I have had to take the adbrite ads of the site, as I discovered yesterday that they they had started publishing ads that I had not been informed of, had not approved, and by the looks of it was not even going to be paid for!

The adbrite rules are very clear, I get to approve all ads before they go on site, and I made sure the settings were set that way.

Maybe the move to another server (more on that later) confused them, but I dont see how, as the normal ads were still showing, so they knew which site they were ‘on’.

As I was getting way to many ads showing, and they were for ones I had NO CONTROL over, I pulled the code and stopped the ads completely until they get back to me.

Problem is, I have no idea how long it will take for them to get back to me, going by past experience it could be a long long time, if ever, as support at abrite is not very good in my opinion, to put it mildly

I still cant believe that there system failed in such a manner, the last thing I wanted to see on site was a advert for a online pharmacy - Im so sick of online pharmacies spamming the site that I never want to see another!

So, if you had a ad with adbrite on this site, then I apologise for pulling the code off, adbrite should not charge you for any days that the ad is not showing, but I would check to be on the safe side, as they dont seem very on the ball…….

I dont have much luck with monitors, some people can keep one for years without any problems, but not me. My monitor is playing up badly, at first it was not to bad, just going a odd shade of yellow from time to time - but now the picture keeps shrinking and stretching at random.

A good thump seems to bring it back to normal, but past experience tells me that it wont be that way forever, and sooner or later thumping will not work.

I do have a backup monitor, but dont fancy dragging it out of the attic, nor using it, I have become quite used to a 19″ screen, and going back to a tiny one isn’t my idea of fun.

Guess a new monitor is on the shopping list (or a really good second hand one )

Meanwhile, back to blogs - I have deleted quite a lot of blogs from LS Blogs today, lots of expired domains and blogs that for some reason had all posts removed. I know deleting entries like this on a regular basis means I wont have “impressive” numbers of blogs listed, but at least the ones that are listed are not mainly dead ones, which is more important than pure numbers in my opinion.

Its funny, but you often dont realise just how much you use, like, or love something until its gone…..

I have been checking alexa rankings, out of curiousity for quite some time now, I know they are not exactly a scientific or reliable method of ranking, as they are based upon users having a toolbar installed, and are quite easy to fake, but still I like looking at how various sites are doing.

But I cant at the moment, and have not been able to for a few days, as it turns out that they are moving from their dark dank basement to shiny new offices, and whilst they are moving, their servers are stuck in the back of a van.

I really hope that van is locked up somewhere safe, I dont want to read that some car thief drove of with the whole of alexa over night, or broke in and stole their servers!

Hopefully they will be back up soon, and I will be able to satisfy my odd compulsion

After a nice suprise with Adsense today, I have decided to buy some more memory for our PC’s soon. The nice suprise came about when one of the people that had signed up to adsense using LS Blogs earned their first 100 dollars.

When that happens, google pays the referrer a nice bonus, and thats what I will be using to purchase some more ram with.

If you dont know what adsense is, then where have you been for the last few years!

Adsense is a service, provided by google that lets people place advertisements on their sites or blogs, and its loved by many bloggers, but its also disliked by many others who do not like adverts.

If you are not using it, then it wont hurt to give it a shot, as it is free, the worst that I can imagine happening is people saying hey we dont like those ads! In which case, you can always take it off, but when its on you can sit back and hope for some earnings from google.

It wont make you rich, unless you have a incredibly well trafficked blog, and I do mean well trafficked, and the content of your blog will make a difference to, as the ads are contextual.

This means that the ads are based upon the content on your blog, so as you can imagine some topics attract higher amounts of competition than others (more competition = more people bidding for the ad, which means more money for the publisher)

If you were to sign up, I would suggest reading the help that google provides, as they have some good tips on how to place the adverts, and how to make the most of the service.

Most important of all - do not try to cheat the service

I will repeat that one again

Most important of all - do not try to cheat the service

as if you do, when you are caught, and you will be, you will lose out on the chance to participate in the service again, and you can kiss goodbye to those ill-gotten gains.

Google has been around long enough to be able to tell if you and your friends are going click mad to earn money, its easy to spot, and they will boot you when the spot it. So dont do it!

Google adsense is best thought of as a bonus, if you make anything from it, then great, go and treat yourself, if it takes a long time for the treat to arrive, then so what, its still a free treat at the end of the day.

Serious bloggers with a lot of traffic could earn more, and faster, the only way to find out if it is for you is to try it.

Getting back to the memory, once I have that, I will be able to tweak lsblogs even more, as at present my pc cant really cope with the demands I am placing on it, and its slowing down my development cycle.

In time, I will get around to getting the bits needed to complete another spare pc, which I will use solely for background tasks needed to keep lsblogs ticking over, which should make the site run a lot smoother.

With all the talk recently of Google defying the US government, I kindof missed the other news that
Google has bought another company.

I spotted it when browsing the directory, and it was mentioned on PC Talk, more details here

As you can see if you read their post,

Google buys radio station

Submitted by Editor on Wed, 2006-01-18 22:47.
General Technology
Google
has agreed to pay $102 million in cash for dMarc Broadcasting, whose
technology links radio stations and advertisers to automate the radio
ad selling process.

Will we be getting google adverts on the Radio next? Will you have to do a jingle for your site if you want to compete in the future? Is google making it a case of the rich get richer, and the poor, well screw em….

Or is it just purchasing it to learn from people who have possibly learnt a little more about the advertising game than they themselves have? Who knows, only google knows for sure.

I really, really hope that google does not start inflicting the world with radio ads for everything they advertise on adwords, and I really hope they dont even consider doing TV ads.

The playing field is fairly even at the moment, as it does not cost much to do a adwords campaign most of the time (well a small one that is) and you dont have to hire a sound recording studio to do a text ad.

If they start with the radio ads though, those with money will be able to afford ads on the radio, and the rest wont stand much of a chance. Google seriously needs to think before it turns the internet into something more commercial than it already is.

And dont get me started on Google defying the US governement, what are they doing their?

Privacy is important, but they have to act within the law, if they have to do something, then they have to do it. Its not up to them to set the laws of their land, nor to tell their elected officials what is right or wrong. This sort of thing is bigger than that, it should be put to public vote.
Just because they are billionaires does not make them better than anyone else, and if they dont like the rules, they should not be playing the game. I dont like the fact the governments want to spy more, but I figure they are doing it for good reason, like perhaps to convict the serious criminals, or catch terrorists. I doubt they are looking to see what cooking recipes Mrs Smith is searching for……

Perhaps google does not want the government to see this sample of search queries because google is fully aware the government may not like what it finds, after all I bet there will be a heck of a lot of searches for illegal activities in amongst that lot, and google probably does not want the government to turn around and say - you have to inform us everytime someone searches for “how to make a bomb” or “how to kill a president” for example. They just want to sit back and say they do no evil, even though its clear that their tool can be used very efficiently to help people do a lot of evil. But then again, so can any tool, or search engine really for that matter.
What is so wrong with giving a list of search queries, if its just a list of searches made, then its just the terms that were searched for, no who searched for them, so no one’s privacy is really at risk here is it?
Is there more to this? Are they terrified that someone may see just how much data they actually collect? Maybe, power has corrupted them, or maybe they just want to DRAW ATTENTION TO THE INTERNET.
Because that is exactly what they are doing, they are so big, they have drawn attention to themselves, and are now putting politicians in a position where they will probably turn around and start passing all sorts of laws, rules and regulations regarding the internet.

And when that happens, and the internet has been so tied up in Red tape thats its not worth using, we can all thank big old Google for not thinking things through - again.

Course, it may not happen, but who thinks the politicians are going to like google defying them?

Well, thats just my opinion, could be wrong, have been before, and will be again.

Maybe its just a storm in a teacup, and one side will back down. But who knows. Also, who knows just what the implications of this are long term, if search queries are made available to the goverment.

Sorry for the slight decrease in acceptance of submissions recently, but I have been asked to help out on another forum, and it has been taking up a fair bit of time today, with some people throwing their dollies out of the pram so to speak.

Regular service will resume soon.

Traffic has been steadily increasing since lsblogs started, at the moment, as you can see from the Alexa Graph below its spikes up and down quite a lot, but its getting close to the 20,000 mark.

For those that dont know alexa, and how it ranks sites, basically a ranking of 1 is the best, traffic ranking gets more accurate the lower the ranking gets, and at the moment we are averaging our highest levels yet.

Since adding the categories on the main pages, the page view count has also increased,
quite dramatically, so not only are we getting more visitors, they are looking at more pages when
they visit.

I still accept roughly the same number of blogs each day, but I do reject more blogs each day than I used to, as part of getting more exposure, means more spam submissions.

Once a site gets “known” it starts to attract submissions from the most unlikely of sources, you would be amazed at the amount of businesses that submit their main websites as blogs, and expect to get in the directory. Often many of them come from the same submitter, and I almost feel sorry for them when I hit the ban button, and ALL their submissions disapear for good.

But, on the plus side, we are getting lots of quality submissions, which is another reason I really want to get the search functions perfected, to make it easier for people to find what they are looking for.

The other day, I managed to make a few adjustments which have speeded up the site, there is room for a lot more improvement, so dont expect things to stay the same, they can only get better. It just takes time, thats all - but lsblogs is here for the long term.

Spotted this on Dirty Tricks

Dirty Tricks: Microsoft Helps China Stifle Freedom of Speech

Microsoft Helps China Stifle Freedom of Speech

USA Today

Microsoft
Corp. has shut down the Internet journal of a Chinese blogger that
discussed politically sensitive issues, including a recent strike at a
Beijing newspaper.

It appears that Microsoft is getting some flack for shutting down a blog which the Chinese government took a dislike to, freedom of speech is very important - but In this instance, as the Microsoft Blog service in question was actually hosted in China, I dont see how they had much choice.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

The service is in China, so they have no choice but to obey local laws in that case, it would be a different ball game if the blogger had registered the blog on the US or UK sites, and I wonder if Microsoft would have taken the same decision in that instance?

Personally I dont agree with the way things are censored over there, but I dont live there, so dont have first hand experience of the issue, Im only going on what I have read.

However to me, the mere fact that a government can close down any site that disagree’s with its views makes me wonder about the way things are ran over there. In fact, the censorship alone tells me more about a country than any blog criticising a governement ever would. It makes me think the government in question is either a bully, or very insecure, either way they can’t take it when someone speaks their mind, if the person is not in agreement with their policies. I could be wrong, they may have very good reasons for what they do, Im sure Hitler thought he had good reasons for acting the way he did, Sadam Hussein probably thought he had good reasons for keeping his opposition silent. But is it right? To not allow people to question what is going on in their own country, or even to report on it?

But what can a governement have to fear from individuals writing words? Surely everyone is entitled to their opinion, or else they become slaves, living in fear of speaking a word out of turn.

But it is their country and they can do what they please, whether their people like it or not by the looks of things. I dont know how their political system works over their, but Im guessing people cant vote them out, or they would have done so by now. I also wonder if china is censoring peoples opinions even if they dont live in china? Is this being censored? Are the ponderings of someone in the UK getting hidden from the people of china, or is it only the chinese themselves that cant write what the feel? What do the majority of people over their actually think about this issue, is it a non issue to most of them? Or is it something of great concern, but as they are not allowed a free voice, people dont know its of concern?

The funny thing is, by censoring the blog in question, they have brought about worldwide attention to how they operate, and that has probably done a lot more damage to the publics perception of China than that blog ever could have done.

Go figure.

At least in most of the world, censorship like this is not a issue, yet…. But everyone does need to keep an eye out to make sure it does not creep in slowly, the internet is a global community, and politicians are often written about online - I bet not all of them like that, and I would not be suprised if they want to change the laws to make sure people cant speak freely at some point in the future.

But thats just a possibility, it may never happen, unlike in some countries where it is already happening.

What do you think? Should people be allowed to blog, report news and speak freely? Or is it ok to for the few to control the many?

Whilst browsing the net, I came across this interesting article on CNET news,

Create an e-annoyance, go to jail | Perspectives | CNET News.com

Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime. It’s no joke.
Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting
annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without
disclosing your true identity.

When I first saw this, I though, hmmmm that will affect a lot of people online. From trolls in newsgroups, to commentors in blogs, not to mention forum posts, websites and chat rooms.

Its starting I thought, the US is starting to try to control the internet and tell people what to do….

Redaing on, looking for some proof of the pudding so to speak we find

Buried deep in the new law is Sec. 113, an innocuously titled bit called “Preventing Cyberstalking.” It rewrites existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet “without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy.”

Fine, at last something I can check out, as one of the problems with the internet, and with journalists is they often dont have a clue what they are talking about.

So off I went, and read the link.

Now the problem I have, is I am not a lawyer, so following legal documents is like me trying to crochet a blanket, blindfolded with one arm tied behind my back. Its difficult, not least because I cant crochet!

But I read through it, looking for information about what the article said, and sure enough what do we find.

(C)
makes a telephone call or utilizes a
telecommunications device, whether or not conversation or communication
ensues, without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy,
abuse, threaten, or harass any person at the called number or who
receives the communications;

Ok, so the words “without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy” are present, just like the article said, maybe the article was correct? Maybe you cant post anything online ever again using a nickname, just in case someone, somewhere is annoyed.

I found that rather odd, surely the President of the United States isnt that stupid as to pass a bill like that?
Surely!

So I read further down, and guess what I found….

(h)
Definitions

For purposes of this section—

(1)
The use of the term “telecommunications device� in this section—

(A)
shall not impose new obligations on broadcasting
station licensees and cable operators covered by obscenity and
indecency provisions elsewhere in this chapter; and

(B)
does not include an interactive computer service.

Note, how the original qoute clearly says “makes a telephone call or utilizes a
telecommunications device” and note how the term “elecommunications device” is defined above.

From what I can see, and remember I am not a lawyer, this is only my simple understanding of the matter,
it says to me a “telecommunications device” DOES NOT include a interactive computer service.

Which, especially if you read what a interactive computer service is, which to me it clearly says is the internet and so on, means this new bill has absolutely nothing to do with annoying people on the internet.

So if clearly states that that qoute does not apply to the internet, why are people going on as if it does?

Am I missing the plot here? Why are political correspondents and others getting so worked up about this?

Have I misinterpreted what is written? It seemed fairly clear to me, but then again Im not a lawyer.

Is everyone just jumping on the bandwagon and not checking out facts? Or am I way of base here?

I am working on improving the search results on LS Blogs, the search functions have been a little lacking up till now, and they still need a lot of work.

Over the coming months I will be fixing the search routines to provide a much better service, at the moment I have just tweaked the code so it only returns the first 300 matches found, this stopped the memory error that some people may have experienced.

Its not perfect, but at least it doesnt crash now….

I will be adding advanced search functions at some point in the future, and making the search results a lot more relevant and easy to use, but it will all take time - but should be worth the wait.

No doubt the search will go through a few changes before I am finnished, as I learn from mistakes, and find the best way forward. There is a lot of data to search, and I dont have a army of coders working for me (its just little old me doing it all…), nor do I have an array of computers working behind the scenes.

So I need to make sure that whichever method I choose isnt to intensive for the server to cope with, as it has to serve the site out, as well as perform searches or index the data at the same time. Plus, finding a way to filter out duplicate results, which is a problem at the moment will be fun

Ideally I want to make the search fast, and easy to use, with the emphasis on returning useful results that are easy to understand.

Plenty of ideas on things I can do, its just finding the time, and figuring out the best ways to do certain things.

With a bit of luck though, this time next year the search will be a lot better