So there I was speed reading through this month’s pile of magazines when I got to the computer stack. Near the bottom of this pile was WEBSITE magazine. I’ve always been kind of “meh” about them, but every so often they have something interesting, so I’ve been re-subscribing so far.
On the last page, titled WEB COMMENTARY with Editor-in-Chief Peter Prestipino, is a one page article titled “A Day In the Life of a Google Junkie”. It’s a article that glorifies the daily pervasiveness of Google nowadays, but I noticed a really big goof in the article.
In the paragraph in the first column with the 5:30 AM indent, it ends with “…In fact, Gmail grew 43 percent in 2008 alone. Expect big growth in 2009 too.”
Wait. What?
This is the February 2010 issue. Even if this column was written last November or December in 2009 and used as a “plan B” column, the dates still don’t sync!
This “column” was originally written in 2008, since 2009 is referred to in the future tense.
Nice.
Either this was an old PR spam article from Google that they copied and pasted without attribution, or it was an article they copied and pasted from somewhere else without updating the dates. Either way, that’s enough for me not to take anything they print at face value. Especially since it came directly from the editor-in-chief’s page.
I bet if WEBSITE magazine actually catches this, they’re going to say it was just a typo and blame it on the copy editors.
Scratch one renewal!
You can see the page by clicking below…
UPDATE: Did a quick search on Google for “gmail grew 43 percent in” and found that Google’s Gmail services really did grow 43 percent in 2008. So it ain’t no typo!
After catching the third consecutive egregious error in a local newspaper’s calendar of events, an ex-boss advised me I should contact the editor. She said this is one surefire way to get a gig.
Personally, I’d never feel right getting someone fired to take their job (and calendar editing? NO thank you). But I thought I’d tell you about it anyways; food for thought.