Sphere was supposed to be the blog search engine that figured out how to not include spam. It launched this morning and is unsurprisingly overrun with spam. Take the search “mobile tech” which is currently one of the most popular searches according to the front page. Every single result on the page is spam. Every one. Way to go guys, that VC really did something .

UPDATE: Good to see that I’m not alone.

Ever since Google took over Blogger, they started hosting buckets of spam (in the form of Blog*Spot sites). When AdSense was integrated with Blogger, Google began profiting off of the spam it pays to host. Now with Google Pages, spammers have another way to host their wares gratis from Google [example]. Dare I say Google is the largest host of spam sites in the world?

I got a DMCA complaint sent to me today from the folks at YouTube. Technically they just passed it along, it really came from Oprah. My minute long clip of Oprah chewing out fake author James Frey was removed thanks to claimed copyrights infringement. So much for fair use! Full text of letter below: (more…)

I have been on an unsubscription binge the past few days. Friendster, Ryze, Classmates and several others have all gone away. Also been purging subscriptions to non-frequent newsletters. I’m not sure what the catalyst was, but I think it was all the unnecessary emails that these services create. I really don’t care what’s new this week with service X.

Surprisingly most companies have made it easy to opt-out/cancel. Easier than I had thought anyway.

What do you do when the Mozilla talkback agent crashes? (It’s the app that pops up after Firefox dumps.) There isn’t a talkback talkback agent evidently.

I’m on my way out to Las Vegas for CES, but as it often happens my flight is delayed. There’s WiFi and power which makes it just a slightly more crowded and uncomfortable version of my office, so I can’t complain too much. Going through security felt like a scene out of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

I got two of the gray trays out to put in my laptop and DV camcorder and the security agent asked why I had two bins. I said video camera and pointed to the sign that said you need to for video cameras (not the same in all airports, oddly). He said no you don’t, those are for video cameras. I replied, I know that’s why I have it, I have a video camera. Again he came back with, no those are for video cameraS. Since he inflected the S I gathered he meant for more than one camera (which would be insane) and then pulled out my video camera to place in the bin. He said, oh you have a video camera, why were you saying video game?

He wouldn’t believe that I actually said video camera several times. Fun. Now off to board!

Bloglines has been down all morning. According to their site it’s a multiple database outage which sounds bad. I thought the painless transition to the new data center was too good to be true.

Technorati tags: bloglines rss

I have no idea how Dane Cook has a huge fan base. I’ve never been impressed by him, but since he’s everywhere these days I have heard a lot more of his stuff. It’s awful. But yet he’s got nearly 700,000 friends on MySpace, which means I’m not in the majority in thinking that he sucks. Oh well.

A long lasting indie restaurant is a rare thing in a lot of towns. Tampa has one called Goody Goody that has been in business in the same location since the 20’s which is long enough to make it an institution but not technically the oldest. It’s a bit out of the way from me and I have never been there, but word broke recently that it will be closing at the end of the month. Ever since I have tried to make the pilgrimage and it has been a harrowing experience. For reference, this is a classic American diner type place, their signature dish is a hamburger.

After finding someone to go we made plans for lunch on the next day. I picked him up right around noon and we made our way over there (which is just a few minutes from his place) only to find about 40 people packed into a very small dining room. It was obvious that we were in for a long wait to just get a table so after a few minutes of scoping out we left discouraged but not beaten.

Today was round two and we played this match with a later time and more confidence. Around 1PM we strolled in (this time with another person, maybe for good luck) and found nearly as big a crowd. After about 20 minutes we had a table but found out that it would be, “A hell of a long wait” before getting food. Literally two hours. This explained why we were the youngest people in the place by at least 25 years–you have to be retired to be able to wait for the food.

We haven’t scheduled round three, but we are determined to get to Goody Goody and eat before the end of the month. If people wait hours for a hamburger it must be good. Our gameplan for round three is to go early, beating out the lunch crowd. I’ll probably have to wake up at 5AM to be in the mood for a cheeseburger by 10AM, but that’s what I get for slacking around and not going until now.

(I just calculated that if we are able to eat at Goody Goody on our third trip I will have driven around 100 miles and used ~$11 of gasoline. That’s not to mention the time spent driving and waiting. Quite a voyage!)

I have no luck with shipping companies. Just when I thought I was a fan of FedEx, I run into their insane billing policies. My bank was bought out recently, so my account number changed. This caused everything I had on autopay to be rejected, so I had to change a lot of my account information for various companies. This includes FedEx, but of course I didn’t remember this until after I had sent a parcel.

I got a note in the mail reminding me to update my account information, so I went on the phone and did it right then. I then went to a customer service rep to make sure they would know to try my card again, now that it is current. She told me that I would have to mail in a check, because they had already sent a paper notice. I told her I know they sent a paper notice, that’s why I called, and to just run the payment now while I was on the phone. This it appears is an impossible task because it could appear confusing that I got a paper bill and then paid it online (she confused me by calling this process confusing, really haven’t figured out what she meant.)

Any other time I get a bill there is an option to pay online or by phone. I don’t write checks, so I of course put it on the back burner and now it’s going to be right at the wire. If FedEx wasn’t retarded, they would have had their money weeks ago. Way to go.

So now, onto UPS?

UPDATE: I went with DHL. They have a nicer website than either FedEx or UPS.