Subtitle: Unless you own your domain, you’re a pawn in Web 2.0

First off, before I get into my angry philosophical rant, a quick shout out to the 2507 Troops. Thanks for checking in, and yes, Sis is Ok. ‘Twas just a dream.

Now for the meat of the post.

Rupert Murdoch web property MySpace has just announced a deal to buy out photo storing and sharing site Photobucket. For Joe Average out there, this falls into the category of “Who cares?” Trust me. You care. Read the rest of this entry »

Online Culture, Rants | 1 Comment »

This is kinda weird, and maybe writing about it will get it off my chest…

Normally, I don’t get nightmares. Well, at least not very often. And when I do, they’re usually about zombies. Yeah, I know. I watch too many zombie movies.

Thing about the zombie nightmares is that if they wake me up, it’s not one of those “cold sweat” kind of things. It’s more like “That was weird - maybe I should turn it into a short story. Nah… There’s already enough zombie stories in the world…” and about that quick I fall back to sleep. Read the rest of this entry »

Pointless Posts | 1 Comment »

Just testing a podcast plugin.

In general, I like to risk screwing up my own site before I try and plug it into a site I manage for someone else. Go figure.

Enjoy a bit of “GP Radio” - a podcast for a site within the Green Political Movement.

Online Culture, Pointless Posts | No Comments »

Subtitle: Even Virus Researchers have a sense of Ha-Ha

Tip of the hat to Wired for this one.

Security researcher Didier Stevens decided to buy a Google Ad to test two things:

1. How good is Google’s screening.
2. How dumb are some internet users (still).

The ad? Well, here’s a screen cap:

Now, I gotta ask. Would you be dumb enough to click on that ad? Anyone? Well, somebody did. In fact, more than a few somebodies did. Not only that, but in the six months that Didier ran the ad, he never once received a complaint, form Google, or anyone else, and the ad was never pulled from syndication from Google. The statistics are that the ad was displayed 259,723 times, and clicked on 409 times, for a Click Through Rate of 0.16%.

Ok, it’s a small percentage. But still, that’s 409 people who clicked on an ad that told them it would infect their computer.

Sad. Very, very, sad.

Online Culture | No Comments »

There’s a user revolt going on over at Digg right now. It’s, well, pretty dang funny.

What happened is, someone figured out the master encryption key for the HD-DVD format, posted it on their site, and Digg being Digg, the story drew THOUSANDS of Diggs and rose to the top of the front page. Read the rest of this entry »

Online Culture | No Comments »

This one goes out to the guys still working at the DI:

Online Culture, Pointless Posts, Video | No Comments »

Subtitle: It must be tough to be “venerable” on the internet.

Wired.com just launched a new look about, oh, within the past hour or so. Well, that’s not quite true. They’ve been fiddling with the look for a couple of months, but that’s mostly applied to the internal page layouts. They just flipped the switch on their new front page. I really want to avoid saying it’s a horrible new front page. Because, really, it isn’t horrible. But I have yet to come across a news site front page that I like. Read the rest of this entry »

Online Culture | No Comments »

Subtitle: Blowing up a building Vegas style.

I’ve only ever been to Vegas once, and really, it’s not my kind of town. I spent exactly one night on “the strip,” then a week crashing around in the desert with a friend and his 4×4. We’d make a game of getting “lost” in the desert, then eventually we’d just pull the truck over on some suitable spot and wait for the sun to set. After sunset, we’d just aim towards the big pink glow over the horizon and work our way back to town. Read the rest of this entry »

Humour, Video | 3 Comments »

This is pretty spiffy.

I’ve been following the trials and tribulations of the One Laptop Per Child project for some time now. It’s a really neat idea cooked up by some of the hardcore propeller heads over at MIT.

It’s a highly noble venture. Basically, it boils down to creating a durable little laptop that can be produced cheaply (somewhere around $100), and then ship a kazillion of these things to the third world, so that children in developing nations get a chance to join the weird wired world. Read the rest of this entry »

Online Culture, Video | 6 Comments »

Subtitle: First Dell asked what their customers wanted, but will they listen to the answer?

Dell has been running a “suggestion box” on their company website for the past three weeks.

Clocking in at over 100,000 requests, take a wild guess at what the top suggestion from Dell’s customers was? Read the rest of this entry »

Online Culture | 4 Comments »