My bad, I plan on moving it over to godaddy because Directi isn’t doing it for me. I should of renewed and transfered it a long time ago before it got locked. Almost criminal how they can keep the domain for themselves if it expires while they are the registrar.
I haven’t messed around with my Google search history all that much but I saw a cool feature today that creates a heat map on a monthly calendar that tracked my search usage. If anything I still use Google way to much. These searches are also only from home desktop.
I think 150+ searches per day is a lot. I’m hoping I don’t hit 250+ any time soon. It would be nice if Google could provide this data in XML or some other downloadable format so I could play with it without having to drag it screaming out of their website.
And this is an embarrassing graph of my insomnia.
With one picture I will sum up what is wrong with Digg.
Shout spam sucks. I setup an account to see how having friends on Digg could help you get on the front page. My 992 friend sample was made up of a random sample of all active users I could find online over a 2 day period.
In the last 48 hours 992 people on my friends list have made 12,227 shouts and then 9,321 other actions making shouts account for 56% of everything that goes on Digg. If every digg in the upcoming section is from shout spam then 1 digg results from every 3-4 shouts.
The front page of Digg needs to change. If a submitted story doesn’t get enough diggs to qualify in 24 hours it will never get to the front page. This leads to the annoying 24 hour viral marketing spam that is prevalent on Digg.
I use Skype for talking with my family and cheap long distance. But when I brought up my task list today I saw Skype hogging my memory. Sadly, there isn’t much you can do except restart Skype every so often.
What you can do is delete \Program Files\Skype\Plugin Manager\skypePM.exe because it does nothing and can eat up as much as 30MB of ram doing nothing. PM stands for Plug-in Manager but if you have never enabled or disabled plugins for Skype you don’t need it and can safely delete or rename the file.
So I check out the trends feature a realized something, I can’t maintain a normal sleep schedule.
So at 3-4am is the drop due to no one else publishing or me sleeping.
I’ve been following justin.tv for a while and today they got a new update to their layout. Call me a voyeur but I find it entertaining to be able to log in and see someone else doing absolutely nothing to help convince me that my boredom isn’t a unusual trait. I can’t say that I’m that pleased with the update, many of the features that would make the service truly great are still missing.
Anyway their added features are pretty poorly implemented and could be so much more if they thought about how to compress the crap. They have an updated directory that appears at the top of the channel displays all the users currently streaming but it takes up so much space that it scrolls off the screen. If they limited the directory to the top 10 and then expanded the list when you scrolled over it would be much better. Any implementation like a light box, a fish eye view or a scroll over that allows you to view the active channels without interrupting the feed you are viewing would be nice. They spent so much time allowing you to tip surf without leaving the page that they forgot about channel surfing.
This is sort of accomplished with the beta version of their new live video viewer but in my mind this is just them reinventing basic browser features. I guess it feels like a ripoff of the ABC player and the slowness of trying to find a show on there leaves me with bad feeling about the player going in this direction.
The new justin.tv archive also needs a lot of work. The new archive page has best of tips which seem to look like what the channel creator recommends you watch. If they were smart they would implement a full page calendar that had the top 3-5 tips for the day and the ability to view all the tips for the day. They could take it a level further and allow thumbnails to show up for users to find something that looks visually interesting instead of just reading tips and seeing how many people tipped them. The other major complaint I have is that if the channel isn’t live it doesn’t appear anywhere on the site. I know the site is all about live video but whats the purpose of the archive if you cant access it when the live video is down. A perfect example is Ron Paul’s channel. You cant access it unless he leaves it running 24×7 under the current system.
The current flash player still leaves a lot to be desired. There is no way to restart the stream when it pauses. In my opinion something is wrong with the design when I have to refresh the browser to view the main content. The archive feature is also kind of sparse. The tip system should be implemented into the archive player similar to how the comment function on viddler works. Its also very annoying when the stream repeats itself or works in slow motion because it never buffers itself enough. I haven’t experienced this a lot but it happens a lot on Sarah Meyers stream.
Some other features are still missing. The channel page needs a revamp to the schedule of the day. Why doesn’t the schedule allow you to go into the archive to see something that was supposed to have happened. The links to RSS feeds are there but aren’t active. I still have no idea what the number next to my username on the site is supposed to mean.
Quick does your domain have a SPF record? In linux type the command below and you should see something like:
# dig yourdomain.com TXT +short
“v=spf1 a mx -all”
I’ve been kind of appalled on how some websites still haven’t implemented SPF records to fight spam. On top of the non adopters you have people who haven’t implemented their records correctly. Most of the SPF implementations are from idiots that use a horrible wizard that suggest they use a soft fail(?all) for any server that doesn’t match their allowed server list. Soft fail doesn’t work. All major email services let through SOFTFAIL and NEUTRAL email. The SPF website has a better spf wizard but unfortunately it doesn’t come up in most searches.
Why should you use -all over any other? It means FAIL. Its the only way to tell another mail server that it shouldn’t accept mail from an unauthorized source. Any server that is not defined in the SPF record should automatically fail authentication. Using FAIL is the only way to minimize spam. SOFTFAIL and NEUTRAL do nothing to combat people masquerading as your domain. FAIL is also the only way to stop receiving bounce messages for spam sent spoofing itself as coming from your domain.
“+” Pass
“-” Fail
“~” SoftFail
“?” Neutral
Don’t understand how SPF works? Your SPF record should identify all the servers that are allowed to send mail as your domain. All modern websites let through email that is SOFTFAIL and NEUTRAL and PASS. I blame SPF Generators for this problem as most of them generate SOFTFAIL which all the big email sites like GMail and Hotmail let through.
Here is what all email servers do when they check SPF records
| Result | Explanation | Intended action |
| Pass | The SPF record designates the host to be allowed to send | accept |
| Fail | The SPF record has designated the host as NOT being allowed to send | reject |
| SoftFail | The SPF record has designated the host as NOT being allowed to send but is in transition |
accept but mark |
| Neutral | The SPF record specifies explicitly that nothing can be said about validity |
accept |
| None | The domain does not have an SPF record or the SPF record does not evaluate to a result |
accept |
| PermError | A permanent error has occured (eg. badly formatted SPF record) | unspecified |
| TempError | A transient error has occured | accept or reject |
The only option to combat spam effectively is to FAIL any server that is sending email and is not defined as allowed.
PLEASE FAIL ANY UNAUTHORIZED EMAIL
Thanks
So the iPhone is coming and I don’t really care. Sure it looks like a great product at first and then you see the price and the 2 year contract from a company that is notorious for helping the government illegally spy on their customers. The amount of hype for a touchscreen cell phone with 8gb of storage that plays mp3s and has average call quality amazes me when the features it offers are lack luster when compared to other music players and cell phones.
It’s supposed to be an iPod with video but its not.
This thing is supposed to be the iPod 2.0 yet you can’t plug in some ear buds and listen to music. I’m supposed to blare this thing like a radio? You have to buy an expansion card just so you can use any run of the mill headset to listen to music. Back to feeling like they are trying to take every nickel they can from me. Don’t believe me? Look at the 360 view and see if you can find a universal headphone or headset plug. It’s also been reported that it can’t stream to bluetooth headsets, so its not wireless. If you want wireless you’ll need another expansion card.
I bet that this is the deal breaker for most people. You can’t even make your own ring tones. People will get sick of getting nickel and dimed after spending $1700 on just the phone+contract. You’ll probably have to buy ring tones off iTunes or get them free with song purchases. Either way, all that old music you own from iTunes or CDs will cost you more money if you want a ring tone.
You cannot access iTunes to make a purchase and download a song while you aren’t connected to your home computer. Everything has to be sync’d to the phone. It’ll feel like having an old Palm Pilot. It’s kind of baffling that they don’t allow impulse shopping.
It’s supposed to be the ultimate cell phone but it skips out on very basic features.
You can’t send picture messages. It has a camera and you can’t send people photos? Also instant messaging is disabled. So you are SOL if you were like me and avoided paying 10 cents per text message and used AIM. You can’t use AIM/MSN/etc. Being reduced to using AIM Express/Yahoo in a web browser isn’t an option when you have to sign in every time you navigate away.
Average users will probably have a huge problem texting. When a all professional technology reviewers say it took them about a week to be able to type on the keypad without errors you have to know that 25-50% of the general populous will never be able to do it. I still meet people that can’t type T9 words to save their life. If a geek has a problem with it then the average person will be frustrated and confused.
No games or 3rd party developers? What a waste of a display. All I can use this for is the web and YouTube. Forget flash game websites. The iPhone internet browser doesn’t support flash. I think they are afraid of giving people to much repayable content. Once you’ve watch the crap on youtube what are you going to do? Probably buy a movie or a song.
Here are ten commandments that outline mistakes so heinous that they should be classified as crimes by internet society. Please never make these mistakes as they turn users away and make them look for alternative content providers.
This is my number one pet peeve. Its the ultimate way for me to not link to your site because the browser clipboard and even search engines have no idea what it means. I also browse with disabled JavaScript. In addition to your site looking like crap the links don’t work. The rule is if the code is <a href=”xxx”> the xxx should never be javascript:some.function().
Example: CNN Video
Everyone still hates them. Users don’t want you to decide to open a new window for them. Middle mouse button or ctrl-click has the functionality. Let the user decide.
This is for the sites that think they need to reinvent the wheel. A perfect example is back and forward buttons. Next page? No thanks. Go back? My browser history can do that.
A page that previews a page is the fastest way to convince someone that your site is just advertising spam. People have been trained to have extremely short attention spans and having to do 2 clicks instead of 1 or wait 5 seconds more for a redirect is a crime. If it takes about 5 more seconds to stumble past your splash page you will waste 1 day of human life every 20,000 visits.
Example: ign.com
There is no reason to ever play sound on a web page unless its in a widget that is specifically made for the sole purpose of playing that sound. It should be disabled or muted and require a click for the user to start listening.
Example: any myspace profile
If anywhere on your site you have next page, last page, links to page numbers. This is mainly done to make it seem like people spend more time on your site. The general rule for identifying a problem is if the printer friendly page is more reader friendly than your article. This sort of falls under reinventing the browser. Use bookmarks damn it. #page_2 is more effective than page2.html or crappy_article?page=2.
Example: Tom’s Hardware
A picture is worth a thousand words. If you have content that is about imagery and you don’t have an image. Posting random art that isn’t directly related to the subject at hand also falls under this category.
Example: 50% of AP news websites.
Never resize a users browser. Either use a fixed width or a fluid style.
The only acceptable place to look like an idiot is instant communication. Text messages, especially with your phone, are the only place you shouldn’t really worry about appearances. Bad grammar and punctuation is only acceptable in forum posts. Every good browser and email client has a spell checker. Those red lines under words mean you have to click them and find out where you went wrong.
Example: digg.com - sure its all user submissions but they have a spell check and people still butcher English.
Theres no excuse for not at least testing how your code looks in Firefox and IE7. If your really good you will turn off JavaScript and see if someone can use your website. Your site gets bonus evil if you lock out users that aren’t using the browser you want them to.