My last post on SpyMac still gets a fair amount of traffic from search engines, so I figured I would bring up the topic again (SpyMac is in the news). Due to Google announcing Gmail, SpyMac figured it would be cool to give out 1GB of email storage to its members.
If you took all Mac sites and rated them on a scale of “shady-ness”, SpyMac would be at the top. Besides calling it’s spattered collection of PHP scripts a “platform” or “operating system”, the site has a faux address at the Empire State Building listed as its home. Not to mention SpyMac is really based in Germany but co-founded from Canada. Just for fun, they are known to steal stories nearly verbatim from Mac news sites and act like it’s their right. Even more fun, their news feed is almost RSS but starts with SpymacNewsChannel version=”1.0″ so it won’t work as RSS. You could call that stealing nearly verbatim too, as they never mention RSS, but we won’t go that far.
And then we have the flutter of stories about the announcement from a few days ago. The site that launched out of a completely faked story back in 2001 called “iWalk” is now being called a Mac web host that has only been around a year. Sadly that’s probably just mistakes by press people who are too lazy to ask questions. I know how that goes, so we’ll give them a pass on that.
For as much code as SpyMac has written, it’s really ugly around the edges. Try logging in and you’ll get a white page with bold verdana redirecting you. Access something when you aren’t logged in, and you’ll see the same. The PHP is all in different files sitting on the main file index. No nice mod_rewrite action to have URL’s that lack cruft. No modular “platform” that can be seen.
When SpyMac realizes that 10,000 kids decided to load up a gig of email for kicks, we should see quite a show. Drives start dying and investors get cranky. Google is cashflow positive and has a track record of knowing how to scale to infinity. SpyMac can’t buy an advertiser and is only famous for lying. Who would you trust with your data?
For me, I’ll load up 1000MB of my favorite uncompressable junk email, 250 MB of my favorite compressed music, and whatever else I can find to take up my piece of the pie. I encourage you to do the same. I’ll even show you how to set up crontab to make sure that you use that data nightly.
I thought I would publish some of the more recent hatemail I have received. Why? It made me laugh, hopefully it will make you laugh. These were all over the recent “analog hack”:
Update: I’ve added more, they are on the top for ease of reading. Really funny stuff this time. They are all unedited (e.g. the grammar mistakes are original).
I’m sure this isn’t where it stops in your life…
I can see it now…well no officer, the beer isn’t mine…it’s his… and his older brother bought it for us….
Your a tard
Why in the hell would you give away the secret? Dumbass.
It is a childish and ignorant way to promote you stupid website. It’s this type of behavior that gives honest e-businesses a bad name. Please remove that article and apologize to everyone who played fair and square.
PALS AND I BACK IN 1996 WERE DOING THIS TRICK TO FIND “YOU WON A FREE 20OZ” ON PEPSI AND SPRIT BOTTLES. DO YOU REMEMBER THOSE YEARS!!??
This trick has been around since pepsi points. you havent figured out shit.
Thanks for making the Mac community look like assholes, I hope the publicity
was worth it to you.
David Bonin
Is this how your parents raised you? How to beat/cheat the system? You buy a soda… you either win a free music download or you don’t. The soda will cost maybe .99¢; quench your thirst and a chance for a free tune. Or forget buying the soda and go onto the Apple music store and download a tune for .99¢. Hmm, .99 cents.
The epitome of petty.
Get a life and don’t be a dink!
Signed,
A patriot
why would you give this info away? do you have no respect for the people who try to make a living ? how do you make a living? its losers like you that make hackers look bad.
jackass.
Considering that you’re so intimately aware of my Mountain Dew story, I can only assume that you’re an iPod Garage regular reader. Once a thief, always a thief, I guess.
All it takes is one dumb person to ruin it for the rest of us by postingsomething like that? What were you thinking??? Now they are going to change that for the future games.
Thanks a lot! not
My main comment is:
WHY TELL THE WORLD!?! SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST!!!
You big idiot!!!
What are you 12 years old????
Get a life!
Now wasn’t that fun? There were many more nice people than mean people. It’s just cute that people actually go out of their way to complain about something as simple as tipping a bottle. It’s in no way original to MacMerc. Just the right place at the right time.
MacMerc posted instructions detailing how to not lose the iTunes / Pepsi promo. It’s the most popular thing we’ve ever published, proving that sugar water and music rule the world. Thanks to all who linked:
And a whole bunch of bloggers / forums. It was really a thrill to see a link on sites that I idolize and read daily. Now, back to drinking sugar and rocking out. Thanks for making my day!
Most of the Apple die-hard have GarageBand by now, and Steve wasn’t lying–it’s easy. While watching the so-called “longest demo on Earth”, the crowd at the store was really impressed with the export to iTunes function. Personally, I was waiting for this feature for about 39 minutes. What I want to see is “Sell in iTunes Music Store” right on the same menu. Right now you’re probably thinking this would be chaotic. Probably. Here’s how to make it work:
1) The songs that have been chosen to be sold on the iTMS don’t go mainstream at first, instead they go into a public song pool. Songs here are free, but you can only stream them (probably X times). After listening, you are asked to validate the genre, and rate the song based on production quality.
2) Only songs that get a decent mean rating from a reasonably large sample get moved into a private song pool. Here they go into the iTMS editors playlist. Before moving the song into the real store, an editor must agree with the public and check to make sure the publisher is not a yahoo trying to skirt copyright law. Nothing they don’t do with songs from private labels now.
3) Once the songs get approved, they go into the real store like any other music. Users that originally approved the songs see the newly released music in a section of the store. They are allowed to download the material for free.
4) Sales go into an account that gets paid whenever the monthly total is over amount X ($100 for instance, like Google AdSense). As a plus, you can use this money to purchase anything from the iTMS or Apple Store, maybe even at a discount.
Apple could become the world’s largest “record label” quickly. With electronic distro rights only, most of the costs associated with running a label are diminished. The bands do all the mastering. R&D is done pro-bono by people who want to get new music for free. This makes music almost a democracy.
Another tweak that could improve this is past history… Artists that have had previous music approved get higher karma and are able to get more music on faster. If you got rejected on your previous attempt to get a song published, your song goes directly to some special editors before it makes it into the public pool.
Everytime I cover a big Apple event, it’s great times. I wish I could do it every week. It’s one of the most intense 3 hours a single person can spend on a laptop. Not only was I typing nearly the entire time, I was getting IMs all over the place and checking the server load to make sure it wouldn’t start smoking. Fun times. Even the Register liked it :).
Of course we weren’t the only one covering the show, but I think ours was some of the best. Not only did we have up to the minute (and I mean it!) posts, we had pictures and a nifty highlights column that was handy for people joining in the middle. On top of all that, we had several AIM chat rooms bumping.
Two words Wired: G4 Cube.
Any non-US residents want to try out the iTunes Music Store? Yum.
I put a few Apple items on eBay the other day, hoping to trade them for a meal or two. Sucess. People never cease to amaze me, and especially on eBay.
Apple dogtags: $12 $18
Apple mousepad: $10 $15.50
Being the coolest 30 year old virgin on your buddy list: priceless
Is Panther worth $129? Well, it at least saves you $14.95. The rest is probably worth the $114.05.
After my deal at the Apple Store, I surrendered my debit card and came away with a 15″ 1.25GHz PowerBook. It was a fair trade. We’re really happy together :-D. I’m not going to say much more about it, because if I wasn’t me and I was reading myself blab about how cool I am now, I probably wouldn’t like me.