Banned from Google and back on in 2 days

I have had a roller coaster ride experience with Google. Spanning from utter reverence to complete disdain, to fear, concern, joy, revolution and many more experiences that all have left me with an impression of Google here or there.My most recent experience of Google was a two day festival of emotion and reactions.Many people wont have a clue what I am referring to here but I recently saw a serious drop in traffic on SA Rocks:Those red arrows...never good. I freaked out. Emailed people, tried removing things I thought might be problematic. And then Mr Jason Bagley tweeted the answer in geniously casual fashion: "check out Google Webmaster tools - might be able to spot something happening in there."Yes, the answer was there. SA Rocks has a problem. I am not going go in to much detail other than to say that thousands of invisible links are injected in to the SA Rocks template occasionally. I didn't even remember this issue and consider it a problem. But it was. Google had booted me off their indexes. Not. Good.The drop in traffic is the result of having every page, every search term, every SEO effort that you have put in for over two years vanish off Google. Gone, kaput, over. Again, I freaked out. This is where the angst, anger, frustration and a mass of other emotions began to flow. I hated Google. I hated the fact they could almost literally grind my hard work to halt by simply removing me from their service. It's a shocker. And they are strict. If you haven't made use of them yet, I suggest you head over and get on top of Google's webmaster tools. They will prove to be invaluable should you one day be booted off Google.I received a message in my Webmaster Dashboard alerting me to the fact that I had been removed from Google. I then Googled SA Rocks, South Africa Rocks, Rocking, SA or anything that I knew would pop SA Rocks on to the top of the ranking somewhere on Google. Nada. Nothing. Niks nie. Kak myself.But it wasn't too bad.I was alerted to the problem by the helpful text-person talking to me on my dashboard. I figured it out, invisible links, google, spam, bam. Went to the origin of the links, manually removed them and then applied to be reevaluated by Google. This is an absolute must if you ever want to be visible on the known web again.Then I honestly thought that I would be waiting for weeks. But I didn't I waited for two days and was reinstated to the Google Indexes. Thank goodness. Can't tell you how glad I am that this is over.Be sure to check up on your website, Google yourself, your websites and your profiles.

Vision - small companies vs big corporates

I've decided that for my age, experience, ambition and work-related desires small companies are for me. Larger companies verging on corporates are just too vague, machine-like and dehumanising.

Big companies and why I dislike them

I have freelanced for some large newspapers, worked at large broadcasters, travelled to some big companies around the world and worked for a major publisher and to be honest, they aren't for me, not at my age and not for the things that I want to achieve.Large companies are like large and impersonal schooling environments. Each employee, just like each student, is a number amongst a million others. I hate this because I make a point of standing out and it is hard to pro actively stand out on a large corporate that has rules, rulers, regulations, hierarchies and bureaucracies.Standing out is not the issue, the issue is how pro actively you do it. Large corporates, in my experience, don't like people to stand out. They like people to put their heads down, make little noise and do their job that is in line with the company's vision. The problem is, many of the people keeping the company afloat don't know or understand the overarching company vision.This is problematic for me because I am not the type of person who is dedicated to "Do as I say not as I do." I like to do as I comprehend. So if I am able to comprehend why you want me to do something I will do it until it is the best damn thing in the world. I will work weekends, nights and holidays to ensure that the task at hand is complete. I'll do this because I can see where my little job fits in to the company and the vision that I am apart of.It often happens that in a large corporate that people don't feel a part of a team or vision, they feel as if they are being forced to be part of a goal that they will probably never see come to fruition. They are only there because the company is paying them to be there and they need the salary. This, in my opinion is never a good idea and is always an avoidable outcome.

Small, established companies and why I love them

Small companies that are well established are the closest that you will get to owning your own company and running around with that much freedom. The individual is becoming a threat to the corporate and that is a great feeling.The likes of Google and Facebook possibly taking on Microsoft in the future is a great example of this. Two people starting small companies, becoming big companies and taking on large corporates. That is inspiring and that is a main reason to get involved in a small company and feel like you can change the world, instead of wanting to take over the world.Small companies have the ability to grow a person and mould you in to the type of skilled specialist that you want to be. You have the ability to take on serious responsibility and proper tasks. You also have access to your superiors. There are no glass doors or big offices and PA's to get past and make bookings with. You simply walk in to your boss's office (don't forget to knock). This sort of access to experience and knowledge is priceless when coupled with leadership and control of your own projects.Over and above the positives there are some positive downsides to working in a small company. You have to work. If you don't there is no one else to blame. You can't simply sit at your computer, in your cubicle shifting papers or saving documents that don't exist. If you don't reach your targets or achieve the goals set for you there is no one else to blame.There is also massive potential to grow the company as you grow. You can start on your own, running "your own division" that consists of you and your e-mail and take that division to soaring heights. If you are up to the job of course. If you aren't up to the task (and this is the downside) everyone in the company will know it, and the powers that be will get rid of you. It's that simple. Succeed and flourish, fail and leave. There is often no room for a middle ground when it comes to employees at a small company. Every employee is an annual salary that if not profitable needs to be used somewhere else.

The end result

It's fairly simple to write down, but probably more difficult in practice: Start niche, small, nurturing and move on to the big fish when you can catch the small ones. Going straight in to a large corporate can make or break you early on in your career. It might just end your will to thrive and your ambitious and innovative hopes. You may end up crushed if you enter the corporate world of big business and don't cut it. So why not change the world with a small company that you fit in to and when you have the skills, desire and experience move to a large company that can break your bank by paying you the salary you think you deserve.The other option is move up through the ranks of the small company you start at and blow them away with your youthful exuberance. By the time you are ready to move up you will have the knowledge you need, the experience you wanted and the skills that everyone else thinks you should have. Then you can really begin to plot your take over of the world (all the while changing it for the better).The world has become a more entrepreneurial place, it seems like the world is smaller and anyone has become a threat to everyone, anywhere in the world. For this reason I say join a small company or start your own. You might not succeed immediately but you will learn more, faster.

How much Gmail space have you used?

I know that the space available to Gmail users continuously grows. But I am extremely interested to know how much space you have used on your gmail account right now?I took this screenshot at 11:05am on Sunday 25th May, 2008.

Answerit vs Google vs Wikipedia & trustworthy sources

Strange. I honestly did not believe that Answerit would manage to take on the mighty Google with a question that I posed.Yet I stand corrected. Answer it might not have provided me with the perfect answer at all but I was able to narrow the answers significantly. While on Google I was wading through ten tons of word related answers to a question taken out of context. One. word. at. a. time.So this was my test question: What is the largest website in the world?It's broad so the answers could vary, specific enough to warrant a genuine answer, and relevant to the people who might be interested in the topic. So I did help the service out a bit. It was a fairly easy question to garner some answers.People took to it like wildfire (relatively of course). In 3 hours I received 9 answers. That's good odds I think. Of those nine there were some relevant answers, some ill-researched ones and a question or two posed back to me. Very community orientated.When I asked Google the same question, the answers were fairly dismal. Nothing that was relevant or helpful.This is only one question, one example and very, very early in the life of Answerit. It is not a search engine, don't misunderstand me, but let's be honest, we all use Google as an question/answer service.I have some reservations that can only be proven in time. One of these is the Wikipedia phenomenon. This is basically a temporary version of what Wikipedia is or has become. You can pose a question, on a topic and have a host of people (in the future) rally to find you the right answer. Wikipedia is permanent and it appears to me that questions posed on Answerit are available for a week. So it's much more of a quick fix answer service. Nice.But how can we actually trust these answers? Are sources sighted? Are the people answering community members or hired by 24.com? Are they average joes who sit in their dark basements taking pleasure out of giving me incorrect information? You laugh, but those people exist and they are screwing with your mind right now.So basically, I like the service, I think it needs a bigger community and I think it might need to explain a bit better why we should trust the answers it provides.

Googlethu lives

I was in CT this weekend. In all the over-Africanised paraphenalia that I stumbled across there was one gem for a geek in CT... Googlethu. Laugh It Off does it again: