Where to find Malcolm Coles, reviews, and tips on how to do things I couldn’t do.

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All my posts about: ‘Bad reviews’

Things I’ve give a bad review to …

Exposed: gaping holes in Facebook's procedure for reporting content 5

March 12, 2010
Picture 204

Facebook claims that it “maintains a robust reporting infrastructure that leverages our hundreds of millions of users to look for offensive or potentially dangerous content.”

But I’ve discovered that this is rubbish. Its methods for reporting inappropriate content are confusing, flawed or missing.

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You need a paper licence to link to the Royal Mail website 33

March 09, 2010

I can think of a way to save the Royal Mail some money – abolish their mad scheme for controlling who links to them – which involves being posted a paper licence to do so.
This is the saga of my trying to link to the Royal Mail site.

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eHow's advice - can you trust what it says? 1

March 09, 2010
eHow on Acai Berries

eHow says Acai Berries are wonderful – eat them. Although it also says they have no benefits.

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Google security problem: logging in to two accounts at once 2

March 04, 2010
Logged in as me

People are often complaining that they want to log into two Gmail accounts at once (the answer is to use two browsers, or Chrome in incognito mode). I seem to now be logged into two accounts at once – even though I don’t want to be – potentially exposing someone else’s details.

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If Fox News ever came to Britain, would it look like this? 0

February 24, 2010

An astonishing video from a hong kong news station where they use 3d avatars to show gordon brown attacking people and losing his temper …

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Ann Widdecombe undergoes odd makeover ... 4

February 22, 2010
Ann Widdecombe has a new hairdo

Ever done a search for Ann Widdecombe? No, me neither until today. There’s an interesting image shown, as you can see.

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PCC rules on Jan Moir: a strange and troubling ruling. 4

February 17, 2010

The Guardian reports that the PCC has rejected all the complaints (more than 25,000) about Jan Moir’s article about Stephen Gately.

As it’s late, I shall limit myself to comparing the reported ruling with the original article …

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The best comments on the readwriteweb / facebook login fiasco 2

February 14, 2010

You may have seen the news that ReadWriteWeb posted a story about facebook’s login. It appeared at the top of google for a search on “facebook login”, leading to, allegedly, 000s of people turning up and trying to log in to facebook.

Here are the best of the 1,500-odd comments, to save you the trouble of ploughing through them. After the first page or so, most of the “I want to log in” comments appear to be jokes – leading to the suspicion that after the first few genuinely confused people, this massive thread is, in fact, between people pretending to be idiots, and people claiming they can’t believe people are such idiots.

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SEO revenge: analytics style 3

February 04, 2010

Exacting revenge on a company that secretly added links to clients’ sites by targeting their analytics data …

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Church blogs: SEO and copywriting tips for the Pope 6

January 25, 2010
How the Pope

So, just as Search Engine Land has issued some SEO advice for Bill Gates’s blog, I thought I’d help the Pope out with some SEO and copywriting tips.

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Discovered: the west pole, somewhere in London 17

January 22, 2010
But Liverpool Street is east of Victoria

The only way is up. All roads lead to Rome. And just as you can only travel south from the north pole, apparently if you’re on the Circle Line, you can only travel east, regardless of which way you’re going.

As these pictures show, if you’re going from Victoria to Liverpool Street, you go in an easterly direction. Want to go the other way, from Liverpool Street to Victoria? Ah, then you’ll be needing to go in an, er, easterly direction.

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Express confuses followers and following. Ha ha ha! 8

January 17, 2010
Express thinks following means follower.

I pointed out this morning that the Express was talking utter rubbish claiming that the BBC was keeping up twitter accounts with 0 or 2 followers. The real numbers were in the 000s.

It appears the Express has confused following and follower numbers. Ha ha ha ha ha.

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Express looking at wrong Twitter accounts in BBC attack 6

January 17, 2010

Dear the Express. Please look at the right twitter a/cs when discussing the BBC’s followers. That is all.

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Google: We spell it colouring here 0

January 17, 2010
Search for colour, get color

Not content with its various other spelling problems, Google is now trying to make us spell colour the US way.

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Google's spelling problems are worse than we thought 16

January 15, 2010
whether vs weather

There have been various posts about how Google is returning results with the American spelling (search engine optimization) when people search for search engine optimisation.

But it’s got much bigger problems with spelling than just -ise vs ize.

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NewsNow vs the Times: I've decided I'm not sympathetic 3

January 09, 2010

I wrote yesterday that I was sympathetic towards NewsNow and its ongoing row with newspapers, especially the Times. I’ve now decided that I’m not.

NewsNow crawls the Times site in order to gather information for its paid service to businesses.

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Worst UK Serps yet? 6

January 05, 2010

If buying a used car, I wonder what checks you should do on the documentation? Don’t bother asking Google.

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Tanya Gold in the Guardian: advert #fail 0

January 05, 2010
Guardian

Tanya Gold has written some anti-iPhone drivel in the Guardian. I’m not going to link to it or its 17 questions. (Nothing to say? Why not ask lots of questions? Is that a good idea?)

But wait. What’s that in the advertising slots on the page? Oh, yes, an advert for the Guardian’s iPhone app.

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Replace suspension cost: more rubbish UK search results 3

January 04, 2010
Gives rubbish results

I needed to know how much it typically cost to replace the suspension on a car (not mine, fortunately). The results are another good example of why the UK search results are often rubbish.

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Pre Budget Report: Business Link wastes money on Google adverts 2

December 09, 2009
Pre budge report Google advert by Business Link

It’s the pre-budget report today. Business Link, the government’s advice service for businesses, is bidding on the term “pre budget report” in google’s adverts.

Maybe we could repair the budget deficit by wasting less money driving traffic to a site that doesn’t have any information on?

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