When installing Wordpress, there’s a little checkbox that says:

“Allow your blog to appear on search engines like Google and Technorati?”

Whilst in the past, I’ve generally remembered to check this box, but when quickly installing this blog after the original hosting company disappeared from the planet, I didn’t.

Naturally, I made sure to set up the robots.txt file correctly, and wrote the header myself when I created the theme. I hadn’t counted on Wordpress getting in the way though.Sneakily, WP had inserted a “noindex, nofollow” into the head of each page without my knowing, and as such Google and all the others were completely ignoring my site.

So. let this be a warning, and don’t let Wordpress kill your spider.

No related posts.

I love my Macs, because they make my job so much easier in many ways, and my phone for much the same reason, but this following is my list of things not to like about Apple, that most Mac Addicts will avoid mentioning, or sometimes even knowing about.

1. DRM

With the iPod came the M4P audio format – the format that will famously only work on your own iPod and copy of iTunes.  Digital Rights Management had been attempted before, and existed already, but Apple were the first to properly put it into place.  By combining the desirable design and usability of the iPod with a draconian DRM system, Apple not only annoyed a whole future of iPod users, but they cemented into place the idea that DRM was a good and practicable idea, making it acceptable for others to try, as with the famous Sony ‘Rootkit’ issue, where Sony effectively hacked peoples systems in the name of copyright protection.  To this day, iTunes Store working on MP4 is the single most annoying thing Apple ever did.

2. It’s Linux, it’s fine!

Apples Operating Systems, OS1 to OS9 were based on their own programming structure, but for OSX (ten) they switched to a UNIX or Linux like environment in order to make their OS easily adapted to the new wave of processors that were on their way.  When Apple switched to using Intel’s Core 2 Duo chips in 2006, they were well prepared, and everything was running on the most commercially viable desktop version of Linux (well Linux-ish).

At this point, they started boasting.  300,000 viruses on the PC, zero on Mac; MacOSX is the most secure; this kind of thing.  My point being twofold here:  1.  When you based your operating system on the work of others that they offered freely, you don’t then boast in such a smart arsey manner about it.  Millions of people were already using Linux.  2.  When your OS is pretty inherently secure, you don’t invite the world to try and break it.  MacOSX is the best demo of what is possible with Linux and other POSIX operating systems when it’s used in a desktop way, and to boast about the security of anything too much is a BAD idea, when this will catalyse people to find holes in it.  Which of course they did.  Apple’s biggest issue with MacOSX?  Stupid stuff like setting default consistent root passwords and the like.  The first MacOSX was full of holes, and yet Steve Jobs was over the moon with it.

Pride comes before a fall, so stop being so up you own about it all.

3. iPhone Elitism

You can buy a Blackberry and use it on any network you like, it might originally be locked, but it’s relatively cheap to unlock.  An unlocked iPhone from Apple costs around the same as mortgage.  When it was launched in America, it was on AT&T and it still is, when launched in the UK it was 02 and it still is.  To make the world’s most adaptable phone with an inherently developing software base that anyone can contribute software packages to (although I’ll get on to that in a moment!), you shouldn’t then ruin it by limiting it to one network, and refusing the freedom to choose who you do business with to customer is the very opposite of the adaptable genius technology that went into the iPhone in the first place.

Remember when Microsoft got into trouble for forcing Internet Explorer on people?  Now imagine that they had made Windows only capable of running IE, and refuse all other browsers, and you have a similar situation to having an iPhone that only works on one network.  At a good 500 a go for the original iPhone, it was ridiculous, and did Apple no good in my eyes.

4. iPhone Housebrick

When it was revealed that the iPhone could be unlocked by using some tools developed by a group of hackers, many people did this to allow them to use some of the new software that people were illicitly releasing and distributing underground or to allow them to use a different network.  Apple responded by releasing software that ‘bricked’ any iPhones that had been unlocked.

After people spent hundreds on their iPhones, Apple made them into decorative paperweights for anyone who’d tried to use them for functions that weren’t available yet.  That’s the worst bit about this.  In the main, Apple bricked phones that were using apps, because Apple hadn’t launched them yet.

In terms of another comparison like before.  This is like buying a bread maker that will stop working forever if you use anything but the approved brand of yeast.  Apple set up it’s iPhones to literally stop working permanently, which given they belonged to the people who had altered them, is a bit rich.  It’s abhorrent if I’m honest.

5. The “you’re not invited” app store

Having launched the App Store for iPhones, Apple put in place a list of rules for what the apps could do, but then also did some obviously questionable rejections of applications, including refusing Google Voice for not-entirely-clear reasons, and even more moronically, rejecting a dictionary for including definitions of some expletives.  One of the cited rejected words was ‘ass’.  Difficult to take Apple seriously after that.

6. I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC, and I’m a failed advertising executive

Now, I know that these adverts worked but the actual premise and idea of them was just annoying.  Encouraging a rivalry between two camps of users is not a good idea when you seek to convert people.  Not only did this ad campaign make Apple users seem like self-important cocks, it also served to make David Mitchell and Robert Webb, who starred in the UK version of the ads, seem like equally dispicable fools.

Worse than that it prompted the terrible response from Microsoft of the “I’m a PC you got a problem with that?” ads.  After these machoist rebukes by the Microsoft marketing lot, the market is divided into a stereotypical set of Guardian readers who wouldn’t say boo to a goose but would definitely enjoy making a youtube video edited on iMovie on their MAC if they did, and a set of blokey wankers who just love that Excel keeps asking if they want to restore a backup of last time it crashed.  It’s a challenge innit?  Fight that computer!

I’m now stuck in the middle.  I buy Mac hardware because it’s good, and it works really quite well.  Sure it’s expensive, but it also lasts a good while, so the cost is similar over time.  I use MacOS because it’s nicely written and runs all the software I use for my job, I also triple boot my machines to also run Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux so as to be able to test web products and software on all platforms.

I have an iPhone, but, for the reasons detailed above, it’s Jailbroken, I own it outright (it’s not a contract phone) and I operate it on two networks using almost entirely software from open sources.  I run skype with wreckess abandon, and have even installed my own command line utilities and stuff.

Yes, I’m a mac fanboy, but my mac runs everything, and it’s a bastardised mash of all the best bits I could find of Apple, Microsoft and everything else.

I am the bastard child of a Mac Fanboy.

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A word on online personas.  I’ve had a few obviously, having started using the internet before there was a web in around 1991.  Back in the days (not the ‘good old’ days please note!) of IRC, and alt. boards, NNTP and then the famous only-good-thing-that-Microsoft-ever-did MSN chat and of course Yahoo Chat, a handle was necessary.  These systems didn’t even allow enough space for your real, full name in most cases and besides, the outlook and purpose of the net was severely different anyway.

The Internet that was given to us by hackers of the ARPANet was a world of cliques, achievement-based acceptance and sharing of information only if you were willing to look hard, the net still embraced info for all, but it was kind of a thing you had to earn.  Just as with a web-help forum, you will need to show a little willingness to learn before you get any useful help, with the net in the old days, users relied heavily on link swapping and such, and there was no way you were just gonna give away links to people who you had no reason to respect.

Google, Web and Web 2.0 changed this.  I single out Google because it is the single largest and most successful processor and sharer of information ever.  Bar none.  Google started collecting links and allow people to search them.  They now collect photos, links, books, scholarly papers, useful technologies, navigation info, sattelite photos and for some even GPS tracking of individual people.  The information shared by Google is potentially worth trillions of dollars (international currency innit) and yet they have negated this cost for all but the stupid.

With this open spirit of the web came the open spirit of sharing aspects of identity.  Finding friends from school is easy, as is tracking down potential partners, current friends or whatever.  To at this time be still using an internet handle is stupid and outdated.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not calling for totally open ID information, simply pointing out that in today’s web with the prolific spreading of information what it is, no matter what you call yourself, a potential criminal (or even smart-arse demonstrator like me) can probably tell you all about yourself regardless of what you call yourself. Whether your facebook name is Brain Green or BG ‘Greenster’, I can almost certainly track down a load of info about you.  Internet security is not about hiding your name, it’s about hiding your bank details, phone number etc, and that is no harder/easier than it ever was.

Online, I am Owen C. Jones.  I have been for a good few years, if I do anything I want a nickname for, I call myself Seajones.  The nickname isn’t to hide my identity (Google it, you’ll see how effective that is! The first link is not me, but the second is my audio boo and the third is my twitter).  If I had a different name, you’d be able to search that, and find some forum that bore to the world my email address, and searching that would find you my website or something else that would tell you who I was.

Online personas just don’t work.  Pick one and try to find out who it is.  People like talking about themselves and so even those with a carefully thought out online handle will have chatted away about themselves Narcissus-stylee at some point.  If you can find nothing, they probably just don’t use the net much.  Now stop and think, if everyone on the net could find your name, what difference would that make to you?

Online, it’s possible to find my Name, a couple of my addresses, phone numbers, emails etc. and proudly so.  You can’t find out my bank account number, or anything that it’s important you don’t find out but the rest is there proudly attributing itself to me.  And rightly so, I don’t want someone saying to me one day “that wasn’t you, that was gobbledegeek12!”.

Consider people who tradtionally have handles, the most obvious one is hackers.  Prolific hackers include who?  Kevin Mitnick?  Not much of a handle is it?  The only hackers who routinely use handles are those who routinely break the law and then take credit for it.  Taking credit for illegal activity with your own name would be stupid, and so is not taking credit for your existence online by calling yourself by some pseudonym.

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