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Archive for June, 2007

How Did Digg Founder Kevin Rose Forget to Register his Own Company’s Domain Names?

Kevin Rose founded Digg.com and recently launched Pownce.com, but his company – Megatechtronium – doesn’t appear to have reserved their own domains! Megatechtronium.com just has “Megatechtronium?” on it and (much more interesting) Megatechtronium.net is up for sale to the highest bidder.

Conservapedia: Your Number One Source for Blatant Hypocrisy and Flagrant Right-Wing BS

Conservapedia - What the Heck is that Anyway?

The Conservapedia is a conservative version of Wikipedia that is anything but what it claims to be: an “encyclopedia you can trust.” The Conservapedia goes to great lengths to indicate that Wikipedia is full of trivial and even misleading articles, and emphasize the high quality of their own offerings. OK, agree or disagree, that sounds interesting, right? Let’s check out their mission statement:

Conservapedia Mission Statement

A different take on things than Wikipedia, from a conservative perspective. Fascinating! Heck, I’ll admit – even as an active Wikipedia user – that both good and bad articles get published, it’s part of the shared knowledge system. However, right next to their mission statement they have a breaking news story that implies Wikipedia editors are in on a murder plot. For the moment let’s just look at the story, and table the obvious question: why, of all of the breaking news stories in the world, does theirs concern Wikipedia and some WWF pro wrestler?

Conservapedia Bashes Wikipedia

First, there is nothing to suggest subsequent edits weren’t made by people who read the first edit. What sounds like a conspiracy theory is actually a lone gunman scenario. Moreover, the term ‘editor’ to a non-Wikipedia user probably implies someone in a position of authority and oversite. However, the person in question was an anonomous user. In fact, anyone in the world could have made that edit! That is the equivalent of implying that an anonomous caller to a news tip line is a reporter. Whew, OK, let’s catch our breath here and look farther down the site. Oh wait, this sounds promising:

Non-Christians Welcome at Conservapedia

Well nice! Yes, the Conservapedia insists that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago but at least they’re open to other viewpoints, right? Well, right under the above section on the front page we find something rather surprising. Specifically, a pair of quotes, from the bible and history respectively, that show a rather impressively definitive perspective:

Conservapedia Bible and History Quotes

The biblical quote is fairly harmless – though it still calls into question how welcome unbelievers truly are on the site. Much more interesting is the historical quote. So wait, let me see here, democracy is built on a belief in God … which really only the church can provide a basis for. So, in other words, we won’t have a whole democracy in the long run unless we are a fully Christian nation? Wow. OK, so we welcome the heathens … so we can convert them?

At this point, what else is there to say? There are plenty of more hilarious, bizarre and downright strange articles to look at on Conservapedia. Still, if you want to learn more about the Conservapedia in a technical, logical or reliable sense, you might as well look at the Wikipedia article on Conservapedia. You’re at least somewhat more likely to get a straight answer that way.

FOLLOWUP: Beware of Dotster Hijacking your Subdomains

Well, on the tale of learning about GoDaddy linking to porn (previous post) I found an equally appalling testimonial from someone who points out that Dotster’s user policy allows them to take your subomains and use them for advertising. Apparently, this is buried in their terms of service but allows them (if you make a mistake in setting up your subdomains) to take unused subdomains and routing them to third-party sites or posting advertisements on them.

Kevin Rose Should Apologize to Online World of Warcraft Community

Pownce was just released – a new brainchild from Digg.com founder Kevin Rose – who apparently forgot that if he kept things entirely hush-hush there would be a storm of searches when Pownce was announced. As a result, some poor World of Warcraft fan with the user name Pownce is currently having his profile trampled via Google searches for Rose’s new project (for a while it was the number one result). Just one more innocent bystander trampled by the stampeding Digg mobs!

BREAKING: GoDaddy Links to Porn

Just imagine: you reserve a website for your family-friendly business and have it parked by a trusted name in domain registration, only to find your site full of links to explicitly adult content. Well, I just discovered that GoDaddy is taking domains, parked for unsuspecting consumers, and putting porn links on their sites! In the past, GoDaddy has been criticized for everything from shady business practicies to having somewhat scandalous advertising. This, however, takes things to an entirely new level.

AllSucks Parked by GoDaddy with Porn Links

Websites that Really Suck

There are many websites that suck, but fortunately there are always other websites kind enough to compile these into neat and ordered lists of the worst websites in the world – thus giving great PR to the websites that deserve it least! There are also websites that are terrible on purpose as a way to demonstrate just how bad a website really can be. You can even read up on how to intentionally create your own terrible website. Of course, you are already on the worst website of all time.

Allsux Retrospective Part 2: The Worst of the Sux

In this latest installment of the AllSux retrospective, I’m taking a look back at the site’s most controversial and popular posts! If you’ve been reading for a while you may or may not have seen these, but they are the ones that put the site on the map and brought in the readers it has today.

(5) This post about Ask, Google and Google-Sux got some attention mostly because I bashed a site, and its administrator came back at me guns blazing. However, their counterarguments got shut down pretty fast. In reality, I think it was the comments that drew more attention than the post.

(4) This post about the huge scandal about LiveLeak not being indexed by Google drew a lot of readership, though much of it was from a Spanish site I never was able to decipher!

(3) Of course, one of the biggest AllSux targets has been Digg.com – and this story that followed the huge Digg scandal was the most popular of them all. While other blogs (and major news sites like Wired) were confused, I stayed up all night and summarized what was going on.

(2) The Technorati experiment had a huge readership. I think that a lot of people are interested in the deeper consequences of using social networks, and this post struck a cord with folks.

(1) Of course the most visited page on AllSux is Allsux! That bodes well for this and my other (newer) blog, because it means that there are a lot of readers who want to see the lates and greatest, and don’t just show up to read a single post and leave. Thanks to you all – keep visiting, reading, and please leave comments! Also visit this new blog I’m helping develop: WebUrbanist.com.

An honorable mention goes to all of the articles on AllSux about Helium. Though none of these pages have individually made the top five, they have cumulatively done amazingly well. Why? Because other frustrated Helium writers keep finding them and sending me words of support as well as their own stories bout Helium.

What’s New with the Web Urbanist?

Well, the Web Urbanist has some new stuff this week – and a lot of comments and traffic to boot. Why? Some of it has come from this neat archive and link list related to creative and interesting guerilla marketing campaigns. However, most of it has come from this piece (also with links and images) related to the Google Street View controversy and privacy issues. However, it is definitely worth checking out this post as well – a follow-up on the first which has amazing, clever, strange and surreal street art.

Strange and Surreal Stuff on MyBlogLog

Scanning through MyBlogLog members you can find some really strange stuff. Take the RedGirl blog, for example, where you can download a I <3 You blog clock, even if you can’t understand a single word on the page. I’ll admit that some of the weird images on this blog are humorous and bizarre, but some of the captions make no sense.

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