Category Archives: Web/Tech

For Book Lovers Everywhere

1 Reply

Bookmooch. This might be the most promising online book-swapping idea I’ve seen.  Basically you sign up, let people know which books you’re looking to give away, mail the books and then get points for every book you’ve mailed.  You can use those points to then have someone mail you a book you want. Here’s how the point system is explained.

I haven’t used it yet but I’ll let you know what happens.  If it works this seems to get around the problem of figuring out who pays the freight for shipping items when you’re trading stuff online which has always seemed like a sticking point for me.  Looks pretty cool.

What You Get When You Search My Name + —Hole

6 Replies

Warning: Semi-adult language to follow.

Yesterday I was looking at the stats for this blog to see if the article about Winston-Salem bloggers on the front page of the Winston-Salem Journal led to an increase in traffic over the normal three or four wackos who normally read this thing.  Sure enough the traffic about doubled, but I found something even more interesting.

You see the stats show where every visitor came from and the majority of visitors come from search engines.  If I click on the link it takes me to the search engine and shows me the search term that was used and the page on which my blog appeared.  Here’s a small sample of some of the terms, the search engine they were used on and where some page on my blog ranked for those terms on the search engines:

  • tyco chicken illegal aliens (Google, #1)
  • nudist blog (Google, #42)
  • inside of ant hills  (Google, #1)
  • battambang cattle industry 2006 (MSN, #3)
  • Ernest Angley (Yahoo, #14)
  • "ed cone" asshole (Google, #40)

Obviously I have a warped mind if I’m writing posts that pull in people interested in illegal chicken processors, nudists, wannabe anteaters, obscure indian cattle data and crazy televangelists.  But when I got to that last one I was kind of bothered.  I mean what had I written that woul equate Greensboro’s "blogfather" with a negative anatomical description/epithet?  Ends up that it was this post and the anatomical reference wasn’t even about Ed.

Side note to Ed: You might want to find out who is so motivated to go four pages deep in a Google search for that phrase; me-thinks there’s someone out there with a thing for you.

Well, this got me to wondering what would happen if I searched "jon lowder" asshole in Google.  So I did and I found that the search returned about 160 results.  The top result was the same post that featured Ed and then number two was on Ed’s blog so I guess we’re even.  Number five was a post on Vie de Malchance, number six was on Billy the Blogging Poet, number seven was another Ed Cone post and number eight was Patrick Eakes.  These are all Greensboro blogs and people I’ve corresponded with so I started wondering if perhaps I’d done something untoward.

So I followed the links and found out that on Vie’s blog I was an innocent bystander and checking Billy’s blog I only find myself referenced in his blog roll so I guess I’m an innocent bystander there too.  On to Ed’s other post and I find that it is recent and interesting in terms of the comments, but I had nothing to do with it other than the fact that my name is on Ed’s blog roll.  On Patrick’s I find that I have nothing to do with it other than the fact that my name is on his blog roll too.

The dim light over my head is beginning to glow.  It appears that if you use two terms, supposedly unrelated, they can pop up in search.  So although I haven’t found an instance where someone has called me an asshole I’m certainly being lumped in with many assholes.  Obviously I’ve probably done the same on my blog so I’m going to use this space to issue a blanket apology to all the victims of my random a-holes and other nefarious comments.

Breaking News: You Too Can Be a Reporter

Leave a reply

CNN has launched a service called CNN Exchange that solicits video, photos and eyewitness accounts for stories from all of us Average Joe (Joanne?) citizens and then they will filter it and use what they feel is appropriate for their coverage.  Isn’t it kind of surprising that this has already been done by one of the major networks?  I mean it costs them next to nothing and it promises to give them exponentially more raw material to work with.

I say it costs them next to nothing because they will have to dedicate staff time to this, and building out the system had to cost them something, but compared to what it would cost them to hire enough people to try and replicate the amount of raw material they’ll be getting from camera-phone toting Anderson Cooper or Christiane Amanpour wannabes it is a negligible amount.  And in their defense the evolution of inexpensive camera phones and the realization that the public doesn’t demand perfect video (i.e. that crappy MPEG footage from Mary Sue’s camera phone is better than nothing) are all fairly recent developments.  So kudos to CNN for getting this going.

Audio Obituaries?

2 Replies

I’m not really sure I know what to make of this.  The Greensboro News & Record is adding a service that allows people who place paid obituaries to add 60-second audio tributes to the dearly departed in their online guest books.  My first reaction is, well, that’s weird.  My second reaction is that it reminds me of those RIP t-shirts with the dearly departed’s picture on them, which I’ve always thought to be kind of tacky.  But that’s just me and I’m as capable of being a snob as the next guy.

If anyone wants to make an audio tribute to me when I’m gone I only ask that they not use any Journey songs as a background.  Other than that, have at it.

Lots of Cool Stuff In a Little Space

Leave a reply

Instead of putting out lots of posts about the interesting stuff I’ve come across the last couple of days I thought I’d do a little digest.  Here ’tis:

That’s it for now.  Enjoy.

Looking for an Award Winning Writer?

Leave a reply

So I’m browsing Craigslist/Winston-Salem and under the Services/Creative category I come across this posting:

award winning writer available to write for you
Hello, I am an award winning writer, in poetry, lyrics, and short
stories. I have 30yrs exp. I am available to write anything you may
need written. Please contact me for furthur details.

I guess we need look no furthur as our praiers have bene anwswered, in writeeng no less.

Fun with Google

Leave a reply

Here’s some fun I’m having with Google.  I’m searching to see how many times I’ve used certain terms on this blog.  For instance how many times have I used "I love" on this blog? Or how about "I hate"?  Here’s the results:

  • I hate – 19
  • I love – 28
  • What the hell – 15
  • Dumb ass – 4
  • Bush administration – 37
  • Stupid – 280
  • Brilliant – 19
  • Genius – 24
  • Moron – 15
  • Shit – 7
  • Damn – 30
  • F-bomb (spelled correctly) – 1

Conclusion?  I type a lot cleaner than I talk.

You Don’t Need CNN to See Lebanon Photos

Leave a reply

It’s not news that the internet has changed how we get information, but many people who aren’t techies or are over the age of 30 may not know about some mainstream web services out there that allow any person to disseminate his or her perspective of events to the general public.  A perfect case in point is the online photo sharing site Flickr which was purchased by Yahoo! a while back and how it is being used by photographers to get out pictures from the war zone in Lebanon.

For those not familiar with Flickr think of it as an online photo album that anyone can use for free and upload pictures that can either be made private or can be shared with the world at large.  What made Flickr revolutionary when it first launched is that it allows users to "tag" each photo with descriptive words which means that anyone can search for photos by those tags.  So if you want to find photos with the tag ‘lebanon’ you simply visit Flickr and use the search field and type in ‘lebanon’.  Here’s a string of Lebanon photos from a user named "arabist", but please be forewarned that there are some graphic photos there so don’t look if you’re squeamish.

Flickr is just one example of how a seemingly simple mass-market service can totally upend a traditional information paradigm.  It continues to be fascinating to me to watch how our traditional news and information purveyors adjust to their new environment of an audience that is increasingly attracted by other information sources and of course there’s a lot of debate about what it means to traditional media outlets, but I’m convinced it’s better for us as a society to be able to get as many images, or perspectives if you will, in addition to the traditional filter provided by the traditional media outlets.

Update: Here’s the blog of a BBC journalist in Beirut and it uses another free web service (Blogger, owned by Google) and here’s his Flickr stream.