Yet Another Web Site

Classmates.com sucks:

• $39/year to see content one can get for free on Facebook or MySpace
• Classmates.com periodically sends email informing one of new content that cannot be seen unless one is a paying customer
• Classmates.com has so many adds it puts MySpace to shame

Jesuits say take word of God to Second Life:

ROME (Reuters) - Catholic missionaries have always trekked to dangerous parts of the Earth to spread the word of God — now they are being encouraged to go into the virtual realm of Second Life to save virtual souls.

In an article in Rome-based Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, academic Antonio Spadaro urged fellow Catholics not to be scared of entering the virtual world which may be fertile ground for new converts wishing to better themselves.

Time for a new Jesuit saying:Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the geek…

MovableType: 3 Years Too Late?

I made the switch from Movable Type to WordPress a little over two years ago largely because WordPress is open source and MovableType was not at the time. If Movable Type had been open source from the beginning, it’s possible I’d still be using it.

Remembering the First Google Bomb

Earlier today, Matt Cutts and the Google software engineering team posted an update citing the progress they’ve been making fighting Google bombs. Back in the old days, these pranks were common practice, but they’ve become less prevalent thanks to Google’s diligence.

That’s OK — link bombs are so 2001.

In January, 2001, Wired News ran an article about a humor site called Hugedisk. During the run-up to the 2000 presidential election, it linked a particularly saucy two-word term to a site selling official George W. Bush campaign merchandise. We contacted one of the Hugedisk admins and offered him the opportunity to recount his side of the story and reclaim his stolen glory. So here it is, a first-hand telling of the bomb that started it all.

I remember the “dumb motherfucker” incident. The amusing part was the site selling official George W. Bush campaign merchandise (how lame is that?) went ballistic and sent a cease and desist to one of the originators of the Google bomb.

For what it’s worth, it looks like Microsoft’s search can still be link bombed…

(via Pharyngula)

Short Version: Link to this post in the name of science.  Ask others to do the same.  Results to be announced during the "Meet the Bloggers" panel at MLA 2006.

OK, I’ll play: http://acephalous.typepad.com/acephalous/2006/11/measuring_the_s.html

A few months ago, I set up a bulletin board type system to go along with my Drum and Bugle Corps web site. I originally used phpBB, but I found a bit too difficult to customize and a bit too bloated for the kind of community driven web site I’m trying to create.

I recently decided to try bbPress since I was already using WordPress and there’s some level of integration between them. I used this script to import the phpBB data into bbPress.

Even though it’s still not quite 1.0 yet (it’s currently 0.73) It looks like bbPress is a good fit for I want to do.

(via email)

MySpace returns after power outage

The popular social-networking site, which recently topped Yahoo Mail as the most-visited Web site in the United States, was disabled entirely as of 6:40 p.m. Pacific time Sunday.

The home page was replaced by a placeholder with a message from MySpace founder Tom Anderson, who said that the site was dealing with a power outage in its data center. He cited the time as 6:40 p.m. Pacific and estimated that MySpace would “hopefully” be back up within the hour. “Wanna place a bet?” Anderson quipped in the note.

As of about 6 a.m. Pacific on Monday, the site was back up.

I find these social networking sites rather useless and MySpace is probably the worst one of the bunch. For the record, I do actually have a MySpace page, which is useless and redundant, but it is at least readable.

I’ve recently started learning Ruby. One could ask “why learn yet another scripting language, especially since Perl has served so well these past several years?” The only reason is the object oriented features of Perl seem tacked on as an afterthought, while Ruby is a is a complete, full, pure object oriented language: OOL (object oriented language).

While messing around with Ruby, I stumbled upon tDiary, a Web-based diary system (like weblog) written in Ruby. tDiary is pretty slick because it doesn’t require a database to set up. I decided to give it a try using the free web space provided by my isp.

Feel free to check it out: Yet Another Web Log

Looks like Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants want to seriously ruin the internet by “developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency.” And if that wasn’t bad enough:

Under the plans they are considering, all of us–from content providers to individual users–would pay more to surf online, stream videos or even send e-mail. Industry planners are mulling new subscription plans that would further limit the online experience, establishing “platinum,” “gold” and “silver” levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even e-mail messages that could be sent or received.

Check out: The End of the Internet?

AND

The Assault on Network Neutrality

Hello, GORRY-O!! I'm a GENIUS from HARVARD!!