on modern-day teenagers: the internet and smart phones which has led one specialist on the subject to described them as 'iGens' -  and Covid-19.

Teenager with cat. Picture: Pixabay.

I know Covid-19 is a very recent event but it is so major and so impactful that it has to be included in this discussion. The pandemic also serves to reinforce the modern teenager's dependence upon smart phones and the internet. This in turn leads them to a less active, outdoor life and one which is more centred within themselves and at home.

But this in turn leads to poor emotional health. It is well reported that today's teenager tends to suffer greater mental health issues than previous generations. Some put this down to social media which has a competitiveness about it in terms of attainment and a person's image i.e. how they are projected towards the world. There is a lot of false messaging on the internet.

There is an increase in problems with self-image, dissatisfaction with their bodies and their standing in the world. IGens spend 5 to 6 hours a day using their smart phones hanging out online and texting et cetera. More than two hours a day can cause mental health problems, it is said.

IGens grow up more slowly. They hang out with their parents more, put off sex and the task of obtaining a driver's licence. Is this a consequence of being self absorbed and living within your head inside the home rather than going out and exploring the world and taking some knocks and learning about life? If they grow more slowly they are going to be less well developed emotionally and less ready to deal with life's problems. Isn't that a fair assessment?

It is believed that iGens are more caring for others. They are more aware of diversity and perhaps this is the woke movement which has caused a greater awareness of equality in society.

Perhaps it is fair to say that today's teenagers are more protected. Not by design but by consequence of being glued to a smart phone and the Internet and texting etc.. It creates a cosseted environment in which the girl or boy is removed sometimes from the reality of the world which in turn slows development and growing up to adulthood. The inability to buy one's own home exacerbates the problem. And career advancement has been damaged by Covid-19. This may last a long time.

Today's teens watch less television, drink less, use heroin less, use meth less, carry weapons to school less and so on (American survey). They appear to be better behaved but this may be because of a general trend in society and a greater awareness and education about the dangers of using these drugs. Teen pregnancy has declined rapidly apparently over the past really case. Is this in line with a failure of teens to grow up?

I sense, and it has to be a sense because the data is incredibly complicated and there are so many layers to this discussion, that today' teenager is more likely to be suffering from some to the mental health issue arising out of failure to engage the world because they are overly-engaged in Internet interactions and smartphone use which has been exacerbated by the Covid pandemic.

This in turn should result in better domestic cat care in the present because domestic cats are going to be with teenagers more often. In the long term there may also be a benefit in terms of animal welfare because the greater the interaction between teenager and family cat the more the teenager learns about the animal which should promote welfare in the future. Perhaps I'm being idealistic.

Cat welfare is about education above all else. The alternative point of view is that if modern teenagers are too engrossed in entertaining themselves using the Internet rather than educating themselves about the hard facts of animal welfare, both domestic and wild, then perhaps in the long term there will be a dearth of passionate and committed animal welfare advocates.

The bottom line is that the modern lifestyle of teenagers in the West is in general terms unhealthy.

The major reason why the Internet is expanding rapidly and continuously

The major reason why the Internet is expanding rapidly and continuously is because Google wants it to be like that as they can make more money if the Internet is bigger. And the way they encourage the Internet to grow so rapidly is because their search engine penalises websites that do not constantly add fresh pages.

If you leave a website alone for several months it will basically die because Google's search engine will stop finding it or find it less often. Conversely, if you constantly add to a website with fresh pages Google's search engine likes it and it will tend to find the site more often. It will rank the pages higher in search results. The more pages you can add the better the search results will be provided the content is good. It's pretty much as simple as that.

So Google dictates the Internet. They manage it and what they want they get. If they want an expanding Internet they can manage that through their search engine as described. This is not a criticism of Google. If anything it is praising Google because it is probably a good thing that it does expand as by and large the Internet is beneficial to people.

It is interesting, though, to speculate how things could have been different. If Google's search engine rewarded sites which had been dormant for a year by ranking them at the top of the search results, Internet expansion would come to a grinding halt quite quickly. The whole complexion of the Internet, of how we live, and such phenomenon as social media online would have been entirely different if Google had set up their search engine differently. It's a thought worth bearing in mind because it is at the foundation of how we use the Internet. And that greatly affects our lives.

Why Are Cats...?

 If you search in Google for “why are cats" every result on page one completes the sentence like this:

"Why are cats frightened of cucumbers...!?

I find that surprising in many ways, but unsurprising in one way.  This is because there are a lot of videos on the Internet of cats being terrified at the sight of a cucumber.  There's been a lot of debate about why cats are terrified of cucumbers.

The answer must be the logical one and the straightforward one which is that the cucumber is a foreign and strange looking object to the domestic cat and when it is placed on the floor behind a domestic cat without the cat's knowledge then the cat will be frightened when he suddenly sees it.

This is because in that instant the cat does not know whether the object is alive or dead, inanimate or living, and therefore the cat's immediate reaction is defensive and to get out of the way as quickly as possible.

That is it and it's rather bizarre in some ways that a very general part-question such as “why are cats..."  is completed with a question about cucumbers!  There are so many other ways to complete this sentence and all the other ways will be far more profound and important than the ones provided by Google in their search results.  It's a reflection on how people use the Internet and what interests people about cats.

Internet Writers Waffle For SEO Reasons

It can be difficult to write a concise compact article for a website because it might be too short for search engine optimisation (SEO) reasons.  Sometimes a writer might simply wish to answer a question in an article.  The answer to the question may take one line of text.  That would not be enough for search engine optimisation reasons.

Sometimes the nub of a news story can be stated in a couple of lines or in a paragraph of text.  But a paragraph of text amounts to about 50 or so words and that is not enough for search engine optimisation reasons.

Classically, the average Internet article may be something between 300 to 1,500 words averaging about 500 to 700 words, perhaps. Writers feel compelled, or are told by their editors, to write articles of around 500+ words.

If the topic that they're writing about really demands far less words then a lot of what they write will be padding --- what I refer to as waffle.

A lot of Internet readers want to find the answer to a question that they have and they want to find an answer quickly in the first paragraph of text but often Internet writers waffle their way through about three initial paragraphs before even beginning to answer the question or provide relevant information.

I would hope that the search engines become more refined so that a person can write even one word as an article and that that article is found successfully by search engines and ranked highly provided the single word completely addresses the topic at hand.

Cult of the Funny Internet Cat

The cult of the funny internet cat is fading. You know what humans are like. I use the word "human" rather than "people" because I write about cats so much I have got used to differentiating between the two that way. Humans follow fads and trends or in this case a kind of cult. The cult of the funny cat on the internet.

The internet is still relatively young. Google is only 14 years as I recall. A lot of websites are less than 5 years old. The internet is a very transient and fluid place in which to set up business. I sometimes think that Google considers 4-5 year old sites as in their dottage; time to euthanise them in the words of cat shelters.

The internet to date has worked both for and against the domestic cat. The great cult of funny cat pictures put the domestic cat on the map. But the endless funny videos are really quite tiresome now. On the upside the domestic cat got a lot of publicity. On the downside, was it the right kind of publicity?

The cult of the funny cat pic was fun stuff, but a fad, a fashion. It has to be temporary because it is entertainment genre. Entertainment evolves all the time. You only have to look at cinema to see that. In cinema people are tired of the super hyped-up, over CGI'd, thin-plotted, blockbuster. The old stuff looks far better. I think cinema ran out of ideas so decided to over stimulate our senses instead. You get tired of that quite quickly.

Maybe we are running out of ideas in art. The only thing that constantly renews itself naturally is news. The cult of the cat on the internet is dying. People want to go back to real, sensible stuff. Good, clean information well presented.

I don't think the cult of the funny internet cat improved cat welfare. It was too frivolous for that. Funny cat pictures don't really respect the cat. Under this cult of funny cat pics and vids the cat is not really respected but used to entertain us. There are too many very serious and upsetting aspects to the life of the domestic cat to allow ourselves to be amused by funny cat pics. Let's get the welfare of cats right first before we have a laugh at the expense of the cat.

If I am correct, I am pleased. PoC is a serious website. The cat pictures are the best. They are not about being funny but about respecting the cat. In the long term, I hope that means that PoC transcends the slow decline of the funny cat internet cult.

Google Change Policy Because They Are Scared

Facebook founder, Sergey Brin says, "I am more worried than I have been in the past. It's scary". Google are spooked by the erosion of the early principles of the internet, the most important of which was openness. Rules stifle innovation.  He says that Google would not have been a success if he had started the business today.

Google likes the laissez-faire attitude of the internet. It is like a parallel universe because anything goes, or at least it did. On the ground, in the tangible world, behavior is regulated. It is regulated because on-the-ground-society is more advanced. The internet is still young, undeveloped and it is bound to become more regulated because you can't go on in a semi-anarchic manner and get away with it for ever.

I understand the attraction of openness but people will and do abuse it. Think gross violations of copyright as one example. For many years Google ignored this and in doing so supported it as they found, through their search engine, works that were violations of copyright. Only recently have they started to delist from their search results webpages that violate copyright - see application form.

Mr Brin says that there are powerful forces against an open internet. He refers to the battle against music piracy and Apple's rules on the software people can use.

I  think Mr Brin is just concerned about Google profits. And in trying to maintain an advantage Google is doing things in a panic, which undermines the raison d'être of Google; to find the best on the internet.

Mr Brin, you are living dangerously and I think you need to take stock. The introduction of Google Plus One is a failure and was a response to being scared. Go back to basics and do it well and accept change.

The internet must evolve and it must be regulated to a certain extent because humankind needs to be regulated within a general framework of freedom and self determination. It is just the nature of things.

Millionaire Employees of Apple

Apple employees, under the Apple Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) would be millionaires today (April 2012) if they had contributed to a maximum of $25,000 per year over a preceding seven year period. In fact they would have an investment worth $1,628,481 on share price of $589.58, which is already outdated and too low! The current share price is $628 (April 11th 2012). It is like printing money for the Apple employees. They are making tens of thousands of US dollars every week - on paper...that is the key. When do you convert that to cash? And what are the rules on selling shares as an employee, at Apple. There will be rules, otherwise employees could depress the share value on a mass sell off.

An Apple document in relation to the Employee Stock Purchase Plan states:

The Company has a shareholder approved employee stock purchase plan (the “Purchase Plan”), under which substantially all employees may purchase common stock through payroll deductions at a price equal to 85% of the lower of the fair market values as of the beginning and end of six-month offering periods. Stock purchases under the Purchase Plan are limited to 10% of an employee’s compensation, up to a maximum of $25,000 in any calendar year. The number of shares authorized to be purchased in any calendar year is limited to a total of 3 million shares. As of September 26, 2009, approximately 4.7 million shares were reserved for future issuance under the Purchase Plan. 

As an employee, even if you invested about £10k per year (relative small sum) the way the Apple share price is soaring you will still be a millionaire soon. The "experts" predict that the Apple share value will continue to climb creating a market valuation for Apple of one trillion USD. It is already the most valuable company in the world. That value would double the number 2 company Exxon.

It has to end. Oh, by the way Apple don't pay proper corporate taxes in Britain and this is causing consternation. They paid about $10m on about $6 bn of revenue as far as I remember. Wow..cheap. They avoid tax through clever tax dodges and there are question marks over their manufacturing ethics.

Google Search Slowing Down?

1st April 2012: Slow Google.com start up? Not an April Fools' prank! Are you getting stalling problems at the beginning of a search when you try and type in what you are searching for? I am and it seems to be do with the Google page syncing up to something on Google Plus or some other add on nuisance. In other words what was once a very simple super fast loading Google search page (Google Classic) is now slow and this slows down my search while I wait for Google.com/ig (iGoogle) to load.

iGoogle is the Google home page that contains lots of extras. It syncs up to things. And it appears to be syncing up to too many addons. Whereas at one time iGoogle was slower than Classic Google it is now almost unusable for me.

It may be the fact that I have recently opened a Google +1 home page "thing" (no idea what it does, already bored with it). I was encouraged to do it by Google. Google desperately wants us to use Google +1 and constantly searches for ways to get us to use it. I guess people prefer the Facebook like button despite all Google's efforts.

For me Google are pushing people away from using Google search. I prefer Bing now sometimes as it is simpler and more direct.

Google changed Picasa Web Albums not long ago and that change stopped me using it. It became to complicated in that I didn't know what was public or private. I could not trust it anymore. When you are not sure what Google is doing in addition to what you can see, you start to distrust them.

I'll try returning to classic Google home page for a while.

Google Fails To Find the Best Content

Despite Google having dozens if not hundreds of Ph.D. educated boffins working on their mysterious and precious algorithm they continue to make the most fundamental of mistakes in finding the best content on the internet which must be the basic requirement of a search engine.

I'll just give one simple example. The search term is:

"how many cats die a day"

God Bless Good 'Ole Google. It finds Wiki Answers:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_cats_die_a_year_from_abuse

The above is the top search result. The answer is complete mumbo jumbo. The idiotic author says that "584 million a year" die from abuse alone.  That is more than the entire world population of domestic and feral cats so the figure is obviously ridiculous. If it were true there would be no domestic, stray and feral cats in the world after a few years.

My answer is not the finest but it is at least is based on a modicum of common sense and science:

http://pictures-of-catsorgblog.pictures-of-cats.org/2011/11/how-many-cats-die-day.html

It comes about halfway down the first page of search results. That is good but Google should not be putting it below Wiki Silly Answers. Wiki Answers is a joke of a website and Google promotes it.

Facebook friendship can be our enemy

Facebook does a great job of connecting people. We know that. It has changed the idea of what socialization means to us.  There are two broad categories of people who use Facebook:

1. People who simply want to socialise and
2. People who want to use Facebook for some purpose. One prominent purpose is to promote a website to enhance the visitor rate.

The upsides of Facebook are obvious. The downsides are not so obvious but include:

1. An addictive necessity to be in the loop so as not to miss something. There is a lot of "needy" activity on the internet. Text messaging is another example. You see young people furiously texting, endlessly seeking reassurance. It is painful to see it. This sort of needy behavior can become burdensome to the participant. Eventually some decide to get out as the downside of the process outweighs the upside.
2. Privacy. There is a lot of talk about the big brother nature of Google and Facebook. They collect data on us and sell it. People are waking up to this and don't like it.
3. A manic, mindless motivation for website owners to connect up with Facebook and drag Facebook visitors to their site. I guess Facebook accept this as it gets more visitors to their site. It is a tug of war. Website owners have got to have a mile long series of buttons on every page of their site through which visitors can express their liking of the page or share it with "friends" that they have never met and don't even know. It is totally artificial and it has got out of hand.

It is time for website owners to stop being so dependent on Facebook and Twitter. It is a kind of parasitic activity. We should stand on our own feet. And it is time people met more in person, in the real world. It is more healthy that way. Facebook is feeding on our insecurity.

Trolling a window on our mind and society

Trolling is the thing that trolls do. Trolls are people who disrupt online comments and dialogue with foul language and comments that are hate filled. They are written assaults on people. It is internet bullying.

It is common and widespread and website managers don't deal with it properly because there is so much of it that they can't keep track of it especially on the large social media sites.

I know that trolling hurts people. The old adage "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" is incorrect. The written word directed at a particular person, who is decent yet vulnerable, will be upset and indeed may become fearful for his or her safety.

Trolling is more than just casual written violence it is a window on an increasingly impolite and angry world. It is not simply impoliteness. Trolls are a kind of sociopath. They fail to understand that combative and rude comments are hurtful.

People in public normally contain their feelings and anger. For polite people it is polite to do this. For impolite people it is necessary to contain their anger as they could get into trouble with the law if they expressed it in public, in person.

But in the ether of the internet trolls feel protected and free to express their anger. They are set free to show us their lack of politeness and sociopathic tendencies. It is similar to the protection, distance and anonymity that people feel when in a car. Road rage is similar to trolling.

There is a lot of anger and fear out there and the internet is a window on it. It is being exposed by the internet. Trolling happens on my website http://www.pictures-of-cats.org/. Not that often, thankfully. I like to give people freedom to express themselves. I don't like censoring as it stunts freedom of expression. However, true trolls are banned and their comments deleted.

Fortunately the police are finally catching up with the idea that it is a crime to harass people on the internet. Trolls are realising that they aren't as protected or as anonymous as they thought. IP addresses are one element that helps to catch trolls. An IP address is a unique number assigned to a device. Big brother is watching.

Google Fusion Tables For Heavy Mapping Tasks

Google Fusion Tables are a great way to map large amounts of information. I won't go over the method in detail. It is fun to explore the process. In essence for people like me, who don't know much HTML code and are not that bothered about learning, Google Fusion Tables is about converting information that has been entered onto a spreadsheet, to a map.

The required spreadsheet is very simple. It might have three columns. The first column (A) might be the name of an organisation. Column B would be the address and column C the telephone number or website URL.

The spreadsheet that I use on an Apple Mac is Open Office. It creates an ".ocd" file. You can also use Google Docs spreadsheet and lots of others if you wish.

Once you have created your spreadsheet, that might have 1000 rows for example, you upload the information from within the Google Fusion Tables application which is part of Google Docs.

Thereafter you simply follow instructions. You can alter the way the information is presented on the place markers using HTML code in a CSS fashion. Even I can do that! You can also ensure that photographs and link are presented in the place marker properly with simple commands.

Google Fusion Tables is able to map 5,000 locations in about 5 mins or less (dependent on broadband and computer speed). The crucial point is to make sure that Google recognises the addresses that you have entered into the spreadsheet. I would therefore do a test for the first dozen or so and check that they are mapped accurately.

If the addresses are of a similar calibre you can safely make the presumption that Google will map the remainder accurately. You must enter good addresses otherwise you will be mapping rubbish. This is automated mapping. It is very dependent on what information goes in to the application as you can't check it if there are 5,000 locations to be mapped. You'll be checking from here to Christmas.

Google Fusion Tables accepts other forms of data to locate an address. These other methods are more accurate but we (or I should say I) don't have access to the information.

I would recommend Google Fusion Tables for large amounts of information as it is much faster to map this way than by hand using Google My Maps. But check for accuracy. I have seen some inaccuracies with Google Fusion Tables and inaccurate mapping is worse than no mapping at all.

See also: New ways to present information on the internet.

Internet Chat or Internet Crap?

They are very similar sounding words that mean very different things. However, on the internet, they often have the same meaning. Virtually the whole of Twitter is founded on crap....sorry I mean chat. There are some pearls in there somewhere but you have to do a ton of diving to find them.  At October 2011 there were 250 million tweets per day. I wonder many useful ones there were? Tweets are a blizzard of verbal internet confetti.

A lot of money is made from this. I suppose that should not surprise us. It was always thus. You know the old north of England saying, "where there's muck there's brass". Maybe it applies to social media.

Some people almost move their entire website onto Facebook. I don't see the point unless you have shares in Facebook Inc.. Don't website owners want their visitors to spend time on their site and not support the already super rich social media sites? You can use Facebook to generate hits but you have to be careful that you don't simply transport your visitors from your site to Facebook or some other social media site.

The only way I use Twitter is by feeding posts to Twitter using Feedbburner. Every post I make goes out in a feed to god knows where. I do know, though, that Feedburner generates a Twitter post. I get about one new follower every two months! It'll take me about 20 billion years to get the same number of followers as Lady Gaga (she has over 20 million followers  - March 2012).

If you build and manage your site on your own as I do it is impossible to spend a lot of time promoting your site on Twitter and Facebook as the "experts" say you should. Unless you work 17 hour days, 24/7. Some people do this. One successful internet entrepreneur developed RSI (repetitive strain injury - to the hands) and had to start dictating her posts as she was writing so much.

99% of websites fail in the sense that the creator had the idea that they would make money, even a living, on the internet and failed to achieve that goal or anything near it.

There comes a time in website building on your own when you have to consider employing someone to expand the business and to take it to the next level. An individual working alone will struggle to compete with websites manged by more than one person.

The second person can spend some time creating some internet crap...I mean chat.

iPad 3 screen crackles and pops

18th March 2012 - Went to the Apple White City store last Friday and having avoided the long queues had a nice chat with an Apple employee and played with the new third generation iPad. You should see this device first hand because it has impact. It changes your perception of what it is like to look at things on a computer screen. This screen crackles and pops. I have never seen images and video on the internet look like this.

HD video looks like a high definition film. It makes any website look better because it makes the whole internet look better. If you spend a lot of time on the internet it makes your world look better!

Apple call it a "retina display". It has a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels (3.1 million pixels on the screen), which is higher than 1080 HD televisions. And it shows.

For me it is the quality of the display that is selling the new iPad because it really is a game changer. You have never seen stuff on the internet look like this before. Other featured improvements are faster wireless connection and a 5 megapixel camera that also allows 1080p HD video recording.

Making a living from a website

Date: March 2012: Having done it myself,  I can confirm that someone totally new to website building can make a living in America (USA) from a single content website, working alone. How much do you have to earn to make living in the US? It depends what your demands are. You can live cheap and have no children or have five kids and send them to expensive schools etc.. Anyway, we are told that a living wage is about $4,000 per month. I am sure you can live off less.

Update June 2014. I earn less (about half) these days from my site because it is impossible to compete after 7 years or so. Also you run out of content. You exhaust the subject matter. You have to evolve as well which is hard. It takes money. I give away all the money earned these days or pay writers with it.

You can make $4,000 per month from a single website within about 2 years of starting from scratch without any prior knowledge of how to build a website or make money from it. As I said, I know because I did it. However, there are a number of big caveats...

It is not easy. Why should it be? In fact it is tricky and hard work. There is an element of luck as well. There are no set formulae for success either. It is no easier making money on the Internet than it is making it somewhere else. The advantages of Internet work are that you can do it whenever you like and wherever you like. And you are your own boss. A lot of people would like that.

I now earn less than $4,000 due to competition, copyright infringements, Google changing its algorithm etc.. That is the nature of the beast. I am endeavouring to come back though!

There are a lot of failures. Expectations should be realistic. It is getting harder for an individual to make money on the Internet working alone as competition grows. It has even changed substantially since I started about 4.5 years ago.

You have to continually build the site because that is what the search engines demand. I think the sort person who has a good chance of being successful making a living in America from a content site is:

• suited to website building work - meaning he or she likes building websites and likes researching information.
• reasonably intelligent;
• hard working;
• a stayer - has stamina;
• at least proficient in writing good English and is...
• committed and
• able to take some risks and be willing to learn by mistakes.

Note 1 : if you have commitment, stamina and an inquiring mind you can do without the rest because you can learn as you go.  Don't be put off by the list. But to summarize, it will not be an easy journey. Why should it be?

Note 2: A suitable person for making a living from a website is someone who likes and is good at:

1. science (html coding)
2. art (illustrations)
3. design (layout)
4. writing (text)

....these are ideals. The more of the above the better. Writing skills must be decent. I think that you have to be a good allrounder if you work alone and initially you almost certainly will work alone.

Note 3: There are other ways of making money on the internet. This article deals with building the classic content website. This is the way anyone can make money using advertising on the site such as Google AdSense.

I don't have the figures, but it is probable that about one in 100 attempts to make a living from the internet are successful (1%). However, there are some inspiring stories. One person comes to mind. She is the owner/creator of http://www.2createawebsite.com/. She is certainly one of the most successful individual internet entrepreneurs - meaning working on the site as an individual rather than a team effort. She says she developed RSI (repetitive strain injury) in her hands and now dictates some of her content. That gives a clue as to the amount of work that you need to put in. She earns big though (I often dictate my articles now too).

Website Hosting

I would recommend SiteSell, Wordpress and Google Blogger. SiteSell charge but they provide you with the chance to learn as you build so you can get off the ground quickly. This motivates as you can see results more quickly. It can be very demotivating if nothing happens for months and nothing will happen for months normally.

Important update: I now reject SiteSell. They kicked forced me to move my website. Here is the story. 


You can make good money using free Google Blogger without even having a custom domain name. However, Google might not like it. You can customise the domain with Google Blogger.

Revenue

AdSense, Casale Media, Infolinks, Custom advertising. These are the simple ways I make money. There are many other ways including selling products as an affiliate. You act as an agent by advertising your partner's products on your site and get a commission. I tend to avoid these because of the management needed to control the business. That is a personal choice.