The other day I received an email from Google. A small transcript is below.

Dear site owner or webmaster of voodoochilli.net,

While we were indexing your web pages, we detected that some of your pages were using techniques that are outside our quality guidelines, which can be found here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769&hl=en_GB. This appears to be because your site has been modified by a third party. Typically, the offending party gains access to an insecure directory that has open permissions. Often, they will upload files or modify existing ones, which then show up as spam in our index.

It goes on to say that they are going to remove my site voodoochilli.net from the index for at least 30 days.

Within 30 minutes of being alerted to the fact that one of my sites had been hacked I managed to remove the spam and change my passwords as well as other security precautions to stop it happening again. Still, it didn’t matter, my site has now had all 35 thousand pages removed from its index without any notice. Now, you may wonder why the title of this blog piece says “for no reason”, after all there was spam on my site, right? Wrong. There was spam on www.voodoochilli.net’s home page, but not on any of the other pages which make up the majority of the site, and more importantly from a business perspective there was not any spam on my completely unrelated company website http://design.voodoochilli.net

I am completely furious with Google. For almost 10 years I have been sticking to Google’s guidelines and being a good boy. I have worked really hard to get my sites indexed in Google. And one day, one of my most popular sites eventually gets a very minor spam attack (3 words and a link) which was a long time coming considering the site gets tens of thousands of visitors per day, and Google deletes all of my hard work just like that. It kind of makes you wonder why Google would take such a hard line. Sure spam needs to be fought but 30 minutes notice and a deletion of thousands of pages and my company website as an additional punishment? Come on! Other people might be considering paying Google for advertising at this point in an attempt to keep traffic levels high. Well it just so happens that we are inundated with work right now, and if anything need a little less to come in so it suits me just fine. I will however be looking at our advertising strategy in the future and will be looking at alternatives from Google in regards to adwords and adsense. The combined revenue that Google sees from my company is substantial and I don’t think I have exactly been rewarded for being a good customer.

I am also angry about the fact that they deleted all of the pages from Voodoochilli.net. There are currently over 8,000 registered members on that site, each with their own portfolio, their own little website and sub domain. Should they get reprimanded because some jerk managed a bit of sql injection on the home page? Because in 10 years there was one and only one successful attempt to put spam onto the site?  It’s not like it was hurting anyone anyway. I once received an email from Facebook that directed me to someone’s profile that was hijacked. I am sure the same email was sent to hundreds if not thousands of other people and would have been reported. I don’t see Google deleting all of the pages there for over a month. Most likely the admin team would have received a polite call from Google telling them about it and advising what action to take. We have all seen spammy comments on Wordpress and Blogger hosted blogs. How mcuh would it have cost Google to call me before dexinging my site? Fifty pence? How about just an email with a days notice? I suspect they would have been sued if a site like Facebook, MySpace, WordPress or Digg was just deindexed like that, sites that often get spam placed on them. That’s the problem here. Voodoochilli.net is a pretty big site, but we are small fry when compared to the people that Google really don’t want to piss off. All I can do is have a little moan here and halt advertising with Google. Well my moan is over and I do feel slightly better because of it. I just hope someone from Google actually reads this and learns from it. Remember your mantra, Google -  “Don’t be evil”. Maybe its time your had a big long look at yourself as I’m seeing ideals being broken.

I guess one good thing about the poor state of the pound right now is that a dollar is worth more to us. Why do I care? Well our Google Adsense revenue is all in dollars so we are earning  more from the same advertising. Ok, it doesn’t completely outweigh the negatives, but it does help, slightly.

First there was Irie who have been trading since 1991, a stable company to say the least. They used to be based just down the road from us when we were based in Broad street, Hereford. It came as quite a shock when I first heard about this, considering how close (literally) they were as competition. Only recently I have noticed that WyEd has also ceased trading.  It saddens me to see web designers go out of business, even through they are competition.  I know how hard small companies like this work for a living. I know exactly the sort of work they have to do, and the hours they have to put in to pay the bills.

It is a reflection of the overall economy, and although in a previous post I pointed out how many designers should not be affected by this so called credit crunch, of course there will be some casualties.

On our green hosting website we have placed some free carbon calculators that you can use on your site.

Here’s an example:

How have you been through the recession? It seems to me that being small, efficient and most importantly smart helps during times like this.

It’s been really hard lately keeping up with all these blogs I run lately let alone do much personal work. This is a shame as I have quite a lot I want to get done! The reason for this, believe it or not is that we have been inundated with work. A client of mine believes this is because smaller companies like ours are very attractive during times of financial crisis as our overall costs are lower than bigger companies with larger overheads.

Although it is true that by being competitive a company is likely to survive where more bloated companies cannot, I do not believe this is the only reason smaller companies are doing well right now. I think it all has to do with people being smarter with their money. Companies need to make money – this we all know, and when there is a downturn in the economy it becomes harder and harder for the majority of businesses to keep going as at the end of the day they are all affected in some way by the the demand and disposable income of the general public. When times are hard it affects the average family quicker than anyone and this has a knock-on affects to nearly all business. People just don’t spend as much when they are feeling the pinch.

So with shrinking advertising budgets due to lower turnovers what should a business do to survive? Keep pumping more money into the same methods of selling? Or try something smarter? It really does amaze me that some clients approach me with successful businesses that have only recently considered getting an online presence. A website can not only act as a non paid salesman for a company, it can also be used as a tool to increase efficiency and do many of the tasks that normally take a lot of time, money and effort. Why post or fax documentation that is needed before a sale when your website can email it straight to your customer, for free and within minuets? That’s just one example, and I am sure you can think of loads yourself, you get the point, I think this kind of thinking will benefit companies prepared to adapt to a changing financial climate. It’s survival of the smartest.

I just got this message when viewing my email.

“You are using this feature to spam other users. Continued misuse of Facebook’s features will result in your account being disabled. If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page.”

What a load of rubbish! Besides it’s hard enough to cancel your own account!

I find it really quite funny that people actually believe the story about some Google boss accidentally  sending the email with the details of their new browser. The comic within was great, certainly a finished piece as far as I could see. And then, the launch of the browser the next day – funny how it was ready in time regardless of this so called accident. All in all what a great bit of publicity. It got a lot of attention on the national news here in the UK – after all news agencies love a story like when a big company supposedly makes a big mistake.

Besides the drama behind this beta launch there is a very good application waiting to be taken up by the hordes of internet users. You would expect no less than brilliance from the company with the reputation for innovation that Google rightly boasts. There are many things done right with this browser. Immediate impressions are of a clean interface with usability at the forefront of the design. For example, a pop-up window, when blocked will actually be placed at the bottom of the page, so if it was actually a requested page then it can easily be dragged up to full view. My only concern with the interface is it somehow looks a bit flat. I guess Google were thinking that its best not to distract from the real reason you are using a browser: to view websites. The icons and buttons are clean and simple, they get the job done.

Page load times seem fast which in my mind is a good indication of a good browser rendering engine. The HTML rendering does need a few tweaks though as some hyper links are showing incorrect colours and attributes as set in CSS style sheets. Still, this is only a beta version.

The browser also has many other features that take a little while to notice at first. For example, a built in spell checker and the ability to drag text areas as you can in safari.

All in all first impressions are very positive and I look forward to further developments.

I got a bit of a shock this morning when I realised google had gone black. I seriously thought that something was wrong with my computer, maybe a weird insternal style sheet or something! Well as it turns out its Earth Hour later today – from 8pm local time, when we should all turn out lights of to save electricity and raise awareness of global warming. google one Google!

Interestingly the UK version of this site has the following information not shown on the US version:

How green can you be? The UK’s carbon footprint is over 500 million tonnes of CO2 per year. Individuals account for 45% of this. Calculate your carbon footprint and find out how you can reduce it by turning off unused lights and other carbon-reducing actions.

Indeed, on the US version there is no link to the carbon foot print calculator, I wonder why? National politics maybe?

Today I closed my account with Facebook. I could write a dissertation on the reasons I hate Facebook so much, but to keep things short and sweet I thought I would write a little list. Even closing my account was hard: it is closed apparently, but I can reactivate it meaning all my data is still stored on their servers. So essentially its not closed, its just not visible. Anyway, to the list:

1. The “You have not registered yet” message. God this annoys me big time and its the number one reason I have closed my account. How presumptuous is that? You accidentally mistype your password or use your other email address and the site assumes you have never registered with Facebook before. Who is that stupid? I can imagine it now: “Hmm I was sure I was a member…maybe I was getting mixed up with Ebay – they are both websites after all?”

EDIT: Maybe the facebook team were listening to me as they have got rid of this

2. Vampires. Bloody vampires and Ninjas. At first I thought it was different, kind of interesting, but now I realise pressing a “bite” button on a website just doesn’t do it for me.

3. The amount of email. No wonder Facebook gets so much traffic – the sheer amount of emails about said vampires gives my spam filter a hard time.

4. People contacting me I was hiding from. Well OK, its a social networking utility, but I don’t like it when cousins I didn’t like as a kid start sending me messages.

5. Vulgar fun wall pictures and video clips. Maybe I’m alone on this one but in my mind a good user experience isn’t spending half an hour deleting badly drawn pictures of dicks.

6. It’s a waste of time. Facebook is inherently addictive – this is the sites main purpose, to keep you coming back. Its not really about connecting people, its about traffic. I have spent way too many hours of my life on that website and I want them back!

7. Integrated applications. Facebook comes with a cool little API allowing developers to create web applications that integrate into the site. The only problem is most of them are buggy. Every time I try and add a little app someone has written it always says there was an error.

8. Privacy concerns. They have a hell of a lot of data about people, their names, their friends, photos, which school they went to, where they work – the list goes on. There are 1.7 billion photos of people for god sake! A good hacker could make a lot of money…But its not that I’m worried about. As they put it: “We may share your information with third parties, including responsible companies with which we have a relationship.” Responsible is a lose term and open to personal interpretation.

9. I didn’t think of it. Enough said.

10. Gifts, pokes and all those other stupid little things that make it annoying!!!

My account is finally closed and I won’t be logging on again! Oh, I just remembered all of my photos are stored on there and I need to get them back…

EDIT: I’ve had to open it again…God damit! It seems people I know now use the site to actaully organise things like weddings and events. Who’d thought…

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