For anyone who recently tried to view this site in Internet Explorer, my apologies for the following error message that you probably received:
Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site.
Operation aborted.
This pop-up message occurred because the default ScratchBack JavaScript code that I used tries to modify the parent container from inside a child <div> container. The original code given to me from ScratchBack looked like this:
This code works fine on Firefox and Apple’s Safari browser. Unfortunately, due to a bug within Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers (5.5 - 7), the error message gets displayed, preventing the page from loading. For anyone else experiencing the same issues, I hacked the ScratchBack code to the following (obviously it will be slightly different for your widget ID):
This corrects the problem in IE, and there doesn’t seem to be any discernible difference in viewing the page in Firefox or Safari. The widget works as it should.
Special thanks to my brother Mike for noticing this issue, since it probably would have lasted for months had he not brought it to my attention (indeed, it had already been broken for a few weeks).
This taught me a valuable lesson to check my site with Internet Explorer whenever I make a code change. Get with the times, folks, and please switch to Firefox already.
First, let me say the primary purpose of this blog is not to make money… it’s to share my personal thoughts and insights on numerous topics (primarily technology, politics, and American culture), and to hopefully spur some thoughtful discourse in return. For this reason, the blog as a whole can appear very disjointed, and I doubt that a very large body of readers would accumulate. If I was in this to make serious money, I’d stick to a single topic.
Nevertheless, I do include advertising on Politivi for several reasons:
It’s my job to stay current on Internet advertising and marketing trends. I work in affiliate marketing, so it is important that I stay ahead of the game. This blog (and other sites I have), allows me to be an engaged user of my own team’s product, as well as the web advertising solutions that other firms offer.
Advertising helps offset the hosting costs.
It’s fun to make a few pennies off of my work.
In addition to the normal sponsored ads/links that are clearly labeled, the content of this blog will sometimes include unmarked affiliate links (within a post’s body, as well as other places) to sites like Shopzilla, BizRate, Amazon, et al. The reasons for doing this are congruent with the reasons enumerated above. Beyond this, it’s just annoying to point out each time such a link occurs (plus you can usually see in the browser’s status bar if such a link is affiliate-encoded).
To be clear, none of the opinions expressed on this site are influenced by any advertisers. I take full responsibility for the nonsense expressed herein.
A new site called Infochimps is making available tons of *huge* datasets for free.
There are many sources to find out something about everything. Until now, there’s been no good place for you to find out everything about something.
From population to organ transplants to native languages to higher education - Infochimps has already compiled quite a worthy collection of comprehensive statistics (see more here).
Wired is reporting on the recent AdWords CPC increases that have taken a toll on arbitragers and others. The argument in favor of these increases is that it allows Google to display fewer (but more relevant) ads, thus increasing the CTR. On the flip side, some ad buyers are saying that it simply costs more now and the traffic isn’t converting to compensate for the difference.
I am curious if this increase also took effect across Google’s AdSense network?
Piper Jaffray added Netflix (NFLX) to its Alpha list, signaling that the stock displays potential for solid near-term appreciation [link]. To back its outlook, Piper cited Blockbuster’s weaknesses and the fact that rent-by-mail currently makes up only 20% of the movie rental market.
I totally agree, in the short term. However, in the long term, I think Netflix has its work cut out for it, if it is to continue growing in the age of bundled cable/internet/phone/whatever packages. I have no data to back this up, but it is my initial reaction that as “on demand” watching becomes more accessible with cable packages, folks will be more inclined to just click a button and watch the movies that their cable provider is offering.
I realize that NetFlix has an excellent “watch instantly” feature, but most folks aren’t going to be bothered connecting the computer to the television. And television still is the reigning champion when it comes to watching movies.
So I wonder: Will NetFlix continue to innovate its way out of a potential pickle? Or will it go the way of Napster and become irrelevant?
Disclaimer: I don’t have a position in any of the companies mentioned, though I am a NetFlix subscriber.
This morning I was checking my usual RSS feeds and was happy to see that many popular websites were rickrolling users in honor of April Fools Day. If you are unfamiliar with the prank of ‘rickrolling‘, it’s when someone mischievously provides a supposedly relevant link that ends up being Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up music video from the 80s. Example IM conversation with a rickroll:
Bob: Hey, have you ever been to Mystery Pier Books up on Sunset Blvd? They have a terrific selection of true first editions. Joe: No, but I’d like to check it out. Bob: You can find more information here: http://www.some site.com/
And of course, the link would land you on a page where Never Gonna Give You Up starts playing. If you think
that’s hilarious, grow up. Needless to say, I agree that it’s hilarious. So, I came up with an idea to rickroll my old high school classmates on Facebook and Myspace.
I crafted a message entitled “MRHS Class of 2000 - 8 year reunion” with the following body:
Hey everybody,
Myself and a bunch of other folks are organizing an 8 year reunion for the Mainland Regional High School class of 2000.
Then I posted it as a MySpace bulletin, and rifled it off on Facebook to all the folks from my class. The responses have been awesome, and I’m glad its given me an opportunity to reconnect with old friends.
By the way, if you find yourself caught in a SERIOUS rickroll, John Chow has posted how to get out of one.
There was a great, inspiring article in yesterday’s Los Angeles Downtown News. Commander Andy Smith of the LAPD was profiled in the newspaper as a ‘good bye’ from the downtown community. Smith has accepted assignment to South Bureau Criminal Gang Homicide Group, where he should continue his string of successes.
When you have advocates for the homeless singing the praises of a police officer, you can be sure that things are going right:
“I don’t think we had [a commander] who embraced the issues of what happens on the streets with the same level of enthusiasm and open-mindedness as Commander Smith,” said Orlando Ward, public affairs director for the Midnight Mission.
Chief Bratton had the following to say:
“He is a caring, compassionate person, and in that command in particular, Central, with all of the deprivation and so many lives that are so severely impacted in a negative way, Andy just seemed to be the right fit.”
Anyway, I was inspired by the courageous story of Andy Smith, his quest to clean up downtown, and his whistle blowing on the issue of ‘homeless dumping.’ Do yourself a favor and read this article. Then be thankful that we have dedicated people like Cmdr. Smith serving the public day in and day out.
I upgraded my blogging platform to WordPress 2.5… there are some pretty big improvements over 2.3.x on the admin side, including a cleaner interface and dashboard widgets (full feature list here).
If you’re blogging, you should consider using WordPress, and if you’re using WordPress, you should upgrade to version 2.5. Of course, there will inevitably be a 2.5.1 release in the next month to fix some bug(s)… but when it only takes 5 minutes to upgrade, why miss out on the awesomeness now?
I recommend WordPress for the following reasons:
Documentation is clear and easy-to-follow
The community support is outstanding
There are tons of actively-maintained, useful plugins
WordPress is a mature product that has been battle tested on some of the most heavily trafficked blogs on the Internet.
Tonight I went to a seminar on personal investing given by Michael Johns and Robert Sherman at the LAJCC. These guys did a terrific job, and it was exceptionally nice of them to volunteer their time.
Anyway, I usually pick up a few tips at these types of events, and this was no exception. One interesting thing that Michael presented was Janus’ periodic table of investment returns that shows quite effectively the strength of a diversified portfolio.
Stanford Law professor, Lawrence Lessig, has been up to his usual awesomeness.
A few months ago he rolled out two excellent slide shows on why he supports Barack Obama (here and here). I definitely recommend checking these out… they are both reasoned and persuasive.
My own introduction to Lessig’s work was through a different slide show on free culture back when I was in college. Since then, I’ve read several of his books (available for free on his site), and created/used many Creative Commons-licensed works.
Beyond the two Obama slide shows, Lessig has also started a new non-partisan organization called Change Congress with the following noble goals:
Matt Heaton, the founder of BlueHost (the firm that I use to host this site) wrote in his personal blog about the difficulty in balancing customer service needs of hundreds of thousands of customers [link]. He writes that the vast majority of folks contact customer service as needed, and don’t exceed the normal unspoken boundaries that a rational person would adhere to (we’re talking 50 calls/emails to customer service a month).
Then he writes about another group, I call them customer service greedy, who leap over this boundary:
These are the people that are generally new to web hosting and have expectations that are almost impossible to meet. They demand the world, don’t/won’t understand what responsibilities fall under their control (domain issues, script security, etc) and what is under our control (servers, network connectivity etc). Often they will call as many as 50 times in a single month for support and hand holding. These are the people that REFUSE to learn on their own and constantly require us to do everything for them. For their $7 a month they expect instant answers to their questions via phone, chat, and email, and tolerate no faults on our side as if they have a cluster of managed dedicated servers. These customers cost us 10-50 times what they pay us and threaten to leave when things don’t go their way.
I believe it is of the utmost urgency for businesses to provide the highest level of service to all their customers (something BlueHost does very well). That being said, as part of my work, I’ve always been in communication with customers/clients, both on a close level and at the periphery. And there can definitely be a *very* small core of folks who are extremely greedy with the finite customer service resources available. These people can be a drain on the system, causing delayed service for everyone else, and not only eat into profits, but potentially resulting in price increases for everyone.
Sprint recently went so far as to terminate the contracts for thousands of these ‘bad customers’ [link]. Now, I don’t think this was a necessary step - maybe it should have been a last resort. A more rational approach would have been to notify the greedy group that if they wish to continue to receive exorbitant service, they will have to pay a premium for it. I think BlueHost should consider doing that. Hire a few extra customer service reps to handle these trouble accounts, and charge them each an extra x amount per month for a premium service package.
Try to make some lemonade out of those lemons, Matt.
