Category: General

Valleywag claims that Second Life is a pyramid scheme. They’re in part right. When I was a lot more active in SL (I’m down to maybe once a month these days and I’ve long since cancelled my paid account) pyramid style banking schemes were common and I probably lost $10-$20 investing some of my money in them. But before you say sucker, I was willing to lose the money, and the schemes always presented in a legitimate way, usually as banks or land investment schemes promising reasonable returns. I’d acquired a far few Lindens and was looking to park some of them somewhere, and hence I did…and subsequently lost them. The ability to cash them out is also a problem, as Valleywag notes, SLby no means has a properly constituted liquid market. Having said all of that I don’t share the general dislike Valleywag has towards SL, but really so much of it is based around porn and gambling I’m not sure that it’s fair to hold it up as being the wonderful thing so many people hold it to be.

Tags: Second Life

Yep, I’ve suffered a bout of grumpy old blogger syndrome. No, I’m not claiming my blog was the first one, but this thread at 901am got me started. The new owners of The Blog Herald (no link love anymore) took it upon themselves to remove my name from the author column at the bottom of the site (note they’ve since removed it all together). Yes: they can do as they please, it’s there site now, but personally I found it a slight against me, 3500 posts, many of which I’d think would still drive large amounts of traffic to the site…indeed I still find old things I’ve written at the site when I’m looking for things on Google, on a regular basis.

I’ve done nothing wrong to the new owners, indeed I covered the buy positively and even participated in some of the conversation about how the buy is representative of an ascendant Pinoy blogosphere…and yet I get removed. Matt Craven, the previous owner *ALWAYS* showed respect (BTW Matt, if you’re reading this, what are you doing now?) and I was happy to return it in droves, the new mob however seem to be about as reliable as a pack of galahs. Indeed, do they want a fight? Pissing off my mates like Krug doesn’t help. Maybe I might consider doing something in the blogging space again. It won’t be another Blog Herald, but something newer, something unique, and something that will whip some ass! 🙂

It really is a sign of a strong and mature market place when quality sites regularly hit the market, and BlogCatalog proves the point. The site is currently for saleThe site sold in 1 day at Sitepoint for $40,000 USD. Congrats to all involved.

(thanks to David for the tip).

Bryanboy shares his experiences with MidPhase. It’s a case of the Shared Hosting scam striking again, the one where by so-called high use shared hosting packages aren’t really because usually buried somewhere in the fine print (never in an easy place, nor disclosed up front) is a clause about CPU/ server usage which states they can cut you off for using too much of a server, usually without warning and with no redress. It’s not just MidPhase, most hosting companies are in on this in one form or another, they sell their high use packages on the basis that most people will never use those levels, and when they do they get suspend accounts, or terminate them: the exact problem I had with Site5 back in 05.

Dreamhost is the only company I’m aware of at the moment that has an open policy on CPU usage where they promise NOT to disable your account, but where necessary to talk to people hosting with them about alternatives should issues arise.

To any people in the hosting business reading this: I’m not anti-shared hosting, and I do understand that you guys have to balance your server loads on shared accounts, but it’s the fraud in promoting memory and traffic levels that could NEVER be met without using a decent portion of CPU on a shared box that I’m against, exactly what has happened here with Bryanboy. If you want to be an honest hosting company, disclose upfront straight away (upfront, not in the fine print) any limits you put in terms of server usage for shared host accounts, and most of all, promise never to suspend or take off line an account without first discussing options with your client (ie talk first, instead of acting first). If you’re doing this, or plan to, let me know, and I’ll happily give you a plug.

Tags: Midphase

The first of the blog directories…and I mean *THE FIRST*, the EatonWeb Portal is up for sale at Sitepoint, current bid at the time of writing is $4k with a BIN of $15k. From what I can read it’s fallen on tough times, zero revenue, although it’s still got a PR of 7. At $15k I don’t think it’s good buying, but if I had a spare 4-5k it would be a good buy…and of course anyone out there who buys the site is literally buying a slice of blogging history.

I’d been hoping to bring this up in Gday World this week, but I never got the chance, because I’ve always seen the Microsoft Vista Laptop Bloggers scandal for what it is, aside from a marketing ploy, but a marketing ploy that had a focus..on hardware. The reason Microsoft sent out those laptops wasn’t alone to get publicity for Vista, but get get publicity for Vista based on the premium hardware requirements the OS demands for optimimum use…other wise they would have just sent out DVD’s with the OS on it for people to review. And now Dave Taylor agrees.

Maybe it’s just the new year/ silly season spike (comment spammers normally ramp up spam at this time of year because it’s less likely to get picked up as people are away) but it would appear more than ever that comment spam is getting even more out of control. I cleared approx 15,000 comment spam out of duncanriley.com yesterday, although I can’t remember the previous time I’d done so. Tonight there was 1700 new pieces of comment spam, thankfully caught by Akismet, but none the less had still managed to lodge themselves on my server, using both disk space and resources (memory and CPU). 1700 + in 24 hours, and this blog is by no means a major blog in terms of traffic nor presence. I respect and understand why people comment spam, but at some stage or another the marginal cost of comment spam has got to get to a point where some one, some where will try to take action against it. CanSpam extended to comment spam would be a start.

More good news on the games front for Nintendo. To quote:

There is no possible way to say this enough times: great graphics don’t make great games. Perfect Dark Zero looked like a Titian, but it was a snooze. Wii Sports?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùa mini-sports anthology that includes golf, boxing, tennis, baseball and bowling?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùlooks like Colecovision. The little guys on the screen don’t even have arms. But it’s hilarious, and it shows off the power of the motion-sensitive Wii controller to put you right in the game, sweating and yelling and trying crazy spins and lunges and angles. The tennis game alone is worth the price of admission. Which is nothing, since it comes free with the Wii.

Tags: Nintendo, Wii

Apologies to those who have commented in the last couple of hours with no luck, the WP db bug has struck again, it might have been the 15,000 odd spam comments sitting on the install causing an issue, which have since been deleted. I received a number of notifications of comments that were simply blank, so it may have been you. Apologies again, and I’m watching closely.

It soon will be. Ask anyone who has ever owned a Falcon in Australia, including the BA, they’ll explain. I learnt after the EA, thankfully. 🙂