Tracking Weblog Updates in Manila

Since adopting 3,000 webloggers from Weblogs.Com last June, I've had a huge amount of trouble tracking site activity on the new Manila server I set up to house these sites. An elusive bug prevented the recent updates page from working correctly.

During the Weblogs.Com server outage, the media went nuts over the 3,000-weblog figure, making the story front page news.

As I have since discovered, that number was inflated by a bunch of dead sites on the server. I deleted more than 1,200 weblogs this week that were never updated after a new user signed up and saw the "It Worked!" page.

Buzzword.Com now has a new recent updates page that lists all weblogs updated within the last month. I wrote a UserTalk script to create this page, which I'll be documenting soon on Workbench.

There's also a big news announcement coming up, which a few users may have already figured out, but it will have to wait. The weekend beckons.

Manila · 2004/11/19 · 9 COMMENTS · Link

Dying to Cover the Iraq War

Knight-Ridder Baghdad bureau chief Hannah Allam has penned a bloglike first-person piece on what it's like to report from Iraq:

My 26th birthday party was perfect.

Stars glittered over the Baghdad hotel where I blew out the candles on a cake decorated by my four closest Iraqi friends. We stayed up until the dawn call to prayer rang from a nearby mosque, telling stories and debating the future of a country I'd grown to cherish.

A year later, only one of those friends is still alive. The poolside patio where they sang "Happy Birthday" in Arabic is empty most days, because foreign guests are afraid of snipers and mortars. The hotel has become a prison, and every foray outside its fortified gates is tinged with anxiety about returning in one piece.

Journalism · 2004/11/18 · Comment · Link

Peggy Noonan's Sparks of Sexuality

Now that the election is over and there's nothing to be gained from rank partisanship, I have a confession to make: I love Peggy Noonan.

If you can abandon the attempt to derive meaning from her columns in the Wall Street Journal or her blatherings on television, Noonan may be the most bewitchingly mad arranger of words on the planet, a Kurt Vonnegut character come to life. Kilgore Trout would envy a passage like this, Noonan's description of her first meeting with Ronald Reagan in What I Saw at the Revolution:

I first saw him as a foot, a highly polished brown cordovan wagging merrily on a hassock. I spied it through the door. It was a beautiful foot, sleek. Such casual elegance and clean lines. But not a big foot, not formidable, maybe even a little ... frail. I imagined cradling it in my arms, protecting it from unsmooth roads ...

Here's her take on Condoleezza Rice from today's Journal:

"I think she is extremely ladylike in her bearing and manner," I said. "Soft voice, pastel suits, heels, not a hair out of place."

"Yes," my friend said, "but she doesn't give off any sparks of sexuality."

"That's another thing I like about her", I said. We don't want a secretary of state running around giving off sparks of sexuality, do we. We don't want a secretary of state giving off sparks at all. We want a nice, quiet, calming, competent, sophisticated, even-keeled person to do a good, solid, nonshowy job.

I know that she's wrong in just about every way that counts, but I want to cradle Peggy's foot on unsmooth roads.

Politics · 2004/11/18 · 1 COMMENT · Link

SmartDownload Users Have No Class

A four-year class action lawsuit over privacy violations in Netscape SmartDownload has ended with a thud.

For several years, Netscape transmitted user cookies and file URLs to its servers whenever a user downloaded a file with SmartDownload. Because some people would be uncomfortable sharing how many times they downloaded pam-anderson-home-movie.avi, several suits were filed over violations of the Electronic Communication Privacy Act, including one by Christopher Specht, a legal photographer in New York who offered files for download on LawPhoto.Com (now defunct).

Members of the class action included anyone who offered a file for download on the Web or used Netscape SmartDownload versions 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2. Millions of Web publishers and SmartDownload users could have been looking forward to a payday like the CD price-fixing settlement that netted $12.63 checks for 3.5 million music buyers (myself included).

Unfortunately, Netscape screwed up the plan by removing the feature and neglecting to do anything with the data it collected. As explained in the proposed settlement, the company can avoid paying any money with a simple promise to never to do it again:

Discovery disclosed no evidence that Netscape had ever analyzed, sold, traded, or otherwise in any way used or derived any benefit from any of the URL or Key Code information that it received from the Covered Versions of SmartDownload.

Absent such use, Plaintiffs believe that there would be no legal "actual damages" that could be compensated.

Bummer.

2004/11/17 · Comment · Link

Sign of the times: "although there were metal detectors at the door, performers aren't typically searched when they enter an awards show."

2004/11/17 · Comment · Link

Hersh Bhasin: "If I could be so distressed just by reading the book, I can imagine what mental suffering the author must have gone through in writing it."

Publishing · 2004/11/16 · Comment · Link

Best Buy: Customers Wreak Havoc

In a comment on Workbench, Jon Dobson describes a series of miserable experiences shopping at Best Buy and another retail chain:

I never had high expectations for either organization; however, after they lied to me (and yes I mean lied to me) I finally decided that I should find another place to spend my money.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week on a plan by Best Buy to drive off 20 percent of its customers, who the company CEO describes as "devils":

The devils are its worst customers. They buy products, apply for rebates, return the purchases, then buy them back at returned-merchandise discounts. They load up on "loss leaders," severely discounted merchandise designed to boost store traffic, then flip the goods at a profit on eBay. They slap down rock-bottom price quotes from Web sites and demand that Best Buy make good on its lowest-price pledge. "They can wreak enormous economic havoc," says [CEO Brad] Anderson.

Best Buy's the same company that embraced the concept of the door stormtrooper, chasing down and illegally detaining customers who refuse to show a receipt as they exit, a procedure that's supposed to be voluntary.

I'm amazed they still have any customers left to alienate.

2004/11/15 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

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