Well it was only a matter of time. I have now recieved the demands from the blackmailers.

Of course I’ve kept the police out of it as per standard blackmail practice. May be if I just do what Genes Reunited wants it will give me back my ancestors?

I just got the following in my gmail…

It so happened that I’d been wondering what happened to my ancestors, and now, according to this ransom email, apparently its Genes Reunited that has them. I am not sure what they want them for but I want it known that I plan not to negotiate.

You can’t give these people an inch - even if they’ve got your ancestors.

I was mucking around on 43things.com recently. I thought this was pretty funny…

It reminded me of that classic scene in ‘The Life of Brian’:

Brian pleading to his followers ‘…You are all different!’ making a point about them not needing to follow anyone.

‘We are all different!’ they return, agreeably.

‘I’m not!’ cries a dissenter in Godelian irony.

Now as far as I understand it, 43things.com is about listing things you have yet to do… arguably if you are one of 73 others wishing to be unique you are possibly already having difficulties. More likely, of course, the other 72 put ‘be unique’ in just to see how many others had, meaning there’s probably 72 other blog posts with a similar screenshot to above.

Maybe I’ve got more work to do than I thought…

I just read over at Joseph Scott’s blog that Google Trends appears to be dead. Some further investigation on the Google Group for Google Trends seems to confirm this. I think it would be a shame if Google Trends was to be decommissioned as the service provides a way for ordinary netizens to examine the behaviours of searchers online.

Whilst SEOs would be hardest hit I think that the loss for the rest of us is also significant. There are other similar services however I’d wager none would compare to the volume of data available to Google (dominating around 70% of search in most countries).

Don’t be too worried though, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the trends data appear in another format… Personally, I will keeping an eye on Google Analytics. Remember Google also bought MeasureMap, so by my reckoning there’s bound to be an uber analytics tool on the horizon. The free analytics tools are great for encouraging webmasters to continue to invest in Adwords and Adsense.

Update: Google buys GapMinder. They are really building up an arsenal of data analysis tools!

Update 2: Again Joseph Scott has the scoop on Google having updated the data available on Trends up to Feb 2007.