Archives for July 2005

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Plagiarism Made Easier – Or Not? (part 2.)

Posted on July 14, 2005 ·

I previously stated that the Bad Guys have arrived to Blogosphere,

and I didn’t mean the little guy who lifts content here and there, but

those that will turn it into mass production.   Blog-Zilla had all the makings of a software service to automate content theft – at least based on their advertising.

Today the Blog-Zilla uncloaked itself, and I wonder if I have to eat my words.   Excerpts from the sign-up page:

“Bloggy is not big on bottom-feeders. If you feel you are dedicated to

multi-blogging your own good stuff (with Bloggy’s help), then you’re

the type of creative blog entrepreneur Bloggy loves. If you’re hoping

to steal content and get rich as you sleep, Bloggy will not make a good

bedfellow.”

“Blog-zilla is not a content duplicator, stealing machine, ‘get rich quick’ system or blog spammer.”

Could this be a decent effort?  To do what?   Hm… I guess we’ll have to wait and see. 

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Filed Under: Blogging, Software ·
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Senator McCain in Raunchy Movie (???)

Posted on July 13, 2005 ·

WTF!  This has to be a joke! (???) … or so I hope.  According to the Drudge Report,  "Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. -- who once held hearings chastising Hollywood studios for producing R- rated films and marketing them to teens -- is now playing a part in one!"

Opening this weekend, WEDDING CRASHERS, a movie packed with raunchy moments and bare-breasted beauties bedding down with the guys."

I guess if actors can turn into politicians, it has to work the other way around, too... (???)

What's next?  Howard Stern to the Senate?

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Filed Under: Humor, Misc, Politics ·
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Plagiarism Made Easier

Posted on July 12, 2005 ·

Apparently the Bad Guys have arrived to Blogosphere: Blog Plagiarism is

on the rise. Here are a few articles on the subject:

Is Blog Plagiarism Growing–and are the Fakes Convincing?

Really Simple Stealing

ON BLOG PLAGIARISM

How Not to Blog

But wait, the dude referred to in these post is doing hard work…

finding and copying other people’s original content is not easy… don’t

worry dude, help is on the way!

Apparently content theft is a big enough business to attract “tool providers” that will help automate theft … just look at this ad (which, by the way I quite innocently displayed on my blog via AdSense):

Quotes from the ad:

“· Take any content or article and have Blog-zilla manipulate, randomize, or merge text based on your rules.

· Grab keyword-related RSS feeds and auto-post directly to all your blogs.

· Never steal content, instead

generate your own and let Blog-zilla hatch unlimited variations all

customized to each blog’s target audience. (maybe you should read that

again!)”

Yes, they are right, you should read that again! Let me get this straight: if

I steal a lot of original content, then have some “intelligent” program

randomly mash them together, republish at a gazillion sites, it’s

no longer theft, right?


WRONG!

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Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Software ·
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“Midwest” Discovered between East and West Coasts

Posted on July 10, 2005 ·

  “NEW YORK—A U.S. Geological Survey expeditionary force announced Tuesday that it has discovered a previously unknown and unexplored land mass between the New York and California coasts known as the “Midwest….

… Thus far we have discovered places known as Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin,” said Randall Zachary, chief navigator for the expedition. “When translated from the local dialect into English, these words seem to mean ‘summer camp….

… surprised to learn that the Midwest, whose inhospitable environment was long believed to be incapable of supporting human life, is indeed populated, albeit sparsely…

…Though the Midwest territory is still largely unexplored, early reports describe a region as backwards as it is vast. “Many of the basic aspects of a civilized culture appear to be entirely absent,” said Gina Strauch, a Los Angeles-based anthropologist…

…We must remember that these people are not at all like us,” Conde Nast publisher and Manhattan socialite Lucille Randolph Snowdon said. “They are crude and provincial, bewildered by our tall buildings and our art galleries, our books and our coffee shops. For an L.A. resident to attempt to interact with one of them as he or she would with, say, a Bostonian is ludicrous. It appears unlikely that we will ever be able to conduct a genuine exchange of ideas with them about anything, save perhaps television or ‘the big game.'”

source:  the ONION:    

Interesting … reminds me of another map we’ve all seen in 2004 and 2000:

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Filed Under: Humor, Misc, Politics ·
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Accidental President

Posted on July 6, 2005 ·

 Our Accidental President (remember Florida!)  proves to be Accidental in more then one way; he seems to be having a lot of accidents:

 
 – fell off a Segway (isn’t that almost impossible) in Maine
 – fell off a mountain bike in Texas
 – and now fell off a bike at the G8 summit, hitting a local cop.
 
Isn’t it time he gets on  training wheels?
 

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Filed Under: Humor, Misc, Politics ·
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Connected Commute

Posted on July 5, 2005 ·

The Mercury News reports that an East Bay transit agency is looking to install free wireless Internet service on its transbay buses as early as this fall, a move that could make it one of the first mass transit agencies to provide the service to commuters.

Wow … I am envious… I need the same in my car!  … and maybe a driver so I can focus solely on the Online experience … but wait… this exists already … it’s called a Limo

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Filed Under: Bay Area, Misc, Personal Productivity, Technology ·
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Technorati tags point to previous article. Support? Knowledge base?

Posted on July 2, 2005 ·

I’ve emailed Technorati support, but several blogs suggest response is erratic … at the same time Technorati appears to be quite responsive in several blogs reporting their problems … so this is my seriously scientific test to see where I get faster / better response.

All my Technorati tags seem to point to the article that is exactly BELOW the tags, in other words the previously posted one: wrong title, wrong content.

Apparently I am not the only one with this problem, see here and here, to list just a few.

This is what my blog host (Blogharbor) support thinks:

“It looks like Technorati’s crawler can’t tell where one article ends and one begins… Which is strange, as I know that they index both the HTML page and the RSS feed; and your tags would be very clearly contained within the correct item in the RSS feed…

So I can’t see this as anything but Technorati’s problem in that they are allowing their HTML crawler’s interpretation of the document’s tags to have precedence, and the crawler does not properly interpret a category page.

The only thing I can think to combat this would be to use excerpts and make sure you enter your tags in the article area but not in the excerpts, that way your tags do not appear in category view and Technorati (hopefully) picks them up from the Permanent Link URL instead. “

Now, I am already doing what he suggests, namely:

– Technorati tags are in the article and not in the experts
– I am using excerpts, meaning I fill out the excerpt field, and verified through bloglines that it gets in the RSS feed correctly. However, I chose to display the full article, not just an excerpt on my main blog page, and noticed that since I do this, technorati no longer displays my excerpts, only the article title. Not sure if it has anything to do with “getting lost” and picking the wrong article

I must look completely crazy, with all the “irrelevant” post under tags where they don’t belong to.

Well, let the race begin – email or blog? (But why do we need to write individually? Wouldn’t life be easier if Technorati posted a Knowledge Base of known issues/solutions?)

Update: Neither the email to Customer Support nor this Blog entry worked; I got the problem fixed after emailing to David Sifry (CEO) and Kevin Marks of Technorati.

Update (8/10) Mark Evans and “Connected” had a Technorati problem, too. They both use Blogware, and “Connected” ended up developing the same code that is offered to Blogharbor customers as a way to map keywords to Tags.

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Filed Under: Blogging ·
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VC Breakfast Club

Posted on July 1, 2005 ·

I am volunteering at SVASE, the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs, and amongst others I sometimes moderate our VC Breakfast Club sessions. 

 
It’s an informal round-table where up to 10 entrepreneurs get to deliver a pitch, then answer questions and get critiqued by a VC Partner.    We’ve had VC’s from Draper Fisher, Hummer Winblad, Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Mohr Davidow, Emergence Capital …etc.
 
I think it’s an incredible opportunity for Entrepreneurs, most of who would probably have a hard time getting through the door to a mainstream VC.   However,  recently I’ve seen quite a few entrepreneurs “blow it”.
 
Yes, it’s a pressure-free environment, with no Powerpoint presentations, Business Plans…etc –  just casual conversation, but for God’s sake it does not mean Entrepreneurs should come unprepared!
 
Please:
  •  Don’t just talk freely about what you would like to do, or even worse, spend all your time describing the problem, without addressing what your solution is
  •  Follow a structure, and don’t forget “small things” like the Team, Product, Market..etc, and it would not hurt to mention how much you are looking for, and how you would use the funds.
  •  Write down and practice your pitch, and please be aware that whatever your practice time was, when you are on the spot, you will likely take twice as long to deliver your story.
 
Thanks for listening … and I hope we’ll have more productive sessions in the future
 
 

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Filed Under: Bay Area, Business, Social Networking, Startups ·
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