When bad ads happen to good websites
Posted on November 21, 2005
Filed Under Internet & Technology | Leave a Comment
I’m certainly not one to criticize any site that has ads. There’s a cost to running a website, and the money for your time and bandwidth has to come from somewhere.
But there are a couple of websites, [MacDailyNews](http://www.macdailynews.com) (aka “If it mentions Apple or Steve Jobs at all we’ll put a positive spin on it and report it as news”) and [AppleInsider](http://www.appleinsider.com) that while they have decent content, they have the *most* annoying ads. These are Macintosh sites, catering to a live-by-Mac-only-or-die clientele yet they participate in the Tribal Fusion or Fastclick ad networks. These networks have gotten around the pop-up blockers in Firefox so every click brings up these annoying ads…the majority selling PC-only software! So obviously these sites really don’t care if their ads bring any value to their audience.
This morning I followed a link from [Digg](http://www.digg.com) that ended up MacDailyNews and not only did I get the stupid pop-up ad in Firefox, but it had sound! “Warning. your. computer. is. infected. with. something. I. forgot. what. it. said. before. I. clicked. the. box. away.” in some robotic voice.
Anyone who knows me knows that one of my pet peeves is a website that makes noise without asking me if it’s okay first. I’m either working in silence or I’m listening to something I want to listen to (such as a podcast). There is no time whatsoever that a site’s music or sound effect is welcome unless it is clear that I clicked a link where that sound would be expected (such as a “watch this clip” link or a link with the word “listen” in it). Ever. Nothing makes me close a site faster and vow never to return. To have an *ad* make noise is beyond offensive to me.
At first I thought MacDailyNews was just the kind of site that would sniff out whether the visitor was running on a PC or Mac and would only serve the ad if one was running on a PC. So I went to my Mac, and sure enough the pop-up came up from Firefox even though I have pop-ups blocked. The only browser that effectively suppressed the annoying window was Safari. I have to wonder if the MDN folks know that. I wouldn’t be surprised if they do. Although it begs the question: if the ad is not showing in Safari since most people run the browser with pop-ups blocked (with good reason) what’s the point of having the ad at all if the majority of your traffic is likely using Safari? I don’t get it.
Don’t ads through networks like Tribal Fusion and Fastclick pay only for conversions (people who actually purchase the product, as opposed to networks like AdSense which pay for clicks)? Unless the publisher is paid for how fast the person curses and closes the window, I can’t imagine where the value is. But that’s just me, and this is just my opinion.
Hear! Hear!
Posted on November 20, 2005
Filed Under Internet & Technology | Leave a Comment
[Jeff Jarvis:](http://www.buzzmachine.com/index.php/2005/11/20/riff-raff/)
>If I were a VC, I’d be investing in a company that tries to use tags and microformats and social interaction to link together the topics and opinions and information people care about on that distributed web. **For that’s the company that won’t waste effort and expense trying to get people to change their behavior and reverse the natural flow of the web out to the edges — ‘come to us and give us your good stuff’ — but instead takes advantage of the essence of the web and leaves control out at those edges by saying: ‘We know you have good stuff and we’re going to help people find it.’** The consumer proposition is then clear: This is how you find the good stuff. This will be the real successor to and competitor against Google. Oh, Google could do it, too, but judging by Base, they’re not doing that. They’re taking control rather than giving it.
Going postal
Posted on November 19, 2005
Filed Under Life | Leave a Comment
Okay, I found something to miss about Stamford…the mailman. Tom was such a nice guy. Always smiled and waved at me. If the weather was bad and the box was full, he’d bring it the doorstep and we’d chat for a few minutes. He gave me all sorts of juicy gossip about the people we bought the house from.
This afternoon, the doorbell rings. It’s our mailman. He’s not happy. Why? “Your address on your mail is wrong, and you better change it.” He’s angry at me! “What are you talking about?” He answers: “Your mail says 57 on it, not 67 (which is the correct house number) and I’ve been nice and delivered it to you but you better change it or you’re going to miss your bills.” Mind you, English isn’t his first language but that’s not the point. I told him that I do know my address and if someone is consistently putting the wrong address on our mail it’s probably a typo or mistake and we’ll take care of it. I thanked him and he walked off in a huff. Eric went to the box to fetch the mail (angry mail guy could have brought the mail with him when he came to yell at me, but noooo…) All the mail was to the correct address except for *one* letter, from Aetna, that was addressed to house #57 instead of #67. Eric will correct it with the insurance company on Monday.
Does the mailman seriously think that I gave out the wrong address just to p*ss him off? It sure seemed like it.
MT 3.2 issue: junk comment purging
Posted on November 19, 2005
Filed Under Uncategorized | 3 Comments
h4. Summary of the issue:
“Movable Type 3.2″:http://www.movabletype.org has a bit of a problem. Not quite sure I’d call it a bug, rather a feature that can cause a problem. You may not be able to log in to your site at www.domain.com/path/to/mt/mt.cgi?__mode=menu&blog_id=1 (the blog’s main window) without getting an “500 Internal Server Error”
The cause? Runaway junk comments. MT 3.2 includes Spam Lookup which is a fantastic plug-in for dealing with junk comments and trackbacks. Set it and practically forget about it. That’s the problem. You can easily set junk comments to delete after a set amount of days by going to settings -> Feedback and select how long to hold junk:
However, apparently MT 3.2 runs the purge *only* when you load the main blog page. If you only post entries through a 3rd party client and never log in, junk accumulates. And accumulates. And accumulates. I discovered this morning that “Eric’s”:http://www.9to5andotherwise.com blog had nearly 25,000 junk comments sitting there since June even though I thought it was clearing out every 30 days. The main blog page was timing out before it could complete the purge and hence the “internal server error”.
Lesson: If you use a 3rd party client to post to your blog, load the MT interface in your browser every once in a while. Maybe “Sixapart”:http://www.movabletype.org should have a way of purging the comments manually or remotely.
Update: “This is a known issue.”:http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/docs/3.2/i_known_issues/#entry-5871 but you have to know where to look for known issues to know about it. Now you know. 
In the meantime, I got the junk comments out with a little help from a “friend”:http://www.nslog.com. if you want to know how to fiddle in your MySQL database to manually purge the comments, read on…
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Welcome back
Posted on November 18, 2005
Filed Under Internet & Technology | Leave a Comment
If you’ve been having trouble accessing my site or any of the sites that I host (you know who you are), it was due to yet another network-wide outtage from Dreamhost. I’m too annoyed right now to link to them or include my referral link.
At approximately 11:05 am eastern Dreamhost went completely offline. No email, no sites loading, control panel down. This time it wasn’t an act of nature such as a power failure…it was just a “switch error” according to their offsite status page. Seems back to normal now. Total downtime: about 2 hours. Being down 2 am to 4 am is not great but okay, being down 11 am to 1 pm on a weekday is not okay.
Even though I’m no longer working freelance, I am still hosting a number of domains pro bono. It doesn’t cost me anything and I don’t mind doing it. But I’m the type of person who takes that responsibility seriously and I feel that when the sites are not performing or the email is not working I owe those users an explanation.
Dreamhost has an offsite [network status page](http://status.dreamhost.com) but they did a shameful job of keeping it up to date while the problem was happening. No time stamp, no update while they were finding and fixing the problem.
So I went ahead and used my [ISP's](http://www.comcast.net) free personal web hosting feature to create a bare-bones status update page. If I host your email or website and you haven’t received my email yet explaining the outtage and pointing you to my off-network status site, or even if you are also hosted by Dreamhost and you just want to know what I know when I know it, I present you: [Judi's down-n-dirty emergency status page](http://home.comcast.net/~sohnfamily67/). i’ve also put the link in the sidebar. Bookmark it now so you don’t have to go hunting for it later.
When Dreamhost is reliable, they’re excellent. But when they’re not… *sigh*
Part of me wants to switch hosts. It’s not about the money. The issue is the time and effort that will go into moving everything over…MySQL databases, email accounts, discussion lists, etc. It can be done, and I’ll do it if I have to, but I’m hoping Dreamhost gets their act together and I don’t have to.
