Net Insanity |

Blacklisted!

"A quick Google search revealed all kinds of complaints. One company had their entire domain shut down because of SURBL."

I’m the administrator of a small, niche website for a popular 70’s/80’s actor. Once a month he writes a column for his fans, and when it goes live, I post the link to his Facebook fan page. Imagine my surprise when after I did so this month, the result was fans getting this lovely warning when they clicked on it:

“Facebook has teamed up with SURBL to help protect you online. The link you are trying to visit has been identified as potentially unsafe by our trusted partner. Visit the Facebook Security Page to learn more about staying safe on the Internet. SURBL: This website was classified as abusive”

Well I can tell you that’s a complete lie. There’s nothing wrong with the site. The webmaster and I went over it quite thoroughly and found no traces of malware or hacking of any kind. It’s as clean as a whistle. Once that was determined I went back to the warning and clicked the “Learn More” link, where I discovered that SURBL stands for Spam URI Realtime Blocklists and that they are lists of URLs that have been found in spam messages. Seems like a pretty stupid way to blacklist if you ask me. Website owners can’t control where their sites will be mentioned. What if a member is banned and in retaliation, decides to send large amounts of spam with the site’s URL included, or spoofs the headers to make it seem like it’s coming from that domain? Read more about Blacklisted!

All The Spam That's Fit to Print!

The New York Times wanted to reach out to get 300 past home delivery customers and get them interested in coming back by sending them a special deal via email. Sounds like a simple and ordinary marketing task, yes?

Sporcle

Mentally stimulating diversions.

I had an abysmal geographical knowledge. It got embarrassing when I didn’t know exactly where Qatar was located, so I sought out ways to improve my sense of geographical knowledge. Almost immediately, I came across the quiz website Sporcle, which provides timed quizzes to help improve world geographic knowledge, but also trivia nerd knowledge, including popular literature, sports, science and literature. Read more about Sporcle

Best Buy Turns Into the Grinch Who Stole Christmas

Best Buy apparently forgot about the power of social media when they abruptly canceled hundreds of orders they originally accepted and promised in time for Christmas.

The War Against Happy Holidays

"How someone wishes you good tidings isn’t important."

Happy Holidays? Them’s fighting words!

No doubt you’ve seen the status updates, shared images, and other content on Facebook declaring war on anyone who dares wish them “Happy Holidays”. The insanity is rampant, supported by the reposts of years old urban myths claiming the White House won’t accept any religious themed Christmas decorations or that President Obama has officially renamed the White House Christmas trees “Holiday Trees”. None of that is true however, nor are the absurd claims that corporations and the government are insistent on taking “Christ out of Christmas”. Read more about The War Against Happy Holidays

College Humor's Funniest Viral Videos of 2011

"The Year in Funny"

College Humor has compiled a list of 2011's funniest videos, and the months during which they were released. I had forgotten about the eHarmony dater who really loves cats and the ham face girl, and I had never seen the adorable Mini Warbler (from Glee) video. Let's take a look at some of College Humor's picks for the funniest, most inspirational and most disgusting videos of 2011: Read more about College Humor's Funniest Viral Videos of 2011

Woman Unfriended on Facebook Sets Fire to Ex-Friend's House

"Insane? That goes without saying."

A woman in Iowa found herself kicked off a friend’s Facebook page and became so enraged that she set fire to the woman’s house. The victim, Nikki Rasmussen, and her husband Jim were forced to flee their home in the middle of the night after Jennifer Christine Harris set fire to their garage in an attempt to burn down their home with them in it.

The Sit-In Will Be Webcasted with OccupyUpdate.org

So, this whole Occupy Wall Street thing has been going on for a month now. What started as an act of civil inconvenience in New York City spread throughout the nation and then the world, creating pockets of justified but nonetheless aimless protest in multiple time zones. The speedy pervasiveness of the movement is thanks to the Internet's use as the primary tool of communication between demonstrators. As I'm often wont to point out, the Internet is more of a mirror than a window. It often doesn't show us anything beyond ourselves, only an intense reflection of what we already are. The Internet presence of the Occupy movement is no exception. Consider the website OccupyUpdate.org. While there's really no "official" voice of the movement, OU.org has a good handle on authority because it's little more than a series of Livestream links to cams placed at many of the protests around the world. Some are better organized than others.

Youtube Nation: Ritchie, Jobs, You

Let's talk about layers. Layers are what make computers work, in every sense of the word. Software is constructed as a series of access layers that keep the whole from being too obtuse or cumbersome. A user's degree of control of a computer relies on his or her ability to understand and manipulate multiple layers of hardware, from the chipsets in the tower, to the input ports at access points, to interface tools like keyboards and mouses. Even the business and culture of computers operate by layers of creation, marketing, use and feedback. Recently, the world lost two of its pioneering layer agents in computer technology. Everybody knows about the passing of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, but there has been a much quieter period of mourning for Dennis Ritchie, the man whose work made the inventions of Steve Jobs possible.

Craigslist Files #145: Housing Crisis

American culture is really freaking quirky, we Americans just tend not to notice because we're acclimatized to the nonsense. Consider our obsession with houses. There are several layers of crazy in American suburbanism and most of them have to do with the mythologizing of housing at every step in the process of acquiring and living in the suburbs. Even the image of the real estate agent has been turned into a sort of living cartoon: A secret ball-buster in a gem-colored blazer selling lies and misdirections with boundless enthusiasm and air freshener that smells like cookies. In reality, being a real estate agent for the majority of the housing options in America must be terrible. I'm sure there's a degree of glamor in being an agent for rich-people properties, but how truly stressful could it be to sell gorgeous, opulent property to people who are defined by their will and ability to buy things? But the other 99% of real estate agents selling the other 99% of the country's property to the other 99% of the country's people live an uphill battle. Most homes are not attractive, so the agents that sell them have to get creative. Unfortunately, they aren't marketing professionals and it shows. Observe, the craigslist Real Estate For Sale section.