Miscellaneous

Interesting. Just got a notification that an Uncabled user named “nareman” — who used killerspm@runbox.com as an email address — was created two days ago and just recently posted to very automated-looking spam comments to the blog.

Normally I’d brush this off a little, but the whole thing feels like someone’s testing out a spambot that will handle email account verifications. Perhaps there’s already been one, and this is just my own first encounter.

Whatever the answer is, it helped remind me that I need to go back and check if the CAPTCHA module for Drupal was finally updated for 5.0. (Just checked and it has been. Updating soon.) I hope that the ability to login using credentials from other Drupal-powered sites will make the account requirement on this site a little easier to swallow, but then again, it may just be another attack vector down the road where spammers will set up their own Drupal sites, register their spambots, and auto-login that way.

Sigh. The battle continues….

I’m watching the On10 video for the Windows Live Spaces launch, and there’s so much wrong with what they’re doing. Two things summarize this well. The first was Ze Frank’s recent vlog about “bad” design and being for ugly MySpace pages. It’s empowering. In a way, it’s the original zine’s equivalent on the web, where you get to revel in how much you get the public to whine about how much it upsets them. Experimentation and expression reign supreme.

The second was a quote by “Machine” about Digg’s relaunch that I really appreciated:

Web 2.0 is so sterile… I’m not saying make it look like Windows XP… but I feel like I’m in a very expensive post-modernist Manhattan loft where you can’t sit on the furniture.

This Microsoft rep is pointing out how users can “really express themselves” and yet the designs are as tight and boring and corporate as can be. Creating content in that isn’t expression. A MySpace page that looks like a Mooninite threw up on it — now that’s expression.

And that’s why MySpace still rules. The next MySpace will be even less of a portal — it will be GeoCities v10.0 where the tools build any page you want and the kit contains lots of AJAX eye candy and social networking features.

Give people the freedom to completely play and make mistakes while making communication between users and friends even more advanced and you’ll have the first system that truly challenges MySpace.

Well, I’ve finally give up on Last.fm when it comes to the iPod. With the launch of the redesign, Last.fm has given up official support of anything but their main player application — which isn’t terrible, it’s just not integrated in an elegant way with iTunes like a plugin or a menu extra would. It’s a big ol’ app that sits in your dock and takes up lots of resources. I’d been having bad problems with the iScrobbler app not submitting my iPod tracks, so I suspected as much — something’s changed somewhat with the launch of the new site, but now the site has an excuse not to go and fix it.

In case you don’t know, Last.fm aggressively battles spam by throwing away submission data that has conflicting play times, is submitted too quickly, doesn’t follow in time with other submissions, and other criteria. This has always caused big problems when trying to use apps that sync the iPod to Last.fm because you absolutely must submit your iPod tracks before any desktop tracks are played or submitted, lest their time-stamps be earlier than the most recent ones on file at Last.fm and be thrown out. This kind of thing happens regularly because people don’t think like programs and meticulously plan out how they use their music player. In fact, the programs should help sort these problems out and let people be, well, people.

Guys, I know you want to keep people from spamming your site — it’s great you’re this dedicated to it — but it’s ridiculous that this data is ignored or thrown away. I do 90% of my music listening off my iPod (I bring it to work, plug it into some powered speakers, and run with it all day long) and let’s face it, you’re not going to win me over to paying for a subscription by forcing me to use my iPod or my music library in a different way(1) just because you haven’t figure out a better way to handle it. I’ve been waiting for a better iPod solution before dropping coin on this but it’s clear you’re not going to do it.

Here’s an idea: don’t throw it away. Keep it. Let users work with it. Just don’t consider that data in charts or use it for public use. Allow users to see badly submitted data for their own edification and for exploring into other people’s libraries. That would be a start, because you would still have all that info down the road, and you’d be able to retroactively analyze it once you’ve got better spam handling in place. Instead, I’m just sitting, waiting and hoping that Apple deploys some social features in the iTMS soon. Sorry.

(1) I just wanted to add: I literally think “Oh my god, did I update the iPod?!” before playing files in iTunes. Three or four days of straight iPod listening would be erased in a heartbeat because of a careless what’s-that-song-again double-click on the computer. This is a horrible thing to feel and I’m so glad to have finally stopped caring enough about my profile to finally get away from it.

On one hand, Apple lets you submit your feed to them, but are slow to include it, or even show updates for it because of their caching system.

On the other hand, Odeo automatically lists your podcast if you publish one (probably scraped from some other source), but apparently makes you jump through hoops to “claim” it.

Not that I’m entirely shocked, because we had problems like this will all our previous “directories,” including Yahoo! and the ODP. Someone owns the keys, and it’s not you, so there’s a price for admission. Now, we’ve got a democratic system in place with XML-RPC pings… now someone just needs to develop a spec to go with it so anyone can build out their own directory.

What this really points toward is the death of the editorial page. Why the hell do we need editorials anymore?…The truth is that an editorial is just another blog post written by one person witih one viewpoint. Here’s a case where you can’t argue that it makes a difference having a journalism degree and a newsroom.
—Jeff Jarvis

Anyone care to place a bet that Google’s logo will feature donut letter Os tomorrow?

In any case, Krispy Kreme will be giving away free donuts to honor the event which was started by the Salvation Army in 1938 to help raise funds and serve “as a tribute to Army ‘lassies’ who made and served donuts to thousands of soldiers during World War I.” Not that Krispy Kreme is my kind of thing, but hey, it might be yours.

Read more about Donut Day on the Salvation Army’s website..