This is the last straw for AOLers

OK, I’ve had it up to here with AOL. If it’s not one thing it’s another. I’ve constantly had trouble sending them messages with my mailing list. First they banned my IP. Then they said I wasn’t using RFC-compliant URLs (though AOL’s idea of an RFC is much different than the rest of the world). So I fixed those URLs (that were just part of my tracking system).

Then, I send out a mailing last night. And I get these errors back (this is all it ways…I’m not cutting it off intentionally):

SMTP error from remote mailer after end of data:

host mailin-01.mx.aol.com [205.188.159.57]: 554 TRANSACTION FAILED:

(HVU:B1) The URL contained in your email to AOL members has generated a high volume of complaints. Per our Unsolicit

Nice error AOL.

Just the same, because of this, I don’t encourage anybody with an AOL or Netscape.net account to sign up for my mailing list, as there’s a good chance you won’t get it. It’s not a problem with Dada, it’s a problem with AOL’s overzealous filtering of all things Internet.

Get a real email account and a real ISP, folks. You’ll be far better off.

January 20, 2004

Make an icon of yourself

It’s too bad these guys are overloaded right now, because I think this would be a damn cool thing to have: A Pixel Portrait. Then maybe you’ll be as famous as Chris’s head is.

January 19, 2004

Portland among “most stressful cities”

The Associated Press via KGW reports on a study by Sperling’s BestPlaces, which reports that Portland Oregon is the 6th most stressful city, following Tacoma, Miami, New Orleans, Las Vegas, and New York. The full study can be found here.

I’m sure that the entire state in general is probably pretty stressful. With the unemployment rate and the budget being all messed up, and having a pro sports team like the Jail Blazers being the only one in the state, I’d be (am) a bit stressed, too.

Hell, live in Deschutes County long enough, and it’ll drive you mad. Before long, you’ll start bickering at co-workers in public.

Thanks Rob for the link.

January 19, 2004

Study links marijuana buzz to ‘runner’s high’

Now I know why I loved running — it’s the best weed out there!

January 19, 2004

Well-formed Atom Feeds Only, says Nick

And I agree with him. Nick Bradbury, FeedDemon’s author, makes a great point about Atom feeds vs. RSS feeds in a couple of good posts:

When I started coding FeedDemon, I immediately ran into an ugly problem: a huge number of RSS feeds are invalid. This made it impossible to use an off-the-shelf validating XML parser, since it would choke on so many existing feeds. A number of very popular RSS feeds are shockingly invalid, and I couldn’t expect FeedDemon to compete in the RSS aggregator market if it couldn’t handle them. So, I coded my own XML parser, and made it extremely forgiving of problematic feeds.

Atom, however, is a new format, and there’s a chance we can get it right. Rather than wasting our time working around validation issues, aggregator authors such as myself can spend our time coding the features our users really want.

I agree. There are a pile of RSS debates between W(h)iner and everybody else, and, really, this is our one chance as a community to get the format right from the beginning, and not force readers to have to work around bad feeds.

Just as an aside, here’s my Atom feed. It’s the default MovableType Atom feed (I think), so it may not be valid, but the folks at SixApart are usually pretty good about keeping their stuff valid.

January 19, 2004

Patent lawyer puts claim to entire Internet

If this isn’t the most asinine lawsuit (and patent), I don’t know what is…

The core of the patent is a so-called method of assigning URLs and email addresses to a specific group. Each member will have a URL in the form “name.subdomain.domain” and an email address in the form “[email protected]”. This, it is claimed in the patent, lives outside the current Internet infrastructure: “The present invention overcomes the limitations of the prior art by providing a method, apparatus and business system that allow a user to quickly communicate online with a member of a particular business, professional or other group regardless of whether the member has an internet presence (e.g. e-mail address or website) and without the user needing to know or find the internet address for the recipient.”

January 19, 2004

The Color of the Web is #9C9C9C

Overlay 3000 URLs on top of each other, and the general color of the web is a nice gray.

January 19, 2004

New Images from the Mars Rover

Yoleo sent me these images taken by the Mars rover (click for larger version)

January 19, 2004

ASCII Movies

If you want to see some pretty cool ASCII/Text animations, bookmark this site, as it’s got a ton of them.

January 15, 2004

Google adds more features

Google has introduced more features like flight tracking, vehicle ID numbers, UPC codes, Area Codes, and US Postal Service tracking numbers (after adding UPS and FedEx tracking before).

While all these new features are all neat and nifty, I have one question: when is all this going to be integrated seamlessly? It’s nice that they finally have all the features listed on one page, and the system is smart enough that if you type things in right, it will just work, but how do people know it will work?

They’re starting to get news results implemented more into the results, but I’d like to see the image results, news results, USENET, catalog results, froogle, and DMOZ results all in one place. So, if I search for Microsoft, I’d like to see this, this, this, this, this, this, and maybe even this, this, , and maybe even this, all in one neat, clean, fast and graphic-free interface.

Will it ever happen? Probably not. It reality, Google will probably look like this before long.

January 15, 2004