Oliver Burkeman's Year in Literature
I've never heard of Oliver Burkeman, but after reading his year-end book review for The Guardian, I'm stalking him on Google.In our conflict-ravaged times, no such list could start with anything other than Bob Woodward's State of War of Denial of Plan of Attack, the third part of his insider analysis of how George Bush invaded Iraq. The first two books, based on weeks of one-to-one interviews with Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, exclusively revealed the inspired and decisive leadership of the president and his defence secretary. In a twist that can only be described as masterful, part three -- based on weeks of one-to-one interviews with Colin Powell -- exclusively reveals that they were actually rubbish.
Here's the lead of an article he wrote about the founder of Pzizz, an odd Web 2.0 company -- is that an oxymoron? -- that creates randomly generated naptime podcasts for adults:
For several weeks, I've been following instructions given to me by a nice man called Michael Breen. He has the calmest, most soothing voice I've ever heard. It's hard to imagine him getting anxious or edgy about anything; even if he found himself in an out-of-control jetliner hurtling towards the ground at 500mph, I don't think he'd panic. I think he'd turn to the passenger next to him and say, "Just relax every muscle in your body and let yourself drift, with comfort, into a state of complete ease."
There's a lot more stuff out there by Burkeman, mostly high-minded professional journalism that makes you a better person for having read it (or so I'm guessing), but his blog's a little thin.
Can't Stop the Dance? Edit Your Hosts File
I've resisted the urge to use any ad blocking software, since I'm a web publisher who supports my sites through advertising. I finally broke down today because of the dancing people who want to refinance my mortgage.
These ads for LowerMyBills.Com bore into your brain like the Ceti eel on The Wrath of Khan.
Upon emergence, the eel larva could enter the ear of a larger animal, where it wrapped itself around the cerebral cortex. This caused the host extreme pain and rendered them extremely susceptible to suggestion. As the larva matured, the subject grew increasingly mad and might attempt suicide ...
The author of My Open Wallet shares my fear of the dirty dancing couple on the rooftop:
... there was something about the way the man was undulating his pelvis as he advanced towards the woman that always looked really creepy to me! That kind of move would make we want to throw a drink on a guy at a club, not get a mortgage from him! At least the image is just a sihouette so you can't tell if he's doing that bite-the-lower-lip thing!
You know he's doing that. He's also primping his shirt like Dieter on Sprockets.
Windows users can block a web server's content by adding it to their hosts file, which maps domain names to IP addresses. If you use this to map an ad server's domain to 127.0.0.1, which is an address for your own computer, you'll never see its ads again.
Windows XP keeps the file in the C:WindowsSystem32DriversEtc folder.
The following line will stop the music for the dancing mortgage people and any other advertiser using the same broker:
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
The ads are replaced with an error message that looks clunky but poses no threat to your cerebral cortex. More detailed instructions are available from MVPS.org.
Some Maps Advise Dangerous Route Through Oregon
Today's Seattle Times reports that CNET Editor James Kim and his family, who became stranded while traveling from Grants Pass to Gold Beach in Oregon during harsh winter weather, were on a route that's recommended by some online and in-car mapping services.Yahoo and MapQuest offer Highways 199 and 101 as the preferred route. A Google map search, however, suggests the Bear Camp route, part of a web of Forest Service roads used mostly in summer.
Authorities suspect that the Kims may have chosen the Bear Camp route via a map search, but Jackson County Sheriff Mike Winters said Monday night that could not be confirmed.
Though paved, the Bear Pass road has blind curves, steep embankments, is single-lane in places and can be treacherous regardless of the season.
"That's not good," said Chris Dent, who manages the river section for the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. "It's not a safe route, particularly at this time of year."
Another story quotes James' wife Kati Kim on how they ended up on Bear Camp Road, which is called "NF-23" on Google Maps.
Lt. Gregg Hastings of the Oregon State Police said a detective interviewed Kati Kim, who said they had intended to take Oregon 42, the usual route from Interstate 5 to the south Oregon coast, but missed the turnoff, found Bear Camp Road on the map and decided to take it instead of turning back. ...
They went the wrong way at a fork in the road and were 15 miles from Bear Camp Road when found, Hastings said.
A web site has been set up for the Kim family. James Kim remains missing this afternoon.
Niall Kennedy Gets Microsoft's Goat
When former Windows Live RSS developer Niall Kennedy saw that one of his Flickr photos was displayed in a Microsoft Team RSS blog post without the required attribution, he swapped it out with one of the web's most infamous pornographic photos, incorporating the Creative Commons logo to preserve what's left of the subject's dignity.I'm not going to show the soul-scarring original photo, because people would have to bleach their web browsers and RSS aggregators, but Matt Haughey's spoof MasterCard logo should make clear what Kennedy did with the huge opening left by his old employer.
Today's security tip for web publishers: If you display an image hosted on somebody else's site, you're asking to get reamed.
Update: In 1,400 words, Kennedy addresses the critics who are chewing his ass out over the picture, which he's republished on his site.
UserLand Software's Corporate Shuffle
Dave Winer writes:For what it's worth, I have not sold any UserLand stock, and remain its largest shareholder and a member of its board of directors. I've read, on the web, otherwise. Not so.
In my item about UserLand Software's decline, I didn't claim that Winer sold any stock.
My understanding is that Winer owns majority interest in UserLand Software Inc., the California company founded in 1988 that created Frontier, Manila, Radio UserLand and Weblogs.Com. He brought in outside management in 2002 and two years later transferred several assets -- including UserLand Software, UserLand.Com, Radio UserLand and Manila -- to a new corporate entity.
That entity is Radio UserLand Corporation, a Delaware company incorporated in February 2004 that's controlled by Scott Shuda. For the past several years, every time I had UserLand-related matters I dealt with Shuda.
I don't know what UserLand Software Inc. does today, but the California Secretary of State's Office lists its status as suspended. The office also reports that UserLand's registered agent -- who was attorney Jack Russo back in 2004 -- resigned on Aug. 3, 2006.
According to Delaware corporate records, Radio UserLand Corp. is still active.
UserLand Software's Shrinking Role in Blogging
Dave Winer wrote this weekend that UserLand Software's still in business:On this day in 1999, MacWEEK (now defunct) covered the introduction of Manila. Believe it or not, Manila is still a product, and UserLand is still operating. ...
Sometimes I think Radio, which was initially a success, was another example of breaking users. A year after its release I wished instead we had produced a Manila that runs on the desktop. Creating a whole new codebase and design for a blogging CMS wasn't such a great idea, in the end. Two architectures is one too many for a small company to support. And there were lots of features in Manila that never made it into Radio. It's totally technically possible to run Manila on the desktop behind a Fractional Horsepower HTTP Server.
I'm a former customer of UserLand and the author of Radio UserLand Kick Start. Though the book was enjoyable to write and is still useful today to people running OPML Editor and Frontier, as a commercial project it laid an egg.
While writing the book in 2003 I expected UserLand to be bought by a larger company that wanted a stake in blogging, but that never happened. As Six Apart, WordPress and other companies were aggressive with new releases and APIs, UserLand slipped into obscurity during the four years since Winer gave up majority control of the company.
UserLand, which reportedly has enough longtime academic customers to keep it going, issues occasional incremental releases with minor new features and bug fixes, most recently Manila 9.6 in October. The last marketable new feature was the addition of support for the SalesForce.Com API in April.
Today, the only sign of life at the company is Lawrence Lee supporting existing users on the Radio UserLand and Manila customer forums. Jake Savin, another developer, joined Microsoft in May.
To my knowledge, Winer's not in a position to resume management of UserLand, since he sold majority interest in the products and company name to a new corporation in 2004.
Company CFO Scott Shuda, who controls the UserLand Software name, domain name and the IP rights associated with Radio and Manila, told me in July that "everyone is moving on," but there hasn't been a public announcement regarding how it's being run today. Shuda killed his Radio and the Manila weblogs and the about UserLand page describing the company's management is gone.
UserLand still has a nice server product in Manila, but the company's management missed a lot of opportunities since taking over. They had the first successful web-based RSS aggregator in My.UserLand.Com, but when it was killed to work on Radio, the field was left wide open for Bloglines, NewsGator and other Web 2.0 ventures. UserLand has never supported Atom 1.0 in their aggregators, making it difficult to stick with its products when an increasing number of syndication feeds were published in that format. They also let Winer take Weblogs.Com with him, which he subsequently sold to VeriSign for $2.3 million.
If there's anyone left at UserLand who answers to the name of "boss," Radio UserLand ought to go open source so the only focus is Manila. There's no business in selling $39.95 desktop blog software, and Radio's hellacious to support. I have four years of information for Radio users in the archives of this weblog, and the only time I ever hear from people about the program is when they're desperate to move.
Saturday at the ACC Championship Game
I attended yesterday's ACC Championship game between Wake Forest and Georgia Tech in Jacksonville, picking up two $125 lower deck tickets near the 50-yard-line. I wanted to see whether seats that good at Alltel Stadium are worth the price.
The game wasn't even close to a sellout, so there were giant packs of unhappy scalpers outside. One thing I didn't need to hear as my son and I walked in: "Lower deck seats, $5!"
The section we were in, 237, has its own entrance and a Carrabba's, Outback Steakhouse and other restaurants in an indoor mall. I didn't know this, so we entered through the main gates in lines several hundred people deep for a half-hour, holding nachos and popcorn.
In retrospect, carrying nachos through a large, tightly-packed crowd of people during cold and flu season wasn't the best idea. My open tub of cheese must have been exposed to every toxin short of Polonium 210, but I lacked the will to throw it away uneaten. I'm hoping the artificial preservatives and coloring in the cheese create an inhospitable environment for germs and viruses. That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
As for the game, what's not to like about a 9-6 defensive struggle in constant drizzle as a bone-chilling breeze wafts off the St. Johns River?
The best part was taking my seven-year-old to his first football game and fielding his rapid-fire questions about the rules. He patiently asked "how do you kick a field goal?" a dozen times before I figured out he wanted to know how a coach decides to attempt one, not how the points are scored by kicking the ball through the uprights.
One I couldn't answer: What is a Demon Deacon? I couldn't think of a reason a school would adopt a well-dressed elderly Baptist deacon with devilish tendencies as a mascot.
Decked out in Wake Forest hoodies we bought on the way in as survival gear, we were so happy they won without going to overtime that some of the team's fans thought I attended the school.
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