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Making a hames of the Interweb

Head Rambles Posted on by

This Interweb thing is really pissing me off for the last few weeks.

Google went and announced that they are dumping their Reader, which meant I had to go searching for an alternative.  I found two – The Old Reader and Feedly, and I don’t like either of ‘em.  They work, but I will probably just stop reading other sites.  It’s less of a threat to my sanity.

Then The Irish Times went and rewrote their site.  They made a fucking hames of it of course and now I have to wade through loads of fucking images to find what I’m not looking for.  Why couldn’t they leave well enough alone?

Then Google struck again.  I have to keep an eye on the piffling income from the advertising on this site so that I know when to remove it.  But Google have done something and when I go in to check my account all I get is a blank screen.  Fuck!  And the only way around that is to use their fucking browser [Chrome or Chromium or whatever the fuck it’s called] just to read one web page.  I don’t like Google.  I don’t like their browser.  It really pisses me off that I am forced to use ‘em.

And on the subject of advertising, the Interweb is getting one last nasty dig at me.  I have finally reached the amount necessary for Google to release the fortune they owe me, and I am just about to switch off the advertisements, and what happens?  Suddenly for no apparent reason my earnings have shot up.  I am now making more in a day than I used to make in a fortnight, which makes it damn difficult to switch the advertising off.

There really are times when I am tempted to revert to good old pen and paper.

But then I can never remember where my pen is.

 

Comments

Making a hames of the Interweb — 13 Comments

  1. Why do you even bother with Google anything any more?  Google is a data aquisition company.  The only thing they're interested in is collecting information from you.  I got an iPhone just because it is NOT a Google android OS.  Google is a bad, bad company more interested in gathering data points than producing a good reliable product be that software or hardware.

    Google is not a good thing!

    • Just as Mickeysoft Microsoft managed to squirrel their way into just about anything to do with computers, so Google seem to have pulled the same trick on the Interweb.  Use 'em and abuse 'em is my motto.  I avoid Google as much as possible [as I avoid MS] but there are times when there is no getting away from them both.

  2. Better watch out. I just happen to have read a few comments from site owners about Google AdSense earnings suddenly shooting up and shortly thereafter (within a few days) Google AdSense sends them an email stating that their AdSense account has been disabled due to possible click fraud. All earnings gone. And the only way to appeal (Google says) is to log into your AdSense account and give them such and such information. Of course, you can't do that because Google deactivated your AdSense account that you need to log into in order to appeal their decision.

    Catch 22?

    Screw Feedly and Old Reader. Install the Firefox Add-on called "Brief" which has a lovely straight forward interface (via a tab in Firefox). All feed feed data is stored in your Firefox profile in a sqlite DB, the feed links are stored in your bookmarks and it's local–to hell with the damn cloud. I've been using Brief for a couple years now and it works fine (install the development version–so far it works in versions up to Firefox 21 beta which is as high as I've tested)

    And I just logged into my AdSense account in Firefox with no problem. Earnings haven't shot up though so it must be one of your visitors having a click-fit?

    • Only made €0.2 today so the ads are gone!

      Thanks for the "Brief" pointer.  I like it.  I find it a tad more readable than the others for some reason though it can be very slow to update.

  3. I think someone out there is keeping tabs on us all, and they're sizing up lots of opportunities to make money/monkey.

    • I just looked it up myself.  I knew what it meant but I wanted to see what the Web made of it.  An expression that seems to be uniquely Irish?  Sorry!

    • Brief – as recommended by KirkM above.  I've been using it for the last couple of months and while it takes a little getting used to, it does do the trick.

      • Update on Brief:

        Brief development has lagged of late and the extension no longer works in Firefox 22 and up. It will keep updating the feeds you have but try and add or modify feeds and the whole thing will go blank due to Mozilla removing the Firefox API that Brief was using in favor of it's new API setup. And the current developer seems to have lost interest (hasn't provided an update since early last year). And using Brief's options to export your feeds no longer works either but removing Brief keeps your feeds directory (located in your bookmarks) intact so no worries there.

        However, another developer has forked the Brief extension into another called "Digest". He basically brought the extension up to date so it works with the newer versions of Firefox, otherwise, except for the name, everything else is the same including names of the files used by the extension located in Firefox's profile which are still called "brief.*.

        To switch over to "Digest" from "Brief", go into Firefox's "Add-ons Manager" and remove the Brief extension (as I said, this will not remove your Feeds directory in your bookmarks so you're good). Then, in Firefox, go into "about:config", type "brief" into the search field and when the results appear, right-click and "Reset" every "brief" entry (be careful as there may be a couple entries related to other extensions but they should be obvious). Shut down Firefox.

        Open your file manager and navigate to your Firefox profile directory and open it (in Linux, you will need to set your file manager to show "Hidden files" so you can see the ".mozilla" directory where your Firefox profile is located) and remove the following files:

        brief.sqlite

        brief.sqlite-shm

        brief.sqlite-wal

        Once that is done, open Firefox again and bring up the "Add-on manager". In the search field type: "digest" and when the search results page comes up, install the "Digest" extension–restart Firefox. Once Firefox comes back up, you should see the "Digest" icon where the "Brief" icon used to be (remember, it's basically the same extension, just a different name). Click on the icon, open the "Digest options" (crossed "tools" icon), select your feeds directory from the list and you're done.

        The above worked for me without a problem and, as I said, it's basically the same exact extension that's been fixed up and renamed to avoid confusion with the original.

  6. Kirk

    Thanks for that – hopefully there may be a day when I get to understand it all. At present , I am an Explorer, select from options ion front of you type-of-guy

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