And Now I Know How I Ended Up in Membership Hell.

Re the pre­vi­ous two posts.

As I men­tioned ear­li­er today, there’s more than one thing hinky about one of the local TV sta­tion’s web­site. I now know exact­ly how I got myself stuck in mem­ber­ship hell. Follow along:

  • open your favorite browser.
  • go to www.king5.com
  • enter a search like, say, “one car”
  • enter anoth­er, “two trucks”
  • anoth­er, “three buses”
  • anoth­er, “four boats”
  • anoth­er, “five bikes”
  • anoth­er, “one more than I’m allowed”

oops… mem­ber­ship hell page.

Become a Member? Of a TV Station?

I have now found the heinous mem­ber­ship page on the KING5 web­site. I’m not sure how a got there the first time, and to be fair when I went there on pur­pose — by click­ing on the top nav bar — I had no trou­ble using the back but­ton to return to the page I was read­ing when I dis­cov­ered the but­ton. Nonetheless check this out: Continue read­ing “Become a Member? Of a TV Station?”

The News Ain’t Free

Pay per view isn’t always in the form of sub­scrip­tions and the com­pa­nies that bring you your local news are either greedy or stu­pid or most like­ly very much both.

This morn­ing I went to one of the local TV sta­tion’s sites (KING5) to have a look at a piece of video and I learned what it real­ly costs to look at the local news on the ‘Net.

I recent­ly set my com­put­er and brows­er to ask me before installing cook­ies. Mostly out of curiosity.

In addi­tion to the KING5 cook­ies which I accept­ed (at least 4) I have to deny cook­ies from the fol­low­ing sites:

.belointeractive.com
.advertising.com.
doubleclick.net
.atdmt.com

Actually about 12 sites but they were all vari­ants of the above. That’s right FOUR dif­fer­ent adver­tis­ing net­works what to install cook­ies in my brows­er so that I can read one local news sto­ry. Not happy.

It gets worse… Continue read­ing “The News Ain’t Free”

Web Dragons and Basic Car Care for Women

I’ve been work­ing for over a week on a review of the book Web Dragons:Inside the Myth of the Search Engines. My drafts are copi­ous and they all suck for one rea­son or anoth­er. So in a fit of hav­ing to get some damn thing out by the end of the week I give you:

This book is Basic Search Engine Care for People with­out Library or Computer Science Degrees.

For more then the 20 years a num­ber of com­mu­ni­ty col­leges have offered class­es in basic car care that were aimed at women. A nice avun­cu­lar gent in a shop coat talked about things like:

  • What an engine is and how it works.
  • Which nois­es com­ing from under the car are actu­al­ly dan­ger­ous and which are just annoying.
  • How to change a tire when the AAA truck can’t come for two hours and you have a meet­ing with your boss in 30 minutes.
  • How often to take you car to Jiffy Lube for an oil change and why it real­ly does matter.
  • How to deal with a mechan­ic and not get taken.

I nev­er took one of these cours­es because I know what car­bu­re­tor means (no, it is not French for don’t fuck with it) but lord knows I have some friends and rel­a­tives who damn well should .

Search engines are just like cars. We all use them every­day, and we all assume that they will work prop­er­ly when we need them, and most of us have no idea how they work. Continue read­ing “Web Dragons and Basic Car Care for Women”

TQR — Deep Secrets of Successful Blogging

Bloggers blogging on blogging

Deep Secrets of Successful Blogging is the com­pli­ca­tion of 30 posts from April of 2007 when Chitika (a blog­ger’s adver­tis­ing net­work) held a “blog­bash” about pro­fes­sion­al blog­ging. (I’m a suck­er for pdfs, or any­thing that I can print and take away from the com­put­er and this one is nice­ly designed for the type of con­tent it offers.)

So why should I, or you, care about blog­gers blog­ging about blogging?

Look up there at the tag line and you’ll see it. “Tools, tips, and toys…” Blogging is a tool for think­ing. Continue read­ing “TQR — Deep Secrets of Successful Blogging”