Every Irrelevance | Scottitude.Net

Crybaby Geeks Piss and Moan; Sitemeter Rolls Back

All over the Net, crybaby bloggers and geeks are whining like little bitches about Sitemeter's scheduled upgrade that clearly didn't go as planned. You'd think it was the end of the world, for Gord's sake!

Yeah, I use Sitemeter but it affected me worse than the crybabies; at least they could log-in and see something, I couldn't get anything more than a DNS error. Did I cry? Did I whine? Hell no, I opened a support ticket and checked my email a few times.

More important than the botched upgrade is that they notified customers via email well in advance of the scheduled migration and published a detailed rundown of what we needed to know about the process. More important still is Sitemeter's reaction to the SNAFU: taking ownership of the problem, admitting they may have jumped the gun, and implementing a rollback to the original platform.

Responsibilty and customer focus are sorely lacking in the world today (both real and virtual) and I applaud Sitemeter for demonstrating both.

Eventually things will be back to normal; I'll be able to pinpoint the pervs Googling Shawn Johnson's ass and all the arrogant self-important blowhards more concerned with monetizing their boilerplate bullshit blogs filled with useless I-know-more-than-you noise can count their friggin' click-throughs.

In the meantime, take some erudite and sagacious advice from my good buddy Penn Jillette:

        copyright © MMVIII Scottitude

Scottitude.Net: A Word About Scripts & Cookies

Like many blogs, Scottitude.Net | Every Irrelevance incorporates a few benign scripts to provide multimedia content and to monitor basic traffic flow. None of these scripts contain malevolent code or serve any purpose beyond enhancing your viewing experience and enabling me to continue to publish content that you the readers, are looking for. Personally, I abhor covert scripting and redirects so much that I've continued to keep the site 100% ad-free since day one. I'm not aware of any other site that can honestly make the same claim and I'm extremely proud to provide a Web destination unlike any other.

To avoid any confusion or appearance to the contrary, I wanted to inform you that in order to provide more accurate traffic reporting SiteMeter, my primary tracking source is overhauling their service on September 13th & 14th and the upgrade will incorporate the use of cookies. These cookies will ensure a more accurate tracking of unique visitors. SiteMeter officially announces the upgrade and explains the entire process and reasoning behind it in this blog post.

If you use SiteMeter on your own blog or Web site you've been notified by email but I would like to assure my readers (and oglers) that Scottitude.Net has always been and will continue to be completely free of covert scripting and cookies. And ads!

Thank you for your continued interest in my off-the-wall perspective and the Internet's largest depository of reality TV screencaps.

        copyright © MMVIII Scottitude

EFx2 Blogs

By now, you may or may not know that EFx2.com the home of EFx2 Blogs is currently off-line as a result of a series of phishing attacks. Keith, EFx2's developer, is committed to bringing EFx2 Blogs back to life but it may take some time. After all, like the rest of us, Keith has to work to pay the bills and EFx2 has been a private labor of love and never a business or revenue generator.

Many of us have come to enjoy the strong sense of community Keith helped us build and look forward to the day when we can return home but in the meantime, people need a source for information and a place to express themselves.

I set up the EFx2 Info blog some time ago to keep people informed when there were hiccups and it's still available for Keith to post any updates or relevant information regarding the rebuilding process. I'll do my best to share whatever details I can get and will gladly invite any interested members of the EFx2 community to participate by offering "guest author" status to whomever asks. You may recall a similar program for "addicts" of a former blogging community and this would work the same way.

If, like me, you find Google's Blogger site to be a vapid mass of noisy nothingness lacking any sense of community and would like an effective alternative I encourage all of you to check out Vox, a free community (and privacy) oriented blog site owned by Six Apart. Whether you actually sign up and blog there or not, you can join the public EFx2 Bloggers Group to share your thoughts, let everyone know where you're blogging and keep in touch.

Regardless of where or how, I sincerely hope to keep in touch with everyone.

Blog on.

        copyright © MMVII Scottitude

Big Brother 8 Update Widget

Cast your vote for America's Player, find out more about the Big Brother House and house-guests and lots more. Or get your own BB8 widget.

EDIT:
Big Brother 8 has long since come and gone so the widget originally posted below is dead and the script yields a rather confusing error message so it's been removed.

Howard Stern vs. The Superficial Friends

Heavy.com's The Superficial Friends are funny enough but throw in an hysterical parody of The Howard Stern Show, complete with the Whack-Pack. and you have cartoon gold! The animators at Camp Chaos are clearly Stern fans; they captured all the subtleties and "inside" jokes that you're likely to hear on any given day.

Check it out...

        copyright © MMVII Scottitude

The Reality and Truth About MySpace

MySpace Jumps the Shark

I have always loathed MySpace and the pathetically clueless socially inept "community" members who use it to visually assault my (and your) eyes with their ridiculously unbearable "designs".

MySpace is nothing more than a digital popularity contest (think hotornot.com on steroids) and "hangout" for the current generation of neglected children and the pedophiles who love them.

Sure, a few worthwhile bands frequently update their pages and that is worth something, I guess, but beyond a handful of artists that really matter and a smaller number of artists that want to, MySpace is perfect example of everything an engaging personal Website should not be.

Last.FM - Radio Scottitude

Listen to Radio Scottitude or channel-surf other stations. Save this shortcut and listen anywhere.

Last.FM - Join the social music revoluion.

        copyright © MMVII Scottitude

TechMeme: Cry-babies Rule!

Intrigued by the chatter one self-important blow-hard blogger started with a foot-stomping sniveling "pay attention to meeee" tantrum, I read through several of the related links featured in the number one spot at TechMeme. As a point of reference, the TechMeme link and any others hereafter were selected based on content, context, and relevance. That may seem a digression but it's actually the focus of the argument.

Apparently the cry-baby's sniffle-fit was, in a nutshell, because Engadget credited a different source instead of linking to his 4o minute video of a tour of an Intel chip factory when said cry-baby was sure he had himself a bona-fide scoop. A 40 minute scoop; on-line, that's an eternity.

Reciprocal links for the sake of reciprocating link-backs or linking with an absolute expectation or sense of entitlement is self-centered and arrogant. If a porn-blogger links to one of my Survivor screen-caps, it's ludicrous that anyone believes me obligated to reciprocate with a link-back to a porn site. I might email or PM the guy and say "thanks for the props" but that's about it.

If it's a different blog that's not objectionable and relevant to my content, I try to to always work in a mention. At the same time, if I'm impressed with their blog or site, it's gets recommended in a post and sidebar link.

If you have some time to waste and see the whole "A-list" concept for steaming pile it is is, follow the trail over at TechMeme. There are some relevant discussions about yesterday's blogs being today's big media and how that impacts "big(ger) bloggers" along with sharp snipes like:

"You’ve not seen [REDACTED] in full-on whine mode. There’s not a lot of rational thought. If you’ve ever seen a two-year old kicking and screaming because he couldn’t get a cookie, it’s about the same level of intelligent thought, although the two year old wins points for having a concrete issue."

And:

"...he was a low level evangelist looking for his “in”. He never made it up the ranks for a simple reason: he is not bright...

His ideas are usually off, he isn’t thoughtful, he doesn’t understand customers (both enterprise users and consumers).

...using marketing to make people believe he is a valley insider. He isn’t. Go talk to any of the VCs, they laugh at him. Go talk to any of the big player companies, the grin and are polite, but they laugh and laugh.

His blog isn’t worth reading, he has no power or influence. Just another whiner that wants to be popular."

Not mentioning cry-baby's name or linking to his blog illustrates my point of selective link inclusion. The TechMeme thread is relevant; another self-important, attention-whore blogger trying to drive traffic by any means necessary is not.

Some times too much noise is just too much noise.

STFU!

        copyright © MMVII Scottitude

FeedFlares?

Okay, there seems to be a problem with the FeedBurner FeedFlares. I painstakingly altered my templates and they worked yesterday but don't seem to be working today.

Maybe they'll pop up with the next ping.

We'll see...

        copyright © MMVI Scottitude

TypePad Adds Flare

As another example that Six Apart is in tune with their customers and intent on building successful partnerships, TypePad bloggers can now add FeedBurner Feed-Flares to each post. TypePad has already partnered with FeedBurner to simplify the subscription process and this is the next logical step.

Rather than requiring separate tags manually coded at the bottom of each post, the FeedFlare script is added through your blog's configuration panel (or, if you're using an advanced template, by coding the script into your selected template) and automatically appear at the end of yoru post based on the features you select when you set up your FeedFlare.

There are currently several options such as email this post, email author, tag it to a social "bookmark" site, view the applicable CC license, etc. Since the API has been released for open development, we should some increased functionality in no time.

I'm trying it out on this post as we speak I write so I'll have a chance to see how it looks published and linked up.

More irrelevancies to come.

        copyright © MMVI Scottitude