Experience Director. Product Guy. Sports Dork.
Thoughts on things happening on and around the Internet and the good ol’ World Wide Web.
Bing is down and taking DuckDuckGo and ChatGPT with it.
Ran into DuckDuckGo issues this morning and I find it interesting that they they don’t mention Bing or Microsoft at all. I guess they’d rather accept the blame than remind people they don’t have their own search index?
Been enjoying using Snipd lately for capturing podcast notes/highlights.
Anytime there’s something I want to capture I mark it and their AI generates transcripts & highlights. Those highlights are then automatically exported to my PKM (Obsidian) making it easy find later for future reference. Worth checking out if you listen to a lot of podcasts and especially if you’re already using some sort of system to save the highlights to.
Check out this example of a snippet from a recent episode of Cal Newport’s podcast:
I still use Overcast for all my tech/sports/entertainment podcast listening, but having a separate app for my business/design/productivity shows that helps me remember what I learn has been really useful.
In a long line of stupid decisions, this may the worst one yet: Twitter is being rebranded as X
There’s so many obvious reasons this is dumb that it’s hard to believe even Elon would make this blunder. Think of all the places you see the iconic Twitter bird and how easily and quickly recognizable it is to even the least online person. News/sports lower thirds. Restaurant menus. Business cards.
What a disaster.
I’ve been using DuckDuckGo on Mac and iOS for years at this point (primarily just to NOT use Google and give them literally all my life’s data) and generally for 90% searches it’s been fine and it’s easy to hop to Google when it’s not.
But… I accidentally searched for “tv” just now and the first result was TV Guide. Compare DDG to the Google results in my screenshots:
In what decade does a person searching for TV mean they want TV listings from TV Guide?
Maybe it’s time to relent and go back to Google or find a alternative to my Google alternative.
“We have enhanced your privacy by sharing your browsing history and behavior with random websites. You’re welcome.”
(via @rmondello@hachyderm.io)
In incredibly sad news Dooce, aka Heather Armstrong, passed away yesterday at only the age of 47.
I’ve been reading her blog, marveling at her writing and photography, and following along with her life and family and struggles off and on since at least 2004. I had just started reading her site again and resubscribed to her RSS in the last couple of weeks. I was so happy to read recently that she had found sobriety but unfortunately it seems like that didn’t mean the end of all the things she struggling with.
My thoughts are with her girls and other loved ones. Please hug your own loved ones extra tonight and if you or someone you love is struggling please don’t hesitate to reach out and find the support you need.
I’m not sure if it’s a indication on the state of the podcast ad market as a whole or just of iHeart’s always awful ads, but it sure is annoying to hear the same 2 minute ad for a dumbass “smart” oven 3 times during a 12 minute episode of a podcast.
And even worse when listening to the The Ticket Top 10, to hear it back to back because the next episode is another episode of the same 8-12 minute podcast.
I mean I guess it’s less annoying than hearing all their ads for other iHeart shows that always sound SO AWFUL. I won’t name names that aren’t huge evil media conglomerates, but pretty much every podcast ad I’ve ever heard on any podcast network (other than RelayFM) always sounds like the absolute dumbest thing ever. Is that what ads for podcasts I like sound like to normal humans?
My Tweetbot subscription ended so I “received fewer issues than anticipated”? Issues?
Did Apple copy & paste this email from the old Newsstand days?
I actually thought my sub was already expired otherwise I would have opted against the refund, but I’m looking forward to giving the Tapbots team a lot more than $.36 for the fantastic Ivory over the next few years.
This is super clever. Tumblr has added a new way to advertise with them that they’re calling the Sponsored Tumblr Dot. Essentially they’re letting brands pay to replace the period in Tumblr’s logo with their own brand. The first example is from Starbucks:
I love that the cup is an animated gif. Very nice touch.