I took Buzzword.Com offline for several hours this morning to compact the databases and perform some other server maintenance. I'm tempting fate by saying this, but so far, so good.

We're nearing the one-year anniversary of the server, which became the home for 3,000 longtime Weblogs.Com bloggers last June. I have some ambitious plans to mark the occasion, but for now my priority is to keep the active bloggers running smoothly and bring all of UserLand's upgrades online.

UserLand has a new version of Manila, the software hosting these weblogs, in beta release. There are a bunch of new features, among them a better way for bloggers to manage visitor comments and trackback.

Manila · 2005/05/01 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

That's Quite a Spectacle

Whenever a character in a movie is a by-the-book square who never got over the end of the 1950s, he wears plastic-top, metal-rim eyeglasses. Tom Hanks donned them in Catch Me If You Can, and you can't make a film about Malcolm X, NASA, or the JFK assassination without ordering them in bulk.

The glasses are especially effective if the buttoned-up wearer is one bad day from a total nervous breakdown, like the downsized defense contractor D-FENS, who rampages across Los Angeles to protest incivility in Falling Down.

I wrote about these glasses last year when I heard the only manufacturer, ArtCraft NewYork, was discontinuing the style. This was crushing news -- I step on my pair of Clubman Art-Rim frames at least twice a year and can barely see through a SuperGlue smudge in one lens.

Since then, I've heard from an executive at Shuron, the company that invented the style in 1941 and sold more than 17 million of them by 1970:

The Ronsir was in many movies and worn by many actors/celebrities -- Kevin Costner, Denzel Washington, Vince Lombardi, Nicholas Cage, and many others. The Ronsir is not going away.

Because I keep directing people to Shuron when they ask about the glasses, the company is sending me a free pair, which I believe makes me the world's first blogger/spokesmodel. I'm spending this weekend trying to come up with my own Blue Steel.

2005/04/30 · 15 COMMENTS · Link

Close But No Cigar

I publish several web sites that run advertising sold by BlogAds, a broker that has been a financial boon to hundreds of weblogs.

I rejected an ad today from a site that sells Cuban cigars. The site claims that it's legal for Americans to import two boxes, but the language of the site's frequently asked questions page gives me the willies:

The original embargo on Cuban products has been revised by the US Dept of Justice to allow importation of small quantities when returning from a licensed trip to Cuba. This revision was extended to the public who are now allowed to import up to 2 boxes for personal use. There is no formal regulations that outlines the ability for US residents to import Cuban Cigars. There have been thousands of customers importing Cuban Cigars for personal use in the US and there is no history of anyone being prosecuted. Also, it has become a common practice among celebrities, military personnel, politicians and even law enforcement.

A U.S. Treasury brochure on the Cuba embargo seems pretty clear on the subject, stating that Americans can't even buy Cuban products while in foreign countries.

I rejected an absinthe ad last year over similar qualms. When I saw that Google wasn't selling text ads for absinthe, I decided to adopt the same policy.

A Google search for the phrase Cuban cigars finds only one cigar seller in the sponsored ads, and that company won't export to the U.S.

Politics · Publishing · 2005/04/29 · 4 COMMENTS · Link

Everybody Carl Jung Tonight

A voicemail message received last week:

Hey, it's Mancow, we're trying to get you on the radio show here. It's an Illinois guy, he probably knows this show. But he got the pope's web site. And the story is he's going to turn it into a porno ...

I didn't get this message soon enough to return his call. I suspect that if he heard my actual plans for BenedictXVI.Com, I would have been a great disappointment to him.

WashingtonPost.Com reporter David McGuire wrote a followup story yesterday about how the domain has been donated to the charity Modest Needs while we await the Vatican.

I'm glad that Modest Needs founder Keith Taylor was able to put something together so quickly April 21 -- 90 percent of the 410,000 visits to BenedictXVI.Com were made by Sunday morning, and traffic has slowed to around 9,000 visits a day. (Taylor may be seeing more traffic directly on the charity's BenedictXVI.Com page.)

Jacopo di Trani, the owner of Benedict16.com, offers a Jungian analysis of why he seeks financial reward and I chose the approval of my Catholic grandmother:

I think that C.G.Jung will say that Cadenhead primary function are his "thoughts", and his last function are his "sensations", and that my primary function is my "intuition", and my last function are my "feelings". I think (do you agree?); so it's very predictable that from all this popedomain-story I'll earn more and more cash than he will ever get . Even if he was the first (he registered his domain the 1st april, against my 14 april), even if he is the most famous (but not in czech sites!), and even if search engines give more traffic to his domain than to mine. I have only a better brandable domain and more real hair - but I'll get more cash than you, Rogers. It's only logic.

I can't address his theory. I majored in journalism -- the only way I would've learned about Jung was if I interviewed him for the school paper. In retrospect, I should have spent less time skipping classes in college to watch General Hospital.

But I will concede the point about his hair.

Domains · 2005/04/29 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

Extended Pings in Weblog Pinger

RSS support was added to Weblogs.Com this morning, making it possible to send an extended ping message to the service that includes the address of a site's RSS feed.

This will make it easier for services that are built atop Weblogs.Com, such as Technorati and GigaDial, to incorporate RSS feeds.

I have extended my pinger to support this new feature.

Weblog-Pinger, an open source class library for PHP, can send update notification pings over five XML-RPC services that monitor new weblog content.

Xml-rpc · Php · 2005/04/28 · 4 COMMENTS · Link

To Dream the Impossible Dream

Lifetime to-do list:

420. Write hands-on tutorial for beginning Java programmers who want to teach self language in no more than 21 days
421. Successfully predict next pope's name
422. End TV news segment with segueway back to anchors
423. Be insulted in no less than five languages by total strangers
424. Do more to help worthy charity
425. Become a professionally ranked tennis player.

My uncle Paul wanted to become John McEnroe as a teen, and we've disagreed for years over whether I could become ranked if I devoted myself to tennis instead of web surfing and fatty foods.

I figured if the rankings went low enough -- the ATP Tour goes to 1307 -- I might have a shot.

Paul thinks I'm an idiot, but I haven't given up the dream. At the very least, I might draw a match somewhere against a ranked pro who had to withdraw due to injury or illness.

Nestor Briceno watch your back!

Sports · 2005/04/28 · Comment · Link

All-Podcast, All-the-Time Radio

A San Francisco radio station is going to start airing nothing but user-submitted podcasts beginning on May 16. The station, which calls itself KYOU Open Source Radio, will broadcast on 1550-AM/San Francisco and the Internet.

Submitted podcasts must be 60 megabytes or less in size and can be in any format. The categories on the submission form demonstrate how strange this is likely to be -- traditional fare like news, sports and politics is mixed with over-the-road trucking, sex and wiffleball.

This could be one of the great wheels-off radio experiments of all-time -- at least until earnest liberal San Franciscans fill it with local community news, activism and independent music.

The station sounds like a good opportunity for Jacksonville weblogger Todd Smith, who devotes his site to Americana music and has a Saturday morning show about the music on a local college station.

Music · 2005/04/28 · Comment · Link

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