I was looking ...

I was looking for stories about the fires in the Black Hills in South Dakota because my family lived there as a kid. I found this article and then scrolled down and started to read the reader posts. Check out the scary pictures. Yikes!

Last night I reactivated my Hotmail account so I could chat with someone via MSN Messenger. This is an account that has been dormant for well over 6 months, yet less than two hours after activating it, it has started to receive spam, despite the fact I opted to not include my profile in any of Microsoft's directories. If Microsoft wants to win friends, they'll start looking into why their Hotmail system receives so much spam and start blocking it. Leaving the system wide open for abuse like this is a sure sign that they simply don't care about you. On the other hand, one of my Yahoo accounts has never received a single piece of spam, ever. My other Yahoo accounts that receive spam, I have traced the culprit back using this handy map. The culprit is one of two low-rent online stores (can't be certain) I once purchased some stuff through about two years ago.

AOL IM Spam: ...

AOL IM Spam: Has anyone else experienced this? Every couple of days I get an IM request from someone I don't know. They proceed to ask me who I am and report that they've received an email asking them to send an IM to 'camworld2', one of my AIM accounts. Is this a new kind of spam, nuisance email, virus, or worm? Anyone know what's going on here? I also get a lot of IM requests from people who have found my screen name on their Buddy Lists without them putting it there or having visited CamWorld. Puzzling. Update: Cory Doctorow emailed and said he calls this "SPIM" - IM Spam.

Editor & Publisher: Bull In China Shop: An American Reporter's Notebook From Beijing

I really do get some of the weirdest email/spam sometimes. Bizarre...

Here's a good ...

Here's a good Salon article on the Amtrak mess. [via Living Skies]

Moron Spammer: Are there people really this stupid still thinking they can use spam to make money? I have been receiving several pieces of spam over the past few days (since June 5, actually) from one "Jerry Maxwell" and sent to "Cameron Cameron Barrett" (not a typo). Like most spam I deleted it but one of them caught my eye. It's subject was "URL Fix!". Apparently Jerry Maxwell is not a very smart man and sent out his business-opportunity spam with a mis-typed URL. Jerry also isn't too bright and included a toll-free number in which you can call to learn more. I called. And got what sounds like a home residence with options to leave messages for Gerald Maxwell, Becky Maxwell and another one of the Maxwell clan. Is this guy really that dumb? If you'd like to call the Maxwells (1-866-202-0097) and breathe heavily into the phone, I won't stop you. If you actually get to speak with Jerry or Becky, string them along and waste their time. Pretend that you are selling them something. Ask for their email addresses. Be as much of a nuisance as you can be and maybe they will get the picture that unsolicited email is not a good way to make money on the Internet.

• URL Fix! (received 1 time)
• Cameron, Still Evaluating $3,000-$5,000+ per wk? (1)
• Freedom!!! (3)
• Cameron,Thanks for answering our ad! (3)
• Cameron, Are you ready to make money? (1)
• Cameron, $3,000-$5,000+ per week from home.. (1)
• Cameron...Coast Club Awesome Power... (1)
• Cameron, Still Interested In Making $1,000-$3,000 per sale?! (1)
• Cameron], New Coastal Finance Programs now available...
• Frequently Asked Questions II---> Make $1,000-$3,000 Commissions (1)
• Frequently Asked Questions I ---> Make $1,000-$3,000 Commissions (1)

I am going to attempt (again) to install SpamAssassin this week, since it gets nothing but rave reviews from those in the know.

Gary Wilke took his daughter's misbehaving Gateway computer to the lobby of a Gateway Country store and smashed it with a sledgehammer. I think this guy's biggest problem is that he bought a Gateway. I have a Dell box that I'm about ready to throw off the roof. My Apple G4 tower just hums along (running Mac OS X), with an occasional kernel panic but other than that runs pretty much flawlessly.

There's something disturbing about actor John Travolta, a die-hard Scientologist, flying his family around the world in his own jumbo jet on a "friendship mission." Can't quite put my finger on it. Creepy.

Amazon.com: Amazon has ...

Amazon.com: Amazon has signed up yet another e-tailer, this time VirginMega, the online operations of Virgin Megastores. I think Amazon serving as the fulfillment hub for online stores is a good idea. The only thing I don't like about it is that Amazon has yet to solve the problem of co-branding, or allowing a secondary brand to live co-dependently alongside the Amazon brand without brand confusion. This is what happened to Borders.com, my former employer. If you go to Borders.com you now get a page that looks and behaves just like Amazon.com. Of course, there is a small Borders logo on top of the page but it looks like an ad banner (this is not branding). The millions of dollars that Borders spends on branding and advertising each year is completely lost because Amazon's back-end cannot yet handle parsing out page templates that can accommodate a different brand. This is also true for Toys "R" Us, another site that has opted to use Amazon's fulfillment and e-commerce services.

Smoking Kills: I'd heard that Dave Winer was in the hospital but refrained from saying anything publicly, until now. I've met Dave a couple of times and he's a nice guy, if a bit opinionated at times. Without anyone telling me, I knew that Dave was in the hospital for heart problems simply because I recognized his lifestyle and knew that his years of chain-smoking had caught up to him. I recognized it because that's what killed my father, who I lost when I was twelve years old. My father was a very gifted teacher and had a way of reaching his students through example. Years later I am in contact (through the miracle of email) with my grade school classmates who were under my father's tutelage and they all say the same thing "Your dad was the best teacher I ever had." It's been over seventeen years since he passed away but I realize now that my father left us with his greatest life lesson of them all: too much smoking will kill you.

NY Times: Smoking Looks Even Worse. "The new analysis provides added reason to ban smoking from public places and workplaces around the world."

Jeez, spammers will say just about anything to try and rip you off. This one is an email pretending to be an organization to help combat "prison slavery". What a scam. Sheesh.

The good news is that I'm keeping busy. The bad news is that I don't have the time to keep up with reading industry mailing lists. WebDesign-L has over 2000 unread messages and CSS-Discuss boasts a massive 7030 7035 unread messages. If you'd all please just stop posting to lists for a while, I can catch up. Thank you.

I completely missed the news that Ann Landers died last Friday. You done good Eppie (her real name). May your legacy prevail.

Microsoft's Palladium doesn't ...

Microsoft's Palladium doesn't sound like a "generic safeguard" to me. It sounds more like a Trojan Horse hiding a special bonus: Big Brother. Microsoft is just shooting themselves in the foot with this initiative. No one in their right mind would buy a computer with this kind of embedded technology. I am, of course, assuming that we will still have a choice in operating systems when Palladium rolls around in a few years. Knowing how Microsoft operates, I'd watch for them to try and lobby the government (especially the Department of Homeland Security) to make Palladium-driven operating systems mandatory for all computing technology.

This is interesting. ...

This is interesting. Amtrak is threatening they will start shutting down their operations unless the government grants them a $200 million "loan". If I were the CEO of Amtrak I would shut down most lines and focus on providing a high-speed train service for the East Coast. I think it's clear that most travelers would prefer to take a fast train instead of a plane if the travel distance is less than 400 miles. And given the delays in air travel these days, the time it takes to get from point A to point B is likely to be similar. If Amtrak were smart they'd also look at creating a wireless Internet network along their main routes using technologies similar to how cell phones hand off a connection from cell tower to cell tower as you travel. With the prices of 802.11b hardware being so cheap, it's definitely worth looking into. If you are a business traveler, how much would you pay for constant Internet access during your train ride from New York to Washington D.C.?

The Economist on emerging wireless technologies.

A new report ...

A new report from Jupiter Research says that companies are overpaying for their Content Management Systems. This just reiterates what people have been saying for about three years now.

IBM's web site ...

IBM's web site has a great Ease of Use poster called "Simplifying Tasks". Go to the page and read the text description of the product. Truly ironic. I wonder if it's intentional. [via Derek]

Bizarre Japanglish, wacked phrases in English that appear on t-shirts and posters in Japan.

MSNBC: Why software is so bad...

Greedmaster is "...an up and coming, full-service design firm offering corporate branding, interface design, and site hosting." Aha, but when you completely rip off the site design and copy from industry leader 37Signals, how up-and-coming are you?

Seth Godin proposes that email needs to be monetized (on-tenth of a cent per email) and that it would work towards stopping spam. Seth apparently doesn't understand how most spam is processed. Most spam is sent through compromised or poorly-secured mail servers overseas and at companies who don't monitor their systems regularly. When a server is known to be "open" or compromised the spammers all tell each other and everyone uses it (and a bunch of other servers) to pump their spam out before it gets shut down or the security hole is patched. Monetizing email will do nothing to stop this process. The only thing that might stop it is educating sysadmins (especially overseas) about the damaging nature of spam. Since most spammers are using the resources of others (those compromised mail servers) to do their dirty work, it might also help if there were harsh legislation to punish those who are caught.

McDonuts, ...

McDonuts, New York City - 8th Ave between 35th and 36th Streets.

It happened again. ...

It happened again. Searching Google for something, I came upon purple visited links within the top 10 results. It's a sign that I am using Google a lot when I can unintentionally arrive to two separate sets of search results containing the a same link even though the two search queries are completely unrelated.

I finally got my Amazon Gold Box. After hearing about it from others for days, mine showed up. It's an interesting concept. Instant coupons, good for only 60 minutes. If you don't purchase within that time limit, the offer goes away. New offers, in batches of 5, show up in your Gold Box very 24 hours. Amazon is pushing the envelope on impulse buying. What I'd like to see is specialized Gold Boxes or smart Gold Boxes that gave you instant coupons for things you buy a lot of, like DVDs. All five items in my Gold Box were electronics, which I don't normally buy online. DVDs and books are much more of an impulse buy for me than electronics.

This horribly written ...

This horribly written article from BBC news points out some obvious things regarding web design and user expectations, but as I said to a friend recently "Usability does not equal simplicity in design" regardless of what Jakob Nielsen says. I give the journalist credit for trying but it's clear that more research could have been done.

A good pair of articles from Forbes Magazine about the absurdity of our aging patent system. [via fsckd]

A very disturbing article over at Salon that warns that the FCC is giving away a broadband monopoly to just a few companies which may result in metered bandwidth and restriction to certain web sites. There will always be ways around restrictions but I'm sure I am not the only person who doesn't want to see our broadband access turn into a poorly thought-out cousin of the television industry where there are 200 channels of crap and yet you pay upwards of $100 a month to view such crap.

Michael Fraase has written a great summary of the current efforts of certain companies to move the market for broadband acces to switch to content-based billing. It does not look for good for consumer choice.

Congratulations to the design team who redesigned the new Citysearch pages. Great job! It's a remarkable improvement over the old site.

He's certinaly no Salman Rushdie; singer Eminem has received a terrorist threat because he made fun of Osama bin Laden in one of his songs. Does anyone care?

Earlier this week I had written up something for CamWorld about the use of the word "homeland" by the Bush administration and how it could be misinterpreted when used as part of the phrase "Homeland Security." I realized that what I wrote was too politically hot and did not post it. I'm not the only person to think this. Peggy Noonan's most recent article echoes many of my thoughts. This is not the first time Bush's people have made a blunder with naming and labels. Remember the whole "Infinite Justice" (now "Operation Enduring Freedom") naming mistake? [via rc3.org]

An interesting project I've known about for a while has finally launched. Meetup is a company that seeks to bring people who know each other online together in the real world by organizing regular "Meetup events" based on common interests. Like the Blog Meetup Day.

Microsoft is starting to push for a standardized DVD-writing technology for Windows. I agree that standards are good but if Microsoft backs a standard that their competition does not (e.g. DVD Forum which is made up of Apple, Pioneer, Samsung and Hitachi) then we'll have yet another fractured market with competing standards, incompatibility and headaches for the end user. Gee thanks, Microsoft.

Ummmmm, okaaaaaaaaaay....

Happy Birthday! Today, ...

Happy Birthday! Today, CamWorld turns five years old. My very first post was June 11, 1997, in what seems a very long time ago. So much has happened over the years, I am proud to say I'm still around, still writing my weblog the way I want to write it. I want to take this opportunity to thank my loyal readers who have continued to tune in every day, even on days (or weeks!) that I have not posted. As I enter my sixth year of blogging, I have a lot to reflect on. I look back at my posts from a few years ago and see who much I have matured and how much my opinions have changed. I would be a different person without CamWorld; I know that for certain.

BusinessWeek: Ballmer's Microsoft. A well-written but typical article on the effects Ballmer has had on Microsoft since taking over control after Gates stepped down. Dance monkey boy, dance! I jest; it's good to hear Ballmer has slimmed down (52 pounds). It will be interesting to see what he does with Microsoft's $50 billion in cash. How about a refund?

I really like ...

I really like the new Apple TV commercials. They do the same thing that "The Dell Guy" commercials do, only they do it better. Making computing easy for the average Joe; that's the message.

I just ordered Made in Silico, the new novel by young Canadian writer Jim Munroe. I've raved about his two previous books and I hope his new one is just as good. Jim is going against the grain and selling the book himself online, telling the traditional book distributors and booksellers to take a hike, and keeping a much higher profit margin for himself.

All the best conversations happen via AIM.

Here's the paper that I mentioned last week about open source security. A summary by Richard Forno:

"This thing reads like an undergraduate term paper. Very little is spent talking about OSS and 'security' -- as their press release full of 'terrorism' jargon hinted at last week -- rather, most of the paper talks about the economic impact that OSS presents to the country and software industry, intellectual property theft, innovation, legal interpretations, etc. As a result of such FUD-inducing hysteria, it's probably - and sadly - going to get widespread media coverage..."

Here's a more-balanced report on open source, prepared by the Department of Defense. It's far better than the FUD-laden (or should that be FUD-Bin-Laden?) report linked above.

The design team at 37Signals are holding design experience workshops at their Chicago office. These guys are the experts. If you are in the midwest, it's well worth the money to send your design teams.

If you haven't ...

If you haven't yet checked out these super-bizarre, funny Quicktime movies from HotDogBoy, you should now. Weird but good.

Brookings Institution: Can Homeland Security Plan Make Us Safe?

Something most people don't think about: Why Homeland Security Must Include Food Security.

Since the FBI and the CIA are having such a hard time finding Osama Bin Laden, I asked Google and it told me. Here he is, alive and well, blogging.

Reminder: The NYC Mozilla 1.0 Party is this Wednesday night at Remote Lounge.

Safety Guide. Hmmm...

The world's smallest web site. I hope you have good mouse control. [via TrippySwell]

First Monday: Cave ...

First Monday: Cave or Community?: An Empirical Examination of 100 Mature Open Source Projects

In Norway a museum is asking computer hackers around the world to help them figure out the password to their electronic archives after the person who set them up (and the only person to know the password) died. Fascinating.

Buyer Beware: I have finally had it with SprintPCS. I have given them many chances to correct their billing problems and rectify the numerous complaints I have had over the past year with their billing practices. After being told by person after person at SprintPCS that there is nothing they can do for me and after being told that they refuse to credit me the excess charges I believe to be unfair, I have decided to ditch them once and for all. I have a four-year relationship with SprintPCS and have had a lot of good actual phone service with them in the many different cities I've traveled to. But after spending thousands and thousands of dollars over the years on numerous phones and phone service (at one time I had 4 phones on my account with them) they have pissed me off to the extreme. They are willing to do nothing for me, even though I have a long record of paying my bills on time (even when I have had massive minute overages) and a long customer complaint sheet on record. SprintPCS's phone technology is good and their digital network is decent, but their customer service and billing practices are completely unfair and deserve some kind of investigation. I know I am not the only person who thinks they need to ship a jar of vaseline with their bills every month. Sadly, SprintPCS has just lost another customer because of their complete lack of flexibility regarding customer complaints.

• When you sign up for service they do not tell you that you can save $10 a month by not signing up for something called SprintPCS Advantage, which means your service is month-to-month instead of a year-long contract (it is month-to-month by default). What this means is that you pay an extra $10/month per phone even if you've had an account with them for years. Completely inexcusable. This needs to be made clear upfront when you sign up.
• Every phone has a $35 account activation fee, even if you have an established account with them. This is ridiculous. If a customer is committed to getting multiple phones with you, then you shouldn't be making them pay more just so you can squeeze more money out of them.
• Their Ringers & More service is a joke. $4 a month plus airtime charges for something that should be given away for free. I checked out the available ringers and images and most of them sucked pretty hard. If the technology were not so damn proprietary I could easily download or create my own media for the phone. Instead, SprintPCS limits you to a pathetic selection and then charges you through the nose for it.
• Their "Claire, Virtual Customer Service" voicemail service is a complete joke. Everyone I know who is forced to use hates it. When I call it I just press the # key until i get to a real person. Does anyone know if there are any articles written about how unsuccessful and lame this solution is?
• Don't get me started on how utterly bad and slow their www.sprintpcs.com web site is. It should not take 60 seconds for me to log in on a T1. Here's a clue: Perhaps investigate to see if Microsoft ASP technology scales well when you are doing massive database queries.

More nightmares.

Someone is having ...

Someone is having fun on the New York Craigslist. First there was the Equal Opportunity Boyfriend personal ad (a trimmed-down version of this old joke) and now there is Greetings Earthwoman, a personal ad from an alien from the planet Krobernorz. At least these ads are creative, far better than the typical "I'm horny, come on over" ads typically found in the Craigslist personals. For some good laughs, check out the Best of Craigslist.

Mozilla 1.0: Word on the street is that Mozilla 1.0 will be released very soon, possibly today or tomorrow. When that happens, Netscape 4.x is officially dead in my eyes. Update: Indeed, they have released Mozilla 1.0 today. Congratulations!

Matt Haughey has learned that Netscape 4.0 Communicator Final was officially released on June 11, 1997. By strange coincidence that is the exact same day and year CamWorld started.

I'm not surprised at all. Now it appears that Microsoft may be behind the funding of a new study that criticizes open source software as being too insecure and vulnerable to attack. I'll say it again, do you really want to trust a company that resorts to such alleged tactics with your personal and private data? Yeah, I didn't think so.

A reader sent ...

A reader sent in this article that compares the Internet stock bubble to pyramid schemes. This article is exactly right except for one fact: There are still some very good Internet companies that came out of the bubble and have proven revenue streams. To lump them all together like this is being shortsighted.

Jakob Nielsen sells ...

Jakob Nielsen sells out. Wait, this isn't news. Not to pick on Nielsen though. Some of his writings and observations are very good but often it seems he is more recognized as "an expert" by the media than he is by his own peers. I'm not sure why that bothers me, but it does.

Admittedly I am not much of a game player so when I bought my Playstation 2 last Christmas it spent much of the past 6 months collecting dust. I would ocasionally pop a game in and play for an hour and then shut it off. A month or two back my brother bought Grand Theft Auto III and didn't tell me much about it. This weekend I finally popped it in and starting playing. All I can say is "Wow." This game is what the PS2 was made for. I am completely amazed. GTA3 is very playable, longer than God, and takes considerable effort to become bored. I'm hooked (for now, at least).

LinuxJournal: Getting to know your fonts.

O'ReillyNet: New security attack identified: Denial of Responsibility (DoR). "DoR attacks used to be of a simple, garden-variety type where a computer manufacturer obscures the fact it has shipped a system with bugs (sometimes known to the company in advance)."

SpongeBob Squarepants: Yesterday I decided to go to KMart at Penn Station to pick up a few things I needed for my new apartment. Boy, was that a mistake. I happened to choose the same exact day and time that SpongeBob Squarepants was doing an in-store appearance. I have never seen more screaming and bawling children upset that SpongeBob needed to take a break. As I was walking out the door with my bags I saw KMart staffers valiantly trying to escort SpongeBob to the elevator. I'm not sure what Hell is like but those few minutes in KMart surrounded by screaming and upset children sure gave me a good idea. I secretly wanted to yell "Run SpongeBob, run!"

Brilliant!

Note: Sorry for ...

Note: Sorry for the lack of updates. The past two weeks have been very busy. I had a double-whammy of an insane work deadline plus moving my apartment from Brooklyn to Manhattan. I'm getting settled in but am still way behing on answering email, updating CamWorld, and various other things. Those who emailed me with concern that I was shut down by the FBI or was hauled off somewhere for interrogation need not be worried. This is still a free country and free speech is still in the Constitution (the Bush Administration hasn't passed that ammendment yet). But seriously, I'm going to try and update more frequently, as my spare time will allow.

I love this Javascript puzzle. It was written by the guy who won Google's recent programming content.

If an monkey can adopt a puppy why can't human beings get along with each other? I think we still have a lot to learn from our primates.

You might want to read Amy Wohl's opinion on Linux United. I don't necessarily agree or disagree with her, but she has some good points.