On May 1, 2012, Paul Miller disconnected from the internet for one year. It was a social experiment. For me it wasn’t necessarily extraordinary. I know plenty of people who are not on the internet.
What was interesting to me was finding out ever so subtly that Paul is a Christian. My first hint to it was no curse words in the video. This in itself is extraordinary. Everyone these days seem to find it important to drop a few curse words within the latest meme video, making it to where it cannot be shared to my friends and family. It didn’t happen.
In the above video Paul mentioned Grace Chapel in Springfield, Missouri. I halfway expected him to make mention how he changed his views on God, but that didn’t happen either. Instead we see subtle reminders of Paul’s faith such as an ESV Bible on his bookshelf.
Within Paul’s twitter account Paul is pretty explicit about his faith stating “I love my savior Jesus Christ.”
I found the idea that a tech writer could also love Jesus to be more interesting that disconnecting from the internet for a year.

I’m experiencing somewhat of a musical renassance on old albums that I haven’t listened to in while. It was brought on by a purchase of my Ipod Touch. I can tell you that this is on the best gizmos I’ve had in a while.
I’m digging into old music and old mp3s. 500+ songs on my Ipod and it isn’t even a 1/3rd of the way full yet. Finally a useful mp3 player. I had tried everything – CD players which read data cds full of mp3s, but I found myself skipping multiple tracks. I paid $25 for a mp3 player shaped like a tape, which cosequentally could be used in my car’s tape player. And it worked about as well as what a $25 mp3 player would work (read not very well). No way to fast forward through songs. You were pretty much stuck with whatever songs were in your player.
The iTunes store is pretty much useless, in that you can’t easily convert music files to an mp3 file to play outside of iTunes. Apple is scared of lawsuits which caused them not to allow this and wireless song transfers between iPods (which I’m told MS Zunes have the ability to do). If I do buy mp3s, I’m sticking to Amazon.com, if only for being able to have more control on what program plays it.
It’s video podcasting ability is useful. I regularly watch last night’s Anderson Cooper 360 during my lunch break. It reminds me of how much “to the point” AC360 truly is. Somehow I wish there would be someway to watch last night’s Seinfeld episode, but anything outside of news (read entertainment) you have to pay for.
Tonight’s guest speaker at church mentioned that his church regularly does Podcasts and he didn’t know if we did the same thing. I wanted to flash on the big screen “WE DO HAVE PODCASTS!” – Something I have been doing for a few months before I got an iPod. I now know how useful this can be, especially to reach those who are unable or unwilling to attend worship services. Podcasts may only be popular with the younger than 40 crowd. The rest might not even understand the concept.

I am pondering if I should get an iPod Touch. My sister received one for Christmas, which then got me really interested in it.
I’ll admit I am not a big spender. I will mull over potential purchases for weeks before actually making the purchase. I’m now into my 2nd week of pondering an IPod.
The pluses are:

• Ability to listen to mp3s on the way to work. Nashville radio is tired and stale. Jack FM plays the same thing over and over. Morning radio shows leave much to be desired. The only good radio station – Lightning 100 – remains staticy prior to actually getting to downtown Nashville. Hence the need for listening to my own music.
• Podcasts. being able to watch a daily or weekly video Podcast when I’m out to eat would make it more entertaining.
• Internet Access at wifi locations. Web based email is blocked at work – not that I would have time check it anyways. However having the ability to check email at my favorite restaurant would be helpful.

Cons:

• iTunes. – I’ve heard iTunes has been locked down to prevent piracy, so much so that one has potential to loose mp3’s if backups are not made. I don’t care for this. The iPod itself should act as a secondary drive to copy mp3s to and copy back to ones hard drive. I’m not getting that warm fuzzy feeling for archiving my mp3s.
• The touch screen keyboard leaves much to be desired. I tried typing on my sister’s iPod and it was incredibily difficult. Sure, I don’t expect to type research papers on it, but just give me a decent keyboard!
• Price – It’s expensive. I am apprehensive about keeping in my car, dropping it, etc.

Visually the pros outweigh the cons. I’m still not convinced completely. It’s definitely alot to be spending and I’m not even sure I should be spending so much, even if it is meant to be a reward for myself. Many many people are living paycheck to paycheck nowadays. I’m not sure if it is the right time to be making a purchase.

Lately we’ve been seeing search engines themselves purchase services that will provide content for their searches. Google’s purchase of Blogger in 2003 parallels Yahoo!’s purchase of Geocities in 1999. Some comparisons:
Yahoo! is known more of hierarchical listing of websites. This being the case alot of broken links are/were listed in their hierarchical listings, plus it can be very difficult to get listed. I can remember in 1997 when I was successfully able to get my church’s website listed in Yahoo’s hierarchical listings. For a while, it remained one of the few (if only) church websites in Mt. Juliet listed in the Yahoo hierarchical structure. Yahoo! has since changed it’s default search results to being more of a search engine, instead of the hierchical structure.
Geocities is known as being the service provider for the first website many of us ever used. That being the case, many Geocities websites have been left abandoned when their owners decided to get their own domain (free of Geocities’ obnoxious banner ads and long URLs).
Yahoo’s acquisition of Geocities in 1999 brought more ads and shorter URLs to Geocities homepages. Yahoo wasn’t necessarily interested in content. It was only interested in finding an already popular service and gaining new Yahoo! members.
Blogger started in 1999 as a blog service provider. Blogger’s focus was content, something Geocities never had. There are a great many GOOD blogs out there which are still hosted on Blogger’s free services. Rarely do you find GOOD homepages (that are exceptionally designed) on Geocities.
Google began in 1996 as strictly a search engine. It’s code of conduct is “Don’t Be Evil.” Hence you will not find any obnoxious banner ads on Google, only subtle text ads on search results.
Google too, focused on content. It’s search results were based on how many people were linking to a particular site. More popular linked sites eventually got listed at the top of Google’s search results. Also its news site listings were based on content of other news providers, and not Google itself. This is much different from Yahoo!’s take on news in that Yahoo has a whole section based on news gathered from the AP. Yahoo! doesn’t write the news itself. Only hosts news stories and photos. Google does no hosting. It only provides links to other news sites. Google has always focused on search listings and content, rather than hosting services.
Both Yahoo! and Geocities are dying. Yahoo! not so much as Geocities. Google and Blogger are thriving. Why? Content. Yahoo’s mistake was trying to do everything at once. Take a look at Yahoo!’s portal page and Google’s page. Yahoo! is trying much too hard to be everything to everyone. Mail, Messenger, News Portal. It’s page represents confusion. Too many services. Too much trouble on the eyes. Google has a much cleaner interface. Everything is right there at your fingertips. Google never wanted to be a portal, and hopefully it never will. Search engines could learn alot from Google. Already MSN’s new interface mimics Google. Altavista, too, has become less of a portal and more of a Google clone.
I’m a bit surprised that Yahoo hasn’t put in the ability for Geocities to do blogs. It’s something that Geocities’ rival Tripod has done. I equate Geocities with cheapness, and I suspect the rest of the netizens do too. Yahoo! recently aquired Flickr, a photo sharing site popular among bloggers. This shows that Yahoo! is still interested in Blogs.
What could Yahoo! do to Geocities that would make it cool again? As stated above, let users be able to blog on it. Cgi abilities would be cool too (as you can do it on Tripod). Less obnoxious ads. Ability to do FTP again (for free members). But I suspect Yahoo! isn’t necessarily interested in improving things at Geocities. Why spend the time improving things on a dying service?
Meanwhile Blogger improved with Google’s purchase. Free users could upload images to their website. Commenting on posts became available.

I’m getting into Everything2. It’s sorta a freeform Wikipedia, without the requirement for a neutral point of view. E2’s articles are more or less random blog postings on a particular topic. I haven’t written up any specific articles (nodes) yet. I’m still learning the site specifics.
There are some perplexing things about E2 which I haven’t figured out yet. Such as why some writeups have just a handful of out of date articles. Such as Church of Christ. There seems to be a handful of old articles on the CoC, but no new articles. Are new articles being supressed? Is there a limit on the number of articles you can write on a particular subject? I guess I’ll have to start writing to figure that out.
There doesn’t seem to be much structure on E2. Any user can write an article title and link it to anything, although there is potential for possible deletion. E2 has been notoriously slow in the past, but it’s been relatively reasonable (we’re not talking Google fast, but reasonable) lately.
A good thing about E2 is that you can write semi-anonymously, without fear of retribution from readers. Something I can’t do here, unfortunately.
Anyways maybe I should read this E2 article to get a perspective on things.

I’ve been experimenting around with Wikipedia alot. It’s self described as “the free-content encyclopedia that anyone can edit.” I find this fascinating. Many times I visited webpages with outdated or incomplete information. I’ve wished I could edit it to make it more complete. With Wiki you can do just that. I’ve found myself editing alot of wiki articles, mostly Christian university articles because there is an absence of them, and because they are easy to find information on.
What is interesting about wiki is that spammers haven’t necessarily found it yet. I’ve heard about wiki spam, but there isn’t much to be found on wiki. Legit users are so effective in trying to edit pages to keep wiki spam to a minimum.

This is kinda scary.
(In regards to AOL Instant Messenger)

Although you or the owner of the Content retain ownership of all right, title and interest in Content that you post to any AIM Product, AOL owns all right, title and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created by AOL using or incorporating this Content. In addition, by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy. You waive any right to inspect or approve uses of the Content or to be compensated for any such uses.

Big brother is watching, folks.

Lately I’ve been battling a new type of battle. Guestbook spam. 3 times last night I had some spammer sign my church’s guestbook promoting their Human Growth Hormone treatment and their loan service. I can’t tell if this is being done manually or by some type of bot. Each time someone signs the guestbook I get an email alerting me of the entry. Each time I have been sitting at the computer when I received notification of the entry, and corrected within minutes.
This happened with a couple of webpages I helped set up: Todd’s webpage and with Josh’s webpage. The only difference is right now both guestbooks are disabled inadvertently.
Guestbooks are SO late 90s. No one (except for spammers) uses them anymore. Instead you’ll see comments on blog entries. And now even blogs are being inundated with spam.
I use the guestbook contained on Matt’s Script Archive. I’ve been looking for a solution for this, either trying to block spam according to content (key words) or IP addresses even. However Matt’s Guestbook Script is not sophisicated enough to allow for this. (One reason I use it is because it is so easy to set up).
The internet used to be fun. It was fun when you didn’t have to repair guestbooks daily when someone tries to sell their snakeoil.
If anyone has any good solutions for guestbook spam, apart from removing the guestbook altogether, I’d love to hear it.

I have discovered the joy of RSS/XML readers. For those of you unfamiliar with RSS readers, let me explain it. RSS (Really Simple Syndicatioin) and XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is the raw HTML code webmasters use to syndicate their site. Basically this means that with RSS/XML readers you don’t necessarily need to view the webpage you want to read. In a reader its like having headlines and articles emailed to you, without necessarily clogging up your email.
The reader I’ve been using is Sharpreader. It’s quick and simple to use. In order to find RSS and XML syndication, you’ll need to look for XML (usually in an orange box) at the bottom of many webpages.
I’ve subscribed to quite a few websites including…

• Linkfilter
• Boingboing
• Metafilter
• Monkeyfilter – Metafilter clone.
• Slashdot

This explains why you should use Firefox instead of IE. (Broadband users only)