Here are a couple pics I took earlier tonight of my reef tank. Just wanted to post something non-tech and non-geeky for a change. Enjoy. More pics coming to my flickr stream soon.
Rose Bubble Anemones
My latest acquisition - a ginormous brain sized bright green candy cane coral
Devil's Hand coral, assorted leather corals, and my mean ass female Clarkii clownfish (my oldest fish)
1.11.2007
Some new pics of my reef tank to spruce things up a bit.
Digg Down! Upgrade? Installation of the anti-spam-laser-blasters?
Digg down @ 5:07PM January 11, 2007
No activity on Swarm:
more signs of strain on the web2.0 bubble
I remember about a year ago when I came across an odd new Amazon service called Mechanical Turk. I actually signed up for an account and tried to do some simple mturk HITs. I spent a couple days fiddling around, and while I saw the genius behind the application, I thought that back then, the concept was way ahead of its time. And here we are today, a year later and the folks over are ReadWriteWeb dicussing the rather lackluster rate of adoption of MTurk services in webapps and the fact that there really hasn't been a killer app implemented that leverages this service. Is there a killer app for MTurk? I think there probably is, but I'm not sure the dev community is ready to build mature apps with something like this yet. What do you think?
the end of the socially-driven-web2.0-era? Social sites reeling from spammers
OK. This now confirms what I've been suspecting for the past couple months. Spammers have REALLY increased their activity and infiltration of the socially-driven sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, MyBlogLog, and many others to the point where it could bring the whole thing crashing down.
It's a damn shame. I get the feeling of impending doom where the entire socially-driven web2.0 bubble could come crashing down rather quickly unless these sites do more to combat the sleazy and constantly-evolving spamming techniques. We need better anti-spamming features built into these sites.
Digging and burying of comments (kind of like a peer review for comments) on things submitted to Digg is a start, but man, the flame wars going on over at Digg make me think that everyone over there is in high school. I mean come on people. The quality of content, commentary, and user participation on the social driven sites has really done downhill. Del.icio.us is in danger of following suit.
More evidence - I came across a post on the MyBlogLog blog earlier tonight where they were asking for feedback on where do draw the line between those pesky spammers vs. honest folks like myself who are just trying to grow our communities. My post from earlier tonight on the existence of possible spam-laden comments over at the TechCrunch MyBlogLog Community site also alludes to the spam-related issues that are currently plaguing the socially-driven sites.
Another example - del.icio.us spam - Here's a screenshot that I just took from del.icio.us with a lot of suspect links rising to the top of the Most Popular page. I took this screenshot at approximately 12:56am pacific time on January 11, 2007. Notice the two entries that I've blacked out below. Both link to adult-oriented porn with tons of ads, links, spyware, and such.
Very concerning trends for techno-geeks like myself who have come to enjoy the GREAT benefits these sites have [had?]to offer. Wouldn't you agree that there were MUCH more interesting things rising to the tops of the socially-driven sites about a year ago. Now the waters are muddied and the future of this amazingly interesting phenomena may be in dire straits. I certainly hope not.
It just goes to show you that it's not about the software and features driving these sites, it about building a community where users are encouraged to participate, contribute, and interact with one another instead of spamming and flaming the latest and greatest poster-of-stupid-content-that-gets-dugg-then-buried-then-flamed-in-comments.
Double sigh. Just when I thought we could bring web2.0 to the masses, I start seeing trends like this that make me think otherwise. Time to go throw a temper tantrum over on Digg.
1.10.2007
Techcrunch MyBlogLog Community getting excessive amounts of spam in comments?
It's amazing how vigilent us techno-geeks must be to stay on top of those pesky spammers. Look at the comments from the MyBlogLog Community page for TechCrunch in the screenshot below.
@ Michael Arrington - might want to break out your spam laser blasters and clean up some of these community comments. Or not... ;-)
Catholic dating? Myspace codes? seems awfully suspicious to me...and please do correct me if I'm wrong, as I don't visit the MyBlogLog TechCrunch community page all that often.
Personally, I'm sick and tired of the spammers. I'm sick and tired of Digg. I'm getting sick and tired of web2.0. Sigh. I think I was on to something in my earlier post on the impending doom of web2.0.
I want my Radio Shack TRS80, tape cassette drive, list of BBS's, and my trusty 300 baud modem back. Ahh the good ole days when life was simpler and there were less distractions. I've gone anti-digg and am starting to digg down all the stoopid stuff that amazingly makes its way to the top. unfrikinbelievable some of the garbage that makes it up on Digg.
Question to my fellow techno-geeks - where are you going for your daily dose of socially-driven content these days?
I'm still using Original Signal and PopURLs, but I'm finding myself constantly scanning my 48 Technorati Favorites. I've got 200+ feeds in Google Reader, but I just can't seem to get in the habit of using it.
That's all for tonight. More fun tomorrow.
1.09.2007
Finally. Flickr approves my account and removed the NIPSA lock so now my pics are searchable.
This is the response from Flickr after I sent yet another request for them to review my account in the hopes of making my pics searchable by others. Tanks Flickr.
Hello, bdeseattle!
This is an automatically generated copy of a help case reply:
Here's the response I got from Flickr after I asked for yet another review of my account to allow my pics (which were previously marked NISPA) to be indexed and available via search.
Hello,
Thanks for your question.
Your account has been reviewed and set to public status. In a short time, your photos will be visible in searches and public areas of the Flickr site.
Regards,
Monish
Digg swarm activity around Steve Job's Keynote @ Macworld
Wow. Check out the Digg activity on Swarm following Steve Jobs keynote.
http://labs.digg.com/swarm.
Link to Keynote as reported by Engadget.
Holy F@#$%@#$%@# --- Eric Schmidt just joined Steve Jobs on stage. Then he brings up Jerry Yang, co-founder and Chief Yahoo!!!!
Swarm is going frikin nuts. I want a MacBook, Apple TV, and iPhone, and I want them now.