March 31, 2005

George Hotelling redesigns his blog for 1991 — this neat April Fool's gag gave me a wash of nostalgia #

Boring Boring — also: Gakker #

eWeek on the WordPress spam issue — fair and neutral; contrast with The Register's article #

Slashdot on the WordPress controversy — my first Slashdotting; the server's being crushed, but still responsive #

Consumating — Adam Mathes and Ben Brown's hilarious dating site with tagging support (via) #

Google prefetching first search result for Firefox users — this seems really dumb to me; hitting unrequested pages wastes bandwidth and screws up server stats (via) #

Sin City comparisons of movie to comic — nice visual design, and surprisingly positive early reviews #

Followup on Laura Krishna, Internet plagiarist — "just a dumb kid with a nice mom" (via) #

March 30, 2005

Howto read RSS feeds on your PSP — using a launch page and the Bloglines mobile site #

WordPress Website's Search Engine Spam

Posted March 30, 2005 by Andy Baio

Disclaimer. I’m hesitant to even write about this, knowing the web’s fondness for angry mob justice, but I feel like it’s an important issue that needs to be addressed. My one request: please be calm and rational. WordPress is a great project, and Matt is a good guy. Think before piling on the hatemail and flames. (Important Update: Followup to this entry, with an official response from WordPress and Hot Nacho.)

The Problem. WordPress is a very popular open-source blogging software package, with a great official website maintained by Matt Mullenweg, its founding developer. I discovered last week that since early February, he’s been quietly hosting at least ~~120,000~~ 168,000 articles on their website. These articles are designed specifically to game the Google Adwords program, written by a third-party about high-cost advertising keywords like asbestos, mesothelioma, insurance, debt consolidation, diabetes, and mortgages. (Update: Google is actively removing every article from their results, but here’s a saved copy of the first page of results. You can still view about 25,000 results on Yahoo. Here’s an example of some results in MSN.)

Continue reading “WordPress Website's Search Engine Spam” →

Y Combinator — Paul Graham, Robert Morris, and Trevor Blackwell's unusual angel fund for very early startups (via) #

March 29, 2005

Del.icio.us gets funding, Joshua goes full-time — this makes me so very happy (via) #

Google acquires Urchin — are they getting into free web analytics and metrics? #

Microstructure in the Long Tail — is every long tail composed of many smaller tails? #

Terri Schiavo's Blog — so very wrong (via) #

TiVo popup ads in the wild — I found three screenshots (1, 2, 3) #

Laura K. Pahl is a plagiarist — comedy writer messes around with a student trying to pay for a term paper, then turns her in (via) #

Yahoo 360 beta launches — invite-only for now; Jeff Veen points out a nice UI touch #

Jon Udell followup on Upcoming.org and open services — data lock-in is bad #

Surftp, web-based FTP client — insecure, but so is FTP (via) #

March 28, 2005

Since U Been Gone, Annual Report 2005 — Matt and Merlin get corporate with a pop song #

8.2 8.7 Quake strikes off Indonesian coast — along same fault line, but no reports of tsunami activity yet (via) #

Big changes over at Upcoming.org — a full API, tagging, e-mail/SMS reminders, and support for personal events! I hope everyone likes the changes #

Buy a fully-assembled Nintendo DS passthrough — $20 cheap; used for loading homebrew demos and code onto the DS (via) #

March 27, 2005

Flickr's Clock Works project — clock face photos for every minute of the hour (via) #

Pop songs as outliner lists — reminds me of this classic McSweeney's list (via) #

IRS may label eBay sales as taxable income — this makes sense for serious sellers #

Om Malik on Yahoo getting cool again — they're making very smart moves, and they're wooing the geek crowd back #

Surfing the web on the PSP — there've been more promising PSP hacks in the first three days than four years of the GBA #

Donovan Freberg's blog — who? he was the kid from the Encyclopedia Britannica commercials #

March 26, 2005

Bits on Wheels, Mac BitTorrent client — but with a real-time 3D visualization of your swarm (via) #

Netdisaster — destroy any website with various disasters; Waxy attacked by martians #

List of sources scraped from Google News — 919, at last count (via) #

The Pez MP3 Project — blogging the product creation lifecycle of a Pez-authorized MP3 player #

First look at Yahoo 360 — anyone else notice the two "screenshots" are just mockups? (hint: look at the mix of aliased and anti-aliased type) (via) #

Network analysis of the Flickr population — some gorgeous charts and visualizations #

March 25, 2005

Howto: copy Tivo To Go videos onto the PSP — the rest of the guides are great, too (via) #

Smoking Gun on school shooter's Flash animations — disturbing, but fascinating (via) #

"Where are they now?" A-list blogger photo from SXSW 2000 — also, the three Blogger co-founders from this year's ETech (via) #

Curtis Poe tracks down his credit card thieves — his detective footwork led to their on-site arrest yesterday; great story (via) #

School administrators blocking BitTorrent as "illegal" — corporate firewalls do the same thing; it's just a protocol, people! #

March 24, 2005

Wired News reporter cites suspicious sources — could be a big controversy brewing (via) #

Fedora's new wobbly windows — watch the videos to see the crazy effects (via) #

Scientists find soft tissue in T-Rex fossil — Jurassic Park, anyone? (via) #

Video: Japanese girls watching "The Ring" — by the end, some of them are crying from sheer fright #

Amazon A9 driver caught in photo — very funny (via) #

Zug's Credit Card Prank II — the first part was an instant classic (via) #

Dr. Who leak culprit identified and fired — I guess it wasn't a deliberate promotional leak, after all #

Siam Waxy — I'm thinking of using this as my new logo and mascot #

Glassdog's rant on Boing Boing ads — I adore Boing Boing, but he has a point #