It Just Reeks of Class When You Use the Race of a Worker in Your Hotel Review

So, I think I'll get back into this blogging thing again after a quasi-hiatus to take care of some things in the real world.

Next month, I'll be going to Chicago for a friend's wedding. I haven't taken a real, extended vacation in a little while so didn't feel bad about staying at The Allerton...although with the deal I got, it's not pricey at all.

Anyway, in typical Dan fashion, I checked out Tripadvisor after paying for the package. It was there that I found this awesome review. I don't care if the poster is right or wrong, someone who finds it necessary to point out to me the race of a worker he found to be unhelpful is just so Archie Bunker.

Ugh, I Popped The Facebook Cherry

Well, frequent reader Buck, from the Raleigh/Durham Posse sent me a Facebook invite the other day and I had to actually create (technically, at least, I didn't put anything meaningful there) a profile over there.

My space here has always been a nice refuge to semi-anonymously post and not have to worry about things catching up with me or being associated with me by name, so I don't think I'm going to link over to Facebook, but just contact me if you're one of these people who diggs it.

I'm not sure how far I'll take it over there, but it was funny that an old student of mine from my days in the frozen tundra somehow found me already. Interesting...

New Word of the Day

Some people will have you believe that the wise person learns a new word a day or something like that.

Here's yours.

Blogounce- v. To make an announcement on a blog, rather than through a tradtional press release/availability.

I found this on John Battelle's searchblog today, in reference to some Google affiliate network changes and thought it was funny. As of now, when I search on the term, I only return results originating with John's posting, so hopefully this word will catch some steam.

"Barack Hussein Obama is a Mohammedan!"

It continues to frustrate people who pay a little bit of attention to goings-on in the world, the number of fools out there who believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim.

(Now, the number of people who find that to be a pejorative is an equally bright proxy for the lower bound estimate of retards we have in this country who will answer their phone for pollsters!)

The Washington Post has an article this morning about some smartypants scholar trying to track down the origins of the emails making these claims.

There's plenty of things about him to dislike. We don't need to start inventing them along the way.

Dark Days Looming for the Internets

I've been following stories like this for some time, but they have mostly been in quasi-techie forums...but now that this story has made it to the Sunday's front page of the Old Gray Lady, I might really start sweating bullets.

The article is about how ISPs are moving to consider tiered pricing and bandwidth limits. When they plotted out how many gigabytes the average user transfers a month, I confirmed what I already know...this dreadful bootleg habit has me many, many, many standard deviations above the mean...confirming the accusations of deviancy I've heard all my life, I guess.

So while the argument for pay-as-you-use internet is clear on one hand, they also duly note that it's just this creation of artificial scarcity by providers that may have slowed down the initial growth of the internet.

Everyone remembers when AOL had its pricing based on the # of hours you spent online per month and some associate this with stifling the penetration of the internet to all facets of our lives.

Similarly, just as the media companies are trying to encourage people to spend more time transferring information and entertainment online, they are starting to plot out the fences.

I'm sure there'll be some kind of reasonable way to survive, but I did find my toes curling a little bit while reading this one.

How Cool is This

The Archive, god's gift to us all, now allows us to embed their player and freely distribute the tunes hassle free.

This is the Grateful Dead, live at the Shrine Auditorium, January 11, 1978.

I just did a little jig!

I'll probably tinker with this over the weekend and make room on the side of the page for a Dan's Choice Show or something like that. Wow, I'm so excited. This is really neato...

Your Government Is Your Friend

Well, this is a nice way to start your weekend...with a feel-good article about the good ole' government going after The Archive.

I've linked and mentioned them before here both for their amazing Grateful Dead live music collection as well as the fascinating Way Back Machine.

Archive's mission, as you can gather, is to archive pretty much everything it can electronically, including the way web pages looked Way Back when.

Well, the FBI was curious about someone who'd registered there and sent them some kind of subpoena which forbade them to discuss it with anyone.

That's pretty nifty, eh?

Well, they got the ACLU and the EFF involved and fought back...and won. The pigs backed off...at least for now.

I heard about this story first on Buzz Out Loud, CNET's Podcast of Indeterminate Length.

Good Write-Up on Halperin's The Page Today

The Times had a very favorable review of Time Magazine's The Page, the brainchild of Mark Halperin.

I've mentioned it here several times and was so pleased when he came back onto the web scene.

I was a shameless addict of The Note (despite, as this article mentions, its use of a lot of practically-decipherable inside jokes) and disappointed when he left it.

The Page really is where it's at for a quick catch-up on all things politics.

Richard Thompson on Campaign Emails

I've blogged here occasionally on emails I've gotten from the Presidential campaigns. I find it interesting what they choose to communicate to us in this new (to campaigning) medium.

Richard Thompson has a nice piece in the current Atlantic Monthly on this very topic.

Read it and you can see why he gets paid for this and I don't.

His take on the state of the electronic campaign is that Barack is much more straightforward and honest with folks, even when it comes down to asking them to volunteer their time to the campaign.

Hillary, predictably, tries very hard to convey some sort of personal connection with people, but it comes off as contrived...something that mimics itself in real-life, too!

Teenagers...Out for Kicks

A friend in Tampa sent me this article about some teenagers down there (jeez, is everyone in the Tampa area some kind of degenerate?) who retaliated against another for dissing them online by beating the snot out of her.

Well now, the Polk County 8, one of whom is a mere 14 years old, are going to be tried as adults, facing life sentences, for their alleged crime.

The dumbest mistake the little imps made, of course, is posting it on YouTube.

Numbskulls.

As in politics, with the Hillary Bosnia-gate story being the most recent example, the availability of video on things can be such a curse if you are involved.

Technology be damned!

MSNBC's Embeddable Content Move Pays Off

It is no surprise at all that MSNBC's video request traffic skyrocketed recently after they decided to make the jump and make all of their online video embeddable.

I applauded the move here in January and I continue to enjoy their high-quality video and 2.0-friendly site.

Foxnews.com has followed suit.

Cool History Channel Ad on Huffington Post

Obviously, there's the part of me that wishes I could use the Internet without ads I don't ask for, but I kind of like this 3-D ad that The History Channel pushed on HuffPo this morning.

"Clickocracy"

That's the term that Jose Antonio Vargas is throwing around in the Washington Post in yet another article proclaiming the supremacy of the Internet as a campaign medium.

He's on C-SPAN's Washington Journal this morning and that got me to look up this article.

Most anyone who follows the news about the campaigns knows the story:

• Republicans have been slow and resistant to adapting to the Internet. Many still see it as a slick mailer without the postage cost. A one-way information transfer, rather than creating the illusion of exchange or shared control.
• We're starting to see a divergence between what the networks report and what people actually choose to view. A timely example of this is after Obama's A More Perfect Union speech. While the networks were still obsessed with replaying soundbites from Reverend Wright's Greatest Hits, the 37-minute speech video was burning up the tubes.
• The Internet can't turn water into wine. While Ron Paul exceeded anyone's wildest imagination in terms of funds raised and votes cast, it still could not catapult him into an actual lead. While Obama is a highly-successful candidate all-around, one has to resist the temptation to attribute all of his success to his finesse on the Internet.

Check it out if you're interested.

The Evolution of the Internets

That series of tubes really has come a long way in the last 10 years.

Here's a really nifty article on the evolution of some major sites over the last 10 years or so.

If you're geeky like me, you might also like The Archive's Wayback Machine...a neat way to look back at your favorite sites over time.

Whoh! I even show up there...albeit sans images!

Land of the Rising Sun

Those crafty Japanese are at it again.

Now, the four major IPs over there are collaborating with copyright holders to track down people using P2P software, allegedly violating copyrights, and taking measured steps to shut them down.

While I've experimented with this stuff the way Barry did a little blow back in the day, I generally don't deal much in commercially-released material. But increased monitoring (and action based on that monitoring) of one's online behavior is something I don't like.

...But I'd be lying if I told you I thought it was anything but inevitable.

Hillary Does a Neat Mailer

The Hillary campaign sent out an interesting email this afternoon that had a nifty little flash-driven photo album from the campaign.

I thought it was kind of cool, so I snagged a little video of it for you.

I Wish My Company Was Cool Enough to Use This Kind of System Maintenence Message to Users

But, we are not...bummer.

I Have to Give Oprah Some Credit

While I was unaware of this in advance (darn, my RSS feed from Oprah.com must be broken!), Oprah had some big event the other night that encouraged lemmings to come to her website.

Well, I guess traffic was so overwhelming that her servers crashed.

But kudos to the woman who puts the O in narcissism.

Rather than playing the card that political campaigns will take in considering overflow rooms at events a virtue (rather than poor planning on their part) or meteorologists who tell us that storms "came late" or "decided to miss us" (rather than bad prediction on their part), Harpo Productions put out a press release apologizing and taking full responsibility for the error.

We will resume complaining about her at the nearest opportunity, but for now she gets the responsible PR smiley face for the day.

Ms. E-Manners

Came across something mildly amusing/interesting on HuffPo.

An article on acceptable (and unacceptable) sing-offs for emails.

Yours in Christ,
Danny-Poo

The Internet Has Everything

You can order books, my favorite pizza, truffles, and a Polish bride just as soon as you get rid of your current one!