Has Suddenlink hijacked your browser?

A few weeks ago, I began to notice something odd whenever I entered an incorrect URL into my browser's address bar. Instead of seeing a Google search result page with suggestions that closely matched whatever I had typed, I was getting a Suddenlink-branded page (Suddenlink is my internet service provider) listing its own suggested alternatives. Here's a partial screen shot:

I was vaguely annoyed by this, but sufficiently focused on other things to not take the time to investigate – until this morning. That's when I noticed a tiny linked phrase on the page: "Why am I here?" While I was pretty sure that link didn't lead to the meaning of life, it did provide me with an explanation of what was happening with my browser:

For those with less than perfect vision, the page reads, in part:

Apparently, Suddenlink has partnered with Yahoo! to take over the redirection tasks that I had been relying on Google to handle. However, I have no recollection of giving them permission to do that, and if there's one thing that chaps my hide, it's someone messing with my computer without my authorization.

The page does go on to inform you that "If this service is not right for you, please visit your Preferences page to opt out," and "Preferences page" is linked to a place where you can restore your browser behavior to what you wanted in the first place before Suddenlink decided it knew better than you how you wanted your system to work.

If there's one message I'd like to pass along to my esteemed ISP, it's that unilaterally imposing your will upon your users but justifying it with an opt-out provision is so 2002. Really, I expect more out of a major communications company.

P.S. I wish I knew more about how this interwebosphere thing worked, because I'd like to know how Suddenlink is able to inject its presence into my browsing experience in this fashion. If you have the answers, please feel free to educate me.

Clock Faces

I figure I already have too much junk in the sidebar to accommodate this, but it is pretty cool:

If you'll check this post every day, you'll see that the calendar really works. And my visitor stats will be huge! Or, not as teensy.

It's the Human Calendar®; you can learn more about it here, and grab one of the code variations here. There's even a variation that will run on a Chumby, whatever the heck that is (my new mantra: Intentionally Ignorant).

But, more interesting to me than the human calendar is the Human Clock project, conceived by the same guy. Go to this page, click on "View the Clock," and start playing around with it. You'll get the hang of it pretty quickly. The fact that the guy convinced Lance Armstrong to join in validates the concept, I'm sure you'll agree.

I'll be more impressed if the organizer ever gets his clock to display seconds.

And, once again we see that the simple fact that something can be done is quite sufficient justification for actually doing that thing.

Is stupidity the Net effect?

Nicholas Carr has written an interesting essay for Atlantic Monthly with the provocative title, Is Google Making Us Stupid?. Carr claims that his reliance on the Web and search engines in particular has blunted his ability to immerse himself in a lengthy book, to engage in – as he calls it – deep reading. He posits that immediate access to almost every conceivable bit of data, along with the overload of content that accrues to a "wired" lifestyle, is actually changing the way his brain processes information. And he's not sure that the change is a good one.

Anecdotal evidence indicates that he's not alone. Scroll through the posts on his blog and you'll see repeated instances of correspondents documenting how they no longer have the patience for books in treeware form, and how their intellectual pursuits have changed so as to emphasize the end result instead of the process. Just give me the answer; I don't need (or want) the back story.

Journalist Bill Thompson extends this theme with an essay on the BBC News website entitled Changing the Way We Think. He describes the work of a Swiss developmental psychologist who hypothesized two processes that he believed lay behind the development of knowledge in children:

Thompson then uses these processes as a framework for describing why our reliance on the internet is changing the way we create and build our world view.

I find all of this fascinating, and I can't help thinking that the fact that it's even being discussed in such depth is perhaps an indication that the worry is overblown. On the other hand, I have no idea how many of you have actually read this far in my post, so perhaps Carr, et al. have valid points after all.

Adding to the fascination is Thompson's reference to Maryanne Wolf's new book, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. Wolf argues that "reading is not an innate ability for humans but something we have to learn how to do, and there is no reason why different forms of literacy should not emerge as new technologies do." "Different" isn't necessarily synonymous with "inferior."

Utterz Test

Mobile post sent by fireant using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

Advice for Beginning Bloggers

LinkVendor offers a free service that most bloggers are likely to find interesting. It's a back-link list generator, meaning that it will compile a list of the websites that are linking to your site. Now, I realize that there are many similar services, but this one is different from most in that it includes more than just clickable links. It also shows those sites that are stealing your bandwidth.

If that sounds harsh, let me explain. Some people have a habit of using images on their sites without actually loading those images onto their web servers. Instead, they link to the images where they currently reside. This means that whenever you visit their site and view that image, the bandwidth associated with the image is actually coming from the image's host server and not the site you're visiting.

This is bad manners at best, and harmful at worst. Depending on the popularity of the "borrowing" site, the owner of the site housing the "borrowed" image could actually incur additional out-of-pocket expense due to increased bandwidth.

I point this out because when I ran the LinkVendor report for the Gazette, I found about half a dozen sites that were doing exactly what I describe above. In some cases, the offense was somewhat mitigated by the fact that the "borrower" included a text link and/or attribution of the image to the Gazette, but in a couple of cases, they just slapped links to my images on their sites, making it look as if they owned them. And one of the offenders was a revenue-generating blog. (It's only fair to note that when I pointed out how little I appreciated what they were doing, they immediately removed the image. I think that falls into the category of "it's better to ask forgiveness than permission.")

If you're a new blogger – or even an experienced one who never thought about this practice – please don't take shortcuts and link to images residing on servers you don't control. (We haven't even touched on the associated copyright issues.)

If you want to use an image that appears on the Gazette on your personal blog, just ask me. 99.9% of the time I'll gladly grant that permission, and I'll bet that most bloggers will do the same.

To do otherwise is bad manners, if not downright theft.

RIP Netscape

AOL has announced that it will cease development and support of the Netscape browser on February 1, 2008.

Netscape usage had dwindled into irrelevancy over the past few years – according to most stats it has less than a 1% market share – so its demise will directly affect very few people. However, the company and the browser will always have a solid place in the history of cyberspace. Netscape was arguably the first company to make the World Wide Web the centerpiece of its business plan. Netscape's ability to produce a browser with an interface that looked and behaved pretty much identically on any computer was also arguably the catalyst that exposed Microsoft's dark side to the world, as Redmond deemed this strategy a threat to its own business plan and launched what we fondly remember as "The Browser Wars."

Netscape was also the first dotcom IPO with any kind of substantial splash. I was in the headquarters offices of an oil company in The Woodlands in 1995, on the day Netscape's stock went public. I was trying to negotiate a deal with the company (it never worked out) and I can remember idle chitchat about Netscape. I was the only person in the room who knew anything about it, and I'm pretty sure no one took my advice to go buy as much of the stock as their brokers could get their hands on. (Of course, I didn't follow my own advice either.)

I was a loyal Netscape user right up until Firefox was released. I even built a few websites using Composer (*shudder*). As a web designer, I had mixed emotions about it. I hated the way it choked on CSS; my consolation was that Internet Explorer was usually even worse. In a way, I was relieved when Netscape's market share dropped to the point that I didn't have to test new designs using it.

As nostalgic as those memories may be (if indeed one can be nostalgic about a phenomenon that's less than 15 years old), I won't mourn the passing of the company. (And for those who feel an inexplicable need to continue using Netscape, it will still work; you just will never see any upgrades or fixes. And, eventually, technology will completely pass it by.) With the continued improvement of Firefox, and the news that the next version of Internet Explorer passes Acid2, the web browsing world has never been in better shape, for both users and developers.

Stumped for shopping hints? Give the gift of web.

Ubër-webhost Media Temple is offering The Hosting Card, a gift card (real or virtual, your choice, although the deadline for by-Christmas delivery of the plasticware has passed) as a suggestion for that hard-to-shop for geek on your Christmas list. The card, which lists for $95, entitles the bearer to one year of hosting, one "free" (well, somebody paid for it, didn't they?) domain name, and 500 GPUs per month (if the person you're giving the card to can understand the implications of GPUs, then you've made the right choice).

I highly recommend this a gift for all your family members, neighbors, co-workers, fellow church members, service providers, and passersby on the street. Because once they discover that The Hosting Card doesn't come with an actual, you know, website, well, then, they can just drop me a line (or call, tollfree: BR-549). I'm pretty sure I can provide 'em with something that will keep them under their GPU allocation.

Really Slow Doubled is Still Pretty Slow

Are you a Suddenlink customer? If so, have you wondered about the their current TV ad where they claim to have doubled our internet connection speed? Don't know about you, but I haven't seen any speed bump. So, I decided to ask 'em about it. After holding for 10 minutes on the phone, I decided instead to try out their live chat support feature, in order to get a transcript of the dialog. Here's how it unfolded.

Chat History
rod has entered the session.

Eric: I keep seeing TV commercials about how Suddenlink has doubled the speed of its internet connections. I'm not seeing any speed increase at all, so I'm wondering if there's a problem with my connection.

rod: Welcome to Suddenlink Online Support. My name is Roderick and I can help you today.

rod: In order to assist you today, I will need some additional information. May I please have the city and state your services are in; the physical address, name on the account and the last four digits of your social security number or Pin number?

Eric: ****

rod: Give me one moment, I am fixing to run a diagnostics on your internet connection.

rod: The test on your internet connection came back good.

rod: Do you have a router connected to your modem?

Eric: Yes.

rod: How many PC's do you have connected?

Eric: One connected directly; several laptops connected wirelessly (none in use at this time).

rod: Go to
rod has sent you to www.speakeasy.net/speedtest.
rod: Run a quick speed test, and give me the results.

[New window opens and I run the speedtest]

Eric: 2569 kbps download; 514 kbps upload

rod: One moment please...

rod: I recommend that you by pass the router, and connect directly into the modem. Save that link as a favorite, power down your PC, and then bypass. Once you have everything connected, power back up, and run the speed test. If the speed does not improve then, contact us at 1-888-822-5151, so we can possibly troubleshoot further.

Eric: OK, I'll try that, but just to confirm: you think that I should be getting faster speeds than what I'm now seeing, right?

rod: One moment please...

rod: For connections that are running through a router, you are around average. It really depends on how many people are located on your node.

rod: Your total bandwidth is 8 Meg down right now.

Eric: Well, now I'm confused. Should my connection speed have doubled recently or not? And if not, what are the TV commercials talking about?

rod: Your bandwidth has doubled. Before, you were at 4 Meg bandwidth.

rod: So we doubled the bandwidth, and that in turn will double your speed.

Eric: But that's just theoretical, right? Because in actuality, nothing has sped up on my connection. Websites still load at the same speed as before. Sorry to be so dense; I just expected to see more of a dramatic improvement, and I'm confused as to why that's not happening.

rod: Both theoretically and actually, your speed has doubled.

Eric: OK, I guess I'll have to take your word for it. I'll try the router thing and see if it helps. Thanks for your time.

rod: When you had only the 4 Meg bandwidth, you were more than likely getting half of the speed you are getting now.

rod: There are many factors that come into play when you refer to how fast websites load on a periodic basis. The server that is hosting the website may not be able to upload the site faster and all other sorts of things. The only way to get a real good picture of how fast your actual connection is, would be to run these speed test, and see.

rod: The server that is hosting the site may have a lot of visitors, and that may be causing it to slow down.

rod: We see a lot of that with Myspace.

rod: So the best way to really tell is to run the speed test.

rod: Are there any additional services or questions that I can help you with today?

Eric: Nope. Thanks again.

rod: Your welcome.

rod: It has been a pleasure assisting you. Thank you for choosing Suddenlink.
rod has exited the session.

You are the only user left in the session.

So, what we seem to have learned here is that my speed has doubled because, well, they say it has. Never mind that I can't tell any difference in day-to-day usage. (For the record, I have not bypassed my router to see if that makes a difference.)

Anyone actually feel like they've seen a recent significant bump in their internet connection speed?

And, can anyone explain to me the relationship between bandwidth and connection speed? I understand that they're directly proportional, in theory, but how does Suddenlink's claim of "8 meg of bandwidth" relate to a Kbps connection speed? It seems like an apples-and-oranges comparison so I'm obviously missing something.

I have to admit that I like this live chat thing for tech support. I've used it on other sites and it seems to work well. It's good to have a written record of the conversations.

Need a webpage? Type and click...

I defy you to show me a quicker way to build a website than this.

I'm not exactly sweating the competition, though.

Tip via Daring Fireball

New Spam

Is anyone else getting hit with a flood of new spam emails offering part-time work? I've been getting 20-30 messages per hour, each starting out as follows:

This introductory language – apparently written by a non-native English speaker – is followed by a rather lengthy paragraph of excerpts from various technical articles, inexplicably dealing with nanotechnology and designed to sneak the message past spam filters.

The spammers have conveniently provided an email link for interested parties, staff@w-ei.com. The domain, which was registered only about three weeks ago by someone in Italy, leads to a placeholder webpage apparently located on a server in the UK.

I thought about setting up a temporary email address and replying to the message to see what comes next, but decided it was too much trouble. I'm just curious as to whether anyone else is getting these messages, or has someone simply noticed my cash flow and decided I could be doing better?

As spam goes, it could be much worse. But why does anyone think something like this works? My guess is that the subsequent steps for those who respond to the solicitation involve the sharing of personal information, which is the end game for the spammer.

Hotmail Blocking Suddenlink Email?

Update (9/6): Things seem to be working again this morning. Hotmail and Suddenlink are playing nice once more.

Has anyone else experienced problems sending email to a Hotmail account via Suddenlink's SMTP server?

My wife and I have had email rejected this evening by Hotmail (mine was a reply to an incoming message; hers was a new message), and the message accompanying the bouncebacks seems to indicate that the reason for the rejection is that the messages have been deemed to be spam. Now, setting aside the question of whether our email might indeed be inconsequential enough to qualify as spam, this action seems to indicate that Hotmail has placed Suddenlink on a blacklist.

Or is it just us?

We Are The (404) World

Via one of my favorite bloggers, Deb at Write Lightning, is this excellent link to an almost universal 404 page.

I especially like the message from the BSD user, although the one from the Mac user comes in a close second. But I can't vouch for the accuracy of the Morse code version.

Top 10 eCommerce Developments

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) last week rolled out its list of the "Ten Most Significant eCommerce Developments of the Last Decade," (PDF). The list includes the following:

1. Google (Sept. 1998)
2. Broadband Penetration of US Internet Users Reaches 50% (June 2004)
3. eBay Auctions (Launched Sept. 1997)
4. Amazon.com (IPO May 1997)
5. Google Ad Words (2000)
6. Open Standards (HTML 4.0 released - 1997)
7. Wi-Fi (802.11 launched - 1997)
8. User-Generated Content (YouTube 2005)
9. iTunes (2001)
10. BlackBerry (1999)

It's a pretty eclectic list, containing items that are almost universally familiar (Google) to those that are downright geeky (Open Standards).

If I'd come up with the list, I'd have put PayPal in there, somewhere (perhaps in place of the BlackBerry). PayPal (started around 2000) wasn't the first online payment system, but it was the pioneer in terms of making the average surfer comfortable about conducting business via the web.

An interesting sidenote is that the SIIA chose YouTube to represent "user generated content," even though blogging is much more widespread and arguably more influential. However, blogs existed long before 1997, and thus don't make the ten-year rule.

Additional observations about the items on this list are found here.

Tip o'the hat to MLB

Google Maps-Based Pedometer

I'm constantly amazed at the cool things Mis_nomer runs across and shares over at Pencil Shavings, and her discovery of Gmaps Pedometer is not only cool, but very timely.

Gmaps Pedometer is another Web 2.0 variation using the Google Maps API, and it's brilliant in its simplicity and addictive in its usefulness. If you're a runner, cyclist, or walker, it's a good tool for laying out a route and measuring its distance.

Using the Pedometer is simple, especially if you're accustomed to the standard Google Maps interface. Just locate your starting point and click the Start Recording button. Double-click on the map to add your starting point, then double-click along the route to extend it. You can adjust the zoom setting at any point, or click-and-drag to reposition the map without affecting the points or the route. Once you've finished, you can save your route. The Pedometer will automatically mark each mile point on your route (unless you toggle that option off), and it keeps track of cumulative mileage for your route. If you the Calorie Counter On button and enter your weight in the resulting input field, the Pedometer will also computer calories burned (presumably for walking or running; it doesn't allow you to specify another type of locomotion).

If you make a mistake on setting a point, there's an Undo button.

One caveat: the "Complete there and back route" option should be exercised only at the turnaround point of an actual out-and-back route, because clicking that link causes the Pedometer to assume that the point at which the click is made is the halfway mark, and it doubles the mileage at that point. That's not a big deal – except you cannot undo this particular action. I learned this the hard way after spending fifteen minutes laying out a precise route, and clicking the "complete" link thinking it would compute the mileage back to the starting point using the same route that going the other direction (I'm not explaining this very well, am I?), and finding that it doesn't work that way at all.

A variation on this application is Sanoodi, which is almost identical to Gmaps Pedometer except that it requires only one click to set a point, and it attempts to compute elevation changes along your route. I suspect the latter is of dubious accuracy, but we don't have a lot of relief in our landscape out here to measure it against. The neat thing about Sanoodi is that it allows you to describe your route, categorize it, and then store it in a personal account. You can also share those routes with others, and add Flickr tags if you provide photos taken along the route. It's just a little more community-oriented than Pedometer.

I mentioned at the beginning that this discovery was timely. We recently replaced both tires on our tandem, and the new tires are slightly different sizes than the ones they replaced. This necessitated a recalibration of our cycling computers, as the distance and speed measurements are tied to tire circumference. And, since the front and rear tires are different diameters, I couldn't measure just one and use the setting for both.

As you might guess, even though I thought I did a precise job in doing a roll-out measurement of each tire, after our first ride with the recalibrated computers the mileage on my unit was different than that on my wife's, and by a fairly significant amount. Just as the man with two watches never knows what time it is, so it is with two bike computers giving different readings. We weren't sure which reading was accurate. After entering our route into Sanoodi, we have a baseline that I can use to re-adjust both computers.

All the accountants in our family can now sleep a little better, having overcome this significant obstacle to our cycling happiness.

Technorati tags: Gmaps Pedometer | Sanoodi | OCD Cyclists

Firefox Plugin: iTunes Store Search

One of the features I appreciate about Firefox is the ability to change the default search engine in the Search Bar. Although I primarily keep Google as my default, I often switch to Wikipedia, IMDB.com or Amazon.com, depending on what I'm working on.

You can use the Manage Search Engines option on the Search Bar to download and install additional search plugins via Mozilla's Add-On page. However, that page does not include a complete list of all available search add-ons. Mozilla also hosts the Mycroft Project Sherlock & OpenSearch Plugins page, which provides a portal to more than 11,000 search plugins. If your mind is boggled by that number, take comfort in the fact that you can search the Mycroft database to find just what you're looking for.

And that's precisely how I came across a gem of a search plug-in for the iTunes Store. This plug-in, created by Matt Cox of the UK, installed without a hitch on my version of Firefox (2.0.0.4, running on Mac OS 10.3.9), and works just like any other search plug-in. When selected in the Search Bar, any terms input to the search box (or highlighted and right-clicked in the body of a web page) are submitted to the iTunes Store for matches. It's a great way to check on the availability of music or videos at iTunes without leaving your browser.

Sort of. In reality, the search is not carried out via your browser. Firefox actually hooks onto iTunes, opens that application, and submits the search to the iTunes Store's search engine. From a computer resource perspective, it's not any more efficient, but it does save a mouse click or two, and the ability to hightlight/right-click on a word or phrase also saves keystrokes.

I don't know if this plug-in works in Windows. The documentation says that it's based on the Sherlock standard, which Apple developed, but I don't know if it's cross-platform. If you are running Firefox under Windows and want to try it out, I'd love to get a report as to if and how it works.

Update: My pal Jim confirms in the comments that this plug-in works fine on his Windows setup (Ffox 2.0.0.4 on Win XP sp2).

The Domainator

One of the Gazette's valued readers, Larry Stephey, emailed the following to me:

Interesting question, and after exhaustive research (following two links after googling it) I can give this authoritative answer: yes. Sort of.

Domain names must follow certain standards, one of which is the length of the name in total (255 characters, including the top level domain [e.g. .com, .org, etc.]). In addition, the length of any subdivision – the stuff to the left of the dot, if there's only one, or the stuff between the dots if there's more than one – is limited to 63 characters. The unwieldy URL in Larry's example is thus maxed out (count 'em if you want, or just take my word for it) and thus it does qualify as being the longest it can be – along with 537 others.

See, there's this guy named Dennis Forbes, who seems to be a really bright fellow but who also obviously has a lot of time on his hands because in 2006 he analyzed around 50 million .com domain names and documented his findings.

He's actually discovered some pretty interesting stuff, such as the fact that the most popular length for a domain name is eleven characters, and 100% of the possible two- and three-letter domain names (presumably in the English language) have been registered. In addition, 100% of the top 10,000 family names listed in the federal census bureau's records have been registered.

He also enjoyed the analysis enough that he documented additional findings (complete with bubble charts!) such as the fact that more domain names start with the "s" than any other letter (and it's not because of s-e-x, either, so put that thought to rest right now), and while the most common starting digit is "1" and the second most common is "2," the third most common is not "3" but "4." Go figure.

Big Brother Gets Bigger

I was well into a post about how I'm fighting global warming by using my bike to run errands when I googled up some critical research and noticed this:

I'm not the most observant guy in the world and this "web history" notice may have been appearing on Google's search results pages for months -- but it's news to me. (That brings up a whole other issue about the effectiveness of such notices on Google's pages, given the single minded focus on search results.) Anyway, does this concept creep anybody else out?

Basically, as I understand it, what Google is doing is co-opting your browser's history file, recording every page you visit and storing that history on its own servers. If that was all it entailed, it might not be so scary, but when you combine that data with everything else Google knows about you (via your Gmail account), and then add all of that to the ad-delivery capabilities of the company's newest acquisition, DoubleClick, then you start to paint a truly fearsome picture that has privacy implications as well as a high personal annoyance factor.

Here's a blurb from Google's Web History Privacy FAQ:

Google's corporate motto may be "do no harm," but as it continues to expand the scope of what's included in "our services," the potential for that motto to cease to have any meaning other than "do no harm to Google's business plan" grows proportionately larger. Already the company has shown questionable judgment in areas such as cooperation with repressive governments.

The mitigating factor is that Web History is an opt-in feature, and thus we each can assess our personal tolerance of the risk involved in turning our data over to Google's stewardship. But you've probably figured out by now that I plan to stay as far away from Web History as I can. The truly scary thing is that Google probably already knew that.

Technorati tag: Google Web History

Suddenlink Server for 3rd Party Email

If you're one of the thousands of Suddenlink subscribers currently wallowing in the mess of switching your email address from Cox, and you also want to be able to send email via Suddenlink using a non-Suddenlink email address, AND you haven't been able to get a response from Suddenlink about how to configure your mail program to accomplish this, here are the instructions I got from them a mere two weeks after submitting the question:

The outgoing server information for third party emails are the following :

does not required authentication

That last line is important, as Suddenlink's regular SMTP server does require authentication.

Now, having provided this information, I have to admit that I'm not sure why it's needed, as I've been able to send email without a hitch using via my ericsiegmund.com address and Suddenlink's regular outgoing mail server. But if you're having problems with a similar arrangement on your system, perhaps this will help. YMMV.

Firefox 3 drops support for Windows 95, 98 and Mac OS 10.2

The newest version of Firefox, code named Gran Paradiso, is in its second alpha release, meaning that it's not nearly ready for prime time but is available for application developers to test. But the next version of Firefox will be built using Gecko 1.9 as its layout engine, and the folks at Mozilla are already warning that it won't support Windows 95, 98, or ME, and will require Mac OS 10.3.9 or later.

I can't decide if the difference in the wording of these limitations is meaningful or not. Does it mean that Firefox 3 won't run on those versions of Windows, or simply that you're on your own if you have problems? There's less ambiguity with the Mac OS requirement.

Update: According to a Mozilla rep, it's incorrect to refer to this as an "alpha release of Firefox 3." The alpha designation is for the new version of Gecko. The practical implication is that Firefox 3 is waaaay off in the future.

Technorati tag: Gran Paradiso

Missed by *that* much...

But, I'll bet you're not on It, either.

Hat tip to Kevin Dayhoff via Soccer Dad, who contends that Instapundit is more influential than PowerLine, although it occurs to me that there's probably a whole generation of bloggers who've never heard of Instapundit and wouldn't know an Instalanche from an instant latte.

Municipal WiFi: Bloggers Beware

An article in this weekend's Midland newspaper described several "WOW" projects being considered by the city, and among them is the implementation of citywide WiFi.

At first glance, this seems to be a wonderful idea, and at least a couple of people over at Jessica's Well profess great enthusiasm at the prospect of dumping their current ISPs in favor of the municipal option. I've given the issue literally minutes of thought and have come to the conclusion that I won't be one of them.

There are a lot of unknowns in the proposition, including pricing, reliability, and security. What is not unknown, at least in my mind, is that giving control over my internet access to the government seems foolish.

Last Tuesday, my internet access went missing all day due to a still-unexplained technical problem at my service provider. Annoyed as I was at the interruption, I felt confident that the company was (a) doing all it could to get things back online, if for no other reason than to minimize the chance of losing customers, and (b) the outage was not intentional. Perhaps I'm naive and paranoid, but as much as I personally like and respect most of the people I know in our city government, I cannot bring myself to assign those motivations to any government entity in a generic sense. Nor can I count on having our government perpetually staffed by people with noble intentions.

The folks who should be most skeptical of government-provided WiFi are those who consider blogging to be a valid form of journalism. I fall into that category, although the reality is far less impressive than the concept, given the extremely low signal-to-noise ratio we currently experience in the blogosphere. (And I count myself in that non-journalistic ubër-majority -- most of the time.)

Blogging does have the potential to play an important role in keeping citizenry informed, but it has the distinction of being a medium in which its practitioners have little control over the actual dissemination of the information they generate. Very few of us know how to independently build and maintain a backbone to the internet; we're at the mercy of folks who have the technology and willingness to do that for us. Up to now, those folks also need what we're willing to trade in exchange for that access. The real question is whether we can say the same thing about the government.

In closing, I'd like to address one additional piece of that article, a quote by one of our city councilpersons to the effect "...government should compete with the private sector as long as it can beat it." The previously linked post at Jessica's Well took issue with that statement, but I happen to agree with it. In fact, I wish that was the cornerstone of all government endeavor, for if the government actually limited itself to only those things it can do better than the private sector, I think we'd be in much better shape overall.

Outlook 2007 Hoses HTML Email

SitePoint's current newsletter sheds some light on a move by Microsoft that will likely affect your incoming email, as soon as Outlook 2007 lands on computers around the world. It reports that Microsoft has switched the HTML rendering engine in Outlook from that used by Internet Explorer -- which in version 7 had become quite competent -- to that used by Word 2007, which, to put it in polite terms, is not fully CSS-compliant (in less polite terms, it reeks).

Here's a quick summary of the features that Outlook 2007 will no longer support, as provided by SitePoint (Microsoft's own summary is found here):

• no support for background images (HTML or CSS)
• no support for forms
• no support for Flash, or other plugins
• no support for CSS floats
• no support for replacing bullets with images in unordered lists
• no support for CSS positioning
• no support for animated GIFs

What does this mean to the average email recipient? Expect to see much simpler layouts, as email developers find that their previously complex designs don't work in the new program. And since they can't target their emails based on which email program the recipients use, everyone will see the change.

Now, lest you think this is more Microsoft bashing on my part -- to be honest, I applaud this change. When it comes to my email, simpler is better, and there's nothing in the preceding list I can't live without. I try to avoid sending HTML-formatted mail, and I prefer not to receive it, when I have the choice. If someone wants me to see a web page, they need only to send me the URL and I'll visit it at my convenience; I don't want it embedded in an email. HTML-formatted mail is often ponderous and bandwidth-sucking, makes phishing easier by allowing the disguise of URLs, and increases the potential for recipients to allow the introduction of malware onto their systems. In fact, according to the SitePoint article, this change by Microsoft implies that the company isn't as comfortable with IE 7's security as it has previously asserted.

In summary, how you view this move by Microsoft will depend on the extent you favor HTML-formatted email vs. text format. There may be much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the developer community (SitePoint's own email newsletter is broken under Outlook 2007), but the average email recipient may be better off (never having to see another animated GIF in an email is a blessing from my perspective) or at least neutral (I subscribed to the text version of SitePoint's newsletter so I don't care).

Firebug for Firefox

If you like to dabble with website design, I'm guessing that you use Firefox as your browser, and you've come to view the Web Developer extension as the greatest thing since sliced bread. (Perhaps I'm projecting, since that describes me.) But if you've ever wished for an even more powerful add-on to assist your development chores, Firebug may be the answer you've been waiting for.

This free open-source application allows you to browse, edit and debug HTML, CSS, and Javascript on any web page via a browser-based interface. It's currently in beta, but seems pretty stable on my installation of Firefox 2.0. It's also available in a "lite" version for browsers not named "Firefox" (as a Javascript that you embed in the pages you want to use it with...not a particularly elegant solution, but I assume it will get the job done).

One caveat: Firebug works best when you have a lot of spare screen space (it supports dual monitors), as its console attempts to convey a lot of information at one time.

I'm not ready to abandon Web Developer, as Firebug doesn't really fit with the workflow I've grown accustomed to, but it's worth checking out if you're not set in your ways and are looking for a full-featured browser-based development tool.

Technorati tags: Firebug | Web Developer

Fox Bite

It's not a bug, it's a feature!

I'm here to tell you that any feature can be turned into a bug, if you simply apply yourself. Take that handy little "x" up there in the corner of a Firefox browser tab, used to close the tab when you no longer have a need for it.

[You can see this coming, can't you?]

I just discovered the unfortunate consequences of combining an unsaved blog post with imprecise mouse clicking, and as a result, you may never learn the details of The Extremely Intimidating Client.

Update: It helps to know really smart people, and they don't come any smarter than the FoxMeister himself, Brian, from over at BeanQuest, who left the following comment: "If you Ctrl-Shift-T after you close the tab, it comes back, with form fields as they were. Maybe it's not too late! Try it now!" Even though it had been more than an hour since I closed that tab, I tried it and -- voila! -- tab restored! Excellent.

Only now, I have to decide if I was really meant to post that thing after all. I mean, we could be messing with some universal laws here.

Firefox Search Tip

Those of you who've upgraded to Firefox 2 have no doubt already checked out the "Manage Search Engines" option when you click the little triangle in the search box on the tool bar. That option shows you which search engines are installed on your version of Firefox, and also provides a link to install additional search services. In my opinion, this powerful feature is one of Firefox's greatest strengths.

Did you also realize that when you change the default search engine in the tool bar that this carries over to the contextual search feature? That is, when you see a word or phrase on a web page that you want to use as a search term, you can select it, right-click on the selection, and choose the "Search for..." option to automatically fire up your chosen search engine.

Here's where I find this feature particularly helpful. When I write movie or book reviews, I often refer to other films or books. I generally try to link to those movies via IMDB.com and to the books via Amazon.com. With the Firefox search feature, I can write the entire review without getting distracted with embedding links as I go along. After I've finished the review, I can select the appropriate search engine and go back through my post, highlight each title, and find the right link to add to the post before publishing it. It's not a huge time saver, but it does make posting more efficient, and so you get more bloggy goodness from the Gazette. (However, try not to blame Mozilla/Firefox for that. After all, blogs don't bore people; bloggers do.)

Good, Cheap...But Mainly Fast

Say what you will about the old interweb, some folks have figured out ways to iron out the kinks in some of the overhead items, and what once took hours and even days now can take literally only minutes.

I think I set some kind of record this afternoon for going from initial inquiry (around 1:30 p.m.) to live website (around 5:45 p.m.), and this includes registering a domain name, acquiring a hosting account, and creating a placeholder home page*.

This is what happens when you have a motivated client and good working ties to service providers. (Oh, and it doesn't hurt if you can hand-code CSS in your sleep. ;-)

I can remember the Bad Old Days (way back in '04) when it sometimes took 48 hours for the DNS transfer to complete. Nowadays, it happens in as little as five minutes.

*If you're still seeing a "coming soon" page from GoDaddy, it means your ISP hasn't refreshed its DNS server. Shame on them. All the cool kids can see the site.

Standing Up For IE 7

The new version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer is now available for downloading and the consensus seems to be that it's a big step forward, at least compared to its Microsoft ancestors.

Many of the new features in IE 7 are simply "catch-ups" to what its competitors -- primarily Firefox and Safari -- have had for a while, things that many of us now take for granted, like tabbed browsing, competent security, and good adherence to website coding standards. The latter, in particular, is welcome news for us web design folks as it means that we can start treating IE like any other civilized browser and -- eventually -- stop kludging code to make it play well with our sites. (The reality is, of course, that it will be years before IE 7 displaces its predecessors. The irony is, of course, that those kludges that made sites work with IE 6 and previous versions may now break with IE 7. I'm just glad that I never coded exclusively for IE.)

However, some folks are claiming disappointment over Microsoft's apparent lack of imagination in browser design, feeling that it should have done more. The Wall Street Journal's technology editor, Walter Mossberg, says this in yesterday's edition: The new Internet Explorer is a solid upgrade, but it's disappointing that after five years, the best Microsoft could do was to mostly catch up to smaller competitors.

Hang onto your seats, because I'm about to do something unusual: defend Microsoft. I wish Walter had provided some examples of features that would have wowed him (he did note that the next upgrade of Firefox would feature spell-checking and state recovery -- allowing you to pick up where you left off after a crash [biting my tongue]). Even so, I think it's much ado over nothing. Bells and whistles are OK, I suppose, but a browser that's secure, renders sites like they were designed, and has a few features that make surfing the Web a more efficient process is really all that most people want. If IE 7 has achieved those goals, I'm more than happy for Microsoft and Windows users who want or have to stay with the browser.

Random Thursday

Let's put a technical spin on this week's edition of Random Thursday, shall we?

• Apple's "press event" slated for September 12 has created a huge buzz over the possibility that it will roll out a studio-to-set-top integrated solution for delivering digital video content. Translation? Streaming movies from the iTunes Music Store directly to your television or monitor...or revamped widescreen iPod. This could be the first move in an inevitable process that will do for full-length movies what iTunes and the iPod did for music.


• More from the wacky world of Apple - Jon Gruber, proprietor of Daring Fireball, has issued a challenge in response to an alleged security weakness in the new laptops: "hijack my new MacBook and it's yours." There's method in his apparent madness, but thus far, no takers.


• Joi Ito previews the mylo, a very small, very cool wifi digital-media thingamajig set to be released by Sony on September 15 and which may or may not be running Linux, is definitely running Opera, and probably won't be available outside of Japan, but you can pre-order it via Amazon, so who knows?


• Via Schneier on Security, this website that allows you to test your bomb-recognition acumen.


• While Apple may be conquering the known media universe, Google is laying claim to everything else, including your company's next intranet.


• And, finally, "tech" shouldn't necessarily imply "high tech," and some of our favorite things might be referred to as "retro-tech." Take mopeds, for example.

Geek out.

Netscape? Are they still around?

Janco Associates has published a white paper documenting browser market share and the big surprise is that Netscape has almost 5% of the market, compared to 0.3% a year ago.

Quick show of hands: any Gazette readers using Netscape?

[Aside #1: I just popped over and looked at the Gazette's visitor stats and note that Netscape is used by 4% of the traffic, with a scary 2% (!) still using Netscape 3.x. Yikes. I can't imagine the jumbled mess they see here. OTOH, that's the same percentage as those using IE 7.]

Confusingly, Janco had this to say in the news release accompanying the white paper:

They must be seeing something in the numbers that I'm overlooking.

Anyway, Firefox's adoption rate has slowed a bit and continues to hover around the 12-14% share.

[Aside #2: The most intriguing things about all of this is the amount of interest that the relative market share of a bunch of free software can still generate. Sometimes I think that there's a perception that one's choice in browser says as much about them -- or more -- than their choice in automobile.]

[Aside #3: If that's the case, perhaps the browser marketers need to take some lessons from car makers like Hummer, where one's manhood (and, now, womanhood) is directly proportional to the amount of Hummerization of one's driveway.]

[Aside #4: I tried to find an URL for the Hummer commercial alluded to above but the whole dang website is a Flash movie.]

Turning Down Work

I've spoken with enough prospective clients calling to ask about a website that I can tell from the beginning whether a project is something I'll be interested in. Thus it was that my antenna was quivering early in yesterday afternoon's phone conversation as the man on the other end of the line rattled off a litany of things he wanted in his new website.

I want to be able to sell stuff via the site. I want to have my site pop up in a separate window whenever somebody looks for what I'm selling. I want to have everything on my site link to eBay so it's always available there. I'm just starting out so I want everything to be as inexpensive as possible...

OK...well, let's talk about some of these things. Do you have a merchant account?

No.

OK. No problem. You might consider using PayPal to handle your transactions. Are you familiar with PayPal?

Uh, no. I don't know anything about computers.

Well, that's what I'm here for. Now, what are you selling.

Oh, knives. Jewelry. Jewels, like diamonds and stuff.

So, do you need a database backend to manage your inventory?

What's that?

Well, it allows you to update your website's store without actually having to get into the website itself. But if you don't have a large inventory, it's probably more expensive and complicated than you need at this point.

Yeah, well, we just want to be able to update the website ourselves.

So...you know HTML?

No, but my partner knows all about websites. She says she can build the website but I don't trust her.

Ooooo-kay. Now, I really don't know what you mean when you say you want your products to automatically appear on eBay. I don't have any experience in that area, but it seems to me that that's something you'll need to handle via your eBay account, and not really something that requires a special set up on your website. But, again, I don't know that for sure.

I don't know anything about computers.

All right. Uh...let's talk about this pop-up thing you mentioned. What do you have in mind there?

Well, you know when you visit a site and, like, 500 windows pop up and you have to click through each one of them to get back to where you're going? I want my site to be that annoying pop up generator.

[Note: "Annoying" is the exact term he used.]

So...

Yeah, so that whenever somebody goes looking for something I'm selling, when they visit another site, I want mine to start popping up...

You know...uh...I'm not your guy. I'm not interested in working on something like that...

[I didn't bother explaining to him that what he was requesting was quite impossible. The very idea that he wanted to do it in the first place was sufficient reason for me to write off the project.]

Oh? Well, where could I find someone who will do that for me?

[That's right...I'm here to help you find my competion. It's what I live for...pleasing the customer until the bitter end.]

I suggest that you look in the Yellow Pages. Good luck. [click]

Calls like this are the reason that while I pay for a small Yellow Pages ad, I do so grudgingly, as I've rarely gotten a worthwhile project via a cold call. Over 90% of my business comes from referrals, and that's the way I like it.

Anyway, I'd love to listen in on this guy's conversation with other web designers.

Note: I don't make it a habit to publish conversations with clients, prospective or otherwise. But every now and then something so outrageous occurs that it must be documented -- as a cautionary tale, if for no other reason.

A different kind of spammer

The following comment was left on a recent post about the Israel/Lebanon conflict:

It's a reasonable enough comment, relevant to the topic and intelligently crafted.

Trouble is...it's spam.

The commenter's purpose is not to express an opinion about Israel's capabilities and options, but rather to get you to click on an URL that leads to a ad-centric website about contact lenses.

I'm seeing more and more of this type of spam. Most are not as well-written as this comment, as they seem to be left by non-English speakers who nevertheless manage to pull key words and phrases from the post and weave them into an almost-coherent response. What they all have in common is a link to a generically commercial website with a dot-info TLD (and most of them use a gmail address). This one leads to www.contactslensonline.info, in case you want an example.

My theory is that someone is actually hiring these folks to spam blogs as a way of promoting these websites. Rather than using a computerized 'bot to generate the comments, which are more easily rejected by captcha routines in the blog software, these human-generated comments have a higher probability of making it onto the blogs, thereby generating either clicks or higher Google rankings for the sites they're pitching. Perhaps it's one of those "work from home and make millions" schemes ("I'm now making more than ever!").

It's an interesting twist. And I can't help thinking that in the case of the Israel comment in question, the writer actually has an opinion about the subject and has taken some trouble to create a readable entry. However, the end result is the same: deletion of the comment and addition of the URL to the blacklist.

Spam is spam, and it deserves to die.

Update: I attempted to contact the commenter via the email address "she" left, offering the chance to leave the comment intact if "she" would answer a few questions about who she worked for and what it involved. Unsurprisingly, my email bounced. Bye-bye, comment. Hello, blacklist.

We get mail...

• This link comes courtesy of my aunt who lives in the greater metropolitan area of Muenster, Texas. It's a Flash-based quiz called "The Senses Challenge" and I hope you do better on it than I did. People have been telling me for years that I have no sense, and this quiz seems to confirm that judgment.


• A blogger from just down the street in the Gazette Neighborhood, Deb Thompson, sends a link to Gliffy.com, a service that allows you to create flowcharts, floorplans, and other simple diagrams online, and save and share them via the web. It's in beta form at this point but it's an interesting concept. Be forewarned, however; it doesn't play well with versions of Firefox earlier than 1.5, as it gave me the following warning as soon as it sniffed my browser. I assume that one of the perfromance (sic) issues is loss of spelling ability.

Technorati tag: Gliffy

Email Woes

Oh, by the way...even though our motel room has free wireless internet, I'm inexplicably unable to send email. Incoming mail arrives just fine, but I can't make a connection with either of my outgoing mail servers. So, if you've sent me a message since early this morning, don't read anything into my lack of response, other than I'm either a klutz or...well, that's probably good enough.

More Spam Ranting: BlogSpot's Enabling

Just when you think the spammers' arsenal has been completed, up pops another insidious tactic, and this one is annoying in the extreme.

I'm getting an increasing number of trackback pings from bogus Blogspot blogs set up for no purpose other than to promote various schemes, businesses, and offensive content. Many of these sites are also configured with an automatic redirect so that you never actually see the blog itself, but immediately land on another website.

Infrequently, the blog will actually appear and it's still got its default Blogspot configuration, including the "flag for offensive content" icon, which I always make a point to click. I have no idea whether Google's blog minions ever follow up on such flagging, but at least it's something I can do.

I've read Blogger's Terms of Service and it's pretty clear that spam trackbacks are a prohibited activity:

Of course, as with any spam activity the real problem is identification and enforcement. Blogger doesn't provide a simple way to report abuses. The last sentence in the TOS is promising -- VIOLATIONS Please report any violations of the TOS via the Blogger Support home page. -- but when you follow the link, there's nothing on that page regarding reporting of abuse. Very helpful, Blogger...pretty much what we've come to expect from you.

This situation is another reason why incoming trackback pings are no longer accepted on the Gazette. Life's too short to spend any time cleaning them up or even moderating them.

Technorati tag: BlogSpot Trackback Spam

IE 7's Security

The release of the public beta of Internet Explorer 7 is the subject of much discussion around the web. Most reviews I've read are from the perspective of web developers and how the new version seems to conform (or not) with current standards, especially CSS. Those reviews are mixed -- some important flaws have been fixed; others seem to still be present -- but everyone acknowledges much can change between now and the release of 7.0.

The biggest gripe about IE, at least among those who care about such things (which should be but amazingly isn't everyone) has always been its woeful security. And when it comes of matters of security, the go-to guy is Bruce Schneier, and he's weighing in with a first look at how 7b2 addresses some of the known vulnerabilities. As with CSS, the report card is mixed.

Even if you don't plan to use IE, the post is interesting because it explains in layman's terms some of the generic security problems that browsers confront. And Schneier also describes some new initiatives Microsoft is considering that may well find their way into other browsers.

Unfortunately for Windows users, IE is still so closely integrated with the operating system that certain vulnerabilities simply can't be fixed, and this will continue to be the case until Vista comes on the scene.

Technorati tags: Internet Explorer | Browser Security

My preferred anti-spam weapon

I was going to post this as a concealed carry satire, but I just got off the phone with a worried client whose website email form is being hijacked by spammers. I would really, really like to introduce those crackers to my leetle fren, the Dillon Aero M134D-T Titanium Gatling Gun:

With a firing rate of 3,000-4,000 SPM, I think I could convince them of the error of their ways, and set them upon a path that would make the world in general a more congenial place to live.

Doff of the shooter's muffs to Deb over at Write Lightning, who never ceases to amaze me.

Technorati tag: Gatling Gun

Hacking for Christ

Gervase Markham is a young fellow living and working in the UK as a programmer and is a contributor to the Mozilla Foundation which has brought us the gift of Firefox, among other wonderful things. Gerv's geek dial is pegged to the right (and I mean that as a compliment). He's also a Christian, and his blog is entitled Hacking for Christ.

He apparently gets a lot of questions about the meaning of that title, and he's finally posted an explanation. It's a short and clever article, and I commend him for publishing it. It's a good reminder that no matter what gifts and talents we've been given, we can (and should) exercise them to the glory of the One Who bestowed them.

I just wish I understood more of Gerv's tech postings. ;-)

I just post 'em; I don't explain 'em

OK, settle down. The real reason for this post is that there is actually some interesting logic behind the computation. It's a comparison of the number of hits on a search term in Google with "Safe Search" turned on, vs. the same search with the filter turned off.

There's no practical use for this comparison that I can think of, other than serving as affirmation that an innocent blogger-to-be who's contemplating using "Hot Buns" as a name for her site focused on baking might want to re-think her choice. Or, maybe that's what she's going for to begin with.

In any event, this is the first time I've ever found a need to put a post in the categories of both "Just Plain Silly" and "Internet." Although, now that I think about it, almost everything in the latter probably fits in the former.

Tip o'the hat to Patti over at White Pebble, whose score on this test seems to indicate that the algorithm needs some tweaking.

Um...just curious. Do you have Safe Search on or off in your browser?

BPL: More Power to Texas Internet Users?

Potentially exciting news from electricity provider TXU Corp.: beginning in 2006, 2 million homes and businesses in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area and "other Texas communities" will be offered Broadband over Power Lines (BPL), via an agreement between TXU and CURRENT Communications Group.

BPL is essentially the use of existing power lines to provide high speed internet access. It's an attractive idea because of the almost univeral reach of the existing infrastructure and the ability to turn your home's electrical wiring into a full-fledged information network. The utopian view is that any properly equipped device plugged into a standard A/C outlet could immediately "communicate" with every other device on the local power grid without requiring any additional wiring. "Plug and play" takes on a whole new meaning. Thus, your digital TV could network with your computer; your coffee maker could network with your bedroom alarm clock; your refrigerator could network with your hair dryer (I'm not saying how any of this might actually be useful). Of course, as with any new technology, there's still some uncertainty in terms of reliability, cost, speed and some other technical issues like interference with radio transmissions.

Also, there are several competing technical standards for BPL, and they're all new enough that there's no guarantee as to which -- if any -- end up being the final standard. CURRENT uses the HomePlug® power line modem standard, and it has some heavy-hitters as backers (like Intel, Motorola, Comcast, GE, Sony, Linksys and more). It's also telling that one of the investing companies in CURRENT is Google.

Interestingly, the HomePlug Alliance focused first on intra-home networking (see my appliance-to-appliance examples above) and has only recently formulated a BPL standard for bringing broadband into the home. The HomePlug AV specification was approved by the Alliance board in August, 2005. While neither the TXU nor the CURRENT new release states that HomePlug AV is part of the services being offered in the new arrangement, it is implied by the phrase "...including the triple play of voice, television and high speed access..." That sneaky reference to "voice" is VOIP, meaning, of course, internet telephony.

Due to the lack of specificity in the press releases, I can't tell if TXU's west Texas customers will be part of this initial rollout. Regardless, it's a fascinating development. I'd be interested to hear if any Gazette readers have had experience with BPL.

Technorati tags: BPL | HomePlug | CURRENT Communications | TXU

100 Oldest Domains

While browsing through this list of the first 100 .com domain names registered, the following Observations Occurred At Random™:

• Apple is #64, having registered its domain name on February 19, 1987. That, according to the WHOIS lookup I just performed, is approximately four years ahead of Microsoft (May 2, 1991). I'd say that the four year gap in innovation has remained the one constant in the relationship between those two companies.


• The oldest domain name, symbolics.com, is still active although it belongs to a different company...or a different permutation of the the original company. I'm sure many of companies associated with the domains listed are now defunct...tandy.com being a prime nostalgic example.


• For the most part, these are really boring names, mostly company or organization names, to be exact. The concept of URLs as marketing tools apparently had not yet been fleshed out. However, #3 on the list, think.com is an exception, belonging to the Oracle Education Foundation. (I wonder if Oracle was the original registrant?) But conspicuous by their absences are those generic noun- and adjective-based domains that would later make some lucky and insightful folks wealthy and/or infamous. I mean, surely someone in the 80s was thinking "sex.com," or was that early period really that geeky?


• The one guy who seemed to be ahead of the curve was John Gilmore, whose toad.com slipped in at #84 (August 18, 1987). Gilmore's site is, well, a bit spare, to be diplomatic, but the co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation doesn't seem like the type to worry much about such things as design. It's interesting to contemplate what he might have accomplished if the web had been flourishing in the 60s.


• It took about 2 1/2 years to register the first 100 domains. It's difficult to get a handle on current counts, but most agree that the total number of active domains is now in excess of 100 million. From tiny acorns...

Technorati tag: 100 Oldest Domain Names

Big Groups of Stupid People

Jim over at Serotoninrain links to an article in Forbes entitled "Attack of the Blogs" [free registration required] in which is described a few instances where groups of bloggers joined forces to harass people with whom they didn't agree. The author extrapolates from those examples that bloggers comprise a formidable lynch mob. Here's the overblown intro:

Jim takes significant umbrage at the charges leveled in the article, and points out that he's not the only one. It will be interesting to follow this in the blogosphere to see if the article was actually designed to elicit the kind of reaction it describes. It's certainly starting out that way.

Forbes does seem to be making the same mistake that the anti-gun lobby insists on repeating, and that's to blame an object for its misuse. Forbes even goes so far as to blame the "manufacturers" (blog-enablers like Google and Yahoo, in this case), much as anti-gun forces target Colt, Smith & Wesson, et al.

The article reminds me a bit of C.S. Lewis' quote about the devil: be careful not to attribute to him too little power...or too much.

But before the blogosphere goes all medieval on Forbes self-exposed backside, it might be helpful to do some self-examination to see if it's as squeaky clean as it will no doubt claim that it is.

There's a popular bumper sticker that reads "never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." The blogosphere is a growing microcosm of society; society as a whole contains a fair number of people who do stupid, illegal, immoral and detestable things. Why do we think the blogging population won't sometimes exhibit those same behaviors? Does the ability to type somehow confer a superior set of ethics and wisdom? (See also Shakespeare, Monkeys and.)

If there's one thing in the article that I agree with, it's that the ability to be anonymous will be abused by bloggers. Not could be; not potentially...it's a fact that has been demonstrated in the past and will continue to be the Achille's Heel of this medium. The very thing that liberates also drags it down. Until people are willing to step up and be personally accountable for what they write about other people, we'll continue to see abuse and allegations of abuse in this regard.

And spare me the lectures about how anonymity is essential for true freedom of speech in cases of corporate whistleblowing or dictatorships. Using those legitimate examples to argue that hidden identities must be protected for all use simply demeans those who really need it...and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who falls into which category.

There'll be plenty of others who do an excellent line-by-line fisking of the Forbes article (and there are several outrageous claims to be debunked), and the blogosphere as a whole will walk away both unscathed and proud of how it defended itself. It's too bad that a poorly researched and written article provides an excuse for ignoring the kernel of truth that's hidden inside.

Fortunately, the bloggers whose work I regularly read and respect will be unsullied by both the article's claims and the truth behind some of them, and I salute them for that.

Technorati tags: Forbes | "Attack of the Blogs"

Firefox 1.0.7 & 1.5 Beta 1 Available

I'm a bit late but I also realize that I'm not alone in sometimes being slow to discover software updates...so if you haven't yet heard, release 1.0.7 of Firefox is now available for free download. This release addresses a number of security flaws, some of which are deemed to be critical.

And, for the more adventurous among you, Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 is now available for download. You can see what's new and improved in the release notes. As with any software in beta status, you should be prepared to deal with surprises, not all of them pleasant.

Technorati tag: Firefox

Here's why I really like my webhost...

This email just arrived from ValueTech, where the Gazette (and many of my clients' sites) are hosted:

I blanked out the phone numbers. If you need to call them, you can go to their website.

These guys aren't a huge company...but they take their business -- and their clients -- seriously, and are committed to first-rate service. It's great that they've not only got a plan, but that they also understand the importance of keeping their clients up-to-date on what's happening. I recommend 'em. I also know of a couple of local and state governments that could learn some lessons in disaster planning from them.

Firefox Tab Tips

If you're an experienced Firefox user, you've probably already discovered this tip, but if you're new to the browser you might find it helpful.

Tabbed browsing is one of Firefox's strengths, but depending on how you prefer to work, you might need to tweak it a bit to make it more efficient. For whatever reasons, I seem to click a lot of links in applications external to Firefox...links embedded in email messages, in Word documents and PDFs, in my GoLive files, and so on. In its default configuration, Firefox opens such links in the tab (or window) that's currently active.

That means that if you're in the middle of, say, an online article about the Norwegian Porridge Feud, and you get an email from a friend providing a link to a breaking story about Jen and Brad, when you click on the email link you'll lose your place in the porridge story because the Jen-and-Brad story will open in that same window or tab. Fortunately, Firefox has an option to change this behavior, so that when you click on a link in another application, the resulting webpage will open in a new tab (or window), thereby maintaining the current status of your open tabs.

To specify the desired behavior, open the Firefox preferences and find the Tabbed Browsing section (see screenshot below, from the Mac version of the program). The screenshot shows the setup to have a new tab opened when you click on that external link.

Now, there is a downside to this option, and that's the potential for an amazing proliferation of tabs. If you build webpages and do a lot of previewing of your work from your layout program, you could easily end up with dozens of new tabs as you work on your pages. You'll have to decide if this is something you're willing to live with.

One more option in this setup is worth noting. The meaning of "Select new tabs opened from links" option may not intuitive, but it simply means that when a page is opened in a new tab, Firefox should make that new tab active. Again, the value of this option depends on your personal preferences about how you like to work. Most of the time, when I open a new tab from a link within the current page, it's because I want to later look at that new page...but not right now. So, I've left the option unchecked.

Technorati tag: Firefox

Technorati Tags

Jim over at Serotoninrain left a comment on a previous post asking for my theory as to why the Technorati-related icon and link wasn't appearing on his blog. It's gone from mine, too, and I'm guessing it's a problem on Technorati's end, as the coding in our templates is still intact.

But in doing some quick research (defined as "clicking around about twice") I ran across this post by Dave Sifry, Technorati's founder. It contains some interesting facts about the adoption rate and current usage of Technorati tags, which the company started tracking last January.

As Sifry [proudly] observes, the adoption rate has been remarkable. More than 25 million posts have been tagged, over 300,000 posts per day are being tagged, and this number represents fully one-third of all the posts tracked by Technorati.

I don't know if tags are the wave of the future, or a passing fad, or one step in a progression of increasingly useful metadata that will help us find what we're seeking on the interweb. But the concept is extremely interesting and worth checking out, if you're a blogging who doesn't use them.

Technorati tag: Technorati Tags

Speeding up Firefox

Here's a performance tip for those who are using Firefox (and why, pray tell, wouldn't you be?): to speed up the loading of webpages, turn on HTTP Pipelining.

HTTP Pipelining essentially allows your browser to send multiple requests to the server at one time -- during one connection -- as opposed to the more usual behavior of sending one request, closing the connection, opening a new connection and sending another request, and so on. Since your browser makes a separate request for each object imbedded in the webpage you wish to view, these requests and connections can add up and cause perceptible delays. (An object can be an image, a script or stylesheet, an audio file or a number of other things besides the simple HTML coding that forms the basis for a page.) HTTP Pipelining cuts down on the lag between the browser's requests and the server's fulfillment of those requests.

You can do this by typing about:config in your address bar and in the resulting window (which displays a long alphabetical list of browser configuration variables) scroll down to "network.http.pipelining" and click on it to toggle the setting from "false" (off) to "true" (on). The setting for "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" can then be set for any value from 1 to 8; the default is 4. (Visit this page for documentation about the various Firefox configuration variables.)

There are a couple of caveats. Not every server supports HTTP Pipelining and even though the latest standards are such that non-support is not supposed to cause a detrimental effect, you could experience problems with a given page. If you set maxrequests to 8 and experience problems, try changing it to a lower number.

More likely, you might find that you don't notice a significant improvement in page-loading speed. Tests have shown that the theoretical improvement in speed of HTTP Pipelining is signficant, but this doesn't always translate into practice.

However, in my limited testing thus far, I think some pages, especially those with a lot of images like SI.com, seem to load quicker. If nothing else, you'll perhaps understand a little more about your browser and how to control it.

Tip o'the hat to SitePoint's unfortunately named "You Don't Know Jack about FireFox"

Technorati tags: HTTP Pipelining | Customizing Firefox

Unwired Cities

Intel has released its third annual list of "Top 100 Unwired Cities and Regions in America," purporting to show which metropolitan areas have the widest wireless internet access (paid or unpaid). For the third consecutive year, Midland didn't make the list. Texas was fairly well represented, as follows:

3. Austin/San Marcos
23. Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington
28. Houston
41. San Antonio
75. El Paso
100. McAllen/Edinburg/Mission

If the Midland Economic Development Corporation wants to truly start putting Midland on the map, it would do well to address this infrastructure issue. I mean, anytime we get beat by McAllen-Edinburg-Mission (or El Paso, for that matter) in a tech-related area, there's something wrong with the picture.

Skype Captain

Update: If you're on my blogroll or one of the In Crowd (you know who you are!) and would like to communicate with me via Skype, send me an email message and I'll send you my username. I'm not ready to just throw it out for the world to see.

Motivated by Julie's account of taking the Skype plunge, I downloaded, installed and configured the free software (it's very similar to setting up chat software) and we were talking five minutes later. I have to admit that the concept is slick, although the actual process is less than perfect.

Julie said that my voice was coming through pretty clearly, but hers was cutting out badly on my end. She had called me first, so we hung up and I called her. That improved things a bit, but they deteriorated steadily through our short conversation. She was also hearing her own voice through her speakers, which makes me wonder if there's more than one way to configure a computer to use this service.

I'm skeptical (skypetical?) about the usefulness of this service. It feels really awkward to speak via your computer; I've never been a big fan of speaker phones, either. I'm also a much better communicator in print than in audio. My conversational skills are hit and miss, at best. A nice feature of Skype is that you can revert to traditional chat mode (typing) if the audio cuts out (or you lose confidence in your own voice or thought process! ;-)

On the other hand, it's undeniably cool to be able to audio chat across platforms and countries, and to put physical voices with the imaginary voices that inevitably develop after you've read someone's blog for a long time. And the price is hard to beat.

If you're unfamiliar with Skype, it offers free internet telephone services that are administered via your computer. The software works on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and Pocket PC operating systems. You will need a microphone that's compatible with your computer, and it helps to have some good quality speakers. The Skype website can provide you with all the other info you need.

Technorati tags: Skype | VOIP

Big Blue Backs Firefox

Proving that corporate IT departments aren't all genetically engineered to run screaming from any application that doesn't originate in Redmond, IBM is encouraging its employees to adopt Firefox for their on-the-job browser.

The ironic thing is that the help desk phones are probably very quiet. Some might argue that the heavy tech support needs and resulting job security are a large part of Microsoft's popularity with corporate IT staffs. But that would be awfully cynical, wouldn't it?

Tip o'the hat to Joi Ito.

Technorati tags: Firefox | IBM

Time Flashes By

Tired of the same old boring digital clock on your desktop? Open a browser window and fill it with this.

The only improvement I'd suggest is to add a line for millenia.

Wind o'the mainspring to Patti over at White Pebble.

Internet Connection Blues

I'm having the most annoying problem with my internet connection. It's intermittently going out and coming back on...and it's gotten to the point where it's off more than it's on. It shows all the signs of a loose connection at the pole in the alley (we don't have underground utilities in our neighborhood), possibly due to a wind-blown pecan tree limb rubbing against the line. Here's the kicker: Cox can't send anyone to look at it until Friday afternoon.

In the meantime, I'm watching my cable modem and attempting to send and receive email, upload website updates and post blog entries during those rare occasions when all the lights are burning...like now! Gotta run...

More Google Map Goodies

In honor of today's NFL draft, hop over to Backcountry Conservative where Jeff Quinton has posted links to satellite photos of the Big 12 football stadiums (and a couple of extras like the Cotton Bowl and Reliant Stadium).

Of course, even if you're not interested in football, you can still drag the photos around and take visual tours of the campuses. I can't remember the last time I was on the A&M campus, but I can still spot some familiar landmarks.

Update: Here's a collection of interesting Google Map satellite photos, including Bill Gates' house and lawn mower art of Oprah Winfrey's face. Perljam.net has done the link legwork so you don't have to. I'll have to take their word about Gates' house, however; I couldn't figure out which one it is.

Technorati tag: Google Maps | Big 12 Football

Bandwidth Test Results

If you want to feel good about your internet connection speed, run a bandwidth test on a Saturday morning.

I just ran four tests over the space of about ten minutes, with results ranging from a low of 1.9 megabits/second up to a blazing 3.1