I'm away to Wales for the bank holiday weekend. My Dad's birthday and my niece's and they're knocking down the flats at the top of the Cynon Valley. Should be a good view from up the side of the mountain.

The grandparents will be pleased to see their other grandchildren too, and I'm taking their bikes.

1750 Also posted to: personal . At: 8:37:17 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Aberdare flats to come down   Knocking down the Hirwaun flats  

Public service item for today. If you're using analog to process your stats, you're probably plagued by referal spam. Here's a list I found in my stats, copy paste it into your analog.cfg file. I'll update this list as I run through, pity there isn't a central resource that we could call down, knowing it to be the most up to date. One day perhaps.

REFEXCLUDE http://*.hopsports.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.fuckinglist.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.linkswhore.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.bexium.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.sex4singles.net/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.sex4singles.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.casino-gambling-pros.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.parishillton.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.necium.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.southwesternpokerplayer.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.sexforsingles.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.onlinepharmacyprescriptions.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.electronictransfer.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.linkswhore.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.best-merchant-accounts.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.visa-mastercardservice.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.cheap-merchant-services.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.merchantaccount-creditcardprocessing.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.acceptcharges.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.electronictransfer.net/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.fastcharge.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.nebrijaschool.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.myhikari.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.ultrasoundskincare.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.shreepigment.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.lewisandkaye.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.crawford-door.net/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.surfitcoaching.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.rightsolutionindustrial.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.monoraparkmazda.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.merchantaccountfirm.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*linkcentre.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.azadapartments.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.amateurxpass.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.linkcentre.com/*
REFEXCLUDE http://*.webstir.com/*

Named and shamed. Die dirty, filthy beasties!

1749 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 3:11:44 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Stop referal spam in analog reports   list of referer spam for analog reports   Here lieth dead referal spam  

Online auctioneer eBay came out on top in a poll of the fastest growing brands in Britain in terms of popularity. In a clean sweep of the top four places by technology and internet companies, internet search engine Google came second, followed by mobile phone maker Nokia and online retailer Amazon.

1748 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 11:22:03 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Guardian: eBay wins the top-brand

For bloggers, it becomes an obsession. Such bloggers often feel compelled to write several times daily and feel anxious if they don't keep up. As they spend more time hunkered over their computers, they neglect family, friends and jobs. They blog at home, at work and on the road. They blog openly or sometimes, like Mr. Wiggins, quietly so as not to call attention to their habit.

Ahem!

1747 Also posted to: cyberSaps , serviceBF . At: 10:53:08 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: New York Times: For Some, the Blogging Never Stops

"Key Email contacts for key activities and teams in the Office of the e-Envoy"I wonder if my emails will get through their spam and green pen blockers?

And I'll bet it'll take 3 or 4 months just to get an acknowledgement, let alone a face to face. But it's time to get seriously political about blogs and the competitive advantage for UK plc to have nearly every one of the Queen's subjects blogging. Blogging reviews, blogging events, blogging rants, blogging good ideas. And connecting up with each other. Wasn't this the idea behind The Big Conversation? That died a death didn't it.With no dates on the few messages posted there it sure looks like it.

Never mind the bottom up business of Bill Gates, what about the bottom up politics of Tony Blair?

1746 Also posted to: cyberSaps , warBlog . At: 2:28:40 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: A blog for everybody in the UK   Blogs could be the UK's competitive advantage  

My phone's been ringing off the hook this morning. I've also had several emails with interesting offers and enquiries.

Feels like there's a new dawn on the internet.

1745 Also posted to: cybersaps . At: 1:24:38 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Suddenly people are getting in contact

Feedburner is the converter of Atom to RSS feeds that Evan of Google's Blogger endorses. On their blog they talk about syndication myths. And take a look into the possible future of syndication feeds:
The good ...the entire syndication space will simultaneously witness a growing sophistication and accompanied level of fragmentation through conflicting namespaces and specialty clients.Perhaps niche consumer clients which read feeds for reviews or to connect schedules together or to join friends up or a host of other uses.

The bad ...some namespaces will be standardised for greater community flexibility, while other fragmented namespaces emerge in order to provide companies with competitive advantage.

Whatever format wins in the format war, we are certainly likely to find stuff in our feeds that we don't understand, nor will our techiest of techie friends. There will be encrypted tags perhaps for our credit cards, which will be fine and understandable. But, there will also be encrypted tags produced by our blogging software that say we're cheap skates because we use free blogging tools, or tags Disney add in to charge us for something, or charge the person pulling the aggregation together.

Our only recourse is to write our own feeds, which isn't realistic. Or, use a reliable and editable feed generator, like Radio Userland or MT, where we have complete control, should we want it, or a trustworthy online blog tool supplier. Either way RSS will be easier to understand and check out by humans. While Atom, provided through the corporate juggernaut of Blooger [sic] or the closed system and money hungry TypePad will be distressing for a mere mortal to read, and easily tainted by encrypted additional tags. Do we think these companies will be trustworthy?

1744 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 12:24:16 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Who'll control your feed?   Roll your own or roll over   BigCos will control your feed  

From the Guardian: "It's pretty clear that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner," said an intelligence source in Washington yesterday. "Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the US for several years through Chalabi."

Larry Johnson, a former senior counter-terrorist official at the state department, said: "When the story ultimately comes out we'll see that Iran has run one of the most masterful intelligence operations in history. They persuaded the US and Britain to dispose of its greatest enemy." [John Robb's Weblog]

Eh? Run that by me again. But though they weren't exactly mates, the Iraq/Iran war was over, and there seemed to be reasonable relations between the two countries for the past few years. And to have brought US troops so close, and given the US a chance at steam rollering Iran too? Would this have been simply a case of Iraq's my enemy and so too is the US, but the US is more dangerous, therefore my enemies enemy is my friend, thus Iran would have supported Iraq.

I don't know who to believe anymore.

 Source: John Robb's Weblog; 25/05/2004; 17:45:14.
1743 Also posted to: warblog . At: 12:17:16 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: US intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war

The UK managing director of Accenture, Ian Watmore, is appointed as new head of e-government.

I'm going to get it touch with this geezer. I've had enough! Enough of the wastage I see in govenment offices. Enough of the competitive disadvantage this country suffers from due to its straggling in late to the power of bottom up internet.

 Source: BBC News | Politics | UK Edition; 25/05/2004; 17:45:02.
1742 Also posted to: cybersaps . At: 12:08:04 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Online UK government gets new chief

In a stunning move, controversial documentary filmmaker Michael Moore announced today that his latest film, "Fahrenheit 9/11", will be released by BitTorrent, the popular peer-to-peer file-sharing network.

"This film deserves the widest possible distribution," said Moore, whose film won the Palme D'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival this past weekend. "I had hoped I could achieve that with Miramax and Disney, but such was not to be the case. I'm thrilled to announce that I have an even better solution. BitTorrent!" [Via Marc Canter]

Fuck me, sideways! That's one shoved up Disney's arse ;-) It'll be out on July 3rd. I'm sure it'll be a pretty busy day for networks, though because of BT's networking strengths, it'll be a really fast download on my 3 meg pipe.

Damn, you just can't trust bloggers, it appears to be a joke. "Denounce is a satire website specialising in false press releases that are meant to neither inform nor educate."

1741 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 11:41:07 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: BitTorrent To Release Michael Moore's New Film Free of Charge

Though this CTO has had his company's blog up a mere 5 months, he's full of praise. "It’s amazing how a system [a blog] so simple and easy can produce such profound results." Though later, he tells how boring it is, and Scoble agrees that Microsoft's internal blogs are also dull.

It's later, when people start to think about what should be in a blog, when they find themselves composing the next blog entry as they take a walk, and when bloggers start letting their personality out, forgetting their corporate Ps and Qs. Then, it's interesting. Then it's compulsive, addictive.

1740 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 12:11:48 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: InfoWorld: Blogging behind the firewall

There are "2.4 million total blogs that Technorati is monitoring. Not all are active. Of that number, about 45 percent have not been updated in the past three months. And he points out that 2.4 million blogs does not equate to 2.4 million bloggers, because many bloggers have multiple blogs."

1739 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 9:38:59 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: How many blogs?

The Event Share Framework says this on the front page: Recently, the need to share event information between entities has dramatically increased. Individuals desire to aggregate, publish and distribute event information in many locations, and by various means. Doing this has been made difficult because of a lack of a formal format by which to distribute this event information. The ESF is designed to provide that standard formant, allowing entities to communicate event information in a standard format and manner, by using an XML-grammar, which facilitates the aggregation of information, and provides a well-defined pattern of usage for instances of this grammar. As well as  time, date stuff these are the types of event: event/class event/class/lecture event/class/lab event/conference event/conference/keynote event/conference/session event/entertainment event/group event/group/meeting event/internet event/internet/chat event/internet/webcast event/person event/person/birthday event/person/anniversary event/sports event/sports/broadcast event/telephone event/telephone/conference undefined

Those little XML feed icons on blogs are important, but as the semantic web becomes reality they're going to be much more important, and much more powerful. Marc Canter says this: ..."The battle (or shall I say the cooperation) moves upstream - away from the protocols/plumbing aspects of syndication - to the schemas/details area where the new work is needed." I have to agree. We've enough standards to sink a boat, and with the current RSS/Atom war we (us users) are in danger of missing the boat, before we've had fun sinking it. As users, we need to start using this stuff. And to do that we, us users, need to write feeds, or at least be able to (human) read others' feeds. RSS is pretty human readable, Atom, just ain't. If we can start producing RSS feeds with ENT, ESF or Reviews or FOAF, just chucking them out there, as we blog, don't you think Technocrati or Userland would start to use that XML? Of course they would. Of course I could search for reviews through my Radio aggregator, or through Technocrati or import local events into a nice table in one of my web pages. Or, call up a list of opinion leaders in my geographical region and find where they're going to be next. This is the semantic web, and though TBL may want some other more complex data format, only readable by machines and, it seems controlled by big business, it is the users who are also the producers, just like HTML was so easy to read, and learn and rob.

The Review Module says this: Many people publish reviews on their own websites, but it is currently difficult to take all these opinions into account when making a decision. Individual reviews may have their own rating scheme, may lack a definite description of the subject of the review, and may be of books, music, films, restaurants, beaches, politicians, or any other subject. As online product reviews become [increasingly widespread], it becomes more important to make these critical opinions easily accessible on demand.

1738 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 11:56:32 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: After the battle there are the writers

Dropping the kids off this morning, I listened in the car to the Pogues version of this old song:

Now when I was a young man I carried my pack
And lived the free life of the rover
From the Murray's Green Basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over
Then in 1915 my country said "Son,
It's time you stopped rambling, there's work to be done."
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they mached me away to the war...

And so now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me.
And I see my old comrades, how proudly they march,
Reviving old dreams of past glory.
And the old men marched slowly, all bones stiff and sore,
They're tired old heroes from a forgotten war,
And the young people ask,"What are they marching for?",
And I ask meself the same question.

A sad old ballad that brought a lump to my throat. It's been doing that for the past few days.

1733 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 10:10:32 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Forgotten wars   Sad old soldiers   We will always remember them  

Spam ads in Atom-2-RSS converter from 2RSS.com

A complaint on his blog by a blogger.com user who is forced into having ads in his RSS feeds, he only saw them because he subscribes to his own dogfood. A blogger  user can only produce Atom feeds and I guess lots use 2-RSS but don't  eat their own feeds.

1732 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 12:57:31 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Spam ads in RSS feeds   You get what you pay for  

From the Guardian: "There are many advantages if companies treat blogging as a useful tool. Employee blogs are a chance for companies and customers to have informal dialogues and build relationships. Blogs are also a great place for damage limitation, brand building and marketing. The experts on a product are usually the people who develop it, and blogs are one way they can share their expertise."

1729 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 2:15:32 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Blogs aren't just personal any more   Talk about your work with peers, customers and anyone who's interested.  

Well, he already is. But this piece has the little snippet that old Nick (who had Moreover first built in Frontier) thinks that to make a blog popular you need quantity of posts and links off rather than quality.

I agree. But quantity and quality are the better combination.

And his sexblog is wank (crap). No personality.

1728 Also posted to: cyberSaps , sexblogs . At: 10:56:06 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Nick Denton the first blog millionaire?

I'd guess that this is a near complete definition of what a blog features are necessary these days. Manila seems to fit the criteria yet it's not in this seemingly exhaustive listings.

1727 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 9:54:01 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: What does your blog software do?

Reading about the hatred for Rumsfeld in the US military, I realised that these antitheses have all the makings for a military coup in the US. Not quite tanks rolling through Washington, but certainly backroom shenanigans.

Bye-bye Rumsfeld. If not maybe tanks will roll through town — after Bush, and the rest of his neo-con gang.

But this doesn't sound right. Would the tanks be lefties? Militant democrats, perhaps?

1726 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 9:31:58 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: The campaign to oust Rumsfeld   Army against Rumsfeld   Rumsfeld clings to power  

It's pretty certain that Bush will lose his election at the end of this year. And I'm hoping that Blair too, will step down, to ensure Labour still wins with another massive majority.

I suggested that Blair fall on his sword months ago. To further that effort, I'll be tactically voting in this June's European elections. Voting for Libdems, rather than Labour.

Question then will be, will the world be a better place? I'd hope that the Arab Street will see what democracy can do, and want it for themselves. But democracy is an ass. And the Arab Street has never been given the free, secret vote. They won't understand.

And we'll be back with the generational war that started at the end of the second World War, when Jews moved into Palestine.

Still, it'll be better without Bush and Blair.

1725 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 5:42:02 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Bye-bye Bush, bye-bye Blair

Propaganda
Smother Iraq with locally targeted propaganda, brochures, leaflets, videos, radio, TV; tell them how it is—honestly. Show the torture pictures, tell them this is unacceptable and it means those involved will probably go to jail, the victims financially compensated and counselled by premier New York and Californian shrinks. The Iraqi people have been children, now they have to grow up fast!

This is the rightness of America.

Truth, justice...
We want out but have to ensure peace and calm as is our responsibility as conquering forces. We want nothing more than peace, democracy and tolerance. Sure we are a majority Christian army and nation, but we have always tolerated other religions, cultures and creeds. Blah, blah... American way... blah, blah. we'll need to educate about democracy, judicary and the quest for the truth; they don't know about these values

Show pictures of Saddams gaols, show recreated pictures, fill a half of a newspaper with them. There's plenty of local stories, illustrate them, remind of millions of victims not hundreds and was part of the reason for coming and educate about why we came.

Stories
There's so many stories to tell. There's so much that they, as a democratic nation, can do in the area. Sell them the propaganda. Make what they'll be like if they could raise their standard of living, get houses in neigbourhoods done out like the TV programme Garden Force. One of the most media savvy nations on the face of this earth and the US doesn't know how to sell a concept of peace and harmony. Show them dubbed Friends. (It's addictive you know.)

Deeds
Explain religious tolerance; illustrate with 9/11 and how strange war is. Let's show how idiotic this is. Take the religion out. We could knock down the gaols and rebuild mosques to prove how religiously agnostic and supportive we are. Your happiness is our mission, now.

1718 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 1:22:15 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: What Bush should do next   Torture, where do we go from here   What now for Rumsfield  

Watching the two hearings with Rumsfield and his generals, I see that the questioners are too sympathetic they are trying too much to help Rumsfield. They don't want to make this worse than it is.

The BBC just had two different people from the Red Cross, who say this torture is in all Iraqi prisons, not as Rumsfield says, just a few bad apples in one place. And the Red Cross have been telling the State Dept. this since April 2003! And previously in Afganistan. If that isn't systemic what is?

Reuters: The Red Cross also said coalition forces had fired on unarmed prisoners from watchtowers and killed some of them.

The explosive nature of these pictures and soon video was in the system for months, the abuse for over a year and Rumsfield didn't know about it?

Rumsfield says he heard of abuse in Jan 2004. 5 months later the press let the cat out. Did he not hear the Red Cross? Did he ignore it? Rumsfield didn't see these photos till last night. Could he really have missed the explosive nature?

He will have to go to show the world that this was wrong. At last the black guy asked him, pleads with him to resign for the same reason as I--top heads need to role. Honour.

And the British will have to do something too. But we are small potatoes in this game.