Tag Archives: Google

Ranking on Google is Not Enough. What About Ranking on Generative AI?

The vast majority of people who visit the Bredemarket website arrive via Google. Others arrive via Bing, DuckDuckGo, Facebook, Feedspot, Instagram, LinkedIn, Meltwater, Twitter (WordPress’ Stats page didn’t get the memo from Elon), WordPress itself, and other sites.

Not on the list yet: TikTok, the search engine that is reputed to rival Google. I need to work on optimizing my TikTok content to drive viewers to the website. (And yes, TikTok is relevant, since there are Gen Z marketers who need services from a B2B content marketing expert.)

But TikTok is not the only site that is missing in Bredemarket’s list of visitor sources. Let’s look at an example.

Who is recommending Neil Patel Digital?

Neil Patel just shared a post in which he talked about a prospect who approached him. The prospect already knew about Patel, but added this comment:

(interestingly, I asked ChatGPT to search for good DM agencies for me and your agency is on the list haha)

From https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-rank-your-website-on-chatgpt/

Yes, people are using ChatGPT and other generative AI tools as search engines.

Patel was curious about why ChatGPT recommended Neil Patel Digital, and he started to investigate. The details are in his post, but here are the two main takeaways that I found:

  1. I hope you’re not shocked by this statement, but sometimes ChatGPT yields inaccurate results. One example: Patel asked ChatGPT to recommend ad agencies who could provide SEO help, and received two inaccurate recommendations. “2 of the top 4 results… Moz and HubSpot are software companies and not ad agencies. They don’t really offer services.”
  2. After a lot of experimentation and number-crunching, Patel identified six specific factors that correlated with ChatGPT’s recommendation of a particular brand: brand mentions, reviews, relevancy, age, recommendations, and authority.
From https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-rank-your-website-on-chatgpt/

For a detailed discussion of these six factors, see Patel’s post. Let’s look at one of those factors, brand mentions, that has a relatively high (0.87) correlation.

How do you increase brand mentions?

So, how do you increase brand mentions across the web to rank higher on ChatGPT, other generative AI platforms, and more traditional search engines like TikTok?

By mentioning your brand. (And getting relevant authorities to mention your brand also.)

Yes, this is a Captain Obvious statement, but it’s important. There are at least ten places where you can mention your brand.

  • Articles
  • Blog Posts
  • Briefs/Data/Literature Sheets
  • Case Studies
  • Proposals
  • Scientific Book Chapters
  • Smartphone Application Content
  • Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, TikTok, Twitter)
  • Web Page Content
  • White Papers and E-Books

If this list appears familiar to some of you, that’s intentional. It’s a list of the 10 types of external content that I have created for others, and can create for you. See my post “The 22 (or more) Types of Content That Product Marketers Create” for more information on both external and internal content types that I can create.

Because the more you look at my brand content, the more my brand will be recognized by generative AI.

I was curious myself, so I tested this. ChatGPT was at capacity when I wrote this post, so I asked Bard “Who is the biometric content marketing expert?”

From Google Bard, September 26, 2023.

John Bredehoft, of the company Bredemarket, is a biometric content marketing expert. He has over 25 years of experience in biometrics and other identity modalities, including friction ridge, face, iris, voice, and DNA. He has created content for Bredemarket clients and his previous employers, including case studies, white papers, and blog posts, that have positioned his firms as biometric authorities.

Bredehoft’s expertise in biometrics and content marketing allows him to create content that is both informative and engaging for his target audience. He understands the issues behind biometric technologies and can explain them in a clear and concise way. He also knows how to write content that is optimized for search engines and social media.

If you are looking for a biometric content marketing expert, John Bredehoft is a great choice. He has the knowledge and experience to create content that will help you achieve your marketing goals.

From Google Bard, September 26, 2023.

Now I don’t know yet if ChatGPT will yield a similar response, and if not I have some more work to do.

But enough about me.

How can you increase YOUR brand mentions?

Let’s talk about you, your content marketing needs, and your need for prospects and customers to know about your brand.

Whether you want to rank in a traditional search engine or generative AI, the key is the creation of content. When you work with Bredemarket as your content creation partner, we start by discussing your goals and other critical information that is important to you. We do this before I start writing your blog post, social media post, case study, white paper, or other piece of content (car show posters, anyone?).

Let’s hold that (complimentary) discussion to see if Bredemarket’s services are a fit for your needs. Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket. Be sure to fill out the information form so I can best help you. 

From calendly.com/bredemarket. 

Alternatively:

Bredemarket logo

Customs Becoming Artificial, Thanks to Pangiam

I missed this story when it came out in May.

MCLEAN, Va., May 2, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — The West Virginia University Research Corporation (WVURC) and Pangiam, a leading trade a travel technology company, announced a new partnership to conduct research and develop new, cutting-edge artificial intelligence, machine learning and computer vision technologies for commercial and government applications.

Pangiam and WVURC will work together to launch Pangiam Bridge, a cutting-edge artificial intelligence driven solution for customs authorities worldwide. Pangiam Bridge will allow customs officials to automate portions of the customs inspection process for baggage and cargo. Jim McLaughlin, Pangiam Chief Technology Officer, said, “we are excited to grow Pangiam’s artificial intelligence work in partnership with West Virginia University and continued development of Pangiam Bridge for customs authorities.”

From https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pangiam-and-west-virginia-university-research-corporation-partner-to-develop-artificial-intelligence-and-computer-vision-technology-301813334.html

Pangiam Bridge is obviously not ready for prime time yet; it’s not even mentioned on Pangiam’s Products and Services page, nor is it mentioned anywhere else on Pangiam’s website. The only mention of Pangiam Bridge is in this press release, which isn’t surprising considering that this is a research effort. But if the research holds out, then many of the manual processes used by customs agents may be significantly reduced or eliminated entirely.

U.S. CBP Office of Field Operations agent checking the authenticity of a travel document at an international airport using a stereo microscope. By James R. Tourtellotte, CBP, U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security – Original link: http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/photo_gallery/afc/inspectors_airports/air_05.xml (file Air_5fphoto_5f05.jpg) Now available at: link, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2867071

And this isn’t Pangiam’s only artificial intelligence research effort.

Project DARTMOUTH is the collaboration between Pangiam and Google Cloud, named after the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence. Project DARTMOUTH utilizes AI and pattern analysis technologies to digest and analyze vast amounts of data in real-time and identify potential prohibited items in carry-on baggage, checked baggage, airline cargo and shipments.

From https://pangiam.com/projectdartmouth/

(Bredemarket email, meeting, contact, subscribe)

Is Bredemarket on Your Favorite Social Platform?

(This is outdated. See the May 15, 2024 update.)

If you’re starting out in business, you’ve probably heard the advice that as your business branches out into social platforms, you shouldn’t try to do everything at once. Instead you should make sure that your business offering is really solid on one platform before branching out into others.

Yes, I’ve been naughty again and didn’t listen to the expert advice.

One reason is because of my curiosity. With one notable exception, I’m intrigued with the idea of trying out a new platform and figuring out how it works. Audio? Video? Let’s try it.

And as long as I’m trying it out, why not create a Bredemarket account and put content out there?

So there’s a reasonably good chance that Bredemarket is already on one of your favorite social platforms. If so, why not subscribe to Bredemarket so that you’ll get my content?

Here’s a list of Bredemarket’s text, image, audio, and video accounts on various social platforms. Be sure to follow or subscribe!

  • Apple Podcasts (link here)
  • Google Podcasts (link here)
From https://www.tiktok.com/@bredemarket

Marketing Ontario, California businesses through blog posts

I just added a page to the Bredemarket website entitled “Blog posts for your Ontario, California business.”

Now that’s Ontario California, not Ontario Canada.

From https://cboardinggroup.com/10-funny-things-about-ontario-airport/.

Let me quote a little bit from the page I just created.

For example, let’s say that an Ontario, California content marketing expert wants to target businesses who need blog post writing services. This expert will then create a web page, and possibly a companion blog post, to attract those businesses.

From https://bredemarket.com/iew-ontario-blog/

You’re now reading the “companion blog post.”

Why did I write the companion blog post?

If I’m going to talk about blogging, I need a blog post to go with it, right?

The other purpose of this blog post is to direct you to the web page. I don’t want to repeat the exact same copy from the web page on the blog post, or the search engines will not like me. And you may not like me either.

If you’re an Ontario, California business who is looking for an effective method to promote your firm, and a description of how to move forward, go to the Bredemarket web page “Blog posts for your Ontario, California business.”

Why should I read the web page?

Needless to say, you only need to read the web page if you’re an Ontario, California business. Well, I guess Fontana businesses can read it also; just ignore the video with Mayor Leon and substitute a video with Mayor Warrent instead.

The web page addresses the following topics, among others:

  • Why do you want to use content marketing to promote your Ontario business? (The web page also addresses inbound marketing.)
  • Why do you want to use blog posts to promote your Ontario business?
  • How can an Ontario business create a blog post?
  • How can an Ontario business find a blog post writer?
  • What should you do next?

If you’re asking yourself these questions, go here to find the answers.

And what about social media?

Perhaps you’re reading this blog post because you learned about it on social media.

The web page includes a paragraph on promoting blog posts via social media, if that interests you.

By Jason Howie – https://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonahowie/8583949219, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57309554

Yes, that’s an old picture. Although some websites still reference Google+ today.

Iterating Bredemarket’s first pillar page

I’ve spent this afternoon posting messages to selected Facebook and LinkedIn pages, showcase pages, and groups talking about updates to blog content (and in one case a LinkedIn article).

If you look at the updated blog posts/LinkedIn article in question, you’ll see that they now start with this statement:

(Updated 4/16/2022 with additional benefits information.)

Then, when you scroll down the post/article to a benefits discussion, you’ll see this insertion:

(4/16/2022: For additional information on benefits, click here.)

This post explains

  • why I made those updates to the blog posts and the LinkedIn article,
  • how I added a new page to the Bredemarket website, and
  • what I still need to do to that new page to make it better.

(Why, how, what: get it?)

Why I updated selected blog posts and a LinkedIn article

I talk a lot about benefits on the Bredemarket blog, but all of the conversation is in disparate, not-really-connected areas. I do have a page that talks about the benefits of benefits for identity firms, but that doesn’t really address the benefits of benefits for non-identity firms.

Then, while I was taking a HubSpot Academy course, I found a possible way to create a central page for discussion of benefits.

A pillar page.

By Rama – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.0 fr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=638837

According to HubSpot, the need for pillar pages arose because of changes to Google’s search model.

Google is helping searchers find the most accurate information possible — even if it isn’t exactly what they searched for. For example, if you searched for “running shoes,” Google will now also serve you up results for “sneakers.” This means that bloggers and SEOs need to get even better at creating and organizing content that addresses any gaps that could prevent a searcher from getting the information they need from your site.

From https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-a-pillar-page

What does this mean?

Now, your site needs to be organized according to different main topics, with blog posts about specific, conversational long-tail keywords hyperlinked to one another, to address as many searches as possible about a particular subject. Enter the topic cluster model.

From https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-a-pillar-page

How I added a new page to the Bredemarket website

So I created the page https://bredemarket.com/benefits/ to work as the hub of a wheel of content regarding benefits.

But not all the content that I’ve written on benefits.

I’ve curated links to selected content (both on the Bredemarket website and on LinkedIn), provided a brief quote from the content in question, then provided a link to the original content for more information.

From https://bredemarket.com/benefits/

After that, I went out to each of the “spokes” in the topic cluster and linked back to the new content hub on benefits as illustrated above.

From https://bredemarket.com/2021/06/18/case-study-example-that-i-didnt-write/

What I still need to do to the new page on the Bredemarket website

At this point the people who REALLY know search engine optimization are shaking their heads.

“John,” they are saying to me, “that’s not a pillar page!”

They’re right.

It’s just a very crude beginning to a pillar page. It lacks two things.

Multi-layered keywords associated with the “hub” topic

First, simply linking selected “benefits” pages together in a wheel is extremely simplistic. Remember how search engines can now search for both “running shoes” and “sneakers”? I need to optimize my wheel so that it drives traffic that isn’t tied to the specific word “benefits.”

Choose the broad topics you want to rank for, then create content based on specific keywords related to that topic that all link to each other, to create broader search engine authority….

For example, you might write a pillar page about content marketing — a broad topic — and a piece of cluster content about blogging — a more specific keyword within the topic. 

From https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-a-pillar-page

A logical organization of the pillar page

Second, a pillar page needs better organization. Rather than having what I have now-a brief definition of benefits, followed by a reverse chronological list of posts (and the article) on benefits, the pillar page needs to address benefits, and its relevant subtopics, in an orderly fashion.

Pillar pages are longer than typical blog posts — because they cover all aspects of the topic you’re trying to rank for — but they aren’t as in-depth. That’s what cluster content is for. You want to create a pillar page that answers questions about a particular topic, but leaves room for more detail in subsequent, related cluster content.

From https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-a-pillar-page
Example of a REAL pillar page. From https://www.hubspot.com/instagram-marketing

HubSpot directs its readers to HubSpot’s own pillar page on Instagram marketing. Frankly I don’t know that I’d want to write something that long, but you can see how the pillar page provides an organized overview of Instagram marketing, rather than just a reverse chronological list of content that addresses the pillar topic.

More to come

So my pillar page on benefits certainly has room to grow.

But at least I’ve made an agile start with a first iteration, and the search engines can start processing the existing cluster of links as I make improvements.

And as I create additional pillar pages. I already have an idea for a second one.

SEO NVI, HRF VVI (Search engine optimization not very important, human readable format very very important)

I’ve been trying to add more local (Inland Empire West) content to the Bredemarket blog. Obviously I’m attempting to promote Bredemarket’s services to local businesses by writing local-area content such as these two recent posts centered on Upland.

City Hall and Public Library, Upland, California.
By Rockero at English Wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3949535

Old SEO

Back in the old days, I might have done optimized for my local audience by going to the bottom of relevant pages on the Bredemarket website and inserting hundreds of words in very small gray text that cite every single Inland Empire West community (yes, even Narod) and every single service that Bredemarket provides. In the old days, the rationale was that this additional text would positively affect search engine optimization (SEO), so that the next person searching for “case study writer in Narod, California” would automatically go to the page with all of the small gray text.

Of course, that doesn’t work any more, because Google penalizes keyword stuffers or content stuffers who make these unnatural pages.

More modern SEO

I use more acceptable forms of SEO. For example, I’ve devoted significant effort to make sure that the two phrases biometric content marketing expert and biometric proposal writing expert direct searchers to the relevant pages on this website. (Provided, of course, that someone is actually searching for a biometric content marketing expert or a biometric proposal writing expert.)

First two results (as of April 1, 2022) of a DuckDuckGo search for biometric content marketing expert. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=biometric+content+marketing+expert&t=h_&ia=web

I believe SEO is important.

However, SEO is not very important (NVI).

(As an aside, I commonly distinguish between “important” stuff and “very important” stuff. And you also have to distinguish between importance and urgency; see the Eisenhower matrix.)

What is very very important (VVI)? Human readable format (HRF).

The two audiences: the bots, and the real humans

And SEO-optimized content may differ from human-readable content because of their different audiences. SEO text is written for machines, not people. In extreme cases, SEO-optimized text is unreadable by humans, and human readable format cannot be interepreted by machine-based web crawlers.

Machine readable and human readable formats. Olav Ten Bosch. From https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Machine-readable-and-human-readable-formats_fig1_327385570

Here’s a comparison:

Machine readableHuman readable
Easily parsed and processed by systemsEasily read by humans
Hard for humans to readHard for machines to read
Adheres to FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable)Communicates with humans via visual presentation
Example: machines have problems reading tables like this oneExample: humans can easily read and understand tables like this one
Google’s gonna hate me for putting this table into a post, but real human beings won’t. See https://control.com/technical-articles/machine-readable-vs-human-readable-data/ for a fuller explanation of the differences between machine-readable and human-readable data.

Here’s another example of how SEO-optimized text and human readable format sometimes diverge. I mentioned this example in a recent LinkedIn article:

I recently updated my proposal resume to include the headline “John E. Bredehoft, CF APMP,” under the assumption that this headline would impress proposal professionals. However, when I ran my resume through an ATS (applicant tracking system) simulator, it was unable to find my name because of its non-standard format. Because of this, there was a chance that a proposal professional would never even see my resume. I adjusted accordingly.

From https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happens-when-proposal-evaluators-longer-human-bredemarket/
By Humanrobo – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18947366

In this case, I had to cater to two separate audiences:

  • The computerized applicant tracking systems that read resumes and decide which resumes to pass on to human beings.
  • The human beings that read resumes, often after the applicant tracking systems have pre-selected the resumes to read.

I was able to come up with a workaround to satisfy both audiences, therefore ensuring that (a) my resume would get past the ATS, and (b) a human that viewed my ATS-approved resume could actually read it. It’s a clumsy workaround, but it works.

While that particular example is complicated by the gate-keeping ubiquity of applicant tracking systems in the employment industry, it is not unique. All industries are depending more on artificial intelligence, and almost all human beings are turning to Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and the like to find stuff.

These are our users (who use search engines for EVERYTHING)

There’s an old example of how dependent we are on search engines. In a famous case over a decade ago, people used the Google search engine to get to the Facebook login page, and were confused when a non-Facebook page made its way to the top of the search results. The original article that prompted the brouhaha is gone, but Jake Kuramoto’s summary still remains. TL;DR:

ReadWriteWeb posted “Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login“.

Google indexed the post.

The post became the top result for the keywords “facebook login”.

People using Google to find their way to Facebook were misdirected to the post.

The comments on the post were littered with unhappy people, unable to login to Facebook.

There are more than 300 comments on this post, the majority of them from confused Facebook users.

Despite the fact that RWW added bold text to the post, directing users to Facebook, and the fact that the post is no longer the top result for “facebook login”, people continue to arrive there by accident, looking for Facebook.

From http://theappslab.com/2010/02/11/these-are-our-users/

What if we can only optimize for one of the two audiences?

So people who create content have to simultaneously satisfy the bots and the real people. But what if they couldn’t satisfy both? If you were forced to choose between optimizing text for a search engine, and optimizing text for a human, what would you choose?

If it were up to Google and the other search engine providers, you wouldn’t have to choose. The ultimate goal of Google Search (and other searches) is to mimic the way that real humans would search for things if they had all of the computing resources that the search engine providers have. It’s only because of our imperfect application of artificial intelligence that there is any divergence between search engines and human searches.

But until AI gets a lot better than it is now, there will continue to be a divergence.

And if I ever had to choose, I’d write for humans rather than bots.

By Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-13018 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5480820

After all, a human is going to have to read the text at some point. Might as well make the human comfortable, since the bots aren’t making final binding decisions. (Yet.)

I want you to question my Frequently Asked Questions

During the lunch hour of Thursday, March 17, AmPac Business Capital hosted a webinar to help small businesses make the most of Google features. (Note: if you missed this one-hour session, there will be a four-week session offered in May.)

Today’s session was led by Israel Serna, a speaker and trainer for Grow with Google. Serna offered a number of tips to attendees, some of which I had already implemented, and some of which I had not.

One that I hadn’t implemented was to create a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page for Bredemarket. However, Serna pointed out that both potential customers and Google itself search for FAQ pages as a quick way to answer questions. And others, such as StrategyBeam, agree with Serna on the importance of a FAQ page.

Before the AmPac Business Capital session, I had answers to questions on the Bredemarket website, but they were scattered all over the place. I decided that a FAQ page would offer a convenient one-stop shop for question answering.

So I created a FAQ page.

Image of the Bredemarket FAQ page as of March 17, 2022. https://bredemarket.com/faq/
From https://bredemarket.com/faq/ as of March 17, 2022.

Now when I created this page, I am absolutely certain that the FAQ page covers EVERY single question that a potential Bredemarket client would think to ask.

Picture of Ed McMahon
By photo by Alan Light, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3048124

Well, you know what Ed’s buddy Johnny would say to THAT assertion.

Picture of ohnny Carson
By Johnny_Carson_with_fan.jpg: Peter Martorano from Cleveland, Ohio, USAderivative work: TheCuriousGnome (talk) – Johnny_Carson_with_fan.jpg, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12750959

Seriously, I need YOUR help.

If you could take a look at the Bredemarket FAQ page at https://bredemarket.com/faq/, I would appreciate it.

Let me know if you like the answers to the questions that are asked.

Let me know if any questions are missing.

If anything is missing or needs to be improved, contact me. My contact information is in the FAQ. (Twice.)

Stupid tech tricks: no permission to respond to calendar invites? (The UID:X trick)

I use two separate Google calendars: one for Bredemarket, and one for personal non-Bredemarket meetings. I receive meeting invitations on both of these calendars. This usually isn’t a problem.

Usually.

Over the last year, I have accepted a variety of calendar invites from external inviters, including invites to Zoom meetings, invites to Microsoft Teams meetings, invites to Google Meet meetings, and even old-fashioned invites for Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) calls. (Yes, these still exist.) These have originated from Google-managed domains, Microsoft-managed domains, and other domains.

When you accept a calendar invite, you send a message to the inviter that contains your acceptance of the message, and this acceptance is recorded both on your calendar and on the inviter’s calendar.

Except for the invite that I received yesterday evening.

I was reading email on my mobile phone and received a calendar invite. When Gmail displays calendar invites, it displays them with “Yes,” “Maybe,” and “No” buttons.

Calendar invite, the expurgated version.

So I clicked “Yes” on the invite…and received a message that I didn’t have permission to access to the target calendar.

That seemed odd, but I noticed that there was an “invite.ics” file attached to the invitation. While ics files are designed for Microsoft calendars, they can be imported into Google calendars, so I figured that I’d just import the invite.ics file when I had access to my computer the following morning.

So this morning I imported the invite.ics file…and got the same error stating that I didn’t have permission to access the target calendar.

Curious, I researched and found a solution:

“The solution for this is to manually edit the .ics file prior to importing it and replace all occurrences of “UID:” with “UID:X” (without the quotes). After doing this and saving the file, proceed with the import and all should be fine.”

So I opened up the invite.ics file in Notepad, performed the manual edit, and successfully imported the calendar entry.

As it turns out, the inviter doesn’t usually schedule meetings with people outside of the inviter’s domain, which explains why I was the first person to mention the issue.

While the problem was solved, I had no idea WHY the UID:X trick worked. And I’m not the only one asking this question.

Most of the time when I receive a meeting request in my gmail account, Google Calendar understands exactly what is going on and handles the request pleasantly.

But for some zoom meeting requests originating from one particular client, Google Calendar refuses to admit that it’s a meeting request until I edit the ICS file and insert an “X” after the “UID:” prefix per the suggestion here.

Looking at RFC 5545, it doesn’t look like the “X” is required but it’s not terribly clear.

Does RFC 5545 in any way require that “X” to be there?

As of this morning, no one has answered the question, but I found a comment in a separate thread that appeared to be relevant.

After investigating for a while, it seems adding the “X” is not a permanent solution. The UID is a global identifier, if two events have the same UID in the same calendar there’s a collision. Some calendar services like Outlook (which I use) seem to handle this, while Google and probably many others don’t.

So the mystery continues.

P.S. If you happen across this post and find it helpful, also see my 2009 tip about the spurious “remove probe” error for KitchenAid ovens. (TL;DR: use a blow dryer to remove moisture from the probe hole where the temperature probe is inserted.)

Google Docs format sharing non-standards

In the past, I’ve mentioned that blog posts are often transitory. I hope this one is transitory and that I can come up with a technical or a procedural solution, because as of now I don’t have one.

Most of my writing experience over the past…many years has been with various versions of Microsoft Word, with the exception of a brief period in which I used FullWrite Professional. (The then-current version of Microsoft Word was NOT Mac-like, and FullWrite Professional was reputed to have a more graphical interface. It did…but it was slower than molasses, so we switched back to Word.)

Google Docs. Can’t you tell?

However, two of my recent projects used Google Docs instead of Microsoft Word, primarily because of Google Docs’ excellent collaboration features, including:

  • The ability to share a document with multiple collaborators, even outside of your organization.
  • The ability to restrict collaboration permissions to only allow commenting, or only allow viewing.
  • The ability to assign items to collaborators, and have the collaborators resolve them.
  • The ability for multiple people to edit the document at the same time. (This could be a drawback, but in my experience it was a plus.)

Everything worked well in my first project, a fairly simple project in which my collaborator took final ownership at the end and performed the final formats.

It was a different story with my second project, a much more complex project.

From my experience with Microsoft Word, a person could modify the existing styles, define new styles, and ensure that anyone who edited the document used the defined styles.

Google Docs is…a little different, as I found out the hard way.

First, Google Docs doesn’t allow you to define custom styles. So if I’m doing work for WidgetCorp, I can’t define styles like WidgetCorpAnswer or WidgetCorpHeading1.

Second, even Google Docs’ standard set of styles is limited.

Normal, Title/Subtitle, and six levels of Headings. That’s it. Forget about special styles for captions, table contents, or anything else.

Third, while Google Docs lets you modify these nine standard styles, there’s no good way to let other people use your modified styles. Here’s how I shared the issue in a Google community:

How can style customizations be shared between collaborators to avoid this issue?

Person A and Person B are collaborating on a Google Docs document.

Person A defines custom styles for Heading 1 and Heading 2.

Person B moves text from Heading 2 to Heading 1.

Person B’s heading style (not Person A’s heading style) is applied.

Person A has to reformat the text in Person A’s custom Heading 1 style. 

This happened on a recent project. I was Person B.

I was hoping that there was some easy way for “Person A” to share style definitions with “Person B” without having those become Person B’s defaults. (Because, after all, Person B may eventually collaborate with Person C, who has different style preferences.)

Sadly, my hopes were dashed:

I feel your pain. Sadly, there currently isn’t any way around this, as editors have free rein. The only solution would be to change their access from “Editor” to “Commenter.”

In other words, only one person can perform final formatting of a Google Docs document. While this restriction can apply to some business workflows, it can’t apply to all of them.

So is there a solution that allows multiple people to format a Google Docs document, and use common formatting styles?

(And before you say “Use Word,” I should also add that real-time collaboration is essential.)

As I said, I hope this post is transitory and I can come up with an acceptable solution.

(But even then, there are other drawbacks in Google Docs, including the inability to automatically number figure and table captions…)

Behind the scenes postscript: I was getting ready to write another post that referenced this post, and then I discovered that I had never actually finalized or shared this post. So now I’ve shared it, primarily so that I can reference it in the future without confusing everyone.

Today’s “biometrics is evil” post (Amazon One)

I can’t recall who recorded it, but there’s a radio commercial heard in Southern California (and probably nationwide) that intentionally ridicules people who willingly give up their own personally identifiable information (PII) for short-term gain. In the commercial, both the husband and the wife willingly give away all sorts of PII, including I believe their birth certificates.

While voluntary surrender of PII happens all the time (when was the last time you put your business card in a drawing bowl at a restaurant?), people REALLY freak out when the information that is provided is biometric in nature. But are the non-biometric alternatives any better?

TechCrunch, Amazon One, and Ten Dollars

TechCrunch recently posted “Amazon will pay you $10 in credit for your palm print biometrics.“

From https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/02/amazon-credit-palm-biometrics/.

If you think that the article details an insanely great way to make some easy money from Amazon, then you haven’t been paying attention to the media these last few years.

The article begins with a question:

How much is your palm print worth?

The article then describes how Amazon’s brick-and-mortar stores in several states have incorporated a new palm print scanner technology called “Amazon One.” This technology, which reads both friction ridge and vein information from a shopper’s palms. This then is then associated with a pre-filed credit card and allows the shopper to simply wave a palm to buy the items in the shopping cart.

There is nothing new under the sun

Amazon One is the latest take on processes that have been implemented several times before. I’ll cite three examples.

Pay By Touch. The first one that comes to my mind is Pay By Touch. While the management of the company was extremely sketchy, the technology (provided by Cogent, now part of Thales) was not. In many ways the business idea was ahead of its time, and it had to deal with challenging environmental conditions: the fingerprint readers used for purchases were positioned near the entrances/exits to grocery stores, which could get really cold in the winter. Couple this with the elderly population that used the devices, and it was sometimes difficult to read the fingers themselves. Yet, this relatively ancient implementation is somewhat similar to what Amazon is doing today.

University of Maryland Dining Hall. The second example occurred to me because it came from my former employer (MorphoTrak, then part of Safran and now part of IDEMIA), and was featured at a company user conference for which I coordinated speakers. There’s a video of this solution, but sadly it is not public. I did find an article describing the solution:

With the new system students will no longer need a UMD ID card to access their own meals…

Instead of pulling out a card, the students just wave their hand through a MorphoWave device. And this allows the students to pay for their meals QUICKLY. Good thing when you’re hungry.

This Pay and That Pay. But the most common example that everyone uses is Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, or whatever “pay” system is supported on your smartphone. Again, you don’t have to pull out a credit card or ID card. You just have to look at your phone or swipe your finger on the phone, and payment happens.

Amazon One is the downfall of civilization

I don’t know if TechCrunch editorialized against Pay By Touch or [insert phone vendor here] Pay, and it probably never heard of the MorphoWave implementation at the University of Maryland. But Amazon clearly makes TechCrunch queasy.

While the idea of contactlessly scanning your palm print to pay for goods during a pandemic might seem like a novel idea, it’s one to be met with caution and skepticism given Amazon’s past efforts in developing biometric technology. Amazon’s controversial facial recognition technology, which it historically sold to police and law enforcement, was the subject of lawsuits that allege the company violated state laws that bar the use of personal biometric data without permission.

Oh well, at least TechCrunch didn’t say that Amazon was racist. (If you haven’t already read it, please read the Security Industry Association’s “What Science Really Says About Facial Recognition Accuracy and Bias Concerns.” Unless you don’t like science.)

OK, back to Amazon and Amazon One. TechCrunch also quotes Albert Fox Cahn of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.

People Leaving the Cities, photo art by Zbigniew Libera, imagines a dystopian future in which people have to leave dying metropolises. By Zbigniew Libera – https://artmuseum.pl/pl/kolekcja/praca/libera-zbigniew-wyjscie-ludzi-z-miast, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66055122.

“The dystopian future of science fiction is now. It’s horrifying that Amazon is asking people to sell their bodies, but it’s even worse that people are doing it for such a low price.”

“Sell their bodies.” Isn’t it even MORE dystopian when people “give their bodies away for free” when they sign up for Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Samsung Pay? While the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (acronym STOP) expresses concern about digital wallets, there is a significant lack of horror in its description of them.

Digital wallets and contactless payment systems like smart chips have been around for years. The introduction of Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, and Google Pay have all contributed to the e-commerce movement, as have fast payment tools like Venmo and online budgeting applications. In response to COVID-19, the public is increasingly looking for ways to reduce or eliminate physical contact. With so many options already available, contactless payments will inevitably gain momentum….

Without strong federal laws regulating the use of our data, we’re left to rely on private companies that have consistently failed to protect our information. To prevent long-term surveillance, we need to limit the data collected and shared with the government to only what is needed. Any sort of monitoring must be secure, transparent, proportionate, temporary, and must allow for a consumer to find out about or be alerted to implications for their data. If we address these challenges now, at a time when we will be generating more and more electronic payment records, we can ensure our privacy is safeguarded.

So STOP isn’t calling for the complete elimination of Amazon Pay. But apparently it wants to eliminate Amazon One.

Is a world without Amazon One a world with less surveillance?

Whenever you propose to eliminate something, you need to look at the replacement and see if it is any better.

In 1998, Fox fired Bill Russell as the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He had a win-loss percentage of .538. His replacement, Glenn Hoffman, lasted less than a season and had a percentage of .534. Hoffman’s replacement, true baseball man Davey Johnson, compiled a percentage of .503 over the next two seasons before he was fired. Should have stuck with Russell.

Anyone who decides (despite the science) that facial recognition is racist is going to have to rely on other methods to identify criminals, such as witness identification. Witness identification has documented inaccuracies.

And if you think that elimination of Amazon One from Amazon’s brick-and-mortar stores will lead to a privacy nirvana, think again. If you don’t use your palm to pay for things, you’re going to have to use a credit card, and that data will certainly be scanned by the FBI and the CIA and the BBC, B. B. King, and Doris Day. (And Matt Busby, of course.) And even if you use cash, the only way that you’ll preserve any semblance of your privacy is to pay anonymously and NOT tie the transaction to your Amazon account.

And if you’re going to do that, you might as well skip Whole Foods and go straight to Dollar General. Or maybe not, since Dollar General has its own app. And no one calls Dollar General dystopian. Wait, they do: “They tend to cluster, like scavengers feasting on the carcasses of the dead.”

I seemed to have strayed from the original point of this post.

But let me sum up. It appears that biometrics is evil, Amazon is evil, and Amazon biometrics are Double Secret Evil.

Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17499683