The best words in any browser: Read Later

I know I mention this from time to time, but it seems not everyone on Earth uses it yet so I’m going to go on about it again: Instapaper!

Instapaper is one of the greatest things since sliced bread. Seen something interesting online? Hit Read Later to send it to Instapaper and you can read it – formatted nicely – in your browser, on your iPad, on your phone, on a Kindle… and if you’re short of stuff to read you can subscribe to other people’s recommendations, which is brilliant.

Honestly, this is one of my favourite things on any device. It’s full of win, as I believe the kids would put it.

Facebook wants you to work for it, for free

Are you getting the impression that I’m not entirely keen on Facebook? Facebook Questions is its latest attempt to be like the AOL of the 90s, but more annoying and evil.

It’s a simple enough plan: make every single link on Google point to a Facebook page. Where’s the best place to buy a T-31 Modulator? Ask Facebook. What’s the best time of year to go turtle punching? Ask Facebook. How can I tell if I have a horrible bum disease? Ask Facebook. Have we always been at war with Eurasia? Ask Facebook.

Why you can’t find washing machine reviews online

In a MetaFilter discussion about dodgy reviews - basically press release blurb being passed off as an independent review – MeFi user JonnySeveral made an interesting point:

this presents a neat little example of the sort of poisoning of the internet information well that seems to becoming SOP now…

There are two predominant ways in which corporations appear to be subverting the greater availability of information on the internet. The first is by model spamming, whereby huge ranges of products with marginally different model numbers are released making obtaining information about any particular one much more difficult. As an example, go into a camera shop and you will find that many of the models (particularly budget ones) have absolutely no information available about them online.

The second strategy pursued is the one of which this incident would appear to be an example: get a tame website to pass off PR as a review. This one looks to be a particularly lazy attempt – the repeated mentions of the manufacturer and model seem designed for SEO, but there was almost no attempt to disguise this piece’s origin, or even make it read like anything other than PR fluff.

This is particularly dangerous in the age of the User Review, when so many of these tend to skew positive as people seek to justify their purchases and have so little with which to compare

The model number thing rings true: whenever I’ve tried to research white goods, which suffer particularly badly from this, I’ve given up in disgust. Between that and content-free AdSense pages stuffed with model numbers, it’s almost impossible to research some products online.

Viral hits don’t sell shit [update: or maybe they do]

Everybody loves the Old Spice viral campaign. It’s fresh, it’s funny, and it isn’t selling any more Old Spice. In fact, sales have fallen. Oops.

While there is little doubt about the viral hit’s  popularity – the official version has racked up 12.2 million impressions on YouTube - sales of Red Zone After Hours Body Wash have fallen by 7%.

Maybe the problem is, as Jezebel suggests, that it takes more than a funny viral campaign to shift many years of negative connotations, or that the target audience of young women simply don’t buy shower gel for their boyfriends.

The YouTube response vids were still inspired, though.

Update, 25 July: PR Week reports an overall 107% increase in Old Spice body wash sales, based on figures from Procter & Gamble.

Apple, interpretation and the woo-hoo/boo-hoo thing

One of the interesting things about online news is that you can often see stories unfiltered. For example, if you’re interested in Apple’s iPhone antenna news conference, you can see footage of it rather than relying on someone else’s report of it. And that throws up something interesting, because there are some very different interpretations floating around.

Take the issue of Apple giving away cases. This is what Steve Jobs said (it’s just after the 25 minute mark if you’re watching the video):

A lot of people have told us the bumper solves the signal strength problem… why don’t you just give everybody a case? Okay, great, let’s give everybody a case… We’ll re-examine this in September and decide whether to keep going or maybe we’ll have a better idea.

And this is Slate writer Farhad Manjoo’s interpretation. Like me, Manjoo wasn’t at the conference; he relied on liveblogs and tweets. I haven’t linked to him for any other reason than his was the first article I thought of.

Still, if you want to be a total jerk about it and keep insisting there’s a problem with your magical iPhone, Jobs has an offer for you. ‘OK, great, let’s give everybody a case,’ he said. Happy now, whiners?

Now, it’s entirely possible that I’m the one who’s wrong here, or that I’ve completely misinterpreted the article, but I think Manjoo’s suggesting an attitude, a vibe that I really don’t get from the video. Is Jobs indulging in a bit of reality distortion during the presentation? Of course. That’s what he does. But immediately before the case announcement Jobs admits that while it doesn’t affect everyone, there is a genuine problem; the case bit doesn’t seem to have any “whiners” subtext.

I’m just not picking up the same attitude that Manjoo clearly picked up. Quite the opposite. I thought Jobs seemed frail, and tired, and less cocky than usual. But you don’t have to take my word, or Manjoo’s word, for it. You can go to the horse’s mouth and get it unfiltered.

And that’s great, but it’s also terrible. Great that you can get things in context – although of course how you interpret what you see or hear will depend on what you’re bringing as baggage, so it’s going to be your truth rather than an absolute truth – but terrible because we’re quite busy enough, thank you. Who other than the most spittle-flecked insomniac conspiracy theorist has the time to investigate every single thing they read?

I think the ability to go to the source is a good example of the woo-hoo/boo-hoo way the Internet often works.

Woo-hoo! I can do this! This is great!

Boo-hoo! I have to do this! This sucks!

Fancy a free book on building iPhone apps?

You do? Here you go, then: a free, legitimate online version of Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. As at least one person on MetaFilter says:

This is a good book.

Fear and loathing and Facebook

I don’t like Facebook. I don’t trust it. I don’t like the way it enables people you’ve avoided for 20 years to annoy you. I don’t like the way its privacy settings are so complex it needs an enormous article to explain them. And I don’t like its ambitions to enclose the entire Internet. There was a good example of that this morning, when it asked me to “Try Friend Finder”. All I need to do is give Facebook my email address and password.

Friend Finder has been around for a while, and what it does is simple: it uses your email account to email your contacts and tell them to join Facebook. I think that’s a step too far, and so do the German authorities, who may fine Facebook for breaking the country’s strict marketing regulations.

It’s no secret that when you use Facebook you’re its product, not its customer – its customers are the marketers who want to precision-target you – and yet I still have an account. If Facebook is so evil – and I think it is – why keep using it? Instead of keeping the “keep me signed in” button unticked and keeping your personal data to a minimum, why not just commit Facebook suicide?

The answer’s simple enough. It’s where my friends are. I’d much prefer it if they used email and Twitter, but they don’t, so I have a choice: put up with Facebook, or lose touch with people I don’t want to lose touch with.

A post on Metafilter - in a discussion about blocking Facebook Connect - last night expressed it perfectly. Over to you, Manjusri:

It’s like everyone I knew in highschool, and all my former coworkers and extended family decided to get together for a party. But for some reason they decided to hold it at residence of the biggest dick in highschool. Apparently they don’t see this guy as a dick, or his dickishness doesn’t rub them the wrong way. In any case I can either skip the party on principle or show up and politely warn friends about the host and enjoy the opportunity to reconnect with people. Just because I accept that this is where everyone is doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.

Apologies in advance if your comment doesn’t appear immediately, or at all

The site’s suffering from one of those periodic spam floods that affect blogs, so I’m trashing around 40 to 100 junk comments a day. If you post something and it doesn’t appear immediately, or at all, please let me know – it may be caught in the spam filter or I may have deleted it by accident.

Stop putting bloody buttons on your websites

This man is right.

In the pre-Twitter/Facebook days, the “share” buttons across the web were simple static links. There were links above and below articles allowing the user to email, bookmark, or share an article across a variety of social networks, but they were static in that they were simple images with no realtime information baked into them.  On the other hand, today’s buttons have constantly-changing data showing, for example, how many times a story has been reTweeted on Twitter or Liked on Facebook.  This realtime information requires a separate call to each respective site to receive the current data.  This process takes time, and when a web publisher or blogger uses three or four buttons beneath multiple stories on a given page, each unique button has to load.

…Button Overload is beginning to take shape across the web. Often, I simply want to read a story that sounds interesting, and I don’t care if it has been liked 75 times on Facebook, reTweeted 45 times on Twitter, shared 5 times on Buzz, and that I can be the first to submit it to Digg.

Can you trust Facebook’s privacy apology? Hint: no

Me, you know where:

Parents of young children can spot an insincere apology from miles away.

“Sorry,” your tot mumbles, after you find the dog half-shaved and your Xbox full of jam.

“Sorry for what?” you’ll say. “Sorry for shaving the dog and putting jam in your Xbox,” he’ll say, looking at the floor. But he’s lying. He’s only sorry that he didn’t get away with it.

Facebook’s much-reported apology in the Washington Post is a bit like that. “Sorry,” says Mark Zuckerberg. “Sorry for what?” the internet asks.

“Sorry for invading your privacy and making things confusing and stuff,” Zuckerberg says. “Can I have an ice cream now?”

Read more: http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/why-you-shouldn-t-trust-facebook-s-apology-691803#ixzz0owXMawMm