[XILED]

I’ve been looking at a lot of referrer logs and reports lately and I’ve discovered that most of my search engine traffic comes from here. This is because of a link I once bookmarked in Del.icio.us. At the time that I did this I was using the FeedWordpress plugin from Rad Geek. At a later time when no longer using the plugin somehow the permalink for that post got b0rked and no longer pointed to the site I had bookmarked. This resulted in a page on my site being indexed by Google with the words ‘ “Windows XP Professional” “Belarc Advisor Current Profile” key:’ on it.

It is at this point that I must admit that the small shallow part of me that wants to get rich with no effort began to scheme. You can’t see me, but I look shamefaced.

I spent the better part of the day searching Google for ‘ “Windows XP Professional” “Belarc Advisor Current Profile” key:’ and finding only URLs that had software licenses on them. I then added those URLs to an Adsense for Search widget. I went to my old blog which I still have wordpress admin access to (but not shell access, thus the new blog) and edited the original post, with this:

Update: This site is no longer active my new site is located here. I am currently working on a custom search engine in google that weeds out all the spam sites you find when searching for “Belarc Advisor Current Profile” key:. So please check there from time to time to see if I have the search engine completed yet. This may take some time as I’m going through search results by hand and filtering spam sites. Once it is completed I’ll place a link to it here. Hope to see you on the new [XILED] soon!
This post Updated on: June 03, 2008 at 10:03 PM CST

Next, I made a new Page on this site called “Custom Searches” and put my custom search code in there. If you look up at the top You can see the link to it. I then edited the local version of that post with this:

Update:
Check here for a custom Google search with all the spam sites removed from the results.

After I had completed all this the part of me that is not a complete wanker woke up and I edited Custom Searches so that it now looks like this:

On this page you will find whatever new Google hack I find interesting.

My first candidate is the “Belarc Advisor Search” and it would already be here if Google would just cooperate is finally here. I decided to add this one because I noticed in my referrer logs that Google was sending me some traffic via search for: “Belarc Advisor Current Profile” key. When I tried this search I found an ass load of spam sites. After several hours of removing those I had a nice list of sites left and I thought a custom search would be nifty.

Belarc Advisor Search (Results will open in a new window.)This search was removed because I don’t want to be EVIL. If you want to find a product key for software you don’t own then you will have to look elsewhere.

At first I was going to delete the page and both of the posts, but this way I was able to preserve (and actually enhance by fleshing out both posts a little bit and cross-linking the posts and page) the content. Also it inspired me to write this. It will also serve as pointed letter to people who find my site looking for software licenses. There is nothing to see here. This isn’t the blog you’re searching for.

I hope someone who is considering monetizing their site/blog via evil means such as this will find this post and reconsider. If you have something to say and establish a community around your site the money will come in time, be patient.

On an unrelated note, I’ve been trying to think of a phrase I can use to close a blog posts that can be a sort of personal hook. What do we think about this:

Insert catchy “signing out” phrase here.

• » Tags: adsense, Belarc Advisor, belarc advisor current profile key, custom google search, custom search, custom search engine, Don't be EVIL, monetizaion, referrer logs, search engine traffic, software licenses, windows xp professional belarc advisor current profile
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This entry was written @ 4:52 AM on June 03, 2008 using Notepad++

My internet connection has been up and down all evening and I’ve
given up on my usual memtracking via Google Reader, Twitter, and
FriendFeed. I’ve decided instead to try to do something useful with this
time. But what?…

One is that I could shut down my computer (gasp!!) and take this
keyboard apart in hopes that I could stop the ? / key from sticking.
Problem is that I’ve never taken a keyboard apart before. I realize that
this must be a shocking admission from someone who claims to be a geek
but still, its the truth. I guess I’ve just never had a reason. Another
of course is that I could write, which is what I’m doing.

The main problem for me there is that other than technology I don’t
really have much to write about. It seems that the muse of fiction hasn’t
visited in quite some time. I suppose one has to exercise those muscles
from time to time to prevent atrophy, which is why I’ve been thinking of
giving Ficlets try. Of course that brings me back to the same problem. I
want to use Ficlets as a sort of fiction OpenCourseware. A place to jump
off from for story ideas. The strict 1024 character limit Ficlets makes
it almost like an english assignment and I feel my fiction was best when
I was forced to write daily by my wretched old english teacher. Of course
this time I would be in charge of myself and I’m a terrible boss. :/

The other problem with me using Ficlets is that its yet another
online service. I believe now that when I did away with my feed reader
that I made a mistake. My reason for doing so was sound, nobody wants to
read an rss feed twice and I need to read them in Google Reader so that i
can share and or note them. This is a vital part of building a community
around [XILED]. It’s all a part of networking. Yet at times like this,
without an  offline rss reader, I am without access to the feeds at all.
The error was in not having a backup. I should have had FeedReader
archiving posts even though I wasn’t using it. Hindsight…

But how am I to backup Ficlets? Sure I can back up my Ficlets and my
favorites and my favorite ficlet authors all via rss(fail once again).
But as for using the service as an idea factory, how am I to back that up?

Screw it, time to take this keyboard apart.

Update: I haven’t worked on my keyboard yet and 12 full hours later my internet is still b0rked. Centurytel, YOU SUCK.

• »

I was just at Plaxo editing my public profile when I thought about how many pages I’ve had to fill out that look like this:

Many of them are now incomplete because I’ve joined other sites and not updated them. How many more will I fill out before some sort of XML based profile list is universally supported? What format would be best? How do we convince these sites to adopt the idea? Answers anyone?

• » Tags: Coffee_Powered_Musings, social bookmarking sites, social media, social-networking
  Comments

I’ve added Disqus to [XILED]

My main reason for adding it was that I’ve decided on this go ’round I’m going to really try to build a presence on the web. There are a few ways you can do this but I consider most of them lame, i.e. link-exchanges. For any lasting effect links are not the answer, people are. Links live in servers housed in data centers. People live in communities.
I think using Disqus will help me build a community much more easily than the standard wordpress comment system. Disqus users will have a user account on my blog already which makes it easier for them to comment. That also makes it easier for me when I do db backups because without the comments the db *should* be much smaller.
It allows users to leave video responses via Seesmic, which makes commenting even easier. No Seesmic account? No problem. You can register a Seesmic account in the comment form without ever leaving the site. That, is awesome.
Also for those of you getting ready to protest about my claim that links don’t matter I know that they are vital part of attracting visitors. Disqus helps out there too. When you install the Disqus wordpress plugin you create a community page at Disqus. Mine is here.
There are also talks of FriendFeed integration which means that the community you build using Disqus will be even larger. Any way I’ve looked at it I see nothing but advantages to Disqus integration. Only time will tell for sure, but I think I’ve made a good choice here. That’s all for now, so let me know what you think.

• » Tags: Coffee_Powered_Musings, comments, community, Disqus, FriendFeed, link exchanges, Seesmic, video comments, video responses, web presence, [XILED]
  Comments

I am writing this to report content theft of the worst kind. Via FriendFeed:

This Crap is nothing more than a copy of Go2Web2.0 with NO CREDIT GIVEN TO THE AUTHORS.

Not only that, but the bastards want you to pay 17$ for it. Spread the word about this folks. Please go complain at Scribd about this. Further more, if you know this guy, whip him like a rented mule.

And to the perpetrator of this crime — just go die, you worthless fuck.

• » Tags: Coffee_Powered_Musings, content theft, Go2Web2.0, rants, scribd, thieves
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I just went to MyBlogLog for the for the first time in quite a while and my appreciation has went up for it ten-fold.

The widgets are much improved since last I checked them out for one thing. I think the Lifestream widget is teh awesome. No more scraping all those pieces of javascript together, now I just add my services into MyBlogLog and let them do it for me. What impressed me most though, and hopefully you too, are the stat reports. Check it out:

Report Results :: Details [Where readers came from]

Report Results :: Details [What readers viewed]

Report Results :: Details [What readers clicked]

And that’s just the free service. If I had the cash I’d sign up for the payed service, but alas, I’m broke. This kind of information is invaluable to any webmaster, but even more so to those who have no access to the Apache referrer logs on the server that is hosting their site. If you fall into that group, or even if you don’t, you really should consider signing up. If the widgets and stats aren’t enough to get your attention then consider this post. The real value of the many social sites available today isn’t in traffic from inbound links. The real value is that they allow you to build a far reaching community. MyBlogLog is no different.
You will notice that all the links you see are to my old site and there are two simple reasons for this, neither of which can be blamed on MyBlogLog:

1. This site is new and not well indexed yet, I haven’t even done a formal submission to Google. I figure I’ll let that take care of itself for now and concentrate on writing and community building.
2. As I stated at the beginning of this article, today was my first visit to MyBlogLog in quite some time so I hadn’t inserted their tracking snippet into my template.

And no to those who will ask, this is not a paid post. MyBlogLog is a property of Yahoo! and they don’t need my lowly pagerank to increase their signups.

• » Tags: blogging, Coffee_Powered_Musings, community, data, MyBlogLog, statisitics, zeitgeist
  Comments (3)

From is twitter dying?:

It seems that everyday now there is a problem with Twitter. Not too long ago I heard John C Dvorak say that if the public jumps on twitter it will go down. Is that what is happening? Today their main database, db006, went down. I always know something is wrong when Twhirl wont let me get tweets even if I haven’t gone over the limit.

It seems from the comments that people are pretty understanding when it comes to twitter downtime. I tend to agree with them, to a certain point. Free services such as Wordpress.com have brought expectations up on free services. Although, the downtime can be quite frustrating.

Why can’t they just get some decent hardware and produce some better uptime? I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to raise some money.

Lets take a closer look at this:
“Not too long ago I heard John C Dvorak say that if the public jumps on twitter it will go down. Is that what is happening?”
Fearmonger.
“It seems from the comments that people are pretty understanding when it comes to twitter downtime.”
Look again, people are acting like children. Everything is normal.
“Free services such as Wordpress.com have brought expectations up on free services.”
11,000 nails per hour. That’s an old article. How many hits per hour you think it gets now? My money is on more. You think wordpress gets that kinda traffic? Doubtful. If for no other reason than the posts are usually longer than a tweet so people take longer to read them.
“Why can’t they just get some decent hardware and produce some better uptime?”
You are confusing the issue. They are in the middle of an almost complete architectural redesign. Also, can you imagine the size of the db? I can’t. You ever do a backup restore of a db larger than ~100mb? It takes a while.

I don’t mean to pick on you dude. Truth is, I picked your post because it was the first in the link list on man down. Please don’t take all this the wrong way. I think most of the panic we see about this outage is due to twitter’s new policy of trying to be more transparent about service problems. And for the record, I doubt twitter is dying. But what do I know.

• » Tags: Coffee_Powered_Musings, decentralized twitter, discussion, Fearmongers, john c dvorak, panic, rant, twitter
  Comments (7)

This post began as a potential comment somewhere on 0xDECAFBAD but I couldn’t really decide which post it belonged on so I have decided to post it here instead. I know that l.m.orchard occasionally viewed my old blog thanks to MyBlogLog, so I’m hoping that he might stumble across this one. If so perhaps he will see this post and respond. As an added bit of insurance I’ll be sending him the link via del.icio.us :D.

So here it is:
You are probably the only [former]yahoo employ I have ever had any sort of discussion with so I wonder if I could pick your brain about something. I’ve lately been kinda worried about all the data I have stored in various yahoo services (especially when I heard the M$ rumors). What do you think will happen when it gets swallowed up by M$ or some other giant? Yahoo has been pretty good about allowing the vision behind the companies it has acquired to continue. I’m uncertain if another company would have the same management philosophy, especially if that company happened to be Google or M$.

p.s. While this is directed at deusx anyone should feel free to respond especially if you have some inside knowledge of Y!.

• » Tags: aside, Coffee_Powered_Musings, discussion, management philosophy, Yahoo, yahoo services
  Comments (2)

According tho the world bank, just 227 families own 47% of the worlds wealth. Here’s a poem about that.

MySpaceTV Videos: The Matrix by Paradox

• » Tags: Coffee_Powered_Musings, injustice, matrix, myspacetv, paradox, poem, WAKE_UP, world_bank
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