April 2007 Thursday, April 12, 2007
MySpace Bans Photobucket (but can I get them to ban me?)I can’t tell you what sort of bullshit this is, but I’m going to try: MySpace has removed all hotlinked photos and slideshows (delivered in flash) hosted at Photobucket because they contain (sometimes) paid advertising. The advertising in question is a teaser campaign from Spiderman III. Here’s a bit of the story from PCWorld:
Basically, only MySpace can junk up its pages with gratuitious advertising. MySpacers aren’t allowed to advertise other things. Well, they’re allowed to solicit sex and promote their albums and movies ... but they’re not allowed to hotlink to other advertisements. Whatever. My issue is that MySpace has been letting its users abuse my site for years. Yes, I’ve contacted them. I’ve contacted them. I’ve emailed them. I’ve even talked to folks I’ve met socially that work there. They don’t give a crap. It’s my problem their users don’t understand hotlinking is like making collect calls. It turns out that it is possible to selectively block hotlinks from one domain. Halleluiah! But now I discover that all I’d need to do is employ some .htaccess magic and have those thousands of hotlinked photos (yes, last month was 230,000 hotlink hits, the majority from MySpace according to the IP addresses logged) into some sort of ad that MySpace would feel threatened by. See, all this time I was thinking I had to put P()rn up there. Turns out that’s not what would catch their attention. Ads for, I dunno, something owned by some other media conglomerate might work. Only problem is I can’t afford to host whatever image that might be (230,000 hits even at 10K each is kind of sizeable). Wait a second ... I think I’m onto something here ... I can sell the adspace! I can find someone who’d like their ad served up to 230,000 impressions in one month all over the web (though pretty much on MySpace). The sale of that might cover the extra bandwidth I’d have to buy on my hosting plan. So either I get my domain banned and don’t have to worry about bandwidth drains in the future ... or I make money with the ad impressions! Here’s a bunch of articles: POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:02 pm Curious News • Monday, April 09, 2007
Sperm Whales Run DeepI have a Google News alert set up for Whale (and one for Dolphins, but I get a lot of sports news on that one). Today’s report featured news that there was a Sperm Whale that washed ashore in Santa Barbara. Here’s my favorite quote:
Yeah. So anyone else see anything wrong with the first sentence? It’s not like there are a lot of different kinds of Sperm Whales out there, like dolphins. I’d say the second sentence is kind of funny, too. Yes, it’s very unusual to find whales up on the beach. Except, you know, when they beach themselves or wash ashore. POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:26 pm Whale Watching • Wednesday, April 04, 2007
a friendly chat with verizonThe battery on my little LG phone has been behaving poorly, and since the phone and the replacement batteries are no longer made, I decided to get a new one. It’s been three years since I signed up with Verizon, so I qualified for their “new every two” program. I picked out a new phone on their website. It was supposed to be $150 but they gave me a $100 credit plus an additional $50 instant rebate. I put the phone into my cart and went to check out. The total was $0.00. I confirmed my billing address as my shipping address, gave them a phone number (it’s a fedex delivery) and hit purchase. Then I got another screen that wanted a credit card. It said that I owed $0.00, but still wanted my credit card. Say what? And why my credit card anyway, I’ve been paying my bill for three years ... we have a business relationship, they can send me a bill and all that. I was frustrated. I didn’t want to somehow be charged for something else, and I don’t like putting my credit card into websites for things like “guaranteeing a reservation” or “trial offers.” So I clicked on the little icon to talk to a Verizon Sales Rep. Here’s my little ditty (this is the actual transcript I cut and pasted ... all names are real, or at least the ones really assigned within the chat window). Chat InformationPlease wait for a Verizon Wireless sales representative to assist you with your order. Thank you for your patience! At the end of the chat, sure enough, a little feedback window popped up. I gave them my comments as Alexander suggested:
So, I get to the end of this tale to say that yes, California does charge sales tax for the RETAIL VALUE of the phone. They say that this phone sells for $288.99 (yeah, right, I wouldn’t pay that much for it!). I ended up owing some $23.92 bucks in tax. Whatever. The point is, why couldn’t they calculate that BEFORE I had to input my credit card, and why didn’t they mention that’s why they were asking for a credit card on a null total on the ACTUAL PAGE. POSTED BY Cybele AT 5:02 pm Curious News • |
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During November it's all about me writing a novel. Sometimes it's about whalewatching. You know, and then there's other stuff.
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