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Sunday, September 16

Joan Rivers joins 'the bloggers'



Too, too funny ...

From her blog:

My doctor told me blogging was what happened after eating too many bananas. But blogging is so much more — it’s sitting alone in a dark room, eating raw cookie dough out of the package while my dogs lick my bare feet, and wondering where my life has gone. Melissa, my daughter, love her to death, but the bitch never calls unless I threaten to update my will.

... these videos and podcasts, much like Senator Larry Craig in an airport bathroom, will be coming at you hard and fast all day on Sunday.

... since this is the internet, and since most celebrities can barely read much less use a computer, I can finally get to say all the dirty and disgusting thoughts that those old-fashioned TV networks never let me get away with. As the evening wears on, Melissa and I will also be appearing in something called “Podcasts,” which I’m praying is some type of body-transplant surgery.




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Postscript:

Who knew Al Gore owns a TV Station? So far he’s got an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy, and now he’s going for a Tony. He’s doing a musical on President Bush called The Lyin’ King.

What’s Al Gore’s speaking fee? Something tells me it’s $All You Can Eat. He’s probably wondering if his Emmy is made out of chocolate. He didn’t learn after breaking all his teeth on his Oscar!

Internet People!

Dan Meth's v. cute run through of the last few years of Internet hits.

Saturday, September 15

World's Worst Polluted Places 2007


View Larger Map

The Top Ten (in red) of the Dirty Thirty (in purple) as determined by the Blacksmith Institute.

KML KML

NB: This was easily done from new 'Link to this page' Google Maps option, but the worstpolluted.com site didn't suggest it.

Why is the UK press ignoring Bebo?


NMA today:

[UK owned] Bebo has overtaken search giant Google as the most viewed web site in the UK, according to new research [ComScore] out today.

The news comes in the same week that Bebo signed a deal with Yahoo! that will see the internet giant sell advertising for the social network, integrate Yahoo! answers within its platform and develop a Bebo-branded browser toolbar.

Here's Bebo Vs MySpace in UK Google Search traffic Vs. UK Press coverage (Google Trends):




The thin blue line at the bottom is Bebo's UK Press coverage.

One can speculate why this is the case but it's so huge that it's rather an indictmentof UK Press coverage of the Web in general.


"Fat and Dumb"


'Former Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska won Best of Show at the Presidential Debate in South Carolina in July.'

Hat tip: the Telegraph.

He calls Americans "Fat and Dumb" amongst a whole lot of other 'home truths'. Great fun watching the others continuing to smile.



Gravel got $100k in the last financial sweepstakes deciding who wins 'Most Powerful Individual in World'.

nb: trying the Candidate Calculator ['Answer the questions below to find the 2008 Presidental candidate that best aligns with your beliefs.'] - Gravel has issues.

I'd be a Kucinich fan (Campaign website, the rather sweet www.dennis4president.com), showing the rather enormous differences in political beliefs across the pond between Yurp and the Yanks.

'Choices' on 'VAJoe.com' include Assault Weapons Ban and Water Boarding of Captives, alongside Universal Health Care.


Usability myths and professionals discussion

More discussion on Alastair Campbell (no, not that one, the other one) of Nomensa's blog about 'Usability myths and professionals'.

Alastair had responded to comments I made about their advice to government web workers (they're at the end of my original long post).

I think Discount Testing is do-able, Alastair has lots of concerns - I think that sums up one disagreement.

We're also disagreeing about the value or otherwise of guidance and 'myths'.

Here's a couple of things I wrote:

[Discount testing]: We are not disagreeing, what I’m saying is that Usability is a movement, a general aim which everyone has to buy-into — that’s the goal. Out of that comes budgets, attitude-changes and far better customer service.

[Usability professionals should prod government]: The UK - for one thing - is doing well in some areas. We do have a lot of good work. But just like Bebo being ignored over MySpace don’t you think our political leaders are rather letting the side down if they aren’t prepared to engage with industry on something as fundamental as the usability of their products? And stop spinning the failures and talk up the real successes?

Dancing Hitler lives!


I love the tone of this headline from Techmeme:

Greg Sandoval / Webware.com:
FIRST PRINCE, NOW VILLAGE PEOPLE TARGET YOUTUBE — Somebody combined the Village People's hit song, "YMCA," with footage of a dancing Adolf Hitler and posted the clip to YouTube. Now the company that owns the rights to the band's music is preparing to sue YouTube.
I met the Village People in Sydney once. Very bored /boring people ...

YouTube is a platform and the U.S. Constitution (free speech and all that) bars the sort of censorship being called for (particularly by daft UK pollies). Lots of sound and fury signifying nothing (except problems for others, like police deprived of their evidence).

Everywhere around the Google empire people are yelling about a lack of customer service - it's the same here, more people needed to 'take-down' quicker, 'why aren't these rich 'don't be evil' people employing them faster?'. Which is bad news for Google and sounds just like what happened to Microsoft.

But I can't help thinking it won't be long before technology exists to pre-screen soundtracks and auto-bar videos with copyright tracks on them.

Which may suck but then someone will come back with a way to get around that.

I'm sorry but I guffawed when I read this about the dancing Hitler:
Each time the video is pulled, someone else uploads another copy
Now you can't kill either the message or the messenger. Satire sure is powerful ...

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Friday, September 14

AdBlock: "not evil"

nicholas carr
The always interesting blogger, author and commentator Nicholas Carr has a thing about AdBlock - that's a little plug-in or add-on which around 1-2% of users have installed - to the point that he just asked the question

If that sounds OTT that's because it is .

As I explained before, there is no way that AdBlock, the effort of one geek in Germany, not the Russian mafia, is ever going to seriously challenge ecommerce.

AdBlock somehow representing armageddon for ecommerce, if not capitalism in general, is what Nicholas and most others on this subject have been carrying on about.

And here's why they all need a bex and a good lie down:

broadway world with ads

This is the faaaabulous Broadway World website trying to flog me Xanadu tickets, finding it's own way around my AdBlock, which is the red circle in the bottom right of the screengrab.

Haaretz and others get some ads round my default AdBlock set-up as well.

xanadu banner
(Xanadu? Is this some sort of off-beam behavioural targetting? I Haaaate Xanadu, brings back bad memories .. :{ )

bex tabletsSeveral industry commentators have written that AdBlock is evil.

Some are arguing that Firefox users be actively blocked, (which just sparks another add-on arms race).

Carr is right on one thing though, that a paid commentator should see the Web the same way as the poor sods who don't use AdBlock. I won't spoil his post by telling you his answer to 'Jesus's' conundrum ...


~~~~~~~~~~~


Postscript: here's Google getting around AdBlock on JackP's blog:



And a comment made me investigate my filters in AdBlock and - ahah! - there is indeed a 'Dr Evil' involved in this conspiracy against capitalism!
[Adblock Plus 0.7.1]

! Filterliste von Dr. Evil & MonztA (mit Hilfe der Foren-Nutzer auf firefox-browser.de)
! Zuletzt geändert: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 19:06:37 +0200 wird alle 4 Tage aktualisiert (expires after 4 days).
! Kommentare (verbleibende Werbung, fälschlicherweise blockierte Inhalte, Danksagungen ;-), ...)


! bitte per Mail an adblockfilters@mozdev.org oder auf http://www.firefox-browser.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28904 an uns richten


I come back to The Pickards after clicking 'add filter' a few times and - voila! - Jack's Ads disappear :{ Even when I disable AdBlock on Jack's site :@ It must be learning !? Only when AdBlock's entirely disabled do Jack's Ads reappear :~

Odd.

Thursday, September 13

Hail to the chimp!


Hurrah!

One other good thing about this new template is that I can pop The Chimp-o-Matic back ... I just looove those Bushisms (doesn't everyone).

Bottom of the sidebar.