Category Archives: Web/Tech

Hemingway Would Have Shot Someone

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How would you like your business to be threatened by the actions of a foreign government even though you don’t do business there?  That’s what has happened to an English travel agent named Steve Marshall living in Spain.  The story’s a little complex so let’s see if we can break it down:

  1. Marshall sells trips to sunny places including Cuba, mostly to Europeans, via lots of different websites that he owns and has run since the late 90s.
  2. In October about 80 of his websites stopped working.
  3. Some of his websites had been put on a blacklist by the Treasury Department because of the tours he booked to Cuba, including literary themed "Hemingway Tours".
  4. His domain registrar, eNom, which is based in the U.S., disabled his sites after being informed that they were on the Treasury blacklist.  They didn’t give him a heads up they were doing it either.
  5. eNom has refused to release the domains to the travel agent because they were legally obligated to also freeze his assets.
  6. All of Marshall’s sites were hosted on servers in the Bahamas.
  7. He still doesn’t have his .com domain names back, but he’s slowly been rebuilding his web business using .net domains registered through European based registrars.
  8. Weird exception to the domains on the blacklist is the www.cuba-guantanamo.com site that is still up and running.
  9. eNom only acted after discovering Marshall’s blacklisting from a blog.  In other words it sounds like no one from Treasury bothered to contact eNom to disable the sites.

Here’s the quote from the Treasury Department rep about their action:

A Treasury spokesman, John Rankin, referred a caller to a press release
issued in December 2004, almost three years before eNom acted. It said
Mr. Marshall’s company had helped Americans evade restrictions on
travel to Cuba and was “a generator of resources that the Cuban regime
uses to oppress its people.” It added that American companies must not
only stop doing business with the company but also freeze its assets,
meaning that eNom did exactly what it was legally required to do.

Here’s Marshall’s reply:

Mr. Marshall said he was uninterested in American tourists. “They can’t go anyway,” he said.

All sounds kind of absurd doesn’t it?  Read the NYT article and you’ll find that there’s a few lawyers who think that the government has overstepped its bounds.  Huh, go figure.

Where Jon’s Readers Live

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A couple of days ago I wrote about the new "forms" function that is available with the Google Docs spreadsheet program.  I decided to test it by creating a simple survey for readers of this humble blog, and when I say simple I mean simple.  I asked one question: "Where do you live?"  The pie chart below was generated using the Google spreadsheet program and it was as easy as, well, pie.  Very cool.

Where_jons_readers_live

Understanding the Manchine

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Per my post about Media General’s reaction to bookofjoe’s habit of pasting their entire articles on his site with links and full attribution I’ve been having an interesting debate with Esbee in the comments.   One of the things that the debate highlights for me is the fact that old-media norms and rules are being challenged by new media tools and habits and the old-media owners are struggling with how to deal with it.  In particular I think many of us are having a hard time grasping the evolution of what some call the internet and what others call the web.  Just when most of us were beginning to get comfortable with how the web had changed information delivery and consumption the web was revamped and now readers have become cut-paste-sharers.  This evolution has been stamped by some as "Web 2.0" and it’s literally changing how people use information, but pity the person who tries to explain the "hows", "whats" and "whys" of Web 2.0.  That’s why I found the video below by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University so compelling (hat tip to Ed Cone for the link).  It’s the best explanation I’ve yet seen for what’s going on in new media, and I think it highlights the challenges that folks at old-media companies are facing.

Media General Not Getting It

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One of my favorite blogs over the last couple of years has been bookofjoe.com.  It’s a compendium of interesting items, not the least of which are articles that the blogs owner/author has read in the New York Times or other newspapers and has reproduced on his site with full links and attributions to the source.  The fact that he doesn’t excerpt but instead provides the article in full has caused some consternation with some of the ink-stained wretches lawyers.

Case in point is the Charlottesville Daily Progress‘s (Joe lives in Charlottesville, VA) lawyer Andrew Carington.  He sent a lengthly cease and desist letter to Joe who promptly posted it on his blog for all to see.  Joe points out that he’s pretty sure that the authors of the articles probably wouldn’t agree with the lawyer’s move since getting a placement on his site vastly expands their audience.  I’d have to agree, and I’d go so far as to say that Media General is making a business mistake by going after him (I’m not going to argue the legality of Joe’s practice since I’m no copyright expert).

Here’s my thinking.  The Daily Progress is a local paper owned by the same company that owns my hometown paper The Winston-Salem Journal.  I’d say it’s safe to assume that both newspapers get the majority of their traffic from folks within their region. On the other hand Joe gets a lot of his traffic from all over the internet tubes so by getting a link from his site the newspaper is getting exposure to a much broader audience than they do on their own.  And guess what?  We’re talking major traffic.

BookofjoevsdailyprogressI went to Compete.com and ran a quick comparison between bookofjoe.com and dailyprogress.com. If you look at the screenshot on the left (click on it to see it at full size) you’ll see that while the Daily Progress does have a bit more traffic than Joe it ain’t by much (63,341 visitors vs. 55,262) and you’ll also see that Joe’s traffic is trending up much more quickly than the Daily Progress.  You’d think they’d love the opportunity to get their name and a link to their site out there to such a growing audience.  Heck, Joe’s offering them free syndication.

But I’m sure the honchos at Media General are thinking that Joe’s getting rich off their work…oh wait, he doesn’t take advertising.  So maybe he’s not getting rich off of their work, so maybe it’s the principle of the thing. But I’m a cynic so I’m thinking they’re just ticked because one guy writing in his bathrobe in his condo is pulling almost as much traffic as their newspaper with dozens of employees and they think they can push him around.  Whatever their motivation it’s a dumb move.

The Disemvoweller

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Xeni Jardin is one of the co-editors of Boing Boing.  She posted a piece on Edge.org called Online Communities Rot Without Daily Tending by Human Hands that essentially fleshes out the thinking behind her very descriptive title. (Hat tip to Ed Cone for pointing to it).  Among the very smart things she wrote I found this bit to be flat out brilliant:

Finally, this year, we resurrected comments on the blog, with the one thing that did feel natural. Human hands.      

We hired a community manager, and equipped our comments system with a secret weapon: the "disemvoweller." If someone’s misbehaving, she can remove all the vowels from their screed with one click. The dialogue stays, but the misanthrope looks ridiculous, and the emotional sting is neutralized.

Now, once again, the balance mostly works. I still believe that there is no fully automated system capable of managing the complexities of online human interaction — no software fix I know of. But I’d underestimated the power of dedicated  human attention.

I suspect Ed is hunting for a Typepad version of the disemvoweller as we speak.  If I got more than my normal quota of one comment per millennium I probably would.

Kids as Oracles

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Fred Wilson has a great post titled What My Kids Tell Me About the Future of Media in which he evaluates the current and future state of media based on the consumption habits of his kids.  Here’s an excerpt:

1) When they walk into a DVD store, they rarely walk out with a movie.
It’s almost always the first season of a TV show they’ve heard is good.
They’ll go see a movie in the theater but don’t really enjoy watching
movies at home or on their computers. They feel that TV shows are
better written and more interesting.  And the entertainment value is
certainly more compelling. For roughly $40US, they got something like
25 episodes of Brothers and Sisters…

2) They will play games whenever given the opportunity. My oldest,
Jessica, favors brick breaker on her blackberry and admits to be close
to addicted. She claims to know kids who play it under the desk at
school…

4) The only time they listen to radio is when we have it on in the
car for short rides. If it’s a long ride, we almost always plug in the
iPod and they’ll take turns DJ’ing…

5) They still read books the way we did as kids. That doesn’t seem to have changed a bit…

6) They love magazines and read all the fashion, cooking, and gossip
magazines they can get their hands on. They read about the same topics
online and on TV (particularly food), but they show no signs of moving
away from the magazine. In fact, I detect a growing obsession with
magazines among my family. They literally fight over a new issue the
day it arrives.

7) They don’t seem particularly interested in newspapers. They get most
of their news on the Internet. Josh will read the sports pages over
breakfast and the girls will glance at the front page. Important
current events and politics will sometimes generate enough interest
that they’ll read the front page portion of a story and then launch
into a discussion over breakfast. But I don’t see a commitment to
newspapers like we have in my generation and my parents generation.

If you’re interested in the future of media I’d definitely read the rest of his post.  I’d say that my kids’ habits closely mirror his, and I’ve been struck by how my kids also enjoy books and magazines but only look at the newspaper when they have to cut out an article for a current events project at school. 

One thing that is intriguing to me is how much more fun my oldest finds gaming when it’s done online against lots of different players.  He’ll still play games offline if that’s his only choice, but he gets really charged up for the XBox Live games and it almost doesn’t matter which game it is.  And the thought that there are millions of kids (and adults) like him out there truly boggles my mind.  I think that’s a truly game-changing, culture-shifting phenomenon.

How the kids watch TV is also interesting.  If they’re
worn from a long week of school they might veg out for a couple of
hours in front of the tube, but really they just watch it in short
bursts and then head to the computer to fiddle around online, or read a
magazine or read a book.  They aren’t as likely to passively watch TV
as we were growing up back in the 70s and 80s, probably because they
have more choices but also I think because that they get interaction
when they go online.  Actually going outside and interacting with other
kids at quaint pastimes like, oh, football or basketball is another
story entirely.

As for music, in our house the kids seem to find their music via word of mouth, whether it’s online or offline.  I know this because I have a Rhapsody account set up and they have to come to me to purchase songs to download to their MP3 players.  When I ask them where they find the songs the answer is always "It was on some friends MySpace" or "So and so told me about it at school" or "my best friend let me listen to it on her iPod on the bus".  In my day we found most of our music from listening to the radio in addition to recommendations from friends and being bombarded with someone else’s music selections bellowing out of his boombox.  Also, if you wanted just one song from an artist you had to buy the album or get a friend to tape a song off of their album (and later CD) for you.  Now with services like Rhapsody the kids mix and match what they want: one Black Eyed Peas tune, a couple of Fergie tracks, etc.  I think they’d fall over if they had to spend $15 to buy a CD that has just three songs they like.  For that matter I’m right there with them.

I’d say it behooves all of us to watch how our kids operate because in a few years the media companies are going to change how they deliver their wares to meet those habits and we’ll be following their lead.

Based on a Couple Days Experience I Highly Recommend Powerline Networking

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Despite my earlier lamentations about running a home office network I do want to make a recommendation for anyone that is setting up a network in their house.  Definitely check out powerline network gear as an alternative to wireless.  FYI, powerline networks allow you to plug a network cable from your router into a small converter that plugs into any power outlet in your house, then you plug other converters into any other outlet in the house and run network cables from those to the computers you want to connect to.

My office is the hub for our home network and is located on the top floor of the house.  The kids’ computer is just down the hall from mine and Celeste’s computer is downstairs.  Both are close enough that they shouldn’t have an issue with wireless signal strength but unfortunately they do.  Celeste in particular would have very sketchy connections that varied from moderate to very weak, and that made her online experience not-so-pleasant.

Last week I was reading a small-biz magazine and came across an article that said that the latest generation of powerline networking gear had eliminated a lot of the problems experience with the first generation gear back in the late 90s and now offered more reliable and faster connections than most wireless networks. 

Xe102gcropped
On Friday I was in Staples and saw that they had a Netgear Wall-Plugged Ethernet Extender Kit – XE102G for $99.95.  Since that price matched what I found in my online searches I snagged it and brought it home.  The setup was incredibly easy:

  1. Plug one adapter into a wall socket in my office.
  2. Plug a network cable from our modem/router into the adapter.
  3. Plug the second adapter into a wall socket in Celeste’s office.
  4. Plug a network cable from the adapter into Celeste’s computer.

I did this and fired up her browser and found that she was connected and had great connection speed.  The only problem that we’ve found is that certain appliances, like a vacuum or hairdryer, can slow down the connection by providing a little interference but it’s not a major issue.

According to Netgear’s info we can connect up to five devices in a similar manner so I’m probably going to get adapters for the kids’ computer and for the XBox 360 that the oldest son is saving up to buy.  That way he can game online and maybe we’ll see him on the weekends instead of having him disappear for two days to a friend-with-XBox 360’s house.

A couple of things to point out:

  • You have to plug the adapters directly into the wall, and not into surge protectors.
  • A great advantage in addition to the simplicity of these things is that they are more secure than wireless.  Unless someone plugs into your house’s power you shouldn’t have any security issues outside of normal internet security.  In other words your neighbor can’t piggyback your connection unless they plug an adapter into your house and then run a network cable to their computer.
  • The exception to the security issue might be if you live in an apartment building.
  • If you’re in a really old house without upgraded wiring you might have issues.
  • I found this much easier to set up than any wireless network I’ve had in the house.  Who knows what the long-term performance will be but the short term has been fantastic.

Home Office Fun

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Working out of a home office has some definite upsides and downsides.  The upsides include not having to shave every day and working in sweats.  The largest downside is being your own tech support.  Take this morning (please)…I get up to my office and find that I cannot get to my email or get my browser to "find" the web.  Strangely my VOIP (Vonage) phone works and I can access my client’s VPN (virtual private network).  To rectify my situation I resort to all my old tricks:

  1. Re-boot the computer.  No joy.
  2. Unplug the modem/router for a couple of minutes.  No joy.
  3. Unplug the modem/router and the Vonage converter for a couple of minutes.  No joy.
  4. Re-boot and unplug everything for a couple of minutes.  No joy.
  5. Start cursing. No joy, but some relief.

I run down to Celeste’s office to see if she can connect.  No problemo for her, so that means that the problem’s with my PC.  Using her computer I Google my issue and get some tips involving manually resetting DNS’s, pinging and other nefarious and hideously technical actions.  I continue cursing.

Upon returning to my office I decide to plug the cable from my router directly into my computer, thus bypassing Vonage.  Voila I’m online.  Still haven’t totally resolved the issue, but hopefully I’m getting close.

Still cursing.

Pics from the Twin City’s Past

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As reported in today’s Winston-Salem Journal, Digital Forsyth has digitized with all kinds of photos from Winston-Salem’s past. Sources include local libraries and universities.

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I like how they’ve organized the photos and how they’ve utilized techniques like tag clouds for searches (see the image to the left for an example).  They also have it formatted much like a blog with each image having it’s own "post" with details about the picture in the post.  My hat’s off to the folks over there at Digital Forsyth.