LookIt

When domain names aren't enough

A recent trend in the Japanese web advertising market may presage changes that could come to the Western world. As described here, some advertising in Japan now includes a picture of a filled-in browser search box instead of a domain name. The idea is that an advertiser can buy top-of-page advertising at the main search engines for various terms and then suggest to people reading their print ads to use those terms to search.

This strategy takes advantage of the simple fact that most people simply type into the search bar instead of the address bar. If you can control what they see on the first page of the search results, you have a good chance of getting them to your web site.

Of course, this strategy also has some huge downsides. First, you need to advertise on al the popular search sites for the duration of your "search for this" ads. Even if you do that, a canny competitor might buy ads for the same words in order to siphon off your viewers. Unless you are a huge advertiser, you cannot control the top of enough of the search engines to make this a sure-fire strategy. Sticking to good old domain names is safer, although it has the cost of knowing that people typically type them in the wrong place in their browsers.

The latest in rebate games

I recently ordered some Symantec software that included a rebate, for which I applied. I got the rebate today, but it wasn't a check. It was a debit card. The letter says "Due to recent customer surveys, we have decided to offer you this rebate method so you can instantly use your reward without having to make a trip to the bank."

I strongly suspect they are lying about the survey. I'm sure they could find a highly-tilted survey from a bank card company that says something like this, but the chance that the majority of real users said that in a survey is near zero. The real reason they did this instead of a check is that because of the increased hassle, it is less likely that I will use the card, or use all of the money on it before they start subtracting $3/month.

Which way does your accent go?

I live on Segré Place. That is the current legal name of the street. It used to be "Segri", and that still shows up in a zillion postal databases, but Santa Cruz changed it more than five years ago, partially due to requests from residents like me.

The problem is that the street is named after Emilio Segrè. Note that his name is spelled with è, not é. I strongly suspect the original lame spelling (with an "i") was because some city employee decided that having accents on street names was too difficult; never mind the fact that we were spelling the name of a living person wrong. (Imagine having a street named after you and they not only lose your diacritic, they change the letter. At least they probably spelled it correctly on his Nobel prize.)

As for the new misspelling, I suspect that some city employee (hopefully not the same one who was there 30 years later!) said either "I have never seen è; they must have meant the normal way, é" or "Oh, no one will be able to type è on their PC, so we should just use é". So, they got it closer to the right spelling of this person's name, but still muffed it. Because of this, I spell it "Segré" when I write it out; if I spelled it like Emilio did, some postal person would probably decide not to deliver my mail.

Yes, I care about internationalization of written text. It is galling to live on a street that is misspelled, particularly when they had the opportunity to get it right.

Those of us in the security field would agree:

Security needs swell federal work force. This is why it is good to have copy editors check the work of headline writers.