Just recently I noticed that some websites that try and be helpful get their extra infomration wrong. Take google for example. I know there is a Royal Bank of Scotland branch (it's their Child's dead posh banking subsidiary) at 1 Fleet St in London. If you search for that using google maps (see this link) it shows you the bank as it should do, but unfortunately tells you that the address is:
WC2B 4, Westminster, London
This is, not to put too fine a point on it, wrong and comes from google doing a search for something like "Royal Bank of Scotland, London" and getting the wrong address.
Another automated oopsie that I noticed recently is Fox business where they try to automatically give stock quotes for things that look like they might be ticker symbols. Their ticker algorithm is wrong because what it works on is (TLA). Unfortunately (TLA) can just be an abbreviation as in "Three Letter Acronym (TLA)" and in these cases it isn't a stock quote. One example is this Foundry Networks press release, where they give quotes for Internet Protocol (IP) and Full Duplex (FDX) and try to get quotes for MPLS, FIB and so on.
Another automatic oopsie that I've noticed are in the adverts on certain sleazy sites (e.g. Yahoo mail) that try to list women I might be interested in dating in my vicinity. Unfortunately the way my ISP works the geolocate services think I'm in the Ile-de-France which means I tend to get a load of tarts from the Paris suburbs rather than from somewhere useful. Not you understand that I intend to take advantage of the offers but it is peculiar to see the sites that are otherwise in English such as Yahoo telling me that there are "Femmes dans votre ville qui vous chercher"...
Blog Home : February 2008 : Permalink