christopherowen.id.au

Here’s an email I just sent to the Sydney Morning Herald online:

Hi,

Just wanted to let you know that the insidious, annoying, inline pop over ads that feature on the front page of smh.com.au have now driven me from using your site any more. I’d much rather use news.com.au and abc.net.au/news rather than putting up with the frustration and distraction of your needlessly obstrusive advertisements.

When will the online media learn that frustrating users does not engender their goodwill toward you or your sponsors and in fact has quite the opposite effect?

Sincerely,
Chris

I just don’t understand the tactic. If this type of thing was possible with printed newspapers would they do it and would their readership put up with it?

While a fellow Atlassian recently lamented losing his number one position on Google after five years on top, for the first time ever, I now appear as the number one hit for “Christopher Owen“.

While I have been the number one hit on google.com.au for some time, on google.com I had been battling the awesome power of the actor Chris Owen (the Sherminator of American Pie fame) and, even more embarrassing, the previous number one hit: a page on mugshots.org listed under the “Sex Offender” category. Hurrah!

I do actually encourage readers to check out the mugshot and verify that indeed the photograph looks nothing like me… thankfully. I won’t link to the pages in question for fear of losing this hallowed status.