Last Saturday morning my blog was down for the count.  I had received an email from Are My Sites Up stating that Creeva.com was down.   It told me that my blog went down late night on Friday.    I verified on Saturday that it was still down, and I had wanted to do some writing on it.  I waited.    I attempted to call tech support but after being the first caller inteh queu for over an hour I surrendered.  Saturday came and went and no blog.   Sunday morning site was still down.

I called into tech support again Sunday afternoon.   I was fifth in the queu and I was moving forward about 15 minutes at a time.  Either people ahead of me were getting help, or they were giving up like I did the day before.   I held on and finally managed to get through to a person.  Upon talking to the tech support I learned that my hosting server had moved.   Not only had it been moved, it was moved back in October.

I had known that they were going to move servers, but the e-mail announcing this stated that most people would not notice an changes.   What this says to me is that a new server will be put up with the same IP address with very little down time in the migration.    This however was not done, so all of my data was moved to a new server.    Since October I had been updating my information and blog on the old server.   When I managed to correct my DNS entries at my registrar, I discovered my blog was out of date since early November.   I was missing literally hundreds of articles once you take into account my lifestreaming posts that don’t make the front page or RSS feeds.   I was livid.

I called back and they stated they would get it synced back up off of the old server.   Ten hours later there was no change.     I waited until Monday when I knew there would be more then just support in the office.   Since I’m a reader of the Consumerist I followed on of their recommended ways of dealing with this is, I sent an executive e-mail carpret bomb here is what I wrote:

To Whom Can Help Me,

I have been a customer with AN Hosting (anhosting.com) a division of Midphase Hosting (midphase.com) since 12/24/07.   In October you were planning a server consolidation/migration plan (notice sent out is given below my e-mail (removed from blog article)) – which stated that some of our accounts would be migrated to new servers.   At that time I created an offline backup of my domain. Things went on working as they normally did until Friday night 1/16/09 7:15 PM.  At this time my site went offline.  This was verified by the service Are My Sites Up? (aremysitesup.com).   I was not aware and didn’t check my email to be informed about this until Saturday 1/17/09 early evening.   I called the support line and though I was the first customer in the queue I waited over an hour before I gave up.

On Sunday 1/18/09 I called in with my problem.  It seems my “free” domain was working properly – I don’t really use this site so I hadn’t checked it.   My add-on domains however were not working at all.   My main site which is an add-on site (creeva.com) was not working.   The technician stated that I had been moved to a new server and the old server was turned off, but my data should still be available.   My old server IP address was  [REDACTED], the new server you had migrated me to was  [REDACTED].   The technician on the phone stated that if anything was wrong with the site to call back and they could pull the back-ups off the old server.  I thanked the technician and got off the phone to start relocating my DNS and testing the site.

Before I migrated my DNS I adjusted the local host file on my computer to make sure everything was working on my main site.  Upon loading it and checking the entries it seems at the closest date I could pin down my latest blog entry was written at 11/10/07.   It’s hard to pin down since in October due to other concerns I had written and scheduled blog posts for most of the month of November and some going forward to early December.   The data may even be from October because I use these functions of wordpress.  I called back in to the support line and explained the issue and asked if I could get the backup loaded that he previously mentioned.

He opened a ticket for me and stated he would get this assigned.   In the ticket language he was vague – here is was he entered on my behalf:
Hi, I am having issues with my addon domain(creeva.com). My account was migrated
to another box. I am not able to view the latest version of my website, its
pointing back to November 10. I’ve been posting updates to my blog. Can you
please look into my account?

thank you

I’m not sure why it had to be opened under my name using the “I” reference – since the technician opened the ticket (ticket number  [REDACTED]).  I would think this is misleading to the technicians working on the case.   I checked out the language after I got the auto-email generated when the ticket is assigned to another technician.    I added the following entries after the auto reply to clarify the situation:
None of my add-on domains to my account are up to date – these have been
constantly updated through the last few months – yet under the current server
migration I was told I was migrated about 3 weeks ago.  So there would still
have been a discrepancy of a month during hte migration.

The migration letter stated that it would be seamless to the end user -
normally in most scenarios this would include making sure that the data was at
the latest possible and maintaining the same IP address – since I’m sure I am
not hte only customer that use another registrar.  If monitoring this was made
more apparent in the letter going out about the migration I’m sure this would
have saved the technical support some headaches.

I was finished some major changes on my add-on site creeva.com at about 4PM
1/16/09 – if a backup of the previous server ( [REDACTED]) can be found after
that time that would be terrific.  Is it Midphase’s policy to make backups
before taking a server offline?

Also wanted to ad – my blog at creeva.com may seem up to date more Nov. 10 – but
everything going through a publishing right now was written to publish at a
future (now past date) and the blog is catching up with it’s scheduled posts.
The current date of the latest post is not an accurate reflection of the latest
data from a back up – the bet I can ascertain the date was at least Nov. 10th
if not earlier.

A while later one of your technicians had checked on the issue and issued this reply:
Dear Brent,

We have investigated your issue. We could find that your account was migrated
from our old server  [REDACTED] to our brand new server  [REDACTED]. Please let me know if
you are using any ftp clients to upload the files. If so please use the details
that we have mentioned below to upload the files and update your website. Please
check the settings of your FTP client.

Server name : [REDACTED]
Server IP :  [REDACTED]
Username : [REDACTED]

We have also checked the blog site creeva.com and entered a post and the post
was successfully updated. We have attached 2 screenshots along with this mail
for your reference. Please check it.

Please let me know the exact issue regarding your subdomains. It seems that you
are uploading the new updates to our old server. So please use the above details
in your ftp client so as to upload the files to the new server.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Regards,
[REDACTED]
Technical Support Representative.
Hosting Services Inc.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since he didn’t seem to understand what I was asking I reiterated my request – also notice in  [REDACTED]‘s reply that he gave me a third IP address that I should be using:
I need the data off of  [REDACTED] – which is where my add-on host was before
yesterday – I wasn’t using an FTP client – I was directly entering the data via
the wordpress interface – I checked my e-mail  logs and at no time was I alerted
there was going to be a server move where I would have had to adjusted the IP
address records of my add-on domains, if I had received that I would have been
more pro-active and migrated the DNS earlier.

The problem is I need the lastest information from Friday off of the
[REDACTED]  – one of the advantages on your home page is the fact that you
do nightly back-ups – so the backups should still be available.

I’m missing approxiamately 200 posts on my blog – affiliates update
information, theme updates – and that’s just for one add-on domain.  I also
find it odd that you give me the IP address  [REDACTED] – earlier tech
support gave me   [REDACTED] – which restored my access to the site  – I added
the IP address you gave me and added it to my hosts file locally before I
updated my registrar – I was hoping it would give me a more up-to date version
of my blog – it didn’t and just delivered me to a CGI page and the site doesn’t
load at all.

The problem is not access – and I can re-adjust my own FTP software – my
problem is data -freshness

Can I please get my data restored from the old server?

While you stated that during the migration – “In most cases, the migration is completely seamless. We have brought in a team of experienced migration experts to ensure this effort is handled with the best of care. If you should have a problem relating to your site, please do not hesitate to contact us: support@anhosting.com. We have a team standing by 24/7 to help out!”  I question the migration experts that performed this migration.  Currently at my place of employment we are performing similar actions with our infrastructure – and there was more customer outreach then you have given.   Since you know what are add-on domains are are your servers – any customer with a third party registrar should have been alerted by e-mail that their DNS records would have had to be adjusted.

Further action should have been done to sites on the old servers that were still getting traffic.  Since my site was receiving regular and steady traffic that should have been a tip off to action by your IT personnel that the customer should be alerted to adjust their DNS records.   This is all a failing on your team of migration “experts” by things that could easy have been prevented by a little due diligence on their part.

The biggest coincidence is that over hte last week I’ve been in discussion with someone to move over to your service.  I also had planned on migrating one of the non-profit organizations ove to your service next year to a VPS plan when their contract runs up.  Currently in good faith I can’t advise this to either of those accounts.   This disruption and loss of data is just not acceptable when it could have been easily prevented by checking what was going on the old server before you took it offline.

I am merely asking to have my backups from  [REDACTED] restored to my account.   Is this possible or do I have to make some other plans?  I am also sending the Consumer Advocacy blog “The Consumerist” (consumerist.com) a copy of this e-mail.   While the migration diligence seems to be in error you can still correct this problem and an unhappy customer by performing adequate customer service.   One of your features of An Hosting that is touted on your site is ” Backup Storage -Nothing is more shocking and heartbreaking than losing ones data and hard work. We back up our servers nightly to ensure you always have ANHosting to depend on!”  I am solely asking for my data to be restored as close to 4PM 1/16/09 as possible and my faith that I can “always have ANHosting to depend on!”

I sent this e-mail out to the American general manager of the company, the consumerist, the European Executives, and support.   I received an e-mail from the general manager and he got a technician working on the issue right away.   The issue was resolved in a couple hours.   They pulled my data off the old server and synced it to the new one.   There was still some minor issues that I had to correct – wordpress needed to be re-upgraded, but all my SQL databases were up to date.   They also kept me informed during the whole migration.

I really wish I could have had that level of care taken of me on Sunday, or at least a time frame when the data could have been restored.    When they try to equate a blog with a normal static website, it just shows ignorance on their part.   It does show the problem I have with doing regular back-ups – which is in the architecture stages right now.    The only thing I ask of my hosting provider is to live up to the promises they have given me.   I don’t open tickets – really I’ve talked to them only about 3 times in the last year.   The first being a simple problem I had while waiting for my account to activate, the second inquiring about the share SSL certs, and the third this issue.    I’m glad even though I “yelled” across the Internet more then I should have, that they came through and everything is now working.

Image from here

I’m the crossposting whore – I write once and I have everything designed to publish everywhere (well at least when things aren’t broken like Ping.fm to Myspace blogs).   This however is not syncing, it’s distribution and publishing.     A true sync across all platforms would be amazing.

The example I would love is I make an edit to a blog post, then every place and profile that I’ve published that post on would update with no manual intervention.   Since I can’t do that, Creeva.com is considered my authorative location for all blog posts.  If I wanted to edit those other sites I would have to do each one manually.  Granted I’m sure without using syncing it saves on bandwidth.

Things that I can sync?   Well my contacts and calendars with Plaxo, but that kind of is just the tip of the iceberg.   My biggest issue write now is syncing Flickr photos to Facebook.  I am aware of Flickurbook, but this still uses your local machine – there is no reason this can’t be done “in the cloud”.    It’s all soooo sloooooow.   Seriously at the speed it moves I could just reupload all the pictures to Facebook faster then this thing goes.  It’s free, it’s the developers fault, it’s great what he did; but it’s not the solution I’m looking for.

Finally using my distribution chain I chase all over the web to answer comments.  I don’t mind doing that.   However, wouldn’t it be better if across all platforms and services these comments were kept in sync?   Then I could use the spam filters I wanted to from a central location.  I could reply to comments from a central location.

I’m just pipedreaming again…..

Image from here

Every once in a while I get comments from SEO professionals that try to advise me on how to re-arrange ad placement.   They tell me I should put ads in the middle of the posts instead of at the end like I do.   Their theory is this would cause more people to actually click these ads.  There maybe some truth in that logic, I find the breaking up the text annoying that way.   I have it set up to work in a certain flow, this is my personal preference.

I could be writing sell out articles where I’m paid to review a product, but you don’t get paid by others if you are known for negative reviews.  So I don’t bother trying to get involved in that.   The biggest money loss I’m sure from an SEO stand point is that I cross post to other sites that do not show my advertising, and in some cases no advertising at all.   A free pass to read my articles without any pressure.   Hundreds of people I know on facebook and myspace read my articles for “free”.

So for those SEO’s that hate me and think about the money I waste – please don’t e-mail me to try to optimize my revenue.  I’ll handle it, or I’ll come to you when I decide otherwise.   This year I should make a profit even though I’m throwing money away.

The recent twitter phishing scam had non twitter users scratching their heads on why this service would be targeted for a phishing scam at all.. Most people view little or no monetary value to twitter accounts. For most people this may actually be true. For people like Scoble or companies that promote themselves over twitter, well the brand name damage caused by a hijacked twitter account could be quite costly.

One of my friends on twitter had a reply about this issue (I’m assuming the other person didn’t realize the long tail potential impact (yes I used the term long tail – get over it)). What I saw was this:

@jeremyasmus could be any number of reasons, spread malware, spam, get passwords, us humans tend to use the same password over and over.

This is the crux of the issue isn’t it? The problem isn’t average user with nine friends directly, it’s the large power users and the passwords for other services. Let’s look at each of these.

Let’s say you are Scoble and your account get’s hijacked. Scoble has a level of trust built from himself, he is known to get the inside scoop on information, people click his links. Scoble has over 47,000 followers. If his account was hijacked and ten percent clicked a link that was really a malware installer – that would be 4,700 people infected within a matter of minutes. I think however the number of Scoble followers would be much larger probable in the 50-60% range. For a malware distribution this is a great return for the time frame, with the added benefit that you may get some other high profile names in the attack.

The cost to deploy such an attack is extremely low – under ten dollars, while the net return would be a few thousand, potentially more. Since there is little risk to getting caught if you know what you are doing, you could make some decent money by exploiting this chain of trust that exists and is protected by a mere password.

Let’s look at the side of this coin, the normal user.  Adam Baldwin nailed it right on the head when he stated “us humans tend to use the same password over and over”. I know I do, though different level of things have different passwords – my banking account does not use the same username/password combination as my twitter account – neener/neener. It is however shared with some other web 2.0 services. Some other people may not be so diligent. This once again is a chain of trust issue. You are trusting the companies that you give your passwords to are truly them, so once your password is in the wild it’s exposed and all of your accounts are open to attack.

Let’s look at the information an attacker can get from you if they have your twitter password:

User Name – while by itself it’s exposing a little bit about your account and your password – the problem lies in having both bits of this information. That part should be blatantly obvious. The issue lies in the fact that most of us use the same username or “handle” across many sites on the web. Doing a Google search for “Creeva” yields over 46,000 hits. A lot of these hits are different services that I play with and over 90% of the hits link back directly to me in some fashion. Since most sites use you username as your login name, if I used the same password every single one of these services would be exposed if I fell for the twitter phising scam.

E-Mail Address – Yes though it maybe only a small amount these days, your e-mail address is still worth a few percentages of a penny to the spammer. This would get you on more mailing lists, and ones that would be quite hard to get off of. It is also normally used as a login name for service that do not use your handle. More accounts have now been exposed because of this. If your e-mail account passwords is the same as your twitter account (dumb mistake) everything about your online life, accounts, and transactions can now be exposed and utilized against you. Would you notice a gmail filter that someone setup to clone every incoming e-mail?

The other issue is even you do not have accounts that show up in a Google search they could use a service search engine such as Spokeo to find accounts even you may have forgotten about.

Mobile Phone Number – This probably would be one of the most annoying things, that your phone number has been exposed to the internet underground. Phone spam, call back charges; there are a few things they can do with this number. I do think this is small annoyance compared to loosing your email account.

Being a good security professional my recommendation is to use strong passwords that are unique to each service and are rotated regularly. I am also a realist and know that you won’t. This may be the time to start doing segmentation where different accounts do get different levels of passwords. This is what I do so if my twitter account was compromised only the services that I consider on par with Twitter security-wise was at risk. Lower level accounts would be safe and higher level accounts would be safe. I also think with the range of accounts, I could move faster then the phishers going through and knowing what to change faster then they could try all 46,000 sites. It’s a thought – now what are yours?

I think I knew from our first date that my wife was going to be the one I was going to marry.   Granted I literally broke up with my ex the day before I asked her out, but it all worked out.   Though I was twenty -one and she was eighteen it was the first real date either of us had been on.   We had started “going out” with people before, but it was always meeting and doing things in social situations then you labeled as a couple and doing things was just being together and not really a date.  I did ask one girl out on a date previously, but it turned into a double date, so this was my first real date.

It was in September of 1997 and I managed to get off work early and get a hair cut, then I went out to one of our customers and bought her a bouquet of roses.   We went to Chi-Chi’s in Lorain, Ohio driving there in my 1986 Ford Escort.  I ordered a mexican pizza which they burned and she had me send back, and I believe she ordered the chimichanga’s .   We talked about going to the movies afterward and decided on Conspiracy Theory.   Walking to the car I asked her if I was the type of guy she could fall in love with (me=geek, not the best social skills).  She said maybe.   I asked her if I was the type of guy she could see herself marrying, she said she didn’t know.   We then drove over to the movie and had a wonderful time.

A few days later she was having problems with her parents, she was at a cross roads and all upset.  She was sitting on the front stoop of her friends house and that was the first time I ever told her I loved her.  She cried in my arms (not from me saying that, but because of the other stress) and said it back to me.   Three months later we were engaged. Thirteen months later on Jan 2, 1999 we got married.  From that first date until about 2004 when she went back to Ohio to visit family while I was stuck working in Oregon, we never spent more then 24 hours away from one another, over 2600 days of seeing each other at least once every day.

I’m not going to saying everything has always been fantastic, we’ve had our ups and downs.  We have managed to stay together and stay in love.   I love her more each day, and now she is going to be the mother of my child (last year we did say we would do something special for our 10th).  We are opposites, but we are also twins, we are stronger together then we are apart.  We are both critical thinkers, yet I’m the only one that thinks she is the better of the two of us – so sometimes she is wrong.

She is the core of my being and the center of my universe, even though I don’t always show it.   Her thoughts and dreams revolve around mine, like mine do around her.   She is my wife, and I love her.

The Internet with it’s promise of a revolution has succeeded in it’s goal of changing the landscape of information and how it is disseminated to the public at large.   We deal with issues that new media and remixing is causing in the areas of old copyright.   I’m one of those that bemoan the constant increasing of time before works enters into the public domain.   I would like to see more information enter into the public domain quicker and I think the creative commons idea is the future of copyright law, but this isn’t about that.   It’s about the loss of public domain works.

It is true that efforts are underway to save and collect media that exists in the public domain.   There are even people creating new work specifically for the public domain.   We have libraries of public domain works and sites that collect information form past websites.   Videos are being collected and maintained where the copyright slipped by and were not renewed in time.  These things are great.   However there are too many people that could care less about the public domain or the ideas that spings out of it.

Most of the time public domain media is considered old and out-dated.   People want things that are new and exciting.  They want constant progress with no respect for the ideas of come from,  and don’t what forge from which the ideas have be tempered.  This leads to a loss of ideas, stories, pictures and music.

I once had an argument with someone in my support for the public domain.   I pointed out all the music and stories that have been lost to the ravages of time and may never be recovered.   Their response was if it was popular it never would have been lost.   This statement is almost as asinine as stating that I have nothing to hide, so it’s a good idea to perform surveillance on everyone.   While the latter statement points to no respect to your own privacy, let alone others.  The former statement has no respect for what has been created.

While we can look at three hugely popular sites for public domain media, Project Gutenberg, Archive.org, and Wikipedia; these are all very niche sites that serve a particular purpose.   They each have a primary focus in what they want to maintain.  Since these are the big players in their directed niche they are considered one of the authoritative sources for the type of public domain media and information that is able to be retrieved from their site.   What about some of the niches that aren’t covered?

Project Gutenberg has a long standing history of salvaging books that have entered into the public domain.   They do a great service that literally takes hundreds of volunteers to take books form a print medium and convert it to digital text available to all.  They are known for their e-books, while they do have some other things that they try to maintain, this is what they are known for.   If you are looking for a book that is in the public domain chances are you will be directed to them first.

Archive.org on the other hand, while authoritative in some respects is the jack of all trades in the public domain sector.   You would use them for website history research using their way-back machine site, or you may check with them for public domain video or audio.   It is a haphazard gathering of people that seem to utilize the best of breed mentality, the problem with being the jack of all trades, is sometimes it’s a pain in the butt to use.   Archive.org’s usability is one of the worst of the mainstream big sites that I’ve used.  It’s hard to find exactly what you are looking for.

Then you have Wikipedia, which essentially the public domain research encyclopedia.   Yes, there are issues with it.  Sometimes you can’t trust.   Sometimes it can be edited.  With all these problems, it’s authoritative.  You can’t do a Google search on a subject most of the time without seeing a Wikipedia link on the front page.   People link to Wikipedia since it’s trusted and becomes the cumulative knowledge of humanity over time or does it – the question will be discussed in an upcoming blog article.

However there is plenty of other types of information and media that is not collected and adequately cataloged so it’s easy to use for a layman.   There are for-profit companies cataloging and maintaining repositories of public domain information, but these companies charge a fee for information that truly and legally wants to be free.   It’s just that no one cares enough to invest the time or money to create archives.   I’m not saying companies can’t make money from these ventures, but I think our higher institutions and governments should take first run at them until they are large enough to be spun out into it’s own non-profit organization.

What type of information am I talking about?

Legal Transcripts

Architectural Plans

Sheet Music

Video

Audio

Photographs

General Art

Etc, etc, – if it has been created it should be saved.

I will state of the big three mentioned above, some of those dabble in all of these things, but not to any appreciable level that exists outside of their primary focus.   Yes there are niche sites, this whole thing started out of looking for public domain sheet music.    No site is authoritative, they all have their own issues, and ironically enough they don’t normally have the same data the other site has.    There is no reason for this, scans are not proprietary or unique, nor do they count as a derivative work.

The other issue with this is global acceptance and resources.  Most of the collections of public domain works exists only within themselves.   There is a lot of cross work done by universities scanning the exact same item to be in their collection that another university has already scanned.     This is wasted man power since their is no authoritative repository to put this information into, or cross reference against.   So this leads to the popular stuff normally being at the front of the list and most likely to be duplicated again and again and again, while the more obscure things are left unread and unfound.

Archive.org, Wikipedia, and Gutenberg all of something else that these other niche sites do not have, global mirrors.  Being an American I could easily say the library of congress will eventually have everything public domain online.   The first part is if I actually made that statement it would be naive on my part.   The second thing is that it means other countries are counting on the United States to save the public domain data.   I’m sure we won’t put the same care to local translation and books, compared to American editions when it comes to preservation or public dissemination of the work.

I’m angry and annoyed.  I’ll be revisiting this topic, but hopefully this primer of where I am coming from is something for you to think about and comment on.

This year was the third attempt I’ve made at the National Novel Writing month, and my third failure.  I am neither heartbroken nor discouraged.   I did write over 50,000 words in the last month, it was actually closer to 75,000 words.   It just wasn’t’ all towards the novel.  For that I did about 10k words.

It was not lack of ideas, I had enough to at least double what I put into it before I would sputter out.   It was two things, the lack of time and the lack of effort.  I whole heartedly take the blame for not finishing.  I also didn’t finish the series about my mother, though there was another reason for that (coming in one last mother post).

Thought I would gie everyone an update since the last month was a slow one for me and the blog.

It seems November is just a bad month for me.   I had to change alot of things around to make it as far as I did.  But life happens.  I know that isn’t a true excuse since  there are plenty of other people just as busy as myself that will manage to finish their novels.   I hope to get back and finish this story, but I truly don’t believe I will have it done by the end of the month.   This will mark my third attempt and third failure.   I’ll keep hacking away, but I just don’t see it happening.

On a plus side, I have actualyl written more then 50k words this month within blog articles and other things.   Just haven’t been able ot concentrate it all on the novel.   Maybe next year.  I won’t give up trying, it just may take a few more tries.   I’ll keep you updated, I made it about 10k words in.   Here is to National Novel Writing Month and all those that do manage to complete their stories.

Well another day, another few words. If only I could count the words I type in my blog. It may just be a little bit since I prepared so much material ahead of time, but it sure would help and look better.

Yesterday was a light day, I was quite busy.  I even forgot to do a word count update post yesterday.  Boo me! I’m now up to 6197 words. I have noticed that there is going ot be a TON of editing I will need to do. So far I’m successful at fighting the urge to fix spelling or grammar yet, I’m hoping to do that in December. I just thought however I owed everyone an update from yesterday

]]> http://creeva.com/2008/11/05/nanowrimo-day-4-6197-words/feed/ 0 http://creeva.com/2008/11/03/nanowrimo-day-3-6109-words/ http://creeva.com/2008/11/03/nanowrimo-day-3-6109-words/#comments Tue, 04 Nov 2008 04:32:56 +0000 Creeva http://creeva.com/?p=3619

I’m too tired to update you much more then a total – but I thought I would give you that much.

With my new word total of 5036, I’m ahead of the curve, but not by much.   I seem to be willing to waste time on other things and not truly devote enough to it.   Never the less, it seems that i’m making good progress and I’m not falling behind.  In the three years I’ve done NANOWRIMO this is the furthest I’ve gotten.  Let’s hope i can keep going.

Well I managed to finish the first chapter of my novel today.   I managed to get  in 2113 words.   So far the writing is going to easy, but I think December is going to be an extremely heavy editing month for me.   I didn’t actually get a chance to get started until th late evening, I think I did end up making good progress on what I actually id have a chance to get done.

Two years of doing National Novel Writing Month and two years of failure for myself.  This year however it should be cake.  Chocolate cake, not white cake – I dislike white cake it’s like the step-father that no one likes of the cake world.   Now I’m sure one of the first things going through your mind is “How is this slack ass that hasn’t written an orginal article in two weeks going to write a novel”.   Well I’ve been busy what can I say?   I think I can do the novel this year.   It’s only 50k words and I can pop out 5k words in an hour when i put my mind to it.

However when I actually bother to write, I never want my blog(s) to suffer.  What I’m going to attempt ot do this weekend is future write for the whole month of October.  I’m hoping if I sit down and crunch through writing before November hits that most of my writing can be focused on that.   So between my different blogs that means doing about 100 articles in the next 7 days.   Can I do it?  I think I can.  I’ll throw in some slack ass reviews to get through a cheater post here or there.   None of us are super-human, and if I was actually getting paid to do this it would be something completely different.

I also have to start looking at adding a blog section to the VCMA web site.   It seems that we are to be featured in the Sunday edition of the Lorain Morning Journal.   I’m going ot have to get someone to snag me an extra paper of that.   So I thought it would be nice to have a regulary updated news section of the blog.   I’ve many times showed my distaste for doing static pages, a blog format would do wonders for releasing updates on a regular basis.  This reminds me though that I also need to get a new design theme for the VCMA website.

I really didn’t have time to write about this last week when it first came to my attention but it seems that Creeva.com has been banned from Technorati for gaming the system.   It states that I republish materials from other sites onto this blog.   This is not untrue, though 90% of my posts actually originate from there.   If I write something I centralize it all on creeva.com.   It’s simple.  It’s efficient.  It allows me centralize and backup my writing.

That being said, they aren’t wrong.   One of the underlying experiments that this blog does is crossposting.  It crossposts to myspace, facebook, tumblr, blogger, and many more.   I don’t make huge piles of cash (haven’t made a dime in my pocket yet).  I don’t blast people with ads, though on some sites including the main there are some that are there.   I’m not doing it to drive up profit in any way.  I’m doing it so different communities can read my stuff.  I won’t harp on it, I’ve written about my crossposting before.

The question is how relevant is Technorati becoming.   I know this question has been asked before, and I used to believe in Technorati.   I didn’t start 500 blogspot accounts to promote the material.  I used 1 public site per service.  For the point of experimentation and proof of concept.  I also have been slowly working on a whole article series on how to crosspost.   With the myriad of services and the fact that data is not yet truly portable, but beginning to become so.   How can these services accurately  track where information is originating from.

Like I said I’m not annoyed, I can live without technorati.  When people are posting links to their site on tumblr, friendfeed, twitter, and others how long before there are more people like me?   Services like Ping.fm and HelloTxt serve in a market segment only to fuel this further.   I’m not someone who has a targetted truly branded blog beyond self branding.   I don’t have a certain topic set I cover and regulary write about.  I’m a schizophrenic writer that is all over the place.   The only thing I hope is consistent is my voice.  Beyond that take away from my writing what you will.

Well it seems I’ve been lax the last couple weeks in my weekly summaries.  Let’s catch up:

Articles:

I Think Fragmented Communities in Social Networks Are a Good Thing

Interesting – Guess They Don’t have Time to Meet

Web Application Developers Can Learn A Bit From WordPress

Holy Legos Batman (Not About Lego Batman)

Some Great Macro Photography Images

Sad Day For Free Speech For Students

Had to Remove Some Sites From My Lifestreaming Page

Web Companies Today Are On Top Of Customer Service – Traditionals Take Note

Get an E-Mail or Twitter Alert When a Company Changes is Privacy or Security Policy

Pop-up Study Proves Users Will Click Anything

It Had to Happen Eventually – DHS Testing Pre-Crime Detection

Palin Hacker Is Not Indicted …So Far……

VHS Alumni Band 2008 Memories

Did I Blog Without Permission or Do You Not Understand Creative Commons

Daily Online Activity:

Online Activity for 2008-09-19

Online Activity for 2008-09-20

Online Activity for 2008-09-21

Online Activity for 2008-09-22

Online Activity for 2008-09-23

Online Activity for 2008-09-24

Online Activity for 2008-09-25

Online Activity for 2008-09-26

Online Activity for 2008-09-27

Online Activity for 2008-09-29

Online Activity for 2008-09-30

Online Activity for 2008-10-01

]]> http://creeva.com/2008/10/03/creevacom-weeks-in-review-91908-10308/feed/ 0 http://creeva.com/2008/09/23/get-an-e-mail-or-twitter-alert-when-a-company-changes-is-privacy-or-security-policy/ http://creeva.com/2008/09/23/get-an-e-mail-or-twitter-alert-when-a-company-changes-is-privacy-or-security-policy/#comments Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:04:12 +0000 Creeva http://creeva.com/?p=3437

Picture from here

A couple weeks ago I was talking with a friend about an idea for a new web service.   The web service would have you enter in all the services and sites you use and have an account with online, and then send you a twitter alert when the policy changed and it would show you which text changed.  My problem is while I could come up with the design, function, and architecture I couldn’t figure out any way to monetize such a service.  I let it languish and said I would eventually write a blog article on how to roll you own.   This is that article.

The key feature to making this work (obviously) is a service that can monitor website for changes and give you some sort of data trigger outbound that is usable for repurposing.  I know I could use services that would do an RSS feed, but I wanted something more immediate and trustworthy then RSS for this scenario.  I hunted around and I found the service Change Detection that will send send you an email when a web page has changed.

E-Mail Alerts

With e-mail you have a bit more control.   It’s all easy.  If all you want is an e-mail alert put in the policy page into the page address field.   Then place your e-mail address in the “send alert to:” field.   Easy as cake and your done.

Twitter Alerts

What about getting twitter alerts?  The first thing I’ll point out, I’m not a programmer.  I’m sure there are much better ways to do this in much simpler methods.  I have two requirements for myself.   Keep it free, and it keep it in the cloud.   Make the internet do the work for you, it’s always on and online – your computer doesn’t have to be.  So instead of using an Uber-Twitterbot I’m going to utilize a few free service:

1. Change Detection -Configure the privacy page you want to monitor the same way in section for getting email alerts.  Instead of relying on the emails for notification, change detection allows you to create an RSS feed for each page you are monitoring.

3. Twitter – Setup a new twitter account that you can friend.  If you worried about privacy (people knowing which sites you are watching), set the updates to be protected so only “friends” can see them.   Have the alert twitter account friend you, log out and friend the account back with your main twitter account.

4. Twitterfeed -Take the feed from change detection, pipe it through twitterfeed so it will put update notifications to your “alert account”.   Now whenever anything has changed you can watch updates from that account and you’ll have almost real time monitoring of any web page.

Image from here

Because of my article about removing certain feeds from my lifestream, it prompted an e-mail from Iminta.  I just received an email back from Iminta saying ” I just wanted to know if there was anything that we (Iminta.com) could do to make the service more useful for you?”.  I replied back that the point of the article wasn’t them, it was me.  I couldn’t handle all the RSS feeds from my uber producers.   I think Iminta is a great service.  They thought their might be issue and contacted me quickly.

I’ve had the same experience with Plaxo, Sezwho, and Lijit.  They are on top of their game searching blog posts or posts on their own sites and reaching out to their users.  While I’m at it I’ll shout out to David Cramer and his Lifestream Plugin, when I have an issue I let me know and he’s put up with me and all of his other users over the issues we may or may not have.

If more traditional companies had the outreach and proactive customer service that these companies did I couldn’t even manage how much better the world would be.

Picture from here

It seems some fo the RSS aggregations sites I use (Profilactic, Iminta, Friendfeed, etc.) generated too much data and I had to remove them from my lifestream page displaying their latest updates.  The problem wasn’t the amount of data on my lifetream page per say, but in the fact that I generate a daily update of online activities (which sometimes the sites I crosspost to get double posts of).  When I had these uber data generating feeds it created posts that were too large for wordpress to handle.   So between a choice of haivng these in my lifestream or saving a daily record – I choose the daily record.

Picture from here

I was listening to the last weeks episode of Net@Night and they were complaining that the Twitter community has become fragmented.  This is true in the online world, as well as the offline world.  We are all not friends.  Sometimes I think what you read, listen to, watch, or have to say is utterly idiotic and reprehensible.   I’m sorry.   I do.   I also know that some of you think the same things about me, especially those that are completely fed up with me.

We call places like Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc.  social networks.  They are and they are not.  If you consider High School an experiment in social networking I guess they are social networks.   I prefer to think of them as “Social Platforms”.   These are sites and applications that allow you to be social, but you don’t have to be.   I enjoy going to a movie with someone else and don’t really enjoy going by myself.   That doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there that don’t enjoy going by themselves.   Some people join social networks for the games, some for the functions, and yes most for the social aspect and the ability to connect with people.

I’ve written before that I use different social platforms in different ways.  Some communities, like twitter, I take an active role and participate in, others I hang back and show up when I receive a comment on some piece of work I’ve commented on.   I just don’t have time to be a good community member and interact exclusively (or a lot) on the literally hundreds of social network sites I belong to.  Giving the lack of time in being able to deal with all of them, I write once and post everywhere.  I deal with comments and such.

I won’t add you to my friends list if I haven’t dealt with you in some sort of capacity.  I add you if I’ve met you through online gaming, real life meetings, or I’ve had some sort of conversation with you.   I won’t add you if you thought I look interesting and just want to chat (don’t worry I’m not requesting friendship form you if you look interesting either).   Heck I don’t even like some of the networks I’m a member of.  What does this mean though?

Does it mean I’m not networking socially?   I am and I’m not.   I’m hanging out with friends or exchanging ideas with people I know.   If your coming along for the ride, more power to you.  I’m not going to these just to meet you, some unknown person to me.   Until I know you I don’t want to network with you.

What does this mean in general?  I’ve pigeon holed myself into these social platforms.  I’ve become cliquish in a way that also existed in high school.   Just because I haven’t welcomed you with open arms doesn’t mean I refuse to get to know you, it just takes time.   This is what happens to the splintered groups amongst all of these social platforms.  They have their own secret hand shakes and communities that exist on the platform.   This is actually quite a good thing, this is how you fulfill the niche market.   One size doesn’t fit all.  I do believe your data and the data explicitly shared with you should be able to be moved to another platform, data should be open and you should be able to make your own decisions over the data and meta data you create.     Splintered communities online just show us the social model that we have in the real world can replicate and exist online.

Because online communities begin to form and evolve organically the same way they do in meat space, we know that they are real true communities.   They aren’t Utopian society love-ins.  Just because your friends with Bob and Jane and I’m friends with them doesn’t mean we have anything in common to talk about.  Personally I have issues with Bob and Jane on some things, what if those are the things that you have in commonality with them?  I would then hate you.   I don’t want to hate, but I don’t want to get to know you either.     That’s not a bad thing.  Like real life we need to get to know each other first.   You don’t give everyone on the street you meet your phone number – why would you add them to your friends list.

It’s not necessarily about hiding information from them.  There are a lot of people like myself who literally broadcast their information broadly and openly across the internet.   You really aren’t gaining too much beyond more access to direct communication to me by being on my friends list.   I think these leads us to rethink the idea of friend lists.

Now go friend me on every possible social network you find that has a Creeva.