Netscape tried to copy Digg when it came out with its voting system some time ago. As expected, the move failed miserably. Netscape is now a pit of user bots, crap submissions, and a dwindling community.
AOL could have learned a lesson from that move, but it looks like they decided to ignore it. As reported by Tech Crunch, AOL is Beta testing a new portal design for it’s site.
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A few days ago I stumbled onto a brilliant site called Icon Finder. The web icon search database claims to hold more than 5,000 icons in its index and offers the tool free for anyone needing a tool to help find them.
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Yasser Dabha over at No One’s Listening had me chuckling earlier. He posted a sarcastic letter about the Firefox vs. Internet Explorer happenings at the work place.
Enjoy!
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OK, according to my statistics, there are still a ton of visitors to my site that are using Internet Explorer. Why that is I cannot for the life of me understand. Some of you might have a good reason, and if so, please let me know what that reason is.
But if there are Internet Explorer users visiting this site that are only using Internet Explorer because it’s what you already have, it’s what you’re used to, and you don’t know there are other options, this post is for you.
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I haven’t touched much on the Sitemeter/Spyware saga as of late. The original post, which made it to the homepage of Digg and has had more than 15,000 readers since it was published, is now ranking fairly well in search engines and I believe it is keeping the debate alive and well.
I then followed it up with a couple more posts, including a post with the “official” response from the Sitemeter team.
Before we get to Shane’s post, let’s take a look at Sitemeters response.
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WashingtonWatch.com is now a part of the wiki using family. It’s a choice that I believe will have negative effects on the quality of the site.
Washington Watch has been a great place for me to find information on bills. The site tracks bills in Congress, providing a fair amount of sound estimates about costs or savings regarding specific bills and proposed laws.
Until now, the bias has been kept to a minimum. While there has been disputable postings, it’s probably safe to say these debates can be had for all sides of the political spectrum. Generally the site is fair and to date has presented information in an unbiased fashion.
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Rachael Bell, an 18 year old MySpace user in the United Kingdom, learned a very hard lesson in what you should and shouldn’t post online.
Recently Rachael posted an invite on her MySpace site for a house party at her place while her mom was away. Instead of the handful of friends she had intended on showing up, she landed several hundred people who completely trashed and ruined her house.
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Matt Cutts really knows how to stir controversy. In a recent post titled, “How to report paid links“, Cutts lays out the simple process on how to bring paid links to the attention of the Google team.
Sign in to Google’s webmaster console and use the authenticated spam report form, then include the word “paidlink” (all one word) in the text area of the spam report. If you use the authenticated form, you’ll need to sign in with a Google Account, but your report will carry more weight.
I can see it now…
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Google’s purchase of Doubleclick is stirring a lot of discussion. Most of it isn’t pretty.
Cocoa & Medicine says:
If you aren’t familiar with them, DoubleClick is in the business of selling banner ads — those flashing, annoying advertisements that sit above, beside, and even above those web pages you visit. That, in and of itself, is not why I dislike them — in fact, thanks to Privoxy, I almost never see their ads. But I’ve been doing the web thing long enough to recall back in 2000 when DoubleClick announced an frighteningly Orwellian scheme to identify every single web user and track the pages they visit.
After DoubleClick’s announcement there was an uproar. Numerous organizations including EPIC and the ACLU filed petitions with the FTC, which launched a 10 month investigation. Eventually DoubleClick backed off of its position and the investigation was dropped.
Fast forward several years and the poster child of online privacy invasion is getting hitched to the poster child of online corporate responsibility. I suppose we could interpret this in a positive way and hope that Google’s values infect those of the DoubleClick unit more than the other way around. But I can help but feel a bit nervous.
The timing of this buy is not at all comforting after seeing Matt Cutts pronounce that Google is now looking down on paid links. Sounds like big G wants the throne to itself.
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TellMe, a new company seeking to get in while the getting is good, has just launched its 100% FREE 411 information service!
To find a phone number, simply call 1-800-555-TELL. When prompted say “business search”. The fully automated system will then search its database to find a relevant result for your query.
No more cell phone bill fee’s for talking to an operator. The service is free of charge and you can use it as often as you like.
I could have used this last week when I called for a cab. I’ve now plugged the number into my Treo so charges for the service are now a thing of the past.
OH! Google has a similar service as well. I love it!
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Yeah, I changed themes yet again.
I really liked the last one, but it was taking WAY too much time to load. It only took two e-mails from readers to realize it wasn’t just me. The theme was slow. Period.
Plus I was getting quite a few errors in the code and I know the high and mighty search engines didn’t like that. This theme is very bare bones and quite simplistic. Hopefully it loads quick and gets right to the point.
Enjoy!
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Friday I learned that a local business here in Nevada was ready to cut me a small check to host a link to their new website on one of my blogs. The business is a web design firm here in Northern Nevada. The owner is a friend of mine and he’s now ready to do some advertising.
Unfortunately, thanks to Matt Cutts, it has come to my attention that Google appears to be positioning itself to penalize sites/blogs who sell text links.
This doesn’t hurt me too much, and the reason it won’t hurt me is a bit ironic. I already sell text links to Google. Yeah, that’s right, Google sends me a monthly check for displaying the text link ads you see to the left of this post when looking at the single post page. Google also pays me to display the image banner at the top of the main page of my site.
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My earlier post requesting a Digg Widget hit the front page of Digg and slammed me with 7,000 visits today. The extra chunk of visits was nice, but the real bonus was the Digg Widgets that came with it.
The first one to come along was Mike’s version in the form of a Wordpress Plugin.
From the looks of it Mike will be putting a lot more into the plugin over the next few days.
The one that has me sold, however, is a flash version (shown above) by David LeMieux. The new Digg Widget pulls data from your Digg friends list and puts it in a scroller. The scroller then displays the title and number of Diggs for the most recent Diggs in your friends list. The widget also comes with a link to your user profile.
This should be complex to install right? Not at all. Simply go to the set up page, enter your user id, hit submit and copy the code.
David used my design concept for the widget and I must admit it looks quite nice.
Good job, guys! AND THANKS!!!
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Google has claimed to be fighting spam for years, but thanks to a link coming in to my recent post about Digg Widgets, I’ve seen evidence that could point to the contrary.
The spam post uses data from the summary found at Digg.com. But instead of just posting the summary text, the spam blog adds completely unrelated keywords to the summary.
The spam keywords are in bold.
X Men 3 spoilers As Digg grows more with each new day, many users, including myself, are looking for ways to better network with friends and content. I propose the Digg Widget to help do just that. X Men 3 music
The keyword stuffing that is going on here would seem to be obvious, and one would think Google could pick up on it right away. But Google has more than 2,400 of the sites pages in its index.
It isn’t just my post that the spammer stuffed with junk keywords. He/she is doing it with MANY blog posts. Take a look at the spam site’s blog.
And does the homepage look worthy of being indexed?
Curious…
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My purpose for posting on the suggested Digg Widget is already bearing fruit.
Vino2Vino’s Mike jumped right on the challenge by pumping out a fairly simple Wordpress plugin that will display a user’s friend list of recent Diggs.
You can see the plugin in action here.
This is headed in the right direction, but it doesn’t yet have any style. I’m hoping to see someone help out in the style realm for those of us who know little ab