Remember the moblogging site Textamerica.com (TA)? In 2003/2004 when this blog was getting off the ground, TA was a site with some promise and hype. And then Flickr rose in prominence and pretty much killed them in the moblogging popularity space, and yet they still limp along.

When I used a camera phone I sent pics to my picture blog at tdavid.textamerica.com. A Hmm search says I linked to them in 18 past posts. Those links now are all redirecting to the main textamerica.com site. Did I ever get any email from them saying they closed my account? Not that I know of, but a look at their terms of service indicates (emphasis mine):

Textamerica.com reserves the right to cancel any person’s registration and to remove any materials related to such member without notice or cause.

I hadn’t sent any pictures to them in a long time, so perhaps inactivity might have been what prompted them to axe my account? Or maybe it was posts like this one: Textamerica hardware upgrade has some members wondering: where did our pictures go?

Whatever the case, it doesn’t really matter because Textamerica is going to be for commercial account only (unless you are one of the few with a lifetime personal account):

As of November 1, 2007, Textamerica is transitioning into being a Commercial Only Service Provider and will no longer support individual users with personal account moblogs unless they hold a Lifetime Membership. All non-commercial account holders who do not hold a Lifetime Membership have until November 30, 2007 to archive and remove existing images and/or videos.

This Textamerica rise and fall for personal moblogging reminds me of why I’m reluctant to spend a significant time at third party sites. Even if the sites are mega cool (which, in retrospect, Textamerica never really was) and getting a ton of hype, I’ve seen so many Textamericas come and go that it makes it harder for me to get too involved elsewhere. This cynicism might have a lot to do with why I haven’t been an avid visitor of Flickr, Facebook, MySpace and so on. I have boarded the Second Life ship (which on some days seems like the Titanic), but that’s more because I’m fascinated in where the virtual world space is headed in the future, not only or even primarily Second Life. I’m part of a group blog at VTOReality.com that actively follows this space. So far the successes seem to be more about gaming than business, but there are some notable exceptions.

I digress. Let’s get back to linkrot like Textamerica.

How to deal with linkrot on your blog
Now that Hmm has 18 posts containing links to pages that Textamerica is redirecting to its homepage, how should I deal with these posts/links? Here’s what I am doing, but am open to additional suggestions/advice/feedback:

1. removing all hyperlinks to textamerica.com except the one in this post
2. where the post doesn’t make sense without the linked page/image, I’m adding an update text with a link to this post in brackets [like this]. These days I try to make very few posts that rely on content linked from a third party site, so even if the site goes down or changes like Textamerica has, the post will still make sense. Linkrot sucks.

I was tempted to delete some of these old posts, particularly the shorter ones with little other content, but that would be breaking my own links. How do you handle linkrot in your blog archives? Do you fix the broken links or just leave them broken? Every blog out there that links out to third party sites is subject to linkrot in varying degrees. The question is how to deal with it as your blog grows? My current strategy is when this comes up deal with it. I probably should have a more structured linkrot maintenance plan. Do you?

Update 9:47am PST: Updated all 18 archived posts with links to Textamerica and my now defunct moblog there. Along the way, I found broken links to other places in the same posts and removed those as well.

Ever buy something only to stop back a week or two later and see the price has dropped or the store across the street is running out the same thing cheaper? Good way to invoke instant buyer’s remorse.

Fortunately many retailers offer refunds for sale pricing, subject to a few rules like it can’t be a close-out price, internet-only deal, etc.

PriceProtectr.com is one of the more potentially useful sites/services I’ve looked at in awhile. Machines were made for work like Price Protectr (PP) is doing. Their service, free as of this writing and zero third party ads spotted (just how are they making money anyway?), will keep checking to see if the price for something you just bought went down and then email you when a lower price is detected so you can take action and manually request a refund.

For example, two of our recent bigger purchases are the Samsung HDTV 1080p which we paid $1,799 and the Sony Handycam for $999. After registering for PP, I went to Best Buy’s website and copied the sales URL page into Price Protectr.

PP showed me that our TV was on sale for $1,699 and the Handycam for $899. We printed the sales offer out and will be heading back to Best Buy later tonight to get our $200 refund. I’ll update this post if they give us any problems when we try to get the money back.

Those thinking about buying the new line of iPods announced today might want to bookmark Price Protectr now. Check out that iPod Touch model which seems typically Apple expensive at $399 for 16GB when you can now get the classic iPod with 160GB drive for $50 less ($349). 16GB might seem like a lot, but isn’t the minute you start building a good-sized music collection. A smaller 8GB iPod Touch is available for $299.

Apple slashed the price of its 4GB iPhone, which seemed to negatively impact stock price today (disclaimer: I own Apple stock) so if you just bought one of those, PP should be lighting up with good news soon (unless this is considered a close-out deal). If you’re buying any consumer electronics or TVs, this site could definitely help make sure you get the best deal.

Want to make sure that only websites you authorize can use your Google Adsense code? The Adsense team has added a new feature (thanks Anuj Seth) that can be accessed as follows:

STEP 1. login to your Google Adsense account
STEP 2. click on the “Adsense Setup” tab
STEP 3. click on the “Allowed Sites” link
STEP 4. make sure the radio button for “Only allow certain sites to show ads for my account” is checked. A form will open up below that looks like the screenshot below.

STEP 5. Fill out the list of domains where the Google Ads code will be authorized. Note: if you add a new site that will use Google Adsense do not forget to add to this list or you won’t get paid. Ouch, definitely don’t forget this step. One way to remember might be to make sure you always target every ad spot (you do mark every ad spot for performance reasons already, right?) and then when you do that, hop on over and add to the Allowed Sites list.

Subdomains ok, but can’t limit to blogs located in subdirectory
Currently you can’t add sites inside a directory. For example, we have a blog still located at blogcharm.com (for archives only, it’s not being updated any longer) still running Google Adsense. Since Blogcharm doesn’t use subdomains (name.blogcharm.com) Google throws the following error when trying to add the correct subcategory blogcharm.com/vtor: “”blogcharm.com/vtor/” at line 6 invalid: URL must not end with a path”

Why is this a problem? Because any blogger at Blogcharm could run your ads if you authorized the entire domain. Even a site that violated the Adsense TOS which could put your — or in this case our — Adsense account in jeopardy. I removed the Google adsense from our Blogcharm site. It would be nice to see the Adsense team realize there are situations that go beyond subdomain support and into subdirectory support that would be nice to have as an option.

All in all, a handy feature to help better control your account. At least you won’t have some nemesis online throwing up a bunch of crap sites that violate the Adsense TOS attempting to get your account banned.

G.ho.st stands for Global Hosted Operating SysTem and is one of the more ambitious computer in a browser window options I’ve checked out to date. Registration and use of G.ho.st is free and comes with 3 GB of space. You’ll need to confirm your email address before being able to login.

G.ho.st looks like a desktop and has similar functionality except one major downside: everything happens in a browser window. While the maximized browser is about as stripped down as one can get, I still feel like I’m working in a box. It just doesn’t feel right to me. What about you?

Other Annoyances include:

- the g.ho.st browser is really a proxy to other websites and thus some sites don’t display properly, including this blog and any other that blocks hotlinking through proxies.
- the URL in the browser window not changing when I clicked on pages which negated the use of copy/paste of the location bar, something I use frequently

Remember FTP in Windows Explorer
One neat thing I discovered while using g.ho.st — or rather rediscovered because I keep forgetting that the functionality is there — is the ease by which you can use FTP in Windows Explorer. Hold down the Microsoft key and press the E key to launch Windows Explorer. Then type:

ftp://YOUR_G.Ho.st_username@g.ho.st

After entering in your G.ho.st password you will be able to drag and drop files from your real desktop to your virtual one. Try this with your web hosting FTP account. It’s a handy way to use a basic FTP editor when you’re on a Windows box without any other kind of FTP, but beware that passwords are passed in plain text. Use web folders instead if you’d like a secure connection.

In summary, G.ho.st reminded me what features I like and use on the desktop and how a virtual desktop doesn’t give me enough reasons to use regularly at this time. Maybe in the future when the quirks are worked out and we can move outside the confines of a browser. I’m curious what readers think of G.ho.st and virtual desktops in general?

By copy pasting the right to left override character at the very end of this post that looks like the image above, hidden codes will make all your type appear backwards (thanks tip of the day). Want to drive folks batty today in chat (IM, Twitter, IRC)? Just copy and paste that and start typing. Could be semi useful for spoilers in blog posts.

Also, I learned from this article that some middle eastern languages like Hebrew and Arabic are written in bidirectional text (right to left and left to right). ‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭‮

‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭‮҉Drive them crazy in chat with right to left chat.

Do you live your life ecological friendly or unfriendly? Until this morning, I’d never taken any test to find out how green I am. Here is my eco footprint:

3 1/2 planets? That doesn’t seem good until reading: “THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON.” 24 acres per person?

The test consists of roughly 15 short choose an answer questions and will take a few minutes to complete. How do you compare?

If you use the Firefox browser and would like to be able to identify what links on websites you look at are using NOFOLLOW, then the following quick Firefox userContent.css hack will help. It will turn links marked with NOFOLLOW to red with white text. You can change the colors to whatever you want, make the links even bigger, whatever you want. Along the right TechCrunch comments area pictured shows the highlighted NOFOLLOW comment links.

This will make it easier to spot what sites are using NOFOLLOW and what sites aren’t. Keep in mind in some cases the webmasters might not even realize they are using it as it is the default behavior of some popular blog programs like Wordpress. One of my friends had NOFOLLOW enabled and when I told him what it was about, he immediately installed the DOFOLLOW plugin. It’s way too easy to setup a new blog with Wordpress and forget about adding the DOFOLLOW. The group blog I participate to had NOFOLLOW in play, but I fixed that this morning. Disclaimer: I still have NOFOLLOW in play on a couple less updated and moderated blogs I contribute to like my Wordpress plugins/mods blog. I’m not completely anti-NOFOLLOW on blog comment areas, it really just depends on how closely the blog is being monitored for spam.

Wondering what NOFOLLOW is about?
NOFOLLOW was intended to be an anti-spam tool for webmasters as the major search engines do not follow links with NOFOLLOW but to date it’s been largely ineffective at combating spam. For a more detailed discussion of the politics surrounding NOFOLLOW as well as my personal feelings in detail on the subject, try reading these past posts (the first one is a Hmmcast video where I talk about it, if you’d rather see and hear what I have to say on the matter):

Februrary 12, 2007: Hmmcast #60 - Why NOFOLLOW continues to be against the spirit of the web
December 13, 2006: The FTC and somebody please give me something positive to write about Sony
September 28, 2005: Debating what is/isn’t spam in the comment sections
September 26, 2005: TypePad offers tip jar feature, still forcing rel=nofollow on all comments?
March 15, 2005: Disabling nofollow in Wordpress 1.5
Jan 22, 2005: Google responds to my nofollow concerns
Jan 19, 2005: Treating all commenters like spammers is a slippery slope
Jan 15, 2005: No Google juice for nofollow attribute, will this negatively impact legitimate comment activity?

Again, by default if you are using programs like Wordpress 2.2x or lower you are using NOFOLLOW. There is no way to disable it in the admin area, you need to use one of the Wordpress DOFOLLOW plugins out there. When I switched over Hmm from the previous blog system to Wordpress getting rid of the NOFOLLOW was one of the first changes I made.

Andy Beard has a nice roundup of dofollow plugins and tools. He also started a DOFOLLOW community at Bumpzee where you can add your blog(s) that use DOFOLLOW for comments and trackbacks. I’ve added MakeYouGoHmm to the list.

Step-by-step how to highlight sites using NOFOLLOW
STEP 1. Navigate to the chrome directory inside your Firefox profile section and rename the userContent-example.css file to userContent.css. Below is where to find this file in Windows and Mac

Windows
Documents and Settings -> USERNAME -> Application Data -> Mozilla -> Firefox -> Profiles -> NUMBERS.default -> chrome

Mac
/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/NUMBERS.default

Need more help locating this file? See the official Mozilla Edit Configuration Files page.

STEP 2. Add the following code to the top of the userContent.css file, slight modification of Phillip’s code offered and explained here:

STEP 3. Save your edited userContent.css and watch for links in pages that are marked with nofollow.

Here’s an example NOFOLLOW link to Wikipedia. Since Wikipedia chose to add NOFOLLOW to all external links from their service, I’d encourage other bloggers to add NOFOLLOW to any Wikipedia link, if you even link them at all. I’ve been trying to link Encyclopedia Britannica instead. I also filtered Wikipedia from my search results in Firefox using the excellent Customize Google plugin.

Extreme? Perhaps, but so is adding NOFOLLOW to every link in every article. With the userContent.css hack described in this post, you’ll be able to spot other publications on the web who are sharing the love, trying to keep it all to themselves or don’t even realize how their external links are being formatted.

Most of the mods I’ve seen for game systems haven’t been something I’ve felt comfortable doing, but Gamepro’s how to for swapping out the 60GB PS3 hard drive looks like a mod that a guy with eleven fingers could do.

The 160GB 2.5″ SATA laptop drive Seagate Momentus [5400 RPM] costs between $110-150 USD online according to the article and bound to come down in price as the TB drives start moving in. The 160GB drive will give you 150GB of usable space, a 100GB boost over the existing 60GB drive.

We’re down to 33 GB of free space on our PS3. How much of the 60GB, er 50GB, do you have left?

Hmmcast #152 mp4

I’m not allergic to many things, but very allergic to bee stings. Doesn’t help that bees love it under the eaves in our house. We knock down the hives, but they keep coming back.

This morning I counted eight developing bee hives around the house (see video). In the past, the hives haven’t bothered me that much because we haven’t done a huge amount of outdoor stuff, but this year with the new barbecue and pool, we’re outside more at home and these bees need to go. A lot of the bees are landing in the pool and dying too making it one more thing to strain out of the pool. I know all the good things that bees do for mankind, so it’s nice to see them buzzing around, but they need to build their homes elsewhere.

As you might expect, it doesn’t make the bees too happy when we knock their homes out of the eaves.

Been thinking about using something like Demon WP, but curious if there are any other good home remedies for keeping bees from building hives under the eaves? Something you spray on? Perhaps something that’s environmentally friendly?

What do you use under your eaves to keep the bee hives at bay?

My wife and I are getting ready for a little friendly stock competition where we’re both starting with a small amount of money and seeing what we can do with it playing the stock market. I thought it would be nice to share with readers how the stocks we’re buying and selling are doing.

There’s already a program running on the server (pictured right) that I wrote which grabs the stock price for the tech stocks I own and charts the progress throughout trading day (see the finance category on stock days). It saves all the data in a relational database so I can run additional queries whenever I want. It works good for stocks I’m holding and want to chart over a long period of time but it isn’t as easily updated for more active buying and selling. I decided to try using Google Spreadsheets instead (Disclaimer: I own Google stock) because:

- my wife and I can collaborate on the spreadsheet
- it will be easier for my wife to update from her browser any time she wants
- changes to the spreadsheet can automatically updated on the blog
- it will give me a chance to work with the Google Spreadsheet API. This will allow me to be able to include parts of the shared spreadsheet at Hmm (programming required)

The spreadsheet design
Let’s go through the process step-by-step of creating the spreadsheet and then setting so it is a shared spreadsheet that anybody can view.

STEP 1. Login to docs.google.com and select New->Spreadsheet

STEP 2. Give your spreadsheet a name by clicking on the “Untitled” heading

STEP 3. Add titles to columns. In our case there will be two groups, one for me, one for my wife with the following eight column names: stock symbol, current price, closing price yesterday, price change since yesterday, buy price (which we will fill out when we buy the stock), number of shares, sell price (we will filll this out when we sell) and profit/loss which will be calculated in the spreadsheet. I color coded the cells cyan for me and violet for my wife by clicking on the edit background color cube. Here’s how it looks:

STEP 4. Add GoogleFinance function to price, closeyest and change. There is a built-in Google Spreadsheets function called GoogleFinance which will automatically fill a cell with data taken from Google Finance. The format is:

=GoogleFinance(”symbol or cell”,”attribute”)

Where attribute can be one of the following: price, priceopen, high, low, volume, marketcap, tradetime, datedelay, volumeavg, pe, eps, high52, low52, change, changepct, closeyest, shares, currency.

For details on what each of these attributes does, see this page which also provides attributes for mutual funds tracked on Google Finance.

1) In cell A3, add the stock symbol GOOG for Google (as a test).
2) In cell B3 add the following function:

=GoogleFinance(A3,”price”)

3) In cell C3 add the following function:

=GoogleFinance(A3,”closeyest”)

4) In cell D3 add the following function:

=GoogleFinance(A3,”change”)

This should load the correct values into the spreadsheet. You can have a maximum of 250 GoogleFinance function calls in your spreadsheet. In our case, I right clicked on the computed value and copied into Kara’s cells: J3, K3 and L3 so I didn’t have to retype. I used the stock symbol MSFT for her example. Here’s how it the spreadsheet looks when finished.

Whenever my wife or I buy a new stock during the competition, we add the symbol to the spreadsheet and copy and paste the three function cells mentioned above as well as the buy price and number of shares. If we sell a stock, we add the sell price. The only function missing from the spreadsheet is the profit/loss which we will add in the next step.

STEP 5. Add zeros to the buy price, # shares and sell price and then add the profit/loss function as follows:

=(G3*F3)-(E3*F3)

This will multiply the #shares (F3) times the sell price per share and subtract from the buy share price. If the sales price is higher, there will be a profit, if the sales price is lower then there will be a loss. Without the zeros you’ll get a function error. Once you add real data in those fields the proper calculation will automatically be made by the spreadsheet.

You can play around with the buy/share and #share values and do some hypothetical what if you’d bought 100 shares of Google at $100 a share and see the amount of profit/loss if you sold today.

STEP 6 (Optional). Edit the cell format to be dollars. By choosing “Edit” and then “Format” you can change the format of the cells where money is involved to automatically have dollars and cents. Here’s how that looks:

STEP 7. Time to share the spreadsheet so anybody can view it and add any collaborators. Click on the “Share” tab and check the box in the Advanced Options that says: “anybody can view at…” and then you’ll see a URL for the spreadsheet. Uncheck the other boxes Collaborators can invite other users and invitations may be used by anyone. I added my wife as a collaborator so she can add buy/sell stock information during our competition.

The URL for our competition spreadsheet can be viewed here:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=p0sET08QrXb6U8pxWPRtELA&hl=en_US

We’ll be starting this competition soon.

STEP 8 and beyond. I’ll save the Google Spreadsheet API stuff for another day because I’m learning too, but some ideas for expansion include adding a snapshot of the data to upcoming posts about our stock competition, graphs, historical analysis and more.