Posts

I’ve never really understood the differences between “pingback” and “trackback”. Google likes to display older articles, which has interesting effects The first thing that I found that tried to explain the differences was published more than 3 years ago and has way more detail than I want. But this whitepaper led me to more resources on pingback and trackback. If I can summarize: Pingback Just ping a blog (or whatever) with your own blogging software No detail about what you said about them Receiver doesn’t link back to you Trackback ...

WHY FEATURES DON’T MATTER ANYMORE: THE NEW LAWS OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY is a great article on why the iPod caught on and what to consider when designing anything. Tools (hardware or software) are overloaded with features that people don’t have time to learn. Craig’s List drives me a bit crazy. It doesn’t let me work the way that I want, sorting things this way or that. But given that it’s a bunch of free ads for stuff that might or might not be still available, well, OK, sorting latest first works. What’s the point of sorting by make and price, then finding out that the item is gone? ...

Laura Ries has a great article about Wal-Mart testing a high-end store in Texas. $500 bottles of wine at a Wal-Mart? What’s the message here? This is especially interesting coming on the heels of her article about how to properly segment: Scion, Toyota, Lexus or Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic. Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart? Don’t think so.

OK, I’ve wanted this for years and it’s still not available. I don’t want paper statements. From anybody. I don’t want to file them away. I don’t want to scan them myself. And I certainly don’t want to pay someone to do it. I want electronic statements that are secure. I want them backed up regularly. I want them authoritative - one of the big reasons that I don’t go electronic is that I figure the original statements will carry more weight with the bank, company, etc. Or the court, if it comes to that. ...

I was really pleased with myself. Not only have I been running AdAware and SpyBot - S&D on a regular basis but now I’d added Microsoft’s real-time anti-spyware to the mix in addition to running Norton. I’m locked down, right? So I downloaded a home page editor that looked good and didn’t pay too much attention to the agreement. Who does? Then it wanted to update the toolbar it brought along with it. Looked at the agreement. “Oh, dear” as Maxine, my two-year-old would say. Track everything I do in IE and send that off? I don’t think so. Even though I almost never use IE any more. So OK, remove that sucker. Hmmm. Things are acting funny. Must be time for a reboot. Hmmm. This is weird. I can’t get out to the network. Haven’t touched the cable. But XP says we’re operating with reduced or no capacity. That’s OK, I’ll switch cables. After all Max or her younger sister Charlie might have damaged the cable. ...

Well, Microsoft had decided to do something about the bad publicity that they’re getting over peoples’ computers being hijacked by various things that IE downloads. So they’ve released their own anti-spyware program. As usual, it’s got a gotcha: it not only requires you to let it look around by running an ActiveX control but you also have to type in your 25 digit validation key. In the picture they show, the sticker is neatly attached to the side of a tower case. In my world, the sticker is attached to the back of my Sony mini-tower. Or on the bottom of my Dell laptop. So I got to practice building up my short-term memory by remembering 5 digits at a time. ...

Two programs that every Windows user needs on their machine: Lavasoft’s AdAware Free for personal use and I’ve found it a little more updated on bad things people are trying to put on my computer. Spybot - Search and Destroy Totally free and very good. I like to run AdAware once every two weeks and Spybot once a month. They take a while to work, since they go through every file on your computer and all the entries in the registry. You can set them to work faster but I feel like thorough is better. Maybe if you ran them every day it’d be good to run them in smart mode.

The week outside MyPages started with an article in the paper about LiveJournal, based here in Portland, being sold to Six Degrees. Because we consider user involvement so important for MyPages, I’m very interested in hearing what happens with any community-based website. Whether the community is online, as with LiveJournal, or more local like Craigslist. No outsider is going to know the terms of a deal between two private companies unless something goes very wrong or very right. Either somebody sues or they’re written up in Fortune or Forbes. But it seems like a good time to be running a community site. ...