Recently in Internet Category

I noticed the other day that I, well, I am in a lot of chat rooms. It's all over IRC networks, none of this third party crap. Let's see what I am in at this moment. On WyldRyde IRC Network I can be found in a number of channels, #blogshares for the game, #lockergnome for the tech info site, #RGN for an old radio stream I used to DJ on way back in the beginning, #geek for my name there, #photography cause I love photography, and a few other channels I am not sure I am allowed to publicize.

I am also on WoW IRC, in #Medros for my name there, #knowyourrole for my WoW topic radio show I do on MMO Radio, #wowrp cause, well, I am a Roleplayer, #worldofwarcraft for the main network channel, #serenity for talk about Serenity, the movie based on the canceled Firefly TV series, and #help, to provide help with IRC topics and troubles. I am also on MMO Radio IRC I am on the MMO Radio channel #mmoradio for talking with the listeners. Lastly, I am on Fuitadnet's IRC, for talking to my web host, in #fuitadnet for business and #chat for fun, both of which are auto joined by the network.

Each year, the king of search, Google, releases it's annual look back on the year in search. Every year, bloggers, press types, and net addicts also analyze those results in the Google Zeitgeist and try to declare the state of the net in the year gone by. Allow me now to follow their lead. My beloved WoW join MySpace, Wikipedia, iTunes, and more in the Top Gainers list, while somehow Janet Jackson finds herself at the top of the search results list for top searches in 2005, even though her revealing Super Bowl appearance was almost a year in the past at the beginning of 2005. In a show that results often mirror life, the results also show that the world joined the southern US in not even recovering from Katrina when Rita hit hard. Check out the results, and see if anything there surprises you.

Has the end of the geek era come to pass? Is Harry Potter enough to keep the geeks in dominance of the media? I mean sure, there is a book and a movie in that series coming out this year, but Wil Wheaton points to an article posted by a New York Post writer that reasons that with the end of the Lord of the Rings, the end of the Matrix, and many other geek series', the geek era is coming to an end. Of course, ever the optimist, sees it differently. "I actually think it's the beginning of a new golden era for geeks" Wil states, and follows by listing the many things geeks have to look forward to, such as the ever increasing net connectivity and computing power, the sci-fi channel, the ongoing X-Men series, as well as other comic based movies, and a potential Hobbit movie. Star Wars and LotR are done, but more is yet to come on the geek scene, I guess.

Meetup.com, the site who decided to mislead their users and volunteer organizers, by saying the change in ToS and site were in order for organizers to begin charging for their meetups, and apparently forgetting to mention it was also in their plan to charge all organizers a monthly fee to volunteer their time to help make meetups what they are. Well, now a VP at meetup.com had authored a post called "Belly-Achin' Bloggers in Seattle" in which he credits the group for deciding to stay with meetup, but that there seemed to be a lot of complaining. The fact that a VP(VP of Communications no less) decided to call their customers, some of the few who stayed with the site, many with decent and valid complaints, 'belly achin' is a truly horrid sign of their customer relations.

I am really curious when this happened. When did websites decide that turning on their customers was a wise and good thing to do? The examples that have cropped up recently are DeviantArt.com, which has revised it's user agreement to basically say they can do anything electronic with their users works without asking permission, and meetup.com which has decided that it is about time their hard working volunteer organizers begin to pay for the privilege of giving up time and energy trying to build up their groups. Few organizers are doing so for just one group, in fact one is doing it for no less than 6 groups. As for dA, I fail to see why they can't just ask their users if they want to use their works elsewhere, especially if, as one staffer put it, using user works in ads is a costly risk.

Last year, Google shook the internet news sites and blogging community. Was it possible they had 2 pranks? Both seemed too much to imagine. A lunar based office, and a 1 GB storage email service named Gmail. The talk was of copyrights and trademarks after the announcement of last April 1st, people completely debunking the possibility as too much to imagine, too much to be real. They ended up revolutionalizing the free web based mail market. On the 1st of this year, Google seems to have topped themselves. I am not sure what their true prank was(GoogleGulp), but their announcement that they will double the space available under their Gmail email service in honor of it's 1 year birthday and official launch is only toped by their promise 'to continue growing your storage beyond 2GBs'. Happy 1st year, Gmail.

It seems that the creator of WordPress, a fairly popular blogging tool, has been slammed for 'spamming Google' and it's ranking system by hosting thousands of pages that they were using to make money from a sponsor. I will not pretend I have not heard of this practise, in fact I am fairly sure some of the advertisers I have had now or in the past have done so because of my 6/10 ranking, but that is a huge difference from front page ads on my site, to thousands of paged on a site linked to by every single WP default install. Rightfully, Google seems to have removed WordPress from their index, and so has Yahoo. It is, though, not surprising that an Open Source coder feels the press of financial obligations and is forced to make such moves to remain solvent. The owner says it isn't spamming, though.

I have been talking to a good friend, who has told me of some amazing offers he is planning to bring forth in the hosting side of this thing we all love, the internet. He has given me some preliminary peeks at what he is planning, and I want to say it is without a doubt a great plan he has. I will talk more about it in a couple of days, but it will be a great offer, I can promise you that. For those who are looking for a new web host, please stick to this page on Thursday or so, as I promise I will make it well worth your while.

RSS is the best thing since sliced bread. I have heard this, or a very similar statement many times over the last year or two. This goes along with the many aggregastor reviews, and changes and forks to the RSS format. There is only little, tiny, microscopic issue I have with this. RSS is as limited as we were with email news letters, mail lists, and web sites, all of which I have heard said that RSS will replace. Don't get me wrong. RSS is very helpful. RSS is not everything. It has the same flaws that websites do. Sure, it strips away the banner ads, the graphics, and all the junk, and it does it well, but I didn't not read the lockergnome newsletters that piled up in my mailbox for months on end because of the ads, I did it because I didn't have time to read them. The problem that plagues web sites is not solved by RSS, it just changed the form of the inconvenience, moving it to 'I didn't have time to open my browser' to 'I didn't have time to open my aggregator'.

The makers of the Suprnova replacement eXeem have, as promised, released the software to public beta. Version 0.20 has already had a few problems, but it still promises to be one of the best known p2p software apps on the net.

The world of Bit Torrent was visibly rattled 11 days ago when the leading site for torrents, Suprnova.org, voluntarily shut down in the face of looming MPAA lawsuits and/or a potential cease and desist order. Suprnova was arguably the most popular site for torrent files, and it's closure was a surprise to few, with many fans seeing the writing on the wall with constant disruptions and increasing times of unavailability of files, but none the less a harsh shock of reality. Today, the owner of Suprnova laid rumor to rest with an announcement.

I noticed this weekend that the CNet site had a new look, and while it is not the look I am used to, it is one I can get used to. Things are still there as I am used to using, and I can still get to the whole weeks headline if I am missing one for a post. Then, today, I found out why. CNet editor Jai Singh writes "To celebrate CNET News.com's launch seven years ago, we ran a full-page national newspaper ad with the tag line: "If you're getting your tech news any faster, we're telling the SEC." Well, here we are celebrating another birthday--CNET News.com was born on Sept. 4, 1996--with a redesign. In those seven years, a lot has changed about our site and the Web in general. What has not changed is our unwavering commitment to credible journalism and to "Tech News First."

What would I do if I had a credit card without worries of the bills, and was able to register all the programs and services I use regularly? This post came to my mind after ruminating on the number of services online and programs on and offline that I use without paying back the creators a little, due to the new member closure of BlogRolling, and I realized there are many. I use Trillian. I use Zone Alarm. I use PGP. I use mIRC. I use MailWasher. I have recently become a big billionaire in BlogShares, and use a good many services online. BlogRolling. Fotolog. TypePad. There are likely more, I just forget most of them. Sadly, I am likely up to several hundred dollars, and I am not even close to done. I would need this fictional card for a year to cover it all.

Ok, so I have been using Google Toolbar 2.0 beta for a little bit, a couple of days, and I have a few thoughts. First, not ready for prime time, but that was a given. Next, there needs to be several options for the auto fill, perhaps in a drop down list with right click, or when it confirms what should be entered. I have two different names I use online, sometimes 4(Dwight Wallbridge, Geek, TheGeek, and GeekMeltdown, with differences in spacing and such), and many email addresses. Third, the pop up killer, while an improvement over other IE PUK's, doesn't do a good enough job. Some sites it does absolutely nothing on, while others that have excessive pop ups seem to kill this feature after about 4 or 5. Also, and this is a big one, I know they bought Blogger, but use the Blogger API and offer me other blog types for BlogThis!. In the meantime, though, here is one way to do your own MT BlogThis! implementation.

Google today released the new version, 2.0, of the Google toolbar to the beta loving public, which has three new features that are sure to be loved by most users. The features, a pop up blocker, a BlogThis feature, and a form filler, are all things that most people already use a lot, mostly in third party plug in's to IE or in using other browsers. No word I have seen yet tells of plans to port the Google toolbar to other browsers, which is honestly unlikely, but the new toolbar does hold out hope that the acquisition of blogger might have some heavy and very positive effects on the world's best search engine. I know I will download it very soon.

Twenty years ago yesterday Jon Postel and Paul Mockapetris did the first successful test of something that now is one of the most important part of the internet, the domain name system, or DNS. This is the part that turns user1.aol.co.com into an IP address like 12.34.21.43 for transfer across the net, and that allows routers to know where the domain a packet is destined for is located in the IP range. the Register talked to Pail Mockapetris today, where they talked about the past and future of the net, DNS and all things connecting them. I haven't had time to read it all, but it is sure to be a great article to get into the mind of one of this tool's founding fathers.

In a move that I am sure will surprise many people, I agree wholeheartedly with Bill Gates on the topic of spam and the threat it poses to the net. Speaking in front of Congress, Gates presented a letter which said "The torrent of unwanted, unsolicited, often offensive and sometimes fraudulent e-mail is eroding trust in technology, costing business billions of dollars a year, and decreasing our collective ability to realize technology's full potential," to Sens. John McCain and Ernest "Fritz" Hollings of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. Technology is threatened, and I know a lot of people who have begun leaving the net because of it and the problem of pop ups. When you begin losing people, it is a major problem that needs fixing.

Yahoo, on the other hand, is doing something to fix it. Today is the first ever International Dump the Junk day when spam recipients are urged to toss out spam and even paper junk mail. The site for the event shows what you should and should not do to help in the fight on spam, and all of the points it makes are good ones. Sadly, the page also recommends sending your Spam(the food) back to the maker, which is hardly the same thing. "Estimates suggest spam--or unsolicited bulk e-mail--costs businesses roughly $8.18 billion per year in lost hours and wasted resources. More than 40 percent of all e-mail traffic is now made up of spam, and some industry experts have expressed concerns that the levels may get so high that e-mail becomes unusable as a communications tool."(C|Net)

A french Canadian named Ghyslain, whose home movie that got out on the net showing him pretending a broom stick is a dual end light saber like the one used by Darth Sidious in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace has made him an easy target of ridicule, has become the focus of a fund raising campaign by two bloggers. "Andy Baio and Jish Mukerji launched a fundraiser Friday for the young man they call the "Star Wars Kid," whose home video has been downloaded millions of times and watched by people all over the world." Wired also reports "By Friday afternoon, the webloggers' fund had received more than 100 individual donations totaling nearly $1,000. The pair also has received donations of software and a T-shirt. They plan to buy Ghyslain an Apple iPod and some accessories."

Ask Jeeves, one of the many companies trying to bury Google and take it's #1 spot with it's Teoma search service, has announced that after a successful 9 month trial run in the US, the service's UK portal will be moving from Espotting to the Google Adwords service. Ask Jeeves will find the going rough for Teoma the more it puts money in the pocket of it's competitors, though it is one of the few sites to actually section of sponsored links from the normal results as most engines just mix them in. "Ask Jeeves is the UK's 11th biggest Web property, claiming 6.6 million unique UK users a month - or 21 per cent of the country's search audience. With Ask Jeeves UK under its belt, Google now claims a UK reach of 63 per cent for its AdWords listings."

Last week The Register reported that Google's Eric Schmidt had announced that Blog's would be getting their own section, like news and usenet do, on the Google tab interface, which many expected would happen when the search giant bought Blogger. The Reg points to one person rambling on Slashdot that blogs are useless(umm, you were posting to one, moron) and one other person who ranted that who clearly thinks that most bloggers are typing to hear the keyboard strokes. Odd, Usenet and 90% of the mail lits online are even higher in the noise to signal ratio, but you don't hear these people ranting about them. Slashdot, once a useful news source, has degraded to a whine fest and become impossible to read, but yet it is used for a quote. Hmm, Geek Blog, #2 for 'Jessica Corbin' in Google. Yeah, I like my stat's. Nothing wrong there.

In what I just read, but was posted a couple of days ago, Tony Steidler-Dennison, now former writer of the Penguin Shell newsletter at Lockergnome, has left the company for his own online publication, uptime, with a link to be provided sometime today or tomorrow. This is the second writer to leave the LG ranks in the last while, and while Jake and Chris are excellent writers, it would be difficult to continue on the path they are on now. Tony, in his announcement, said the parting is friendly, and that someone else will be writing Penguin Shell for now, though he made no mention of who, but he may not know. I will miss his writings, but am happy that I got a link in one of his last few issues.

I have seen many different things by email. The first and foremost is the many spams I receive. I have had so many nigerian scams that i could likely tell you the fingerprint of these things that many of the better spam killers use to detect them. The Register received one recently that defies logic and ensures that only the truly gullible will go along with it. the email starts out by the writer proclaiming that he loved a woman, whose name is ironically the same as that of a Nintendo game character, who was beaten and raped. he then goes on to say that he will kill whoever did this, and that anyone who does not pass it along must have done it. He says he has killed 14 already, and there is supposed code int he email that tells him the location of the reader. Thankfully, The Reg is smart enough to pass it off and mock it as the worthless crap that it is.

Possibly the cause of the spammer going live on TSS earlier, MSN, Yahoo! and AOL today were expected to announce a plan to join forces in the fight against the scum of the internet, spammers. The Register reported a story by ElectricNews.net that claimed the three email giants, and the three best free mail domains on the net, "will cooperate to locate and prosecute so-called "kingpin" spammers, promote anti-spam federal legislation that clearly targets such spammers and establish technical standards to combat the menace. Already each company is taking steps separately to fight the problem; most recently, AOL earlier this month filed five federal lawsuits against spammers it accused of sending 1 billion junk messages." There is no word yet on whether or not they did, but I will be sure to mention any developments.

I was watching this thing Frontline: Cyber War, which I learned about through VMyths, and the show had the exact stuff that the writer for the viral myth debunking site claimed there would be. There was former cyber czar Richard Clark warning about the major cyber threat from other nations, and a liberal dose of those straight faced gentleman refusing to comment on the possibilities, though a logically thinking person's first question would be what exactly they refuse to comment on. Are they refusing for the far too often used threat to national security, or is it that they know it is not as big? I have no doubt Slammer was a test for bigger things, but I doubt Al Queda is a cyber threat.

So, Chris Null, renowned blogger, has an article on Wired News all about Bloggers and how their blog's are handle after they have passed on. When I think about blogging and death, I think back to what has to be the most infamous 'death' of a blogger that was heavily linked to at the end. That is of Kaycee, who is was discovered later was the figment of one woman's imagination but who was well known in the blogosphere, and her death was one of the most widely reported events, though the revelation of the deceit was even more widely reported in the 'sphere. Great article, none the less.