A couple weeks ago I mentioned the release of Identi.ca, a social networking/microblogging site built on an open platform and allowing federation. Today, a beta release of Twhirl, one of the more popular clients used on the Twitter microblogging service as well as a couple others, adds support for Identi.ca and includes "push" support. Many of us who have come to like Indenti.ca are very happy.

That means Twhirl doesn't have to pole (read: overwhelm) the Identi.ca servers to see if you have any new items to read. Instead the servers just let you client know there's new content and pass it along. It works using the jabber/instant messaging interface (identi.ca sends it's push messages to your jabber account, and you tell Twhirl how to log into your IM account).

This is pretty darned smart (and takes a couple steps to set up). It's something that Twitter could probably use on their service to potentially reduce load (although I cannot say for sure that a push service would actually reduce the issues related to overloading of their servers).

Read more about it at CNET or grab the latest beta of Twhirl with Identi.ca support from this link.

Tired of relying on well-funded commercial software companies testing their software on you while you come to truly rely on it, with little to no control?

Well, the world is (potentially) changing.

If you're - for example - a Twitter user, you might be interested in checking out Identi.ca, a brand-new open-source platform for microblogging. Press release below.

I can be found at http://identi.ca/greghughes - Check it out.

Control Yourself, Inc. launches Identi.ca, the Open Microblogging Service (July 2nd, 2008)

Montreal, Quebec-based Control Yourself, Inc. today launched Identi.ca, the open microblogging service. Users can post short messages about themselves to Identi.ca, which are then broadcast to friends in their social network using instant messages (IM), RSS feeds, and the Web.

Identi.ca is similar to existing microblogging sites such as Twitter, Jaiku, or Pownce. Unlike those services, Identi.ca’s underlying software is available under an Open Source license. Identi.ca is also the first service to support OpenMicroBlogging, a standard for exchanging short messages between microblogging sites. Identi.ca also makes public user data available under a Creative Commons license in standard formats.

“Too many existing social networks keep users locked in to their services,” says Evan Prodromou, president of Control Yourself. “With an Open Source code base, and support for standard data exchange formats, we are giving users back the autonomy to control their own social Web presence.”

Response from initial testers has been enthusiastic, both for the software’s design and functionality, as well as the site’s openness. “It makes me feel alive again to see the resurgence of free/open on the web,” said Jon Phillips, Community Manager with Creative Commons in San Francisco, CA.

Control Yourself will grow the service exponentially throughout 2008, adding features such cell phone text messaging (SMS) and multilingual support in its next software release.

Link to the original press release: Control Yourself

I've really missed Windows Live Writer since I starting using my Macbook Air so much. Even though I have it in a Fusion virtual machine running Windows, I find I rarely use it since it uses the VM's filesystem (not the Mac's), and copying stuff onto the Mac clipoard and then pasting into a Windows virtualized app is not what one might wish.

I was pleasantly surprised to run across a Mac app called Blogo, which I am using to write this post. It's nowhere near as feature-rich as Live Writer, but Blogo is a great start on a WYSIWYG editor with many of the bells and whistles. I pointed it at my blog home page during setup, with very little hope it would auto-discover my blog settings, but I was pleasantly surprised. Up popped a dialog asking for my username ad password, and once I provided it, there on the screen was my list of blog posts pulled straight from the server's API (which I seem to recall emulates the Blogger API). Very nice.

Blogo has a funny icon logo, is available as a free 21-day trial, and after that it's $25. There are a few key features missing that might make me pause when it comes to shelling out the cash. Specifically there is no spell checking (I'd like to see red underlines and inline corrections with the right-click action), selecting text and trying to drag it around doesn't work, the image editor is fairly limited, and it doesn't seem to pull my list of existing categories. Plus you cannot edit the HTML it creates (yet) and pasting multimedia content inline doesn't seem to work well. But as I said, it's a great start. If you have a Mac and you're frustrated with other blogging apps, you should check it out.

It's the best WYSIWG mac client I've found so far, so it earns a spot on my Mac's Dock. I will be keeping up with this editor's progress with high hopes, and am encouraged there may yet me a Mac blogging client to rival WLW.

We can hope!

One of the main reasons I decided I would buy the MacBook Air recently was that I knew I would be able to run Windows on it, either in a bootable install or in a virtual machine. In fact there is really one main app that I use all the time on Windows that I just can't get for the Mac, but that's a topic for another post. I'm quite happy with the Air - It's a great machine and  I have to admit that OS X has grown on me.

I bought a copy of VMWare Fusion after doing my required research. Compatibility with OSes and a variety of different features/capabilities put it at the top of my list for a virtualization host. I have a couple copies of Windows Server 2003 lying around here that I never broke the shrink wrap on, so I built a trimmed down virtual machine for use on the Mac.

In fact, I built three of them. But every time I installed a new VM and got it up and running, every time I restarted the machine VMWare would simply quit, die, crash - console and all. No running process and nothing on the screen.

Long story short, I searched and searched and searched and then went to the VMWare user forums, where I found a note about issues people have been having with Fusion and the MacBook Air when using the Air's external DVD drive. Apparently because I was unplugging the DVD drive and then restarting the machine without it attached, Fusion was somehow wigging out (my term) and closing unexpectedly.

After reconfiguring the VM in Fusion's control panel to no longer show the missing drive as "connected," the VM fires right up and works. Hopefully this is something VMWare will address in it's next Fusion update. It's tough keeping up with the nuances of new hardware, to be sure, so looking forward to a fix. In the meanwhile, manually removing the DVD drive in the VM's settings works like a charm.

Guy Kawasaki and a couple of his friends recently fired up a site/service called Alltop, which displays a variety of popular topical areas in which various popular blog/news feeds are aggregated. Think of each of the topical sites as a one-stop-information-shop. High-level topics include the categories of Work, Living, People, Interests, Culture, Geekery, Good and News. On his blog Guy describes it as:

Alltop... a news aggregation site that provides “all the top” stories for forty of the most popular topics on the Web. The headlines and first paragraph of the five most recent stories from forty to eighty sources for each topic are displayed. Alltop stories are refreshed approximately every ten minutes.

The interface is clean and easy to read - lots of information on the page. Mouse over a headline and see the first few sentences of the article. Click the headline to go to the original site and read the full article or post.

I'm privileged to be among the bloggers whose sites are listed on the Windows Alltop news site (at http://windows.alltop.com/), along with a list of information sites and authors which - truth be told - I am amazed to be paired with. I mean, glancing at the site right now, I'm on the page between Ed Bott and the IEBlog. If I work hard enough at it, I can only hope to provide the types and quality of information you get from the other sites in the list.

Check out Alltop. Lots of good stuff there.

I don't think I have actually mentioned it here before (oops), but I use Twitter on a semi-regular basis to jot down thoughts, post my "status" and keep an eye on what some other people are doing. My Twitter name is greghughes (go figure), so feel free to add me to your follow list, or whatever. :)

Twitter has a mobile client (at m.twitter.com, but note that it only works on a mobile device) that works, but it's pretty basic and feature-incomplete. So, since I had some time this evening I decided to look around for software (to run on the PC) and web-based (for the iPhone) clients.

I found a few options, including a really nice web-based client specifically made for the iPhone (or the iPod Touch) called PocketTweets, which is clean in appearance and includes pretty much all the Twitter functionality. I can post my own Twitter updates (called "Tweets"), send replies to others, or anything else on Twitter I might want. It's certainly better than any of the other clients I found. Very cool.

Next I need to find a good Windows client that won't crash when run on a 64-bit OS. I've been using Snitter, which is pretty okay but doesn't quite work (update) reliably enough in my experience and I'm not much of a fan of bright and contrasty color schemes. Any ideas?

My friend Brad Pierce is in the middle of his trip around the world (literally), where he is doing the whole trip on the surface - no airplanes. He's crossed the United States, then the Atlantic, and is in Europe as I write this. Paris to be specific. It's a lifelong dream of his, and he left the familiar world behind to live that dream. I am a lot proud and a little envious. :)

You can keep tabs on Brad's travels at http://www.peopleinpassing.com/, where he is logging his experiences and posting some photos as he goes. Brad is also a talented photographer.

He says 5-6 months or more are still left to go, and the path is one that gets determined on the fly. It's a trip with it's bumps, which is really a critical part of the great experience in Brad's book. Great stuff, man.

Minutes ago and well in time for the Tuesday release goal on the West Coast, Omar released dasBlog v2.0 on Sourceforge, which as Scott mentioned a few days ago runs under the .NET framework v2 and supports medium trust deployment.

dasBlogv2.0releas.0andmediumtrustsupport_1387E/dasblogbannerimage_2.png" width="500" border="0">

Downloads can be found dasBlogv2.0releas.0andmediumtrustsupport_1387E/dasblogbannerimage.png" target="_blank">here for source and compiled web files.

I'll upgrade soon (when I can find enough free minutes, probably later in the week). The dasBlog dev team is also pushing ahead with a version that will take advantage of the .NET 3.5 framework and should be very, very cool as well. So, lots there now and lots more to come!

I'll update here with details (or more likely a link to someone else's details list) soon.

dasBlogv1.9.7releasefinal.NE.1version_8FF9/image.png" target="_blank">dasBlogv1.9.7releasefinal.NE.1version_8FF9/image_thumb.png" width="240" align="right" border="0"> Scott posts about the latest dasBlog release, v1.9.7, which you can download and use now. He also discusses the pending (within a week) release of dasBlog v2.0, which will be compiled using the 2.0 .NET framework, and even additional versions planned under framework v3.5. Lots happening in dasBlog land. 

Among the new, improved and changed stuff in v1.9.7 (the below list is quoted from Scott's blog):

• Fixed a metric buttload of bugs (ed: Scott's word, not mine, heh)
• Taken in more patches from the public than any other release (Thanks public!)
• Category and Home Page Paging Macros
• LiveComment Preview (thanks SubText!)
• Emailed Daily Activity Reports
• Windows Live Writer Custom Integration
• Support for Akismet Comment Spam Support
  • Go get a WordPress account, without a blog, and use the API key they'll send you.
• Optionally show comments on the Permalink Page
• Even more performance gains (4x+) in the Macro engine
• New Internationalized Languages, including Swedish (Thanks Per Salmi!)
  • This brings our total supported language count up to 15! Although we can ALWAYS use more, and we really need double-checkers and updaters to put in localized strings for some of the new features!
• Support for Blogging directly from Word 2007
• Many fixes in our Blogger API and MetaWebLog API support
• Better detection of referrals from Search Engines
• CSS fixes and additions like highlighting of the Blog Author's comments
  • Make the comment email address match the email address in sitesecurity.config for this feature.
• DHTML Timeline of Posts from the MIT Simile project
• Support for SMTP Servers like Gmail for notifications
• New themes
• Support for THREE Rich Editors - FreeTextBox, FCKEditor and TinyMCE (in DasBlog Contrib, see the source)

Kent Newsome started a "help me rebuild my feed list" project recently, and I was pinged to contribute a short list.

This is an update on my swivel feeds experiment, in which I ask bloggers I read to help me rebuild my reading list.  I've had a great response so far, and my new reading list is coming together nicely, with a diverse and interesting mix of bloggers.

A good list has formed and when all is said and done he plans to create an OPML list to share.

Here are my five (or so) blogs for the recommendation list. I've tried to find ones that I would recommend highly but which are not already on Kent's list (there is one repeat though). Also, ones where the author published often. They're all listed for their own individual reasons, and no - not all of them are tech-related. Three of these people I have met in person, one I have interacted with on the 'net, and one I have only read. All get my attention in FeedDemon.

• Rory Blyth - Often described in the past as a train wreck in progress, mostly his blog is just plain real - sometimes very much so. And he's a great writer.
• Trevin Chow - A Microsoftie I know and appreciate, he's worked on a number of cool products and projects.
• Adam Gaffin - He writes quick and topical links at computerworld.com on pretty much a daily basis.
• Scott Adams - Yes, the author of Dilbert and a couple very good books. Scott's blog is incredibly smart and funny and smart and sarcastic and smart and ... Well, just go read it. I'd be shocked if you were not to become a regular.
• Scott Hanselman - Yeah, he's already on Kent's list but let's face it, Scott's top notch and his blog bears repeating.

Of course, I subscribe to a lot more than those five, but they are among the ones I look at and read new content on nearly every day.

You know the best way to get a real grasp of how many people read your blog? Just stop posting. They'll come out of the woodwork with questions...

"Hey I noticed you haven't written much on your blog recently - everything okay?"

"What happened? Nothing new recently."

"Did you stop blogging or something"

"When are you going to start writing again?"

... and on and on. Which is nice. So thanks to all of those who have asked. I am alive and fairly well, thank you very much.

I've been pretty tied up at my job lately, with an even-more-than-usual workload. Between that and all the related (and unrelated) travel, any available time to think and write has been quite scarce. Then add in the fact that Richard and I have been working on our new IT podcast, RunAs Radio, and the situation gets even tighter.

But I am still here, so thanks for the thoughts and there is more to come.

Let me start by saying I really like GoDaddy.

A while back, I migrated this blog from a shared web hosting environment to a virtual dedicated server at GoDaddy. Now, before I gripe a bit about the performance, let me say one thing. What I bought from GoDaddy is exactly what I got. They guarantee something like 384MB of RAM for their Windows VDS's, and my blog plus mail server regularly exceeds that amount. My fault.

What that means is that when the host that houses my virtual server is under heavy load from the various virtual machines it's managing, the available RAM allocated to my virtual machine could drop as low as the guaranteed 384MB level. Needless to say, if that happens and my apps need more, things might crash. Especially those apps that are already running in RAM at the time the allocation changes.

And that's what has been happening on my server. Plus, I have discovered it's getting quite expensive.

As I mentioned in my last entry, my blog typically pulls in around $80 a day or so from ad clicks. Well, this afternoon I had a few minutes to breathe at work and I discovered my server had been offline most of the day. My ad revenue for today is less than $30 as a result. Do that a few times a month and adds up pretty quickly.

So, I've decided that I will once again be moving, this time to a GoDaddy physical dedicated server on its own hardware - an Intel Core 2 Duo running at 2.13 GHz, with 2GB RAM, dual 120GB drive in a RAID array, a Cisco PIX 501 firewall and the works. The reliability and uptime of dedicated hardware is easily justified by saving all the lost revenue from the current system, so it just makes good sense to do this. It's true what they say: You get what you pay for.

At any rate, the downtime during the transition will probably be far less than the downtime each time the current server fails. Maybe I should install this copy of Exchange I have lying around here and really get things humming. Hmm....

Over at problogger, I recently (well, actually it was several weeks ago - I am just now using a long flight from Chicago to finish this post) ran across a post entitled "Does AdSense Suck for Bloggers?" where Darren Rowse points to Guy Kawasaki (who started a popular blog called "How to Change the World" in 2006) and the New Web Order blog, which editorializes a bit further on Guy's experiences.

A bit of a high-profile slam on AdSense was taking place in these venues, which is unfortunate because Guy's experiences are not the same as everyone's. I'd venture to say that his experience may in fact be similar to the majority of people who just "give AdSense a try" without putting any serious effort into it. But Guy's blog was never optimized in terms of layout for AdSense advertising and his page content is not exactly optimal for context-sensitive advertising either. Now, he writes about many things (and quite well, by the way) and I truly enjoy his blog, but the fact of the matter is that there are a few things he could have done to improve his click-through rate and revenue. Not to mention the fact that his blog is still relatively new - it's only a year old. These things take time, the creation of contextual content and careful design. And the kinds of changes I am referring to would not necessarily have required trashing the layout or skimping/compromising on the author's writing style.

Go read Guy's post about his experience, and then take a look below at mine, to illustrate that it's not just about being famous or high up in technorati's listings when it comes to having a successful experience with AdSense. Being famous or well-known can help, of course, but it's really about how many web site visitors you get, whether the ads are contextually relevant, and how many of the people who visit your site actually click the ads to reach to the content they provide. I'm far from famous, and I am certainly not too well-known (thank goodness). But my revenues from AdSense on one single web site continues to amaze me.

Note: I am providing some information here that other people may not feel comfortable sharing about their own sites and experiences. That's fine, but I have no reason to hide any of this information. My point is to illustrate that AdSense can and does work, and to provide some evidence as well as a little balance to the "AdSense sucks" argument.

In mid-2006, my page views numbers were somewhere in the 8,000 per day range. Later in the year,  it's climbed to well over 10,000 a day, and is now well over 15,000 page views a day on most days - often in the 20-30,000 range.

So - for posterity's sake and for conversational comparison, here are some stats for the year 2006 on greghughes.net, per Google's system counters (which vary from and are slightly lower than my own internal stats counters, but I think being conservative is a good thing when looking at these values). Note that I cannot post publicly my account's actual click-though rate or other numbers due to Google's AdSense terms of service, which I respect. Also, I ran this article (pre-edits) by the AdSense support team before posting, just to make sure I am not crossing any lines. I have no desire to fall victim to the rather terse and stern terms of service that Google rightfully has on its program. They said I was good to go.

What I can tell you is that my click-though rate is relatively high compared to typical site averages, and that through testing I have proven to myself and others that the high rate is a direct result of effective placement and design of the ads themselves, in combination with site layout and design tweaks.

The 2006 stats for this site (greghughes.net):

• 2,355,059 page views for an average of approximately 6,450/day average (using some very conservative counters to be sure). Note that today I average more than 20,000 per day - a significant difference. As you'd expect, that difference is reflected in the total number of clicks per day and the daily revenue numbers.
• 264 posts for the year generated significantly less comments and trackbacks than Guy's blog did - and that's one difference in being famous and high-profile - people link and talk back to you more if you have some celebrity following like many of the A-listers do. Note that perhaps more important than how many posts and comments I had in 2006 are the other 1,107 posts that I made between this blog's inaugural post in 2003 and the end of 2005. Those posts still generate a significant amount of interest and traffic from search engines - many thousands of visits a day.
• Again speaking conservatively, several hundred people regularly grab the RSS feeds. Again, this is a huge difference from Guy's RSS subscription count (I'm on the low end of the spectrum). His subscriber count via RSS is in the thousands - and this is also an indicator of why his traffic may not be driving much revenue. It's been proven that RSS feeds are not the better advertising medium. People just don't click as much. However, I should say that my friend Scott has seen some good results in his RSS advertising.
• Total advertising revenue for 2006: approximately $8,700.00, which is significantly higher than Guy's revenue, and let's face, it - no one really knows me from a hole in the ground. It's also worth pointing out that the 2006 amount is for the full year, which includes a good six to seven months of significantly lower monthly revenue before I made some critical design changes to the page layout in about August. In fact, $1800.00 of the year's total came in December alone and my revenue values have been increasing consistently over time. Only time will tell, though. You never know what might drop or raise your numbers. Hopefully not this post, heh. For comparison purposes, my January 2007 revenue was over $2000.00 and it looks like February will close out at about $1700.00.
• Again, I have intentionally left out any mention of metrics other than how many page views occur and the total payment amounts, because Google is pretty strict about not sharing other metrics like click-though ratios, cpm, etc.
• As an aside, it's worth saying that for those who are not yet familiar with the process of IRS Form 1099 income, this is not all free money. You do have to pay taxes on it, and it's treated as income for an individual, so be prepared to set a large chunk aside for tax time each month. Keep that in mind and be sure to evaluate whether you should be running AdSense as an individual or as a business entity. Depending on your situation, there may be one option that's better than the other. you may want to consult a good CPA on an hourly basis to give you some advice. That tax hit, ouch!

There's a lot more that goes into making AdSense work than just dropping ads on the page and getting a few (or a lot of) people to look at your site. Sure, you have to drive traffic to your site content in order to get clicks. But ad positioning, relevance of the ads, the actual content of your site, and a number of other critical design and configuration elements play a major role in the failure or success of your advertising. The fact of the matter is, if you have a lot of distracting, flashy, graphical stuff on your pages, the ads will not get clicked nearly as much. Why? People just won't look at them nearly as much. It's that simple. 

For example, I used to have a picture of myself in the header of every page on my site, but one day I decided to remove it just to see what impact that would have on my ad clicks (specifically the click-through rate). I suspected that the picture was competing visually with the ads, resulting in less clicks. Sure enough, click-through nearly doubled as soon as I removed my mug-shot from the page template. Visual competition with your ads equates to distraction (you can think of it as visual aerobics - like watching a tennis game from side court), which means less clicks, which in turn means less revenue. Not a very complicated formula.

So, let me leave you with this - Despite the occasional popular, cliche rant in the blogosphere, AdSense most certainly and definitely does not suck for bloggers if you have patience, use it thoughtfully and apply it well. If you don't believe me, ask Joel Comm, the AdSense guru. If his AdSense Secrets is the bible of AdSense, then he is the prophet who can lead you to the promised land (forgive the analogy, sorry), but only if you actually follow his suggestions - all of them, even the ones you don't really want to. Remember - it's just a web site, so you can always put it back the way it was if you don't like the changes you make. You will have to experiment and try new things. Joel can tell you pretty much everything you need to know and a whole lot more. If I was to put some real and substantial time applying even more of his suggestions and those of others to this blog and maybe another one or two topical sites, I could quite possibly quit my day job.

But hey, I am certainly not planning to do that. I like my work and blogging is more of a passion for me than a vocation. I consider myself lucky: I'm certainly glad to have a revenue stream that makes it easy for me to justify using a dedicated host server and which pays for itself quite well (and then some). I'm also financially able to do more charitable giving in my community and in the world, which is important to me. It's a pretty darned good deal, no doubt about it. And I don't even have to do all that much to make it work - the content I've already written over the past few years seems to appeal to a wide audience, so they come here to find what they're looking for. Because the ads are relevant to what they're researching they sometimes click. All I really have to do is continue to write about the things that interest me and hope that others will remain interested, too.

By the way, I am certainly not the only beneficiary of my advertising success. It's a good deal for Google and it's advertisers, too: The better the ad performance on my site, the more effective their customer's ad campaigns. We all win.

Here are a few resources for learning about AdSense and making it work. These are the ones I used, in addition to a few acquaintances who made suggestions here and there:

• Joel Comm - who has his AdSense Secrets and other resources
• Google's AdSense program site - where you can get started
• The Google AdSense Terms of Service (TOS) - which you need to read and understand so you don't make any fatal mistakes

(the one where I ponder the personalness (or is it personality? (both?)) of blogs and notice how level the playing field really is...)

I was glancing at Techmeme.com this evening to see what I have been missing the past day or so, and I started browsing the names of the weblogs listed there. I noticed mine was listed, which was pretty cool, and a whole slew of others. For those that don't know, Techmeme lists current online news and blog entries about - you guessed it - technology. Where a topical post appears, the author is attributed and when others write about the same topic, those weblogs or news sites will sometimes also get listed under the main entry. You can click on each one and see what each author has to say about the topic at hand. It's really very slick, and it's all automated. You can blame Gabe Rivera for it's creation. It's really pretty much virtual ice cream for a geek's hungry mind.

Anyhow, as I was passing through Techmeme during my end-of-day, finally-got-home-from-work, just-have-to-see-what-the-rest-of-the-world-is-thinking time, I realized that not many people with tech blogs use their own names in the title. That got me to thinking that tech blogs are often "properties" by name, rather than direct representations of the people that author them, which is interesting to me since one of the things I like best about blogs is that they are uniquely personal.

Then it also occurred to me that except for certain specific blogs I already know (Engadget, TechCrunch, big names like that), I am naturally drawn to blogs that have someone's name in them. I had not thought about it before, but often I want to know what other people think about something. So, I guess when I see a person's name, I am drawn in. Interesting.

SO I went back and looked for examples at TechMeme. There are some people names scattered around. My name is right there, listed as "greg hughes." Robert's is listed as "Scobleizer," which is a play on his name. And Ed Bott's name is part of his weblog's title. But look at all these other names - most are some pithy or cool geeky blog name. Here's a partial representation of what's on there this evening:

Download Squad, Engadget, TechBlog, The PC Doctor, Ed Bott's Windows Expertise, Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog, Guardian Unlimited, Silicon Valley Sleuth, Blackfriars' Marketing, Tech Digest, Ed Bott's Microsoft Report, Microsoft News Tracker, Gearlog, Slashdot, Under The Stairs, TechCrunch, Search Engine Journal, Office Evolution, Download Squad, Screenwerk, ContentBlogger, InsideGoogle, Black Voices, paidContent.org, 21talks, GigaOM, robhyndman.com, Between the Lines, Silicon Valley Watcher, Good Morning Silicon Valley, Valleywag, Googling Google, Search Engine Journal, Google Blogoscoped, Download Squad, Mashable!, Digital Inspiration, Google Operating System, digg, Scobleizer, Beet.TV, AdJab, IP Democracy, TechEffect, Search Engine Journal, ClickZ News Blog, Bloggers Blog, Digital Micro-Markets, Techdirt, rexblog, CNNMoney.com, E-consultancy, Web Worker Daily, StrayPackets, rexblog, greg hughes, Gadgetopia, Scripting News, digg...

Quite the mix of properties, blogs, new sites, names and sources there. Also quite a group to be associated with, to be honest. Often individuals who post on personal weblogs are listed right alongside pro bloggers from big organizations and companies. That's proof that the playing field is as level as you care to make it. Listed in the same context as CNN Money, Todd Bishop, Michael Arrington and Om Malik? That's a level field, alright. Heh.

And another thought... I find that even though I subscribe to Techmeme via RSS, I prefer reading and using it via the browser because of the way it positions and presents information on the page. You just don't get the same dimensional organization in RSS, and not everything works best in "river mode."

Do you read Techmeme? You should. Really.

There's no point in droning on and on about this one - Scott Hanselman is 100% correct when he proclaims:

"I say this: IE7 and Office 2007 not supporting Basic or Digest Authentication out of the box for accessing secure feeds will negatively affect adoption of RSS more than any other failing of the spec since its inception. It will slow adoption down at every level; it will make it harder for Financial Institutions to justify it and it will flummox internal Enterprises who don't have completely NTLM/AD infrastructure."

He discusses this in the context of using RSS to securely retrieve feeds for banking data, for example. Sure, there are many points to ponder regarding the retrieval and storage of likely sensitive information, but in the end this is something that will be needed, and would be useful now for many uses.

Do you think this functionality is important? Scott does and so do I. Read his post, Accessing Private and Authenticated Feeds - Why it's important, and say something - in the comments here on this blog, on Scott's blog, on the IE Blog, on your blog.

Just downloaded Windows Live Writer, a blog publishing tool that was released in Beta by Microsoft while I was on vacation. Omar was using it (without being able to say exactly what he was using) and said to keep an eye out, someone was releasing a sweet blog authoring tool, and this is it. I am writing this post after a very fast and automagical installation of the Live Writer software.

Wow, that was cool, pasting that image in the window... Finally, a blog authoring package that lets me copy an image to the clipboard without saving it and then lets me CTRL-V to paste it into the editing window, without having to save the image on the clipboard as a file - and drop-shadows to boot!

And, if all works well, I will be able to post this to my dasBlog weblog without using FTP for the images, using the metaweblog API enhancements in dasBlog.

There's lots of great little features. Check it out and try it out.

I just downloaded and installed Zoundry's Blog Writer over lunch, a free and ultra-feature-filled blog editor. This thing is slick! I am writing this post with the new editor.

I think I found my new blog editing app that I have been dreaming of for so long. At least it's going to get a real trial run. I have fought with Rocketpost so many times (it has never worked for me, and the authors don't seem to answer email anymore), and while I love BlogJet, the feature set in Zoundry is pretty incredible.

I'll write more about it tonight, after I get a chance to play around with it some more.

UPDATE: I am having a hard time getting the app to play nicely with my web hosts's FTP. Seems to upload image files, but the "test" mechanism says it does not work correctly, which is kind of strange. I have filed a post on the support forums, we'll see how that goes. I can upload images, as witnessed at right...

UPDATE AGAIN: One super cool feature I noticed was that Zoundry totally used the newly-implemented blog autodiscovery calabilities that have recently been baked into dasBlog by Omar. None of the old manually setting up and remembering the URL for the blogger API or any of that stuff. Nice!!

I have a tendency to bleed a little on this blog, meaning I grab the latest source code version and compile it myself to run it on the server almost all the time. The last official release of dasBlog (which is an open-source .NET blogging server application) was v1.8 and it was born nearly a year ago (wow, that long?). But for those who compile it themselves from source, it's been changing regularly over the past year and we've been enjoying the trickle-flow of feature enhancements.

And sometime soon now, says Scott, the official dasBlog v1.9 release will be out.

v1.9 will include some significant feature enhancements. Here is a mostly complete list (at least at this point -- the list is blatantly stolen from Scott's blog):

• Much better multi-user/blogger support including a Top Posters macro and total comments - from Christoph De Baene
• TagCloud - from Scott
• Huge (100x+) speedup in Macro execution - from Scott
• Support for If-Not-Modified to speed up execution, improve RSS bandwidth and CPU cycles - from Scott
• Direct Feedburner Support with 301 redirection for RSS and Atom feeds. Don't lose a single subscriber. We're the only blog with direct support for Feedburner and Feedflare I believe. - from Scott
• Delete comments directly from your mail reader - from Omar
• New themes out of the box, 18 at last count - from Many Folks
• New XML-RPC support for newMediaObject - from Omar and Giuseppe Dipietro
• New support for RSD so client software can autoconfigure itself - from Omar
• Pluggable Rich Text Editor, choose from FreeTextBox or FCKEditor or write your own adapter - from Josh Flanagan
• Support for CoComment - from Scott
• Organized source, build, and packing for clarity - from Josh Flanagan
• New Feed Icons - from Omar
• Automatic disabling of Comments after a certain number of days. Also manual "close comments" support - from Omar
• ContentLookAhead show future dated posts - from Josh Flanagan
• Other misc fixes and suggestions from Tomas Restrepo, Jason Follas, Rene Lebherz and Steven Rockarts. Added entry CPU usage optimizations from George V. Reilly.
• Better strings and support for Portuguese, Turkish and Vietnamese from Ph?m Ð?c H?i.

If you're a sourceforge nut, know how to use Subversion and want to compile it yourself, go for it. Or wait a bit longer for the release. I am running the latest code on this weblog, and it's pretty darned slick.

A Gnomedex discussion took place earlier in the conference about sharing intimately personal things on weblogs and in public forums. There was a lot of other stuff in the conversation, too - but what I took away from it was the "what do you write about, why, and is it a good idea?" theme.

Some people are a truly and completely open book (crime, sex and all) on the Internet, while others who used to be quite open in their blogging have since changed and have pulled all the personal stuff back in, only writing about things that are not descriptive of real life. Kids these days (that's my old dude comment for the week) seem to post all kinds of things that some find both shocking and concerning.

For my part, I write both. I would never write about certain things that are definitley best kept private, and there are a number of specific things that happen in my life which I choose not to post here. But people do sometimes comment about things I write that are quite personal. It really doesn't take courage (people often say "I wish I had the courage to..."), just some common sense and a desire to think things through sometimes, which I find works out well by writing.

I often write (both the personal and the tech stuff) to clear my plugged up brain so I can sleep better. So I guess whatever comes out just comes out. With a filter. Like it or not. Good or bad.

What podcasts do you listen to? Which ones actually keep you coming back?

Honestly, there are so few podcasts out there that I can stand to listen to anymore. I deleted a whole slew of podcast subscriptions the other day because I felt like I was wasting massive amounts of time on those occasions when I did listen, and because many of them have simply turned me off completely and therefore got skipped over and never listened to (and honestly that's most of them).

What are my pet peeves? Okay, here's my harsh list for what will cause me to kill the audio before the podcaster even gets started.

• Any podcast that opens with anything even remotely like "your speakers are about to blow up" or "warning, "the sound you're about to hear may cause damage." Give me a break. Everyone says that, and the only potential damage is me pushing a pencil through my ear to drown out the un-original intro.
• Don't say "welcome to the world of (anything)." That's as lame as the movie trailers that start with "In a world..." People laugh and cringe at the same time. And it's sad when cringing is accompanied by uncomfortable laughter.
• Open your show with "blahblah podcast" plus the date and then never use the word podcast ever again. Use of the word "podcast" more than once in any single sentence, or in more than one sentence in a row should be a felony. Agh. I know it's a freakin' podcast, it's not like it magically found its way onto my computer - I had to do all kinds of work to find it and access it. Tell me something I don't know and (here comes the 'o' word again) original.
• As much as it might mean to you, chances are nobody else especially wants you to pontificate about how you and your girlfriend celebrated her 31st birthday this past weekend. In fact, your girlfriend probably doesn't want you saying it either...
• Podcasts about podcasting. Uh, yeah.
• Crappy indie music. Note that I have nothing against independent music if it's good. But any music that's bad (indie or otherwise) is bound to drive away listeners. The operative word is 'crappy.' If you played "We Built This City" on your podcast opener, I'd probably click the 'Close' button, too.
• Repetition
• Repetition
• Repetition
• Seriously, you don't need a blog entry with the same copy/paste text on the page for every episode. I'm reading to see what's different, not what's the same. I already unsubscribed from the podcast, don't tempt me to do the same with the blog.
• Snot noises (sniffling, etc). Seriously, blow your nose or take a decongestant or something.
• "So I thought I would talk about something like that and so ummm yeah so uh I am going to talk about that now..." GAH!

They can't all be that bad...

Anyhow, my new goal is to find 10 awesome podcasts that attract, deserve and retain my attention. Let me know if you have suggestions.

http://www.zachbraff.com/

Sure, he's had the Garden State blog going with an occasional post here and there for a while, but Zach Braff - one of the few actors I can actually stand to listen to (actually I think he's a rather good, decent, funny cool person) for more than five minutes at a time - has started a new blog with video and text entries. Check it out.

Needs RSS though.

JK posted a cool picture that turns out to be a visual representation of his weblog. So, I went to the site that creates them and made one of my own (click the image below to view full-size):

Color Legend:

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

I had to go to the Seattle area for my three-month post-op followup with my surgeon today. My back is in great shape he says (more x-rays were made today that look pretty darned cool), and the doc thanked me for doing so well. Heheh... I think maybe he had a lot to do with that, though. So I thanked him, again, for helping me get my life back. I owe him a lot.

After my appointment with the doc, I drive the ten minutes from the hospital over to the Microsoft campus and met up face-to-face with my online acquaintance, Trevin Chow. He's on the Windows Live ID team there, and I've always though he was a good guy. Come to find out I was right - we had fun meting and discussing a variety of things. And Trevin, thanks for the coffee!

Shameless plug time: Go read Trevin's blog - it's well worth the read. And, of course, subscribe. Here, let me make it easy for you: Subscribe to Trevin's RSS feed.

It was especially fun because although we'd never met face-to-face, it was much like the natural continuation of a conversation. Trevin emailed me this afternoon in reply to my saying thanks and said, "Your personality oozes into your blog, so you weren't a surprise in any way :) " Well, I hope it's not an infection, or we're all doomed... Heh...

Seriously though - that's exactly the impression I got from him. Glad to have met ya, Trevin. And he'll laugh that I posted all this, heheh...

Random Side-bar: Trevin has his motorcycle endorsement, but he's smart enough (read: much smarter than I) not to buy one because a couple people he knows have been in bad motorcycle accidents recently. I worry about that, too. If you ever ride a motorcycle, you must pretend you're invisible on the road - others simply will not see you. And even then, there's no guarantees.

So... Who was the last person you met, whom you met first online, but eventually caught up with face to face? And, who is the one person you've met online, but not met face to face, whom you'd most like to meet in person?

I lucked out last night - big time. We dropped by the Best Buy store in Beaverton (that's Oregon) after a fun day hanging out at OMSI and cruising Portland, just in case by some random chance they had any of the complete Xbox 360 kits around (as opposed to the "core" system version). Sure enough, a hand-made sign inside the door read "Xbox 360's in stock!"

We headed back to the place where they have the consoles, and sure enough, there were about 15 white and green boxes stacked behind the table. So I bought two - one for me at home and one for work, where all the people that work for me can play during breaks (I have been promising them one for quite awhile now - they work hard, they should play hard now and then). Added a few games and extra controllers, and walked out poor (for what it's worth, the funds have been set aside for some time waiting for a store to stock them and for me to show up before they got bought up), but also a bit excited and with a feeling of accomplishment. Finally!

I hooked mine up at home last night. I played Battlefield 2 and Need for Speed: Most Wanted. I also got Quake 4, but have not played it yet. Maybe tonight. The graphics, digital sound and animation on this thing are all freakin' A-MA-ZING.

And today, my Xbox 360 decided to start blogging. Yes, seriously. My console has it's own blog. Go figure. I guess new posts will start showing up soon. And you thought those blogging Aibos were cool eh? Nahhh... Heh.

I have to say, this is one seriously nice gaming and home entertainment console. Projected on my wall at 120 inches, that's some serious game play, and of course DVD movies look and sound great, too. I need to fire up the Media Center PC (need to fix a hard drive issue first) and tie these things together - that will be a killer combo for sure.

(Thanks, Trevin for the blogging link)

The other day one of my coworkers, Brent, asked me if I've given up blogging.

No, Mr. Sarcasm - I have not. But with the recent wholesale replacement of part of my spine, plus travel, work, a variety of stressors, the need to rest and a ton of other things, I have not been writing much here lately.

I have a lot to write about, though - eventually. I just need to get better caught up with life. Heck, we're losing an hour of sleep tonight. That doesn't help any!

So don't worry. I'm not dead yet.

I haven't posted much recently because I have been out of pocket quite a bit, and during the few days I've been in town and functioning normally, it's been quite busy for me. So, even though this blog's been quiet, I have quite a few things stacked up and waiting to be written. I'll get to them soon. Plus I think the slow down in writing is good for me for a little while. Creativity recuperation you might say.

Hopefully they'll have WiFi on the flight to Europe this weekend - that would make it easy to catch back up some. And easier to get some work done.

Meanwhile, I went and saw Scott Willis, one of our past IT interns where I work, in his school's performance of An Ideal Husband (by Oscar Wilde). Had a good time, and I am once again amazed at what young people can do all on their own when simply provided the opportunity and support when requested.

More to come soon. Hopefully some pics from Germany, too.

If you have not yet checked out BlogCode.com, I'd suggest you give it a try. It allows you to submit your blog, answer a few category ranking questions, and then see which other blogs are most like yours.

Alternatively, you can browse their listing for other blogs that have been "coded," look for your favorite blogs, and see other blogs that are similar.

The idea is that the blogs listed might be ones you'd like to read. Certainly there are other uses, as well.

I coded my blog the other day, and below are the closest-matched weblogs (as of the date this post is published) relative to the greghughes.net weblog. Per the folks at BlogCode.com, an 80% or better match is considered a very high score. Many of these blogs I already read or have read before, and some are new and unknown to me. I'll definitely have something to look around at for a while now.

Blog Name/URL (click each for blogcode results)	BlogCode Match
Scobleizer (http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/)	79.22 %
TechCrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com)	78.21 %
Agylen (http://agylen.com/)	77.96 %
Kevin Harder (http://kevinharder.com/blogs/kevin)	76.72 %
Ben Metcalfe Blog (http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/)	76.71 %
EvilSpudBoy (http://www.evilspudboy.net/)	76.43 %
Licence to Roam (http://blog.bibrik.com)	76.25 %
Newest Industry, The (http://newestindustry.org)	76.18 %
NeoThermic.com -- The well of information (http://www.neothermic.com)	75.95 %
FreeCashSpace (http://blog.freecashspace.com/index.html)	75.93 %
A Venture Forth (http://aventureforth.com)	75.89 %
Solution Watch (http://www.solutionwatch.com)	75.81 %
blogging.wurk.net (http://blogging.wurk.net)	75.64 %
Life On The Wicked Stage: Act 2 (http://wickedstageact2.typepad.com/)	75.43 %
PHOSITA ::: an IP law blog! (http://www.okpatents.com/phosita)	75.36 %
07Designs (http://www.07designs.com/)	75.12 %
Sunday Bytes (http://sundaybytes.com)	74.68 %
The Daily ACK (http://www.babilim.co.uk/blog/)	74.34 %
inluminent.com (http://inluminent.com)	74.29 %
adverblog (http://www.adverblog.com)	74.28 %
mathewingram.com/work (http://www.mathewingram.com/work)	74.26 %
integrating developer process (http://idp.shmarya.net)	74.24 %
View from the Isle (http://blog.larixconsulting.com/)	74.09 %
disambiguity (http://www.disambiguity.com)	73.72 %
Brandopia (http://brandopia.blogspot.com)	73.71 %
Creative Tech Writer, The (http://www.creativetechwriter.com)	73.65 %
Church Tech Matters (http://churchtechmatters.com)	73.62 %
Larry Borsato (http://www.larryborsato.com)	73.56 %
Linickx.com (http://www.linickx.com/blog)	73.49 %
brilliantdays.com (http://brilliantdays.com)	73.49 %
LaughingMeme (http://laughingmeme.org)	73.40 %
Superaff: The Affiliate Marketing Blog (http://superaff.com)	73.34 %
rexblog (http://www.rexblog.com)	73.30 %
Keith`s Inklings (http://talideon.com/weblog/)	73.29 %
Seven Degrees (http://sevendegrees.blogspot.com/)	73.27 %
StartupBoy.com - Journal (http://www.startupboy.com)	73.04 %
Vinny Carpenter`s blog (http://www.j2eegeek.com/blog)	73.00 %
A View Inside My Head (http://jasonf-blog.blogspot.com)	72.96 %
michael parekh on IT (http://mp.blogs.com)	72.79 %
Ninefish Tales (http://www.ninefish.com/blog)	72.54 %

This world's really not a very fair place.

Robert Scoble called "foul" on the whole Google GMail for domains story yesterday, which has since engendered a whole set of responses to his post, in both his comments and on a number of other weblogs. For what it's worth, like Robert and others, when I saw the Gmail for domains news spread I also wondered where the heck everyone was when MSN did the Windows Live Custom Domains thing (heck, they day it was announced back in November I set up a domain on it and wrote about it here on this weblog). So yeah, Microsoft already did it, and did it quite well for the record. And I guess maybe you could say it went mostly unnoticed, if you want. Not sure I'd agree, but that's debatable. You could also say that hey, it's not about the domains, it's about the GMail (which, face it, people love).

The fact is, Google is in the spotlight right now, and all the people sitting out here in the audience are paying close attention. Google plays it smart - they tend to hold new ideas somewhat close and secret, and then kick them out the door and into the pool one day to see if they'll sink or swim. This they call a "beta." Microsoft has done a little of the same, but not in quite the same way. Google is a company that has - quite effectively - captured the eyes, ears and imaginations of a huge and hungry audience, so it's no real surprise when the company does something new and people talk a lot about it. Apple's another example of a company that's capturing audience attention cycles. Microsoft, while having made great strides in terms of being viewed by the greater audience as a creative, agile and "imagineering" company, still has a bit of an uphill battle to fight with some in the audience. But things are much better than, say, a year ago. That's progress.

It's also important to understand that the audience wants a Google character - the colorful, mysterious yet well-known underdog that you're are not quite sure about, who gets the attention of everyone in the room every time he (or she) walks through the door. It's a good gig for an actor like Google to land at this point in its career, and the audition's been a tough one. Microsoft, on the other hand, is more like the established, experienced character actor. The audience knows what to expect and many even like the character, who's gained in popularity recently due to some decent films and scripts. But the character actor mold is a hard one to break out of and the scripts have changed. It takes a great vehicle to get the audience's attention, and even then the proof is in the performance. Only then can you win over a whole new audience. It can happen, but it sure can be difficult.

Anyhow, bad analogies aside, where the debate starts to break down and turn sideways is when suggestions of AdSense ethical hipocracy and bought motivations are tossed around. According to that theory, I'm beholden to Google because I run AdSense ads? Or is that only if I write about Google's new services and run AdSense ads? What if I use Google as my main search engine? What if I have a Gmail account? Seriously, people... Let's think for a few minutes about AdSense and blogging and influence and being beholden to anyone.

I have AdSense ads on my weblog. It's pretty obvious. And my ads earn more than the couple of bucks a day that some others have mentioned (substantially more, by following a few basic design and placement rules - worth checking out). But just because my AdSense ads made a notable dent in my tax return refund this year, that doesn't mean I am in any way influenced by or beholden to Google. I think Google's a cool company that's doing some very interesting things, but anyone who knows me is perfectly aware that Microsoft is a company I have many ties to, and that their products are ones I have leveraged extensively. The fact that I have AdSense ads on my site is indicative of only one thing: that they are there. If I wanted, I could choose some other ad vendor, and there are plenty of others out there.

In fact, from what I hear, Microsoft's coming out with something similar to AdSense... So, if I switch over to that program and drop AdSense from my weblog, does that mean if I then write about Microsoft products and skip over Google's stuff that I would be bowing down to the Microsoft money? Should Google employee bloggers complain out loud if that happens? Would they? Questions worth pondering.

Heck, if I switched to a Microsoft-provided ad program, I'd likely be accused of being too one sided, not enough fair-and-balanced in my overall approach. But then again, that whole equal-time thing was thrown out years ago.

Look, people have opinions, and not everyone has mine. I actually kind of like it that way.

I write about things that capture my attention and things I believe in. I don't really give a damn who's ads are running where, or whether it's Microsoft, Google or any other company that's serving them up. And Google doesn't seem to care what I write about, and I don't even think about it when it comes time to author a weblog post. In almost every case, I believe others operate in pretty much the same way. I was one of those people who wrote about the Windows Live Custom Domains when that service was released, but I didn't have to. I haven't had a chance yet to see what Google has to offer in it's new service, but when I do get to see it I'll probably comment about that here, as well. We'll see if it captures my attention.

On average, people are generally smarter and more ethical than we want to give them credit for when our feelings are hurt. The group-think mentality that occurs in the blogosphere is an interesting phenomenon, and can even be problematic. And it goes both ways. Group think leads to closed lines of thought partners, and if one thinks there's undue influence from AdSense, one might want to look instead at the influence that comes from the same closed groups of bloggers feeding each other like ideas and thoughts all the time.

And then if you think that's bad, get a group of opinionated bloggers together in a room, raise a controversial point, and in my experience the problem can get even bigger. Much bigger. But it sure is a lot of fun to stand back and watch. Heh.

Speaking more generally and stepping back from this particular debate, realize blogs are complicated things under the hood - in the content. They're really only conversational in that there's a way to respond (in comments or on your own blog). But in terms of mimicking a face-to-face conversation, I've noticed more and more recently that there's no opportunity to stop somebody in their tracks and to challenge their point before their foot gets lodged in their teeth. It's more often a speech platform with a method for the reader to write a quick letter to the editor. Not that it's a bad model - I love it. But it does lend itself to rants (hence my weblog URL) and diatribes when authors use them for that purpose. Sometimes that means grandstanding, not conversation. At least we have comments, on most blogs.

And let me say this: Robert's not entirely wrong about this whole mess. I don't always agree with him, but I like him and he's a smart guy - and he has a valid point to make. The positioning of the new Google service as being ground-breaking or even substantially original was not well researched and was simply incomplete in reporting and writing. Is the world giving Google credit for something Microsoft did? Well, maybe, but not really. They're definitely talking about what Google's been up to. Did they miss part of the story? Yeah, they sure did, but more important than drummed up hypotheses about whether or not bloggers are influenced by small-potatoes advertising is the fundamental question: Why isn't Microsoft getting more attention when it does great things? I know people who work on the teams that didn't et the credit in this situation, and I agree - someone needs to cry foul. But not with weak advertising ethics accusations. That just muddies the waters and takes the conversation to the point of nastiness.

I like the way Reeves confronted the same issue on the MailCall blog maintained by HotMail team members:

"Working for Microsoft in Silicon Valley can be a surreal experience.  Just the other day I ordered cheeseburger and the person serving me my lunch asked me if I knew that Google had invented the idea of cheesy meat between two slices of bread three years ago… and it's been in beta ever since.   Yeah, yeah, perhaps I’m being dramatic but sometimes I feel like Google is going to overshadow Al Gore and get credit for inventing the Internet.

"Joke as I may, it does get to me every once in a while...especially when we've been working like crazy on something, already have it in market, have gotten great customer response, but everybody thinks someone else did it first."

My opinion? Microsoft has a lot of people who worked hard and delivered a product that Google later released a remarkably similar version of (with less features), and the Microsoft people didn't get notice. And they should be. But none of this was likely brought on by financial influence - real or assumed, big or small - from Google-provided advertising.

One problem in this particular situation might be that Microsoft's product is called "Windows Live Custom Domains." Now, I know what the WLCD service is and how cool it is, but only because I went and looked. Not from the name. The fact that I have to acronymize it is one clue that the name could be better. It doesn't say "email and instant messaging services" to me. And yes I know there's a bit more to it than mail and IM. Google calls theirs "GMail for your domain." That's a name I can quickly get my brain around. In the "Don't Make Me Think" department, Google creates and names most things quite aptly.

Now we can just wait to see if Google will start telling us how they're "innovating" with all these "borrowed" ideas of theirs. Heh... Now wouldn't that be perfect?

At any rate, in my opinion it's really not a question of ethics this time around. It is a question of audience, actors, script and venue. It's a question of who's paying attention to whom, and why. And sometimes that hurts.

Get my attention, and I'll tell others. Heck, I already do. And you don't even have to pay me.

All the virtual world's a-buzz with commentary and conversation (ironically, since a lot of the commentary is out of the reach of the service for now) about coComment, a coolio and not-yet-fully-released "Web-2.0" online service that let's you track comments make on blogs everywhere. Or at least it will at some point - only a few blogging platforms are supported right now (and the software this weblog runs on, dasBlog, is unfortunately not one of them), so it's very much hit and miss as to whether or not you can use it, but the promise of an interesting future is certainly there.

I'm using coComment now, and it's pretty cool. You can sign up at the site (look for the "Get Notified" section on the home page), and they're trying to get new invitations sent out as soon as they can.The coComment web site is well designed and the core feature/functionality is a sharp idea. I will say that it's a bit clunky in terms of how the actual user commenting experience works. You have to think about it too much, which is not so good... It puts an extra graphical "button" with your name onto the page that you have to click first, before you click the actual comment submission button. The new button falls to the right of the submit button, so it's a lot like being forced to read right to left and it just doesn't look very clickable - It's just counterintuitive.

Brian Benzinger wrote a little GreaseMonkey script that automates the sign-in for FireFox users - It's very nice and you can get it on this page. Otherwise you have to use a "bookmarklet link" to activate the service on any given comment page - another layer of abstraction that would be nice to avoid somehow.

But hey, it is pre-v1.0, so... Anyhow, it would be especially nice if the authors and some creative blog software creators made it even more usable.

It does solve a few problems, mainly being able to find your conversations in the blogosph -- uh, on blogs. Two other things it does is, 1) it allows you to embed a little bit of code in your blog template to display comments that you've made on other blogs, and 2) it allows you to subscribe to a RSS or ATOM feed with all your tracked comments in one place. Adoption will depend on how many blog software authors get into the mix and how many blogs the coComment people decide to try to tackle themselves, I suppose.

Note that, while it's a great start, the real test will be whether everyone will sign up - since that appears to be a requirement in order to actually track everything that might matter. Is there not a better way to do this? Does the RSS comment capability/spec not go far enough?

From their site:

Coming soon..

For advanced bloggers who would like to more fully integrate coComment features in their own blog, coComment will offer:

The ability to add elements of the coComment service to blogs based on non-standard blogging platforms in order to ease the usage of coComment for commenters (automated capture).

The ability to customize the appearance (eg colors, fonts, etc.) of coComment elements, in order to better suit your tastes and needs.

After something like two and a half years of blogging, another calendar year comes to an end. Here's a list of some of my favorites from 2005. A bit belated, since we're already five days into the new year, but what the heck. Why do this? Because I can, of course.

Here are 12 of my favorites - chosen from the 754 blog entries for 2005. And typically not-too-tech-related, I just noticed:

• Loose is a four-letter word
• For the guys only - write your name in the snow
• It's 2005 - resolutions, plans and stuff
• Passphrase success, Sigmund Freud and Slips
• Best, sweetest, most ultimate book EVER!
• Click here now, have some fun
• The Realities of Software Development Projects?
• Decisions, decisions: Right back to the back surgeons...
• How to Destroy the Earth - a Guide - Not for Wusses
• Doc washes his hands: Toilets and bad bathroom habits
• Tech Support woes, and why process everywhere ain't all it's cracked up to be
• The ultimate, pan-galactic test for a knowledge-centric computer system in 2006

Scott and Chris reminded me that there's a nifty feature in dasBlog that lets me put all the headlines from this weblog for 2005 on one page in a calendar-like view. So, here ya go:

• The 2005 greghughes.net weblog year in review

Every single post from the year, listed in a chronological calendar view. All 754 of them. Wow, now that's scary.

Plagiarism sucks, and Om Malik's weblog was apparently being copied verbatim, images and all, and repurposed sans-attribution on another site that was serving up ads and (potentially) making money. I've had this happen to me a few times in the past year or so, and in some cases found the only way to fight it was to quote the DMCA in an email to the host. Lord knows asking Google to hold them accountable for their terms of service did not work in my case - Google just wrote back and said "we can't do anything." Plus the bad guys were repurposing content from a whole slew of other sites. Lazy jerks.

By the way - this is really not exactly a trivial deal for many blog authors and publishers. I know when it happens to me, I chase it down and take it seriously. No lawyers needed - I am pretty good at that stuff and have some legal and courtroom experience, so why not put it to use eh? The ads on my site pay for my web hosting and my Internet access each month, and then some, so I have a little more than just an ego interest in what I choose to write and post.

Anyhow, below is an email I used last year to resolve a plagiarism problem involving full content from this web site. It's blunt, direct, complete and it worked. Also, note that this letter followed multiple attempts to get the site owner to remove plagiarized content. I'm posting the email letter here simply for the benefit of anyone who might become a victim of blog plagiarism and wants access to some ideas that have worked for others in the past.

And by the way - make sure you have a copyright statement and maybe a Creative Commons license on your main page that states what people can and cannot do with your blog content (mine's at the bottom of every page - it says people can repurpose it with attribution and for non-commercial purposes). It can't hurt to do this, and it helps set reasonable expectations and ground-rules for well-behaved people, while it can also be ammo for the ill-behaved later on...

Note that the problem I tackled with the below email was resolved within 4 hours of the email being sent to the hosting provider (the site owner never responded), and it happened a year and a half ago, so please don't go harassing anyone - this is just posted here to help people who might end up in a similar situation.

Where you see the word "(-- edited --)" below, I have removed identifying information to protect the innocent as well as those who complied with the requests to remove the offending content.

[via tech.memeorandum.com]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:  ACTION REQUIRED: Illegal use of copyrighted content by one of your customers for commercial purposes
Date:  Sun, 3 Apr 2005 17:18:51 -0700

NOTICE: IF YOU ARE THE OWNER, OPERATOR OR HOSTING PROVIDER OF THE “MICROSOFT-DOTNET-TECHNOLOGY.INFO” DOMAIN, THIS IS A CEASE AND DESIST LETTER REQUIRING YOU TO IMMEDIATELY CEASE REPUBLISHING CONTENT OR ALLOWING/ENABLING CONTENT TO BE REPUBLISHED, WHICH IS SOURCED FROM THE “GREGHUGHES.NET” DOMAIN.

The owner of the web site(s) located on your servers/network at the below IP address and domain name is stealing and republishing - via an automated web-server application that gathers an XML feed - content owned and copyrighted by Greg Hughes at http://www.greghughes.net:

216.7.187.20 (MICROSOFT-DOTNET-TECHNOLOGY.INFO)

The following ARIN information identifies (-- edited --) Holdings, LLC (which is a corporation in Colorado) and (-- edited --).com (which appears to be a possibly defunct operation) as owners of the IP address/block in question:

Location: United States [City: Loveland, Colorado]

NOTE: More information appears to be available at NET-216-7-186-0-1.

(-- edited --) Holdings, LLC D393LLC-DC-INVERNESS6 (NET-216-7-160-0-1)
                                  216.7.160.0 - 216.7.191.255
(-- edited --).com VONOC-216-7-186-0-23 (NET-216-7-186-0-1)
                                  216.7.186.0 - 216.7.187.255
 
# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2005-04-02 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.

The person(s) running the web site at MICROSOFT-DOTNET-TECHNOLOGY.INFO have been contacted in the past via the “contact” form on the web site and told to stop repurposing this content, specifically because they have not obtained permission and because they are profiting from advertising revenue from said web site. This activity constitutes theft of intellectual property under copyright laws and the DMCA. The information being sourced is copyrighted as indicated on the web site, and is not in the public domain for re-use. The party(ies) associated with MICROSOFT-DOTNET-TECHNOLOGY.INFO have not responded to repeated contacts and requests to cease use of the copyrighted material.

We have sent a CEASE AND DESIST letter to the parties once again today (April 3, 2004) through their web site contact form at http://www.microsoft-dotnet-technology.info/contact.asp. At this time we request that you remove the offending web sites and pages from your servers, as they are clearly in violation of the common acceptable use provisions of the parties to this email:

http://www.(-- edited --).com/acceptable-use.asp#copyright

IN ADDITION, the same person(s) appear to be sourcing copyrighted material for commercial use from Yahoo!, Search Engine Watch, moreover.com, the Kansas City Public Library, National Geographic News, about.com, and Web Hosting News. Unless the situation is rectified immediately we will also be contacting those persons and companies to advise them of the misuse of the copyrighted property and data.

The WHOIS information on record for the domain in question is:

Domain ID:D8436219-LRMS
Domain Name:MICROSOFT-DOTNET-TECHNOLOGY.INFO
Created On:27-Nov-2004 15:34:17 UTC
Last Updated On:27-Nov-2004 15:34:20 UTC
Expiration Date:27-Nov-2005 15:34:17 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:R136-LRMS
Status:ACTIVE
Status:OK
Registrant ID:C7727838-LRMS
Registrant Name (-- edited --)
Registrant Organization:(-- edited --)
Registrant Street1:(-- edited --)
Registrant City:(-- edited --)
Registrant State/Province:Gujarat
Registrant Postal Code:(-- edited --)
Registrant Country:IN
Registrant Phone:(-- edited --)
Registrant (-- edited --)
Admin ID:C7727839-LRMS
Admin Name:(-- edited --)
Admin Organization:(-- edited --)
Admin Street1:(-- edited --)
Admin City:Ahmedabad
Admin State/Province:Gujarat
Admin Postal Code:(-- edited --)
Admin Country:IN
Admin Phone:(-- edited --)
Admin (-- edited --)
Billing ID:C7727840-LRMS
Billing Name:(-- edited --)
Billing Organization:(-- edited --)
Billing Street1:(-- edited --)
Billing City:Ahmedabad
Billing State/Province:Gujarat
Billing Postal Code:(-- edited --)
Billing Country:IN
Billing Phone:(-- edited --)
Billing (-- edited --)
Tech ID:C7727841-LRMS
Tech Name:(-- edited --)
Tech Organization:(-- edited --)
Tech Street1:(-- edited --)
Tech City:Ahmedabad
Tech State/Province:Gujarat
Tech Postal Code:(-- edited --)
Tech Country:IN
Tech Phone:(-- edited --)
Tech (-- edited --)
Name Server:VOB1.(-- edited --).COM
Name Server:VOB2.(-- edited --).COM

(Note: I edited the names and other identifying infomration from the WHOIS record at the request of the person listed in the contact sections of the record becuase they asked me to do so. While the information is accurate as it was originally posted, it serves no useful purpose to keep that person's phone and other information here and the orginal issue was resolved, so I agreed to make the change).

Not sure how I missed it, but sometime last week or so BlogJet was upgraded to version 1.6.1. I have been using this tool for well over a year now to post almost all my weblog entries. There are others out there, and some are getting close, but BlogJet is simple and works well.

What's new? Lots of enhancements. Posting to MSN Spaces sites for one thing, and more. While there are still some features left on my wish-list, this is a great upgrade. Here's the list from the BlogJet weblog:

NEW FEATURES

• Free Flickr integration plugin (included, no installation required).
• Auto Replace.
• Title and rel attributes for links.
• Ping default URLs.
• Protection for unsaved posts before publishing.
• Zoom icon for generated thumbnails.
• Saving of default layout settings for Insert Image window.
• Group posting (post to multiple blogs at once).
• Confirm when using Ctrl+Enter to publish post.
• Better FTP file upload progress indication.
• New blog providers: Blogzerk and BLOGZY.
• NTLM and Digest proxy authorization support.
• New keyboard shortcut: 
   Ctrl+Y - edit last post
   Ctrl+Shift+E - extended entry
• Ability to abort posting when checking spelling.
• BlogJetThis extension for Firefox 1.5.
• Speed and stability improvements.

BUG FIXES

• Work-around for WordPress and TypePad date/time issue.
• Now BlogJet can work via proxy with authentication.
• Fixed issue with FTP proxy.
• Fixed double trackbacks in TypePad and Movable Type
• FTP password encryption.
• Fixed: Insert Link window didn’t remove automatically http:// when inserting https:// of ftp:// links.
• Fixed “Cannot focus a disabled or invisible window”.
• Fixed: error message when posting with image selected.
• New connection core.
• Lots of other bug fixes…

My coworker, Brent Strange, has just started a Quality Assurance (QA) blog. Brent's what I would call a QA expert (he amazes me from time to time for sure) and he does terrific quality work, so I am looking forward to what he says and thinks on it.

Here is his introductory post, and he's already started adding new content. And it's another dasBlog weblog, which is cool. Nice template, too.

This will be one to watch. Subscribed.

Want to instantly turn off a blogger? Ask them to link to you without a compelling reason. Seriously. Unless it's a truly compelling and timely topic, never ask for a link. If you do, prepare to be ignored.

Robert Scoble wrote a short-but-right-on-target post today that I can totally relate to. And keep in mind, my blog is like 1/100th of what his is from an attention perspective, so the impact of blatant link begging on me is nothing even close to what it is for him, I'm certain.

Like Robert, I've also been getting a lot of emails and even a few phone calls recently from PR people, bloggers, marketers and other people who don't quite "get it" asking me to write about specific things on my blog. Some have even gone so far as to offer something in return as payment. At first I just laughed and tried to figure out why anyone would actually take the time to ask me to write, then I looked at my pageviews and did some fuzzy math in my head. Okay, so lots of people read the content on this site, that's cool. Not as nearly as many as the big guys, but a lot nonetheless. My AdSense income amazes me more than anyone. But my voice is mine, and it's not for sale.

I'm not saying I don't want to hear about cool stuff - send it on. What I am saying is if your request takes the form of "will you please link to this?" or "hey you should link to this" or "you should write about this for me," I'm really not interested. Of course, if you think something is really cool and it catches my eye, too (and you're not pulling a fast one or crying wolf), I'm going to be interested.

I've gone so far as to reply to one or two of the more truly blatant, entitlement-laden requests with words like "I don't take requests" or "Sorry, I don't do performance blogging." Most of them I just ignore and immediately file in the electronic circular file. It's not that I don't want to hear about good and cool stuff. I just don't want to be anyone's hired or begged PR publisher.

PR people often operate in the old-skool world (been there in a prior career), one where lazy print writers looking for something new to write about love to get calls from PR agencies with some pre-written copy that can be regurgitated or copied verbatim and published. Bloggers don't work that way. If you (hypothetically) send me a book to review, I will try to read it when my schedule allows and if it catches my interest. If I find it especially compelling I might write about it. If I don't like it, I'll most likely just let it go. If it's really, really bad, I might just write about that, too. But probably not - I prefer to emphasize the positive here. So, unlike the print world, there' some risk involved. One thing's for sure: There's no promise or guarantee I'll write anything. And if the request is to take a book or software or anything else in turn for a guaranteed review, don't ask. I'm not for hire. Some people have asked if they would have a chance to respond to anything negative before I write it. I tell them no, but that my blog has comments and if they have a blog (they should), they can always participate in the conversation. It's amazing how many people that puts a stop to. Heh.

I agree with Robert's suggestion. If you see something cool and want me to blog about it, send me a link and tell me what's got your interest and why. I don't care whether it's a link to your site and your comments or if it's pointing to the original info, or whatever.

Now, don't let me scare you away. I write about many things - stuff I care about. Some of it I discover by reading something someone else wrote or sent to me. If I happen to have the same level of interest as you when you show me something, I might take you up on the info. Conversely, if you specifically ask a blogger to link to you for selfish reasons, prepare to be ignored unless it's something very special and urgent.

I've written almost nothing all week until today, partly because I got tired of these calls and emails with blatant requests. It's not fun. It feels like work, and that's one thing this blog is not. Plus, I have been pretty busy recently with my job and life. We all need a break now and then.

Anyhow, Robert - you got that one right, man.

If you've used Urchin's web site analytics package in the past, you're familiar with the detailed reporting it can do from a web site marketing and usability standpoint. It's been considered one of the luxury stats packages for some time. Well, Google bought Urchin recently, and today announced that they have now morphed the Urchin software into the Google Analytics service, and that it's available for free. Yes - that's right - free:

"Google Analytics is absolutely free! We're very pleased to be able to offer this web analytics solution for no charge, allowing anyone with a website to track conversion data, analyze the flow of visitors through their site, and identify elements of their site that could be changed to improve visitor retention.

"This free version is limited to 5 million pageviews a month - however, users with an active Google AdWords account are given unlimited pageview tracking. In addition, Google Analytics is completely integrated into the AdWords front-end and with your AdWords campaign, making it easy to track your AdWords ROI."

Well, I won't be risking five million page views a month anytime soon, so I figured I'd sign up and check it out. And for those who are interested in running the software in-house, it's still available for purchase, don't worry.

Understandably, the service is up and down a bit this morning. Things were going well for me til about 5:30am Pacific time today, when everything on the Google Analytics site suddenly went into the ether. After a few minutes of hung browsers and dead pages, a "maintenance" page appeared. Well, that makes sense - it's a brand new service at launch, so I am sure there are several kinks to work out.

UPDATE: As of Tuesday at about noon, I am more than 30 hours into my 12-hour wait period to start seeing stats from my web site, which checks out okay by the service (meaning the code if there and working). Still no data to view. Hmmm...

No worries - By the time the maintenance started, I'd already received my code from Google that has to be entered into every web page. The code consists of a few lines to be added to the <head> section of each web page on your site, which loads a .js (JavaScript) file from their Urchin servers. That's how they do the tracking work. So, you'll get information about page views and routes taken through the site, how people found your site, visitor geographic locations, etc. But you won't get information about files like images that are directly loaded from your server without accessing web pages containing the code (so it's a marketing and web site tracking.usability tool, as opposed to a complete traffic and monitoring tool like one would want to use for security monitoring - worth noting).

On top of the free stats service, anyone who uses Google's AdWords services on their sites gets the added benefit of AdWords integration into the Analytics services:

"If you have an AdWords account, you can use Google Analytics directly from the AdWords interface. Google Analytics is the only product that can automatically provide AdWords ROI metrics, without you having to import cost data or add tracking information to keywords. Of course, Google Analytics tracks all of your non-AdWords initiatives as well."

Google's hard at work for sure, spending that cash in some smart ways. Makes me wonder how many new things we should expect to see from the company next year - I bet it's a lot.

The other day my co-worker Matt (a truly-all-around-good-guy who will almost certainly laugh (I sure hope) and turn bright red (like I certainly would) when he reads this) wrote on his blog that he was...

"...curious where I would rank if you searched for "bit-shift". So I loaded up my favorite web browser, pointed it towards google and off I went. Was I on the first page...Nope. Page two you say? Notta. When I loaded up page three I was beginning to get depressed. But Wait! There at the bottom of the page, second to the last link was Bit-Shit.Net. Woohoo! At least I beat out a link to an Intel article on 64 bit-shifting, HA! Take that Intel."

Heh. The emphasis in the above quote is mine. You see, the funny thing is that Matt made a similar slip (typo? psychological? Hmmm...) a couple weeks ago in a blog post, which I dutifully pointed out (in person), and which he promptly changed before I could do a screen-grab and post it here for all to see. I'm not sure why he has a recurring problem typing "shift," but I am sure it's pretty darn funny from a reader's perspective. No spell checker maybe? Or is that word allowed in the spelling dictionary? Heh... All in good fun here, Matt. I don't think he'd ever purposely type that word. Must be a deep subconscious thing.

Anyhow, hopefully some post linkage here will help drive a little search-engine-bot attention to Matt's site, where (by the way) he's writing about interesting thoughts of his and whatnot. I've subscribed to his feed and added him to the blogroll over there on the side of this page somewhere. Google indexing and ranking is driven by many things, especially inbound links. So, check out his blog. I like his writing style - some of my favorite weblogs are the ones that follow whatever happens to be on the author's mind at the time. Now all we have to do is get Matt to stop thinking about sh... Oh, never mind. Hah! (Just kiddin' ya there Matthew ).

So - What can we learn from this? Simple, really: Accidentally type about poop, someone notices, and hopefully it generates a little more traffic to your site. And it just goes to show, at it's core the universe really is awfully entropic.

Or maybe the lesson is something more like "type sh*t once, shame on you. type sh*t twice, shame on... well... you."

Thanks for the fun fodder there, bud.

The security geek in me is a happy guy today. The Anti-Malware product team at Microsoft has fired up their new blog. They're "the team responsible for building Microsoft's antivirus and anti-spyware technology (along with anti-rootkit, anti-bot, and other stuff)." Malware, for those who are not yet familiar with the term, is short for "Malicious Software."

"We already have two pieces of technology our technology shipping: the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, which helps to remove some of the most prevalent malware from a user's machine. We also are shipping a beta of the Windows AntiSpyware technology. We'll talk more about these in future blog posts. We also have a bunch of other cool stuff in the pipelines."

This will be one worth watching, I imagine. The security threat landscape has eroded, changed and reshaped itself significantly in the past year, and things are only getting more and more complicated. So, it's good to see the face of a critical team in Redmond and to have some insight into what they're addressing.

Subscribed.

Can you tell it's almost Halloween? I can. And I can also tell how much traffic one little blog article can drive. My stats for the past few days are awash with Google and other searches landing people on this site for pumpkin carving patterns, since I wrote about a great deal I found and how to get them them the other day. Here's a small, partial listing of a small portion of the search referrers for pumpkin carving, taken from today's web traffic stats on this site:

 

pumpkin carving patterns (www.google.com)	34
free pumpkin patterns (www.google.com)	29
pumpkin patterns (www.google.com)	29
free pumpkin stencils (www.google.com)	21
free pumpkin carving patterns (www.google.com)	13
pumpkin patterns (www.google.ca)	11
pumpkin patterns (www.google.com)	11
free pumpkin patterns (www.google.com)	11
pumpkin designs (www.google.com)	10
free pumpkin carving stencils (www.google.com)	10
pumpkin stencil (www.google.com)	10
free pumpkin stencils (www.google.ca)	9
free pumpkin patterns (www.google.ca)	9
pumpkin carving pattern (www.google.com)	9

And it just keeps going from there, too. Hundreds of similar search combinations and terms in addition to those. Definitely noticing the increase in the number of visits (still a small drop in the bucket, but interesting to see).

Unless, of course, you die today... In which case, you probably don't care much about this right now.

Hugh over at gapingvoid.com writes hilarious (and often poignant) cartoons on the backs of business cards. Come of them are decidedly off-color, granted - but they're worth looking at as long as you don't have easily offended sensitivities or something.

Oh and many of the designs are available as T-Shirts and BlogCards.

It must be true. I read it on the Internet. On a blog even.

It looked pretty convincing, really. Someone started a blog called Google Tooth in September, under the guise of being Google's first live-in, on-site dentist. A plausible possibility, when you consider the benefits Google offers its employees.

But it's not for-real.

Google has already confirmed it's a fake, but the real fun is in figuring it out without asking the newest Internet giant for their two cents on the matter. Of course, the one group you can count on to do just that is a bunch of weblog readers. Not to mention real Google employees.

The most obvious tell-tale giveaway was an image that was posted on the Google Tooth blog, ostensibly of the new office space (click the image below to go to the blog entry):

Nice use of color and open space, eh? Only problem with the image is this photo from the SUNY Stony Brook web server (click the image to load it from the sunysb.edu server):

Amazing and uncanny resemblance. What do you figure the odds are?

This was a harmless enough - and even amusing - fake blog. Don't be surprised though if it ends up rubbing some people the wrong way. Fake blogs threaten some and amuse others. I thought it was creative and funny.

But people do get fooled:

• Silicon Beat - "Google's live-in dentist"
• Silicon Beat again - "Actually, we were just testing you"
• Google Blogoscoped makes it clear: "Google Dentist?"

Or maybe it's real and the trick is that people are saying it's not real, but what they're saying is actually the part that's not real.

Yeah, that's it.

Google has launched their Google Blog Search -and its good stuff. One of the best things in my book is that you get a list of highly-relevant weblogs before you get the text search results.

Some searches:

• OneNote
• Security
• Exchange 2003
• Obligatory ego search

There's really nothing quite like first-hand experience when it comes to seeing what's happening in distant places. Let's face it - the mainstream media cuts things into little chunks that remove the full context of the place and situation, trying (usually without much success) to replace it with an explanation, usually written by one or two people.

In your mind, choose one or two people you know at random. Now imagine sending those two random people into a war zone with a camera and a microphone and telling them to accurately and completely convey what's happening, without personal bias. Would you tend to trust what they have to say? Yeah, me either.

That's what interests me most about Boots In Baghdad Films, a vlog that contains video posts (using audioblog.com's videoblogging capabilities) shot by soldiers on the ground in Iraq. It's first-hand video of real situations. It's not that soldiers are without any bias - but the soldiers and their experiences are part of what's happening, which makes this video much more real than anything on TV, and the few videos posted on this site have an unedited honesty that I appreciate. Note that there's some colorful language in some of the video shots - that's to be expected, I think.

Hopefully the content will continue to grow, but of course not for one day longer than the people filming it need to be there.

(via Eric Rice)

That pesky msnbot/1.0 is a pretty busy bot today. That's MSN Search's spidering robot. I've had more than 10,000 hits from it today, and a friend with another blog has had about 4,000. These numbers are way larger than normal.

Hmmm... Something coming soon from MSN Search maybe? We'll see!

UPDATE: Looking at my web server log details, it looks like the spidering that's going on is touching mainly a whole lot of RSS content. Main feeds and category feeds are being pulled frequently. Is MSN Search pushing the RSS envelope? With RSS going native to the OS, this might make some real sense?

ANOTHER UPDATE: A member of the MSNBot Team (who, by the way, responded post-haste to a question I sent through, uh, channels) asked me to volunteer some of my web server logs earlier today and the traffic's dropped off since. Maybe it was just a little behavior problem (that happens). Interesting!

His weblog may not be an official Microsoft site - it's his own site, a place to publish his own opinions - but the fact is, Robert Scoble's a Microsoft blogger, albeit "unofficial."

And one Microsoft site - Microsoft for Business and Organizations - has published an article called "Agent of Transformation," where Robert is interviewed about corporate blogging.

Good read. It's also linked from Microsoft's Executive Circle. Interesting, really - Robert's an insider, of course, but he speaks his mind from time to time - He's been known to express opinions critical of Microsoft's products and positions if that's where he stands. So, it's also interesting to see Microsoft publishing interviews with Robert to talk about how corporate blogging benefits business.

"So there are times when we are having an online conversation out in public, which is fascinating and scary. It's like living naked. Sometimes it's not all that pleasant. We both believe very strongly in transparency and believe that it makes you make better decisions overall."

He also talks about being a smart business blogger. It's worth a look for anyone interested in the blogging world, and for anyone who blogs about - or for - work. Read the interview here.

And... Coming up in September, Scoble's gonna be webcasting:

Robert Scoble on Blogging - September 21, 11:30 AM Pacific Time. Catch this webcast with Microsoft's most well-known blogger, Robert Scoble, and learn how to build your own blog presence, brand, and traffic.

Eagerly anticipated and full of great new features and enhancements, dasBlog v1.8 has been officially released.

Scott covers the details and pontificates the important readme file information on his blog. Here's a list of many of the cool new features:

New Features of Note

• Anti-Spam Features
  • Automatic Referral and Trackback blacklist update
  • CAPTCHA for non-admin users (Font warping has also been increased in this version)
  • Logging and display of Comment IP addresses and resolved Hostnames for Admins
  • DasBlogUpgrader can strip spam from existing content folders
  • Support for rel="nofollow"
  • Ability to delete referrals and trackbacks directly from the Admin UI
• Security Features
  • HttpOnly cookies
  • Admin access auditing
  • SMTP Authentication for outgoing mail
• Syndication Features
  • Improved RSS Comments support for SharpReader and RSS Bandit
  • Upgraded Atom support from 0.3 to Valid Atom 1.0. ATOM Syndication permalink changes but 301 is issued.
  • RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 validates via FeedValidator.
  • Ability to mark entries as "syndicated" or not. Entries can appear on the site but not in RSS/Atom.
  • New between RC1 and Gold: Plugable, configurable pinging of Blog Search engines like pubsub and technorati.
• Performance Features
  • Search Highlighting is optional now
  • Referrals are logged but not stored in XML by default. Configurable.
    (This has huge performance benefits for high traffic sites.)
  • DasBlog Upgrader can optionally remove all referrals.
    (Again with high traffic sites some folks had 5meg XML files full of referrals)
  • Theme templates are now cached in memory.
• Installation Features
  • New VBS for IIS permissions and VDir creation
  • Support for running under ASP.NET 2.0
  • Support for running on Win2k 2003 without changing permissions when impersonation is enabled
• Content Features
  • Ability to pre- and post-date entries
  • Permalinks based on Title and Date optional: 2005/06/06/title.aspx
  • Latest build of Free Text Box including ability to upgrade FTB without upgrading DasBlog.
  • Text Editor (FTB) supports IE7
  • Text Editor (FTB) supports FireFox
  • Blog Statistics macro
  • Mail-To-Weblog continues to improves. Works with Thunderbird.
• Extensibility Features
  • Custom Macro Plugin model without recompiling DasBlog (see the source for the example custom macro)
• Theme Features
  • DasBlog now ships with 16 themes and a Theme Combo to change between them.
  • New theme.manifest file makes themes and image assets more portable.

Here's a shameless plug of my very own... I guest-co-hosted the Tablet PC Show with James Kendrick today, filling in for the one and only (and much-better-at-this-than-me) Marc Orchant. It's been published, so check it out if you like:

The TABLET PC Show #19 (MP3 - 21MB - 60min)

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

Marc Orchant was away but guest co-host Greg Hughes graciously stepped in and we have an action packed show. Greg fills us in on the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet PC that he’s been lucky enough to use for the past month so anyone interested in this fine convertible (or those anxiously awaiting delivery) will get some good information to take away. After the break we shift focus to the hot topic of the week, WindowsVista Beta 1, and round up the information that is starting to emerge from those brave enough to install it on a Tablet PC. Enjoy the show and as always we appreciate your feedback! (We missed you Marc!)

The Tablet PC Show #19 (MP3 - 20.9MB - 61min)
LISTEN HERE

00:00 Intro- Greg Hughes & James Kendrick

05:45 Greg has a Lenovo ThinkPad X41 Tablet PC

25:00 The Podcast Network

26:00 WindowsVista Beta 1 information roundup

eWeek- will your Tablet run Vista?
Random Elements- Colin Walker installs the beta
Greg punches a cat in the face
IE7 panning with a pen
Tablet PC team has a blog
Speech recognition- command and dictation fused
Ink Analysis in Vista

60:00 Wrap up

Just couple quick links to some cool new stuff.

Microsoft's Tablet PC team has started blogging - very nice. Check it out:

http://blogs.technet.com/tabletpc/

The Tablet PC Avalon (a.k.a. "Windows Presentation Framework") team has also started blogging:

http://blogs.technet.com/tavalon/

Two blogs that look to be worth watching, and I've subscribed to both.

Come geek out this weekend. Bring a friend, your audio gear and a camera (or just yourself if that's easier), and lets do some podcasting and videoblogging as the Podcast and Videoblog Roadshow comes to Portland, Oregon. It happens Saturday at noon downtown.

Podcasting, videoblogging, audioblogging, etc. Get creative. Fun stuff. 

All the obligatory W's: 

• You, me, Eric and whoever else wants to come out and play
• Portland (Oregon) Podcast and Videoblog Roadshow
• Seattle's Best at 1742 SW Sixth Ave
• At noon
• That's this weekend - Saturday July 16th
• Because we can

See ya there.

A new beta version of Technorati - the web-based service that "brings you what’s happening on the web right now" - is available at http://beta.technorati.com/, and it looks darn nice. I like the new look and user interface (the search "options" feature is great for new users), and it seems to work quite well. You can learn what's new on the Technorati beta weblog.

Support for tags, more search options, personalization and watchlists are some of the new functionality in the beta version.

Technorati is currently tracking 11.1 million sites and 1.1 billion links. That's a lot. Tons of information to be had, and not it's easier than ever to do.

I use BlogJet to post nearly all my weblog entries - it's a great client-side application that connects to pretty much every blog package you can think of. So, you can write your blog posts locally, include and resize images, format to your heart's content, etc., and then post to your weblog software when you're ready. You can also edit your blog posts. I'm writing this post in BlogJet now - so this would be a BlogJet post about BlogJet.

It'll also record audio, check spelling, and insert "what's playing" info. It creates context menu items that allow you to "BlogJet This" and adds a web browser action button.

Anyhow, BlogJet is cool and awesome. You can get the v6.1 Beta 1 version here.

For complete BlogJet info, go to http://blogjet.com/

Blogging is reaching new heights. While Scoble's blogging from the seat of an airliner with WiFi on a trip to Europe on his way to a geek dinner (sounds like fun), a group of 20 police officers and companion climbers are slowly but steadily audioblogging their way to the rugged summits of Denali in Alaska (20,320 feet) and Humphreys Peak in Arizona (12,634 feet).

Using a satellite phone in Alaska and mobile phones in Arizona, the officers are calling in to a special phone number at audioblog.com, which immediately posts their voice recordings to the Climbers' Weblog at copsontop.com.

Both teams will strive this weekend to summit the mountains as a memorial to honor the lives, service and sacrifices of police officers Eric White and Jason Wolfe, both of the Phoenix, Arizona Police Department. Officers White and Wolfe were killed in the line of duty on August 28, 2004, while searching for a suspect who had just shot another man in the chest.

The officers are members and representatives of Cops on Top, a non-profit organization of police officers and others who execute memorial expeditions to remember peace officers killed in the line of duty. The audioblogging technology enables the teams to document their progress in real time, and to reach the families and friends of those fallen officers who are honored on each expedition.

Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo! has posted his company's new corporate employee blogging guidelines. There's a PDF file linked from his post, along with his comments.

Blogging policies are (I think) a good thing for companies to have. Why? Because they set the stage with the proper expectations right up front, before a problem can begin. People often benefit from having the context predefined, so they know what's cool and what's not.

In other words, having a good policy enables people much more than it restricts them. That's why I'm glad my company has a blogging policy, anyhow.

More and more companies are going beyond allowing their employees to blog, and are enabling and encouraging it. What's your company doing?

Andy and Angie have a cool weblog where some of their great pictures are displayed. They also have an online photo gallery that you can check out. There's real talent here: great use of light and digital editing for enhancement purposes (as opposed to completely altering a scene to be something it's not). There are also some cool macro insect pictures, nice landscapes and original desktop wallpapers available.

In one post, Andy explains how he edits an original digital image to get from this:

to this:

Same original image, but a very different end result. How did he do it? Go read his weblog to find out.

Note that the images are all copyrighted under a Creative Commons non-commercial use license by Andy Purviance.

There are plenty of opinions about placing ads in RSS and ATOM feeds, but regardless of the opinions, AdSense users can now apply to get AdSense for Feeds, which will allow them to place small ads in their RSS feeds.

• Information is here.
• Application is here.

I'll likely set it up to see how it works (I am kinda curious), and time will tell whether or not I'll want to keep it. Probably keep. We'll see.

The Mindjet team, the people who create and publish the MindManager software that can be so useful for organizing thoughts, ideas and plans, recently started blogging:

"The Mindjet team is now blogging! Visit our new Mindjet blog at: http://blog.mindjet.com/ to read and comment on regularly updated discussions about our journey through the world of visualizing information. Gain insight into Mindjet's goals and read featured commentary from the diverse and creative team pioneering Mindjet's efforts.

"Discussions could range from technology to philosophy and even unique uses for MindManager software. So please join us at the blog."

They've even posted a MindManager map that contains hyperlinks to some of their favorite blogs on information visualization, collaboration and related fields, as well as their RSS feeds. Interesting idea.

Paul Bausch asks:

Has anyone put rel="nofollow" on the back of a t-shirt yet?

Well, yeah. Sure. And now it's even spelled correctly. Click if ya want one.

(corrected the lingo, changed the shirt, oops!)

I decided today to check out WB Editor 2, a blog-posting and editing app that's available for Windows. It's darn-right cool.

Unfortunately, some of the XML-RPC functions don't want to work with dasBlog, even though that's the specific software I designated when I set up the blog account in the program interface. So, I can upload the screenshot here with the tool - I'll have to add those manually.

I have to say, I really like the user interface - it's quite well-polished and allows easy access to all sort of functionality. So, I'll be contacting the author to find out what's up with the dasBlog glitches and we'll see what can be done to help there.

At any rate, if you are a Windows user and you would like a better/different way to post to your weblog than the simple web text entry UI, you might want to check out WB Editor 2 and see what you think.

(Thumbnails added with another tool I like called BlogJet - click to view full-size images)

As I was checking out a few of the ways the earthquake that happened earlier today is being covered, I happened upon something I had not noticed before: MSNBC.com has a whole section of Citizen Journalism:

http://cj.msnbc.com

It's not quite completely run by and written by plain-old citizen journalists, but it's still cool. MSNBC employees collect stories and letters sent to cj@msnbc.com and from there they publish the content.

Cool idea. Interesting reads.

Forgive the headline please, Robert. It's all in good humor. 

In a completely understandable and laudable move, Robert Scoble has announced he's decided to give up publishing to his linkblog, in order to have more time for more important things in life. You know, important things like family and friends. Good for him!

All things in moderation - That's a lesson I know I've had to learn from time to time. The truth of the matter is that sometimes the best way to manage over 1000 weblogs a day is - well - to not manage over 1000 weblogs a day. Or at least to manage them less. I know I just cut my own RSS subscriptions back drastically last weekend, so I am back down around 300 feeds now from something like 700 before the surgery. It took a drastic slash across my RSS reader, but it needed to be done.

Of course, the demise of Robert's link blog is also a bit of a bummer in a way, since for many it's been a regular source of great links and information - or even more often for me, links to links to links...

Multi-layer clickthroughs from Robert's linkblog have always been valuable to me. More often than not I will read something he posts on the linkblog, and that will entice me to click through to the linked author, and from there I will uncover more interesting things and links to other interesting people.

But it's completely understandable that when you find you're spending anywhere from 8% to 33% of your day linking to and for others (sleep time included), a selection of robots just might do an effective enough job of what up til now has been a very human endeavor. Maybe. Those services show me what I am looking for based on what I put into them. The difference with the "human aggregator," so to speak, is that I am often pointed to things I would never have looked for. Of course, there are also other services existing and coming that will help people see what others are reading and how popular items are, in order to find things of interest. I hope those don't work out to be the electronic version of the high-school popularity contest, but we'll see.

So, when Robert points to a few popular search and aggregation services as alternatives to his link blog, I can't help but think of the perfect tongue-in-cheek name for them as a collective replacement for Robert's link blog...

"Robot Scoble"

(Yeah, you have to read it carefully. Spelling counts.)

Says Robert:

"I've been looking at my link blog, and the requests lately about it, and I've decided just to stop doing it.

"Why? Well, there are so many other ways for you to find cool new blogs now. Pubsub. Bloglines. Technorati. Feedster. NewsGator (Greg Reinacker reminded me again that NewsGator has a really cool set of online services including a search engine)."

Robert's right, but again it's worth pointing out that the human factor is part of what makes his linkblog so valuable - I think many people liked it because they appreciate the "Scoble Filter" - you don't get that with automation. Well, not quite yet anyhow.

At the same time, it had to be painful to maintain, with well over a hundred entries some days, and since Robert says he may still post a little bit there from time to time, hopefully we will still get a few Robert Scoble Human Filter links now and then.

Hey, there's always his regular weblog. In fact, chances are his Scobleizer weblog will just become a better place for information - kind of a quality over quantity thing.

By the way, in the linkblog department - Jeremy Zawodny's linkblog is another I subscribe to and enjoy, but it is quite different than Robert's.

Jeremy Wright and Mike Hillyer have just launched a new weblog called "The Wealthy Blogger," with the tagline "Money Management Blogging from two Decidedly Un-Wealthy Bloggers."

It looks like a great new site where conversations can take place about the pains of credit, debt and money management. It's a topic many people should be interested in, whether they actually are or not.

Anyhow, after reading a pre-release entry on the subject of credit card companies and the draining of today's college student population, I had some thoughts, which I posted there as a comment and am cross-posting here (slightly edited, but I have had more time to think about it since I originally posted my comments - see below).

But that's not really the point - go check out the site - I think it will be well worth our collective time as the site grows. I've subscribed.

Anyhow, here is me quoting myself (weird eh?) talking about my view of the reality of "borrowing" money... (edited and enhanced)

To get you started, please remember one very important thing. Behind the spin and sales lines, there are only two types of people in the world:

• People who buy money (often mistakenly called "borrowers")
• People who sell money (often mistakenly called "lenders")

That said, here are my comments:

Looking even beyond just the credit card companies, *no* company that "lends" you money is doing you a favor. That's like saying the car salesman is doing you a favor by letting you buy a car.

The fact of the matter is that when you get a home loan, a credit card, a personal loan, or charge to an installment account, *you* are the customer.

People need to realize that: When you take out this kind of loan, you are buying money. You are the customer and the lender is the one who is selling you the money in order to make a profit. No lender does anyone a favor, even if it feels like that's what's happening. Just like with the car salesman, the idea is to make it *feel* like it's a favor. But in reality, the profits are theirs. They do those things necessary to maximize their profits and minimize their losses, just like any other business.

Would you pay $100 in cash for $20 worth of groceries? If you put it on a card, that's possibly what you're doing, unless you pay your full balances within one or two months.

It used to be that credit cards were held and used for emergencies. Now people use them like they're free money, without thinking. That's too bad, because unless you happen to have a very astute credit mind and the ability to pay off everything you charge within the grace period, you're borrowing from sharks.

I know two young guys, about 20 to 22 years old, both of whom got credit cards and immediately ran them up buying fancy new computer equipment. One of them talked to me about it before he did it, and I advised him against it, but he did it anyhow. The other acted on his own without advice. Now they're both listening, after realizing how big a deal it is. I explained to both that it would take 30 years (or more with the high rates their cards had) to pay off a computer that would be outdated in one or two years if they made minimum payments. I told them about the virtues of saving and having cash on hand.

Credit cards are evil for most things, but they can be a blessing for a few things: Purchase protection for big-ticket items is nice to have, and rental car coverage is a good benefit if you travel. But some of the check cards with a logo of the major companies on it will give you similar benefits.

Which brings me to my final point: If you like using credit cards just because they are convenient and because you can use them to buy things online, you're probably using the wrong kind of card. Shop around for a ATM/Debit/Check/Visa-or-MasterCard type of card, and make sure you get one from a bank that offers the features you want.

Finally - a reminder: Whether it's a credit-card loan or another kind, the APR of the loan is what determines how much you are paying on an annual basis (compounded - which means you pay interest on the accumulated interest, too, and not just the dollar amount you originally borrowed) for the money you are buying from the lender. Yes - I said *you are buying* money from a lender, and how much you'll pay depends on how long it takes you to pay it off. It's as simple as that. Credit cards are a big-money business for lenders and are a big-loss pig of a deal for borrowers.

If you have to borrow, like for a car or home purchase, you should always shop for money the same way (or more diligently than) you shop for gas, cars, clothes, airline tickets, electronics, homes and whatnot. No lender is ever doing you a favor - they are selling you money, and they are doing so at a profit. Don't ever forget that.

See that? I did learn something, after all.

A guy named Matt has an idea. He reads blogs, and realized that sometimes he'd like to have an analog version - like one on paper with a cover and bound on the left.

And so, he come up with bookthisblog.com

That's a cool idea, I think. There are a few blogs I'd really like to read on paper, one's that I'd hang onto for sure, such as:

• Neopoleon.com - because Rory's a great read
• Indoor Camping - because it would be at least as good as a book, if not better

I'm sure I'll think of others. Plus, I'd like to be able to "burn" my own blog as a book now and then, maybe once a year, just for keepsake purposes. My family would probably like it, too. And there are megabloggers who I am sure would find a use.

There *is* a lot to be said for something you can hold in your hands, something of physical substance. Cool idea, Matt - Make it happen!

Via HineSight: On Nightline this evening, the subject matter will be blogs and bloggers and blogging.

Is it just a fad? Is it simply a medium? Is it a revolution? Is it nothing, really? It all depends who you ask. It will be interesting to see what Nightline's take is...

Tonight's piece is a fascinating one. Turns out that as John and producer Elissa Rubin were conducting interviews with bloggers, they were being blogged. The bloggers had some interesting opinions, to say the least. And as this program airs (and this e-mail is read by viewers), there's no doubt that bloggers will blog about it...

Umm, yeah. Heh.

So what are blogs? Turns out that although 8 million have created blogs, 62 percent of Americans who use the Internet don't know what a blog is. That's according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. And in an age where blogs are fundamentally changing the nature of news, we thought we'd tell you the story about the beast of blogging...

Check your local ABC affiliate's listings, but it's probably right after your late news.

http://hinessight.blogs.com/hinessight/2005/03/blogging_focus_.html

Jeremy Wright has posed a weblog entry discussing ethics and blogging. It's an interesting start to what should be (and needs to be) an ongoing conversation.

Jeremy starts with a discussion of the premise that bloggers are not ethical.

My take? It's very simple in my little world and point of view: Honesty, authenticity, objectivity and credibility are qualities that all people should strive for, regardless of their profession or avocation. It's not so much about the blogger vs. the journalist - these qualities apply across the board. It's about doing the right thing, and doing it the right way. It's about responsibility.

I've been both a journalist (several years ago) and a blogger. Ethics has been central to every job I have ever worked in: Journalist, police officer, security professional.

I get Jeremy's points, and agree with what he says in large part. There are, however, certain minor points with which I disagree (surprise, surprise, heh). I don't believe ethics was born of capitalistic need (early ethics was a Greek endeavor, and only a couple of ethical views like Marxism and social ecology are actually tied to economic or financial systems), and I tend to disagree with the idea that applying journalistic standards to blogging doesn't work. Rather, I think it can work - but that there's more to both sides of the equation than just journalistic standards, and that trying to oversimplify the discussion or pigeon-hole any aspect of it is a mistake. It's always tempting to try to divvy up different behavior characteristics and assign each of them to their own neat little groups, but it's never that simple.

Jeremy offers his own opinions and positions, and they are certainly worth reading and will hopefully start readers thinking about what ethics means to them in terms of blogging and publishing information in general:

"At the end of the day, the only thing we as creators of the written word have is that which our audience gives us - their eyes, their ears and their minds. And to violate that trust is the cardinal sin of everyone who values the written word. Be they blogger, journalist, poet or playwright.

"So protect your words, protect your readers and honor the trust you have been given. By doing so you will be the best journalist or blogger you can be."

Jeremy's article can be found here. Read. Comment. Write. Converse.

EDIT: Blog Resource has more comments here, as does Fifteen Seconds. And more yet - A Blogger's Code of Ethics, over ay Cyber Journalist.

Jon Stewart - comedy non-news guy - and team take a funny look at blogs, the blogosphere, blogging, journalism and government. You don't have to agree with his political positions to get the humor on his show, for sure.

It's hillarious.

Stephen Colbert, a.k.a. Ted Hitler, on Bloggers:

"They have no credibility. All they have is facts. Spare me."

Heh...

View the video segment here.
(Note: Some content probably not very good for kids.)

Jeremy Zawodny points out the Blogger's Bill of Rights and gives his opinion on the matter. He doesn't like it. Neither do I. It's just another example of people making something out of nothing, and trying to avoid personal responsibility in the good name of free speech. Here's where I speak up and say why I think it's crap, too...

Now, I'm a fairly outspoken person. I've also had a tendency in the past to open my big mouth, say exactly what I think, and then go into another room to extract my foot from my esophagus. But when I stick my foot in my mouth, I am keenly aware that it's my foot, it's my mouth and it's my choice - regardless of whether or not I thought it through ahead of time. Whether or not I was correct isn't relevant. You can be correct every time, but that doesn't necessarily make you right.

People, this is all about responsibility and ownership. You want to say something? Fine, but ya gotta own it, like it or not.

Let's define a couple of terms for the purposes of the discussion:

• Consequences: The results of something one chooses to do, or not to do. All choices have results, both good and bad. Some of those results impact the chooser, some impact others.
• Speech: Pretty much any form of communication - collective, individual or otherwise - in a variety of forms. In this context, we'll keep it somewhat simple (since we are talking about individual weblogs) and say it's an individual's written or spoken words.

Okay so - Right up front I'll say this: There is no special, magical set of rights that bloggers can (or should) expect, not with regard to employers, husbands/wives, boyfriends/girlfriends, coworkers, friends, family members, governments, or anyone else. The idea that blogs are somehow special or different and should be treated differently is arrogant and probably and indicator of the root of the problem - people think they are entitled to say whatever they want, however they want, with no consequences. Sorry, Charlie. Ain't happening.

• Your right to free speech does not apply to the specific medium in which you exercise it. Speech is protected in certain circumstances, in certain locations, regardless of the form that speech takes. You have no more right to expect protection on a blog than anywhere else. Your rights are reasonable to expect, but when your exercising of your rights infringes upon the rights of another, you're crossing a line.
• If you shoot off your mouth on your weblog, it's not an ollie-ollie-oxen-free home-base super-top-secret say-anything-I-want kind of thing. You are responsible for what you say, at the time you say it.
• Speech is behavior. In a previous career I was always amazed at the idiots who thought if they could just get their car into the driveway, they were safe, regardless of the level of alcohol in their blood while there were on the street that got them to their driveways. It's not where you land, it's who and what you affect along the way.
• Your speech is your speech, and with it come consequences. If you choose to say or write something on a weblog, keep in mind, it's speech in a public place and you are making a choice, and with that choice comes certain consequences. Your choices may impact others (coworkers and employers), and as a result, the very second you post your words, you choose to accept all of the consequences of that speech, regardless of whether or not you have taken the time to think about said consequences.
• Your employer can hire and fire based on the quality of your behavior and how it impacts business, your performance, personalities, coworkers, morale, anything. You should remember this before you post on your weblog for everyone to read. And comment on. And quote. And read again. And copy/paste/email to your coworkers and your boss and his/her boss. And to end up on the Wayback Machine.

It's not about who yells the loudest or who thinks/knows they're right. What it is about is being responsible for oneself and thinking ahead about the impact of exercising one's right to free speech.

One important aspect of thinking ahead is considering the consequences and weighing the risks. Preferably before speaking. But if you don't take the time to do that, it shouldn't be (and isn't) someone else's problem.

Anyhow, that's about all I have to say about that.

Scott and Omar have announced the release of dasBlog Community Edition v1.7. There's lots of new features and improvements in this version, and best of all, it's open source and free of charge. I have had the privilege of running it in various dev stages over the past few weeks, and yesterday one of my blogs running the v1.7 pre-release software got Slashdotted without as much as a hiccup, so I think it will hold up just fine under pressure.

In fact, this weblog was Slashdotted last year while running v1.6 (with a super-heavy traffic load that day), and it help up quite well - the slashdot traffic overran the NIC well before the app ever had a chance to choke. Considering that dasBlogCE v1.7 has a slew of big-time performance enhancements over v1.6, you can pretty well rest assured it's built to handle a serious load.

• Download dasBlogCE here
• Version history is here
• Scott's release announcement is here
• Omar is a program manager at Microsoft, who recently caught the programming bug. He's turned out to be a pretty darn amazing learner of .NET development, according to Scott.

The Cops on Top web site and weblog - where a group of mountaineering expedition team members currently climbing Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro are calling in via Satellite phone to record instant audio blog posts - got slashdotted a little while ago. That, of course, means the web server (which is the same one this web site runs on) may be under heavy load for a while.

And by the way - the expedition team made it to the summit of Kilimanjaro today!

You know, I used to blame Rory for everything. I'm starting to wonder if maybe I should be blaming Scott instead...

Luckily it's the middle of the night here in the states, but we'll see what happens when people wake up in the US and start checking out their /. and getting their geek/nerd fix after a weekend of dealing with their girlfriends/wives. Heh.

Related Links:

• The Cops on Top web site and Climber's Audio Weblog that's the topic of interest (it really is cool stuff)
• The Slashdot article (note - slashdot comments are notoriously rude and insensitive, reader beware)
• Scott's "I Slashdotted Greg again" weblog entry (with a choice quote from me)
• Audioblog.com is the provider of the phone-in audio blog posting service. Cool service and cool people there.

I’ve been an audioblog.com customer for some time, and have always liked their product. I have not used it much in the past, but recently I found a perfect use for their service.

Cops on Top has a team of 13 climbers – police officers and a couple civilians – in Africa on Mt. Kilimanjaro, making a climb to the summit of Africa’s biggest mountain in memory of fallen Officer Isaac Espinoza of the San Francisco Police Department.

They have a satellite phone with them, and are calling in audio blog updates using the sat phone. As soon as they call in an update, it’s posted instantly to the Cops on Top web site’s climbers weblog.

Imagine that – technology now allows a group of people in the furthest corners of the world to instantly file an audio recording update to a web site, so people everywhere can know what’s happening, right now.

I had a configuration problem the other day as I was trying to get the service running for the Cops in Top site, and Eric over at audioblog.com helped out and made a quick fix that allowed us to solve the issue and get the service working. Righ then, right there, solved the problem and made sure it was working for me. True service. Nice.

If you’re geeky and have a blog, give audioblog.com a try – it’s nifty stuff and works well.

I have been testing development and release builds of dasBlog 1.7 for the past week or so. There are a few of us running it on our live sites to make sure everything’s working as expected and to provide real-world feedback.

This version – spearheaded by developers Omar and Scott and incorporating the work of several others – simply rocks.

There are a large number of performance improvements (it’s a lot faster and uses less resources on the server) and feature additions/enhancements. You can read about all the changes on the dasBlog wiki page for v1.7. Some of my favorites are the ability to post drafts without actually publishing to the live site, RSS 2.0 enclosures, referral spam protection,

One thing that I just added to this site with the latest build is live support for the Movable Type Blacklist, which is another mechanism to kill referral spam before it happens. There’s also the ability to block referrers from being listed by keyword. It’s all pretty cool.

It’ll be done soon, and when it is you’ll want to check it out, regardless of whether you currently use dasBlog.

Adam Gaffin, who publishes Network World Fusion’s Compendium (RSS feed here: ), has announced that Network World’s weekly interviews are now available a la Podcast – as a RSS 2.0 feed with enclosures.

So, point your feed reader or podcast client over to the  podcast feed at http://www.nwfusion.com/podcasts/radio.xml and partake of the quality content – these are quite good interviews and recordings, especially for IT pro’s and people who want to learn more about IT in the home and office.

Here is a point of view I tend to agree with, with regard to business and blogging… It’s not just what you say at work that can get you fired, and companies can employ (or not) based on a number of aspects of a person’s life. If you’re a blogger, these thoughts over at the Blog Your Way weblog are worth reading and taking into account:

Blog Your Way » My thoughts on being fired for blogging

There have been a lot of posts lately about being dooced (fired for blogging). Dooce (Heather) was the first to be fired almost three years ago and thousands have been fired since then. It seems that many more will follow. What was the common denominator in the majority of them? Discretion…and not thinking about the possible reaction to their posts.

To make creating weblog entries simple, fast and easy, I use a tool called BlogJet. Dmitri (the author) has just released v1.5 of the program:

BlogJet 1.5 Final Release

Great news – BlogJet 1.5 is available now. It’s a huge improvement over previous versions – it has slightly better user interface, more features, support for more blog services and CMS and it’s more stable.

BlogJet 1.5 is the free update for registered users.

Download it now!

Full release notes are here.

My gnome friend Brandon Watts jumped on the proverbial horse and rode straight out the barn on his first PodCast earlier today. And all in all, he did a fine job.

If you have not heard about Brandon before, here's a little info:

• He wrote his own programming language for beginners, called Leopard, a couple years ago.
• He's 18 years old now.
• He's wicked smart.
• He writes for Lockergnome and has had his writing featured in a variety of print and online media.
• He has a pretty darn good radio voice.
• He has a blog.

Check out his podacst (for the uninitiated, podcasting's this new thing that all the kids are doing with MP3 files and easy-to-use-and-distribute audio shows). Let him know what you think.

Scoble on blogging at Microsoft and assumptions that might be made by people on the outside:

“… They think someone has "spun" Bill Gates into believing blogging is good for Microsoft.

“Please, if you're gonna say something like that, warn me not to be drinking water when it comes online.

“I wish I could tell you why that made me laugh. Let's just say the skepticism is misplaced. You don't get 1300 to 1500 people doing ANYTHING at a company without some very explicit decisions made at the very top of the company. Think about that one for a while.”

The 2005 List of Banished Words has been released.

Sadly/Happily (depending on your personal opinion/position), among the words formally banished this year by Lake Superior State University is “Blog.” LSSU’s 30th annual list describes the term and its reasons for banishment as folows:

BLOG – and its variations, including blogger, blogged, blogging, blogosphere. Many who nominated it were unsure of the meaning. Sounds like something your mother would slap you for saying.

• “Sounds like a Viking’s drink that’s better than grog, or a technique to kill a frog.” Teri Vaughn, Anaheim, Calif.
• “Maybe it’s something that would be stuck in my toilet.” – Adrian Whittaker, Dundalk, Ontario.
• “I think the words ‘journal’ and ‘diary’ need to come back.” – T. J. Allen, Shreveport, La.

Also banned – and I have to agree with this one, it just bugs the crap outa me every time I hear it – is “Webinar,” which is described on the list this way:

WEBINAR – for ‘seminar on the web.’

• “It’s silly. Next we’ll have a Dutch ‘dunch’ … bring your own lunch for a digital lunch meeting.” – Karen Nolan, Charlotte, NC.

AMEN Karen! But better watch out what you say in public, someone will hear it and the next thing you know, instant mareting-speak… Dutch dunch. Heh…

LSSU has been compiling the list since 1976, choosing from nominations sent from around the world. This year, words and phrases were pulled from more than 2,000 nominations. Most were sent through the school’s website: www.lssu.edu/banished. LSSU accepts nominations for the List of Banished Words throughout the year. To submit your nomination for the 2006 list, go to www.lssu.edu/banished.

(found via Doc Searls, Über blogger extraorinaire)

Blogging is not just about personal journals and random rants. It’s become a viable commercial venture, as well – whether the purists like it or not. I get a lot of great information from commercial blogs and bloggish web sites. Now there’s an awards program to recognize business blog, and you can nominate your favorites now:

Welcome to the 2005 Business Blogging Awards, presented by InsideBlogging! As business blogging has taken off in 2004, and looks to explode in 2005, we figured it was time to inaugurate some fun awards to reward all those hard-working business bloggers. After all, we can’t have the online diarists have all the fun, can we?

Here’s how the awards will work:

• We’re accepting nominations until January 24. Anyone can nominate any blogger in any category
• Additionally, feel free to suggest new categories if there’s one you’d like to see
• To nominate a blogger, simply place a comment in the nominations thread. Feel free to nominate as many blogs as you’d like (including your own) for as many categories as you’d like
• A panel of judges will whittle the nominee list for each category down to a minimum of three and a maximum of six nominees
• Voting will open at 12:00pm PST on January 26. You’ll be able to vote once per day per category
• Voting will continue until 12:00pm PST on February 9
• Winners will be announced on February 10. Winners will be contacted by email

(via ensight)

From Mitch Wagner, writing at Security Pipeline:

“For Sanjay Senanayake, a documentary producer in Sri Lanka, the tsunami this week was the start of a sometimes-exhilarating, sometimes-horrifying adventure. He chronicled his travels through the disaster areas using mobile-phone text-messaging and blogs.”

Read the security pipeline article here, and read Sanjay’s weblog SMS and mobile phone entries here at the ChiensSansFrontiers weblog. It’s another very real real look at what’s happening.

Remember: Do whatever you can to help. If you have not yet given to support relief efforts, please stop and ask yourself if there is a truly good reason keeping you from doing so. Then click to a site and make a donation, no matter how small. It’s easy to give in many ways. It takes just a couple of minutes, and regardless of how much you can give, it will make a very real difference.

Recently Apple, Microsoft, eBay and PayPal all put up links to pages that let you find ways to contribute. You can also give through Amazon.com, and Google has a web page up with links to places you can give.

Make something happen – that is your part in this. We all have a role, and let’s all make sure we all do the best we can.

Eric Rice interviewed me Wednesday afternoon, to get just one simple blogger guy’s perspective on the blogosphere and the process of giving to the relief efforts needed so badly in South Asia after the tsunamis and earthquakes that have devastated so many people in that region. It was the AdSense donation idea that sparked the interview, but we talked about other aspects of the blogosphere and its collective reaction to the tragedy, as well.

Thanks to Eric for taking the time to do a podcast about something that’s very important: those things we can do now to help others in need.

Download the podcast (an MP3 audio file) from EricRice.com and see links there for a few places you can go to offer your help, as well.

Omar Shahine has been working on dasBlog v1.7, and on his weblog he says he’s working to release the new version by the end of the year. Nice!

Lots of cool new features, some of which I am running here that were built up by Scott Hanselman. Check out Omar’s progress announcement, Scott’s changes, and the v1.7 wiki page for more info.

Can’t wait!

John Dvorak posts a great little article for people new to the blogosphere: Understanding and Reading a Blog (for Newcomers).

(via BlogWrite for CEOs)

“Give me fuel, give me fire…”

Robert Scoble turned some heads and offended some technology “sensibilities” this weekend with a few posts on his weblog, including this one, which apparently ticked off more than just a few people because – among other things – Scoble used the terms “open source” and “Microsoft” and “leader” in the same breath.

I’ll admit, when I read the entry (and a couple others he wrote that day), the first thing that went through my mind was “Now that’s a real can of worms.” In fact, about the time I finished reading the article, I saw Robert pop up on my screen via IM toast. So, I clicked and mentioned what I was thinking:

Greg Hughes    cans o worms ;)
Robert Scoble  You think?
Robert Scoble  Might as well get them out in the open.
Greg Hughes    yeah but its a good thing

All day Sunday (and no doubt since then as well) people complained about what Scoble wrote. There are also a few lonely souls that have something positive to say. Robert, true to form, has linked to his detractors on his blog. As far as I’m concerned, everyone’s at least a little bit right. But, even more important than who’s right and who’s wrong is the fact that what Scoble did here should make people stand up and look around. Not just at what he’s saying, but also about how and where he’s saying it, and to whom it’s addressed.

And if something comes of it, well look out – Because nothing breeds adoption like success.

It’s important enough to pay attention to, so I am going to ramble on here stream-of-consciousness style about what Robert wrote. You’ll have to go to his web site to read the original entries…

Scoble: Dear Bill Gates: can we create an interesting music player?

This blog entry – “Another letter to Bill Gates” – suggested that Microsoft should open-source the development of a new Windows Media hardware device, to be designed and built by a community in order to go to market before back-to-school next year. It would compete with the iPod. It’s a damn interesting idea. It has merit, whether or not its realistic. I’d like to see what he’s suggesting become a real product, one way or another.

But you know, it doesn’t need to be realistic. Think about it – The fact that someone can work for that company, write an open letter to one of its leaders on a public web site, and apparently not fear repercussions (or maybe he does but writes what’s on his mind anyhow) is definitely worth noting. This isn’t same-old-same-old. It’s not what we’ve seen elsewhere. It’s – get this – innovative and new.

That blog entry irked many, in part because Robert suggested that Microsoft succeeds as a leader in the open source realm. I think he was referring to Channel 9, where he works – It’s a Microsoft web site community (and a very successful one at that). That community sort of embraces the open source marketing concept and does, in fact, succeed at what it sets out to do.

The thing that bothered me the most about Robert’s weblog entry wasn’t the product/community design/develop/market idea, or the fact that Robert associated Microsoft with the open source “movement,” a comparison that many people would (and did) freak out over in disagreement. No problems there – That’s healthy. It started a powerful conversation. That’s why it’s a good thing. It’s marketing, and its working. It’s not really about being right or wrong, nearly as much as it is about just being there.

Honestly, what bothered me the most about what Robert wrote was this one line:

“Start a weblog. NOW. Get the person who runs the team to start a blog. NOW. Or fire him/her. I'm serious.”

Ouch. I have no problem with starting a blog to fire up a project and make it as open as possible, if that’s the goal. But I was more than a little surprised to see Robert advocate even the idea of firing someone because they won’t write a weblog. That’s a thin line over which I am not so sure Microsoft should tread. Fire them? Weblogs are one tool among many to market and communicate products. I know we’re all big into the whole blog-as-marketing-tool thing, but firing someone because they won’t blog – I don’t think so. It would be better not to hire someone into the project position in the first place than to fire someone for not blogging. I hope the Kool-Aid’s not getting too strong, man.

Were you really that serious, Robert?

Scoble Again: Linux user advocates switching from Windows

In another entry, Scoble essentially scolded a *nix sys admin who wrote another “open letter” – this one apparently addressed to the whole world – for his suggestion that people should move now from Windows to Linux. It’s not an innovative idea, this whole “switch” thing – I think it’s been done before.

This article and resultant responses of the community were a little harder to swallow - on all sides of the argument. It did make me stop and think though – quite a bit. I considered putting my thoughts over in Scoble’s weblog comments, but instead I’ll just put them here. You should go read the original entry on Scoble’s weblog first, or this response won’t make too much sense:

It's clear the author of the "open letter" spends his time using Linux. Five hours to clean a Windows system simply means he was not familiar – and he alludes to that in his letter. It takes Robert an hour or so to do the same thing because he's done it before. Apples and oranges here.

Hard to prevent spyware? Maybe, maybe not. Want to know where to spend your family security time and money? How about education? For example: http://alwaysuseprotection.com/Book/intro/toc.htm

About Windows Apps - There *are* alternatives to MS Office, Photoshop, Illustrator, et al. Ink? Yeah, well honestly I use two Tablet PCs and Ink is the last thing I'd hold over Linux's head at this point. Or just run the MS apps (some of them anyhow) on Linux with WINE. I don't do that (I like Windows myself, and I use a number of programs that won’t cooperate with Wine), but others do.

About problems running as admin - While it's a perfectly valid point to say that not running as admin would solve many problems, it will *not* solve all of them. However, Microsoft would do well to introduce a paradigm-shift level of change in this regard, and force the user context as restricted as possible, with some usable, easy-to-understand tools that would allow the user to specify elevated privileges for certain tasks, like installing software for example. Not some add-on stuff - it needs to be built in and intuitive. I like power-toys as much as the next guy, but this is important - BUILD IT IN and make it work the way it should. And build these changes and tools not only into future versions of the OS, but also as installable patches to ALL the past versions (the 32-bit ones, anyhow). Seriously. It's worth the investment.

Linux is not a threat in the bad sense of the word - rather it's a healthy marketplace competitor. Competition makes for healthy companies/teams. The fact is, Linux would not be what it is today if Microsoft was not part of the landscape; neither would Microsoft be what it is today without Linux in the world. Same goes for Apple and a bunch of others. The loss of any of thee players would be bad for all the others, plain and simple.

Complaining for the purpose of getting people to change their personal behavior more often than not just doesn't work. But complaining to get companies to change their products - now that's another story. But be ready to support and defend your argument, and think through the gaps before you start.

The unfortunate thing about many people today is that rather than voicing reasonable complaints and making rational, well-formed suggestions to solve problems, they instead take the route of whining loudly and then looking around to see if anyone is talking about their whining. “Did you hear what so-and-so said???”

A blog doesn't *make* a person a Voice - it just *gives* them one. There are plenty of bloggers who have blown that opportunity. Truth be told, I'm getting pretty tired of the whiny people. Maybe RSS 2.1 needs a whiner filter field or something. Umm, no pun intended - Sorry, Dave.

And as far as relative costs of Linux vs. Windows, if my company had a dime for every time I had to listen to someone pitch a half-baked argument advocating switching from Windows, or to Linux, or whatever - Well let's just say they'd owe me a great big honkin' bonus check. It’s not all about the cost of the OS itself. There are many other factors to consider. I am pretty darn happy with the computer systems we have now. I can fix spyware problems and secure computers - but I can't make an operating system more friendly, usable by non-geeks, or centrally manageable.

I'm a huge fan on the secure-by-default methodology that Linux and OS-X leverage - but it should never replace a good, solid security config, check and review. Assume nothing, check everything. Of course, I can’t very well expect my mom to secure her own computer, and she’s seriously asked for a gift of one year worth of tech support for Christmas. I told her she has to cover the travel – she lives more than 1300 miles away.

And before anyone starts the "but Linux is so much better now than it used to be" thing, just save the speech til it's ready. I use Linux here and there, I stay familiar with it and how its progressed, and while I like it a lot it's not ready for what I need from a desktop operating system to use in business today. Servers yes, desktops no. And that's okay. I don't need better, I need done. I know some will argue it is done – I just don’t agree there, and the definition of “done” will vary from person to person, depending on their specifc needs.

For some, Linux is better. For others, it’s not. That won’t be changing anytime soon.

Ultimately, computer arguments have fallen victim to the same problem that plagues every other form of discussion in today's world: People assume it has to be all one way or all another. It's not a black-and-white world we live in, though. Believe it or not, Linux, Apple and Windows can all co-exist peacefully, and will continue to make each other better over time as a result.

Ahh the continued one-sided mantra rants of a clueless generation...

Meanwhile, I’m willing to push Microsoft to continue to improve their products – which is something they need to do. I’ll continue to use Linux in those places where it works best for me – typically in security applications and certain server environments. On the desktop and on most servers it’s Windows, centrally managed and patched automatically and reliably. Our users know what they’re using. And spyware? Well, it’s really not that hard a problem to solve for me. Once you know how, anyway.

But Microsoft truly needs to do something about it, and needs to do so now.

Clearly, something about this works. Look, I wrote all about what I think. Others have done the same. Something’s happening here.

Somebody look what’s goin’ down…

Scott Hanselman has been working on some very cool updates to a private build of the current version of dasBlog (the blog software this site runs on), and last night he and I stayed up late plugging his new build into my weblog site and his. We did some tuning and troubleshooting (he tuned, and I took direction and troubleshooted/shot/sha– eh, whatever…), and got to where things are looking pretty darn nice.

The net effect of the changes is significantly improved performance and some new functionality for site owners.

It’s faster. Big time. Between the dasBlog changes and cleaning a few things up in my blog template, the site is loading well over ten times faster than it was 24 hours ago. Wow. Scott’s blog is also running on the new bits, and its much faster, too.

Before anyone asks, it’s a private build, and it’s not mine to give away. Scott said that “if its righteous,” Omar will take a look at it for possible inclusion into dasBlog v1.7.

I won’t pretend to understand the guts of it (that’s Excellent Programmer Scott’s job), but here are a few of the new things he’s implemented (in my words, not his, so forgive me if it’s in not-too-programmerish terms):

• Speed Improvements: Site content that used to be cached on the file system in blogdata.xml, categoryCache.xml, and entryCache.xml are now stored and manipulated in memory, which means no more of the thrash-and-wait disk IO associated with those files, and therefore a faster application requiring less overhead. Category pages are incredibly fast now. My RSS loads faster in the reader. Speed, speed speed…
• New Config Setting: Blocks unwanted referrers by keyword, and logs the action taken along with the matching keyword. Does not count as a referral or visit in stats.
• New Config Setting: Send an HTTP 404 response (page not found) to blocked referrerals.
• New Config Setting: Enable Captcha for comments. Captcha is the tool that creates an image with numbers and letters that you have to type into a form field when submitting comments on the site. It’s purpose is to prevent comment spamming, and it is now integrated directly into dasBlog.
• New Configuration File: Block access to the weblog application by IP address by adding them to blockedips.cfg.
• HTTP Compression Changes: Makes larger pages transfer and load faster.
• New activity logging features: Logging of dasBlog application activity is enhanced with things like source IP addresses for referrals (in case you want to block it or look it up), keywords used on referral filtering, refused referrals, and I am sure a bunch of others.

It’s all so super fast, slick and nifty, but then again that’s exactly what I’d expect from Scott. He’s wicked smart and more than just a little driven.

It’s such a bonus to have friends around that you can learn so much from and who can make such cool things work. Thanks as always to Scott, and woo-hoo for dasBlog!

Over on it’s GotDotNet workspace, you can download the Collutions cBlog package, a custom site definition for SharePoint released under a Shared Source license. The cBlog package creates a blogging environment on the Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) platform. WSS ships as a free web server add-on/enhancement to Windows Server 2003.

This is interesting stuff. Jim Duncan’s sample blog is viewable online, and is a real, working blog that appears to be dedicated to the development and discussion of the cBlog custom site definition itself, at least so far.

Looks like Jim has already created an  RSS  2.0 Feed  for the WSS cBlog, too. Subscribed!

Going to have to look into this one further…

For the past few months now I have had Google AdSense ads (four of them in a vertical stack format) way down deep on the page in the right-side nav section of this weblog. You’d be safe to say they were buried, way “below the fold.” In other words, the worst possible place to stick ads that you want people to click on.

I put the ads there after Chris Pirillo pontificated on the wonders of AdSense - on his site, to me in person, to me in email, to me in instant messaging conversations. He groks the stuff.

Yesterday I got a “hey here’s some new info about your AdSense account” email from the AdSense people, which reminded me of that fact that I even had the ads on my site at all (yeah, they were that far down on the page). I’m a little lazy about that kind of stuff. In fact, I had not checked on the stats for my AdSense account in some time, and so I was a bit surprised to find I had almost $80 worth of ad revenues in my account. Hmmm…

So, being the smart guy I am, I decided maybe there actually was something to this AdSense stuff. Late last night I changed my ad layout design from four ads to just two, made it a horizontal layout, and moved them to the top of the page - into a much higher-profile placement.

The results? Well, just today, I had nearly $10 in click-through revenues – and today was a (relatively) slow traffic day on the site. In other words, by simply moving the ads and making them fit in a little better, in just one day I brought in about an eighth of the total ad revenue from the past four months. That’s hard to beat, no matter how you look at it:

• Click-through Rate:   3.4% today     0.2% per day average
• Click-though Count:   36 today       1 per day average
• Daily Earnings:       $9.42 today    $0.43 per day average

Of course, I emailed Chris and told him about my little experiment in ad placement and the results, and his reply was what exactly I expected:

“Told ya so.”

Heh. Yeah, he sure did.

Most any blog that’s been Googled, Slashdotted, or Engadgeted – or for that matter pretty much anything that drives traffic to a site – has seen the effects of referral spam. It SUCKS. Porn and marketing sites create a fake link to your blog entry, which results in a link to their web site (usually and unpleasant and unwelcome one) showing up in your referral list for that entry. Your readers click a link and get porn tossed right in their faces. Ugh.

With dasBlog, the only way I had to effectively battle this (I am a victim of referral spam for sure) was to turn off referral displays on my blog. I don’t want that, but this is a family-friendly site for the most part, so keeping the nasty out was important.

But last night Scott Hanselman, a friend and co-worker, sent me a new little C# 2005 Express project ZIP file, told me to compile it, and to try it out. He just built it for himself, and passed it on for me to use.

No more referral spam!

UPDATE: While I was able to kill the nasty referrer links, I have again removed referral listings from the blog for a while, because I have one particular weblog entry that has so many hundreds of referrers, it will crash the browser when you try to load it with referrers showing… But that’s a whole different issue…

Since then, Scott has posted the project source file on his blog, too, so any dasBlog users that need it can take advantage. He plans to make it a little more elegant in the future, but this is a great start!

Scott Hanselman, YOU’RE MY HEEEROOOO.

Eric Rice is thinking hard, pondering what it will take to make Blogcast 1.0 happen, and posts his thoughts over on his weblog.

What will Podcasting’s future hold? What about video? Other forms of multimedia communication? Delivery methods? How can it be made more usable and accessible to new and experienced users alike?

I’m in. Multimedia communication by individuals online is just barely getting started, and this is the place to be for those who are interested in what the future will hold.

And besides, Eric’s a cool guy and a conference he drives is sure to be a hit. Plus he already made up a cool logo.

According to my just-arrived daily Google News Alert, Robert and I were both quoted (semi-syndicated, actually) today in the Boston Herald, with regard to our comments on MSN Spaces.

Funny, I didn’t actually think the two of us were at opposite ends of the spectrum, opinion-wise. In fact, I actually tend to agree with Robert, in that I would not use MSN Spaces as my primary blogging tool.

(Not that what I think matters all that much, but hey, it’s an honor to be quoted. And I’m a bit embarrassed – for Robert, that is – that I was quoted in the same breath as Scoble. He deserves better company, really.)

Sidebar: I find it fairly interesting that I am essentially blogging about tools that are used for blogging, then the new