Category Archives: Internet

But isn’t that what the Web is for?

The Terms of Use for the site yobi.tv includes the following (the emphasis is mine): 8. RESTRICTIONS ON USE You may use this Site only for purposes expressly permitted by this Site. You may not use this Site for any … Continue reading

Posted in Idiocy, Internet | 1 Comment

Captcha this!

I have trouble with a lot of those “captcha” systems.  When the letters are oddly curved, run together, or otherwise obscured, I have a tough time.  I thought this one wouldn’t be so tough, though.  Until I saw the note, “it … Continue reading

Posted in Idiocy, Internet | Comments Off

Is there a syndication format standard for media?

At work, we’re trying to make our media firehose available to other developers.  One thought is to publish a syndication feed through Pubsubhubbub.  I can easily do that, but I don’t know which format to use. Pubsubhubbub was originally designed … Continue reading

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Podly.TV is alive!

It’s been a long road.  Back in January of 2007, David Stafford and I came up with the idea of writing a media search engine.  We thought it’d take maybe a year. We actually had something in a little more … Continue reading

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Why Google will win

I don’t know who’s calling the shots over there at Google, but they’re absolutely brilliant. Google’s technology is impressive, no doubt. They’ve come a long way in the 12 years or so since two college kids named Sergi Brin and … Continue reading

Posted in Computers, Internet | 2 Comments

Movie madness

Outside of YouTube, MP4 is probably the most popular video file format available online.  MP4 videos exist inside a container format that’s also widely referred to as “the MP4 container format.”  Honestly, I’m not sure what the correct name for … Continue reading

Posted in Computers, Internet | Comments Off

What is dragonwood?

It’s rare that I’m stumped when I try to find something on Google, but this one beat me.  Somebody on the woodcarving forum asked about “dragonwood.”  Always curious, I thought I’d look it up. Dragonwood appears to be very commonly … Continue reading

Posted in Carving, Internet | Comments Off

Sniffing network traffic

My latest crawler modifications require me to scrape Web pages that host videos so that I can obtain metadata (title, description, date posted, etc.) that we place in our index.  Unfortunately, there’s no standard way for sites to present such … Continue reading

Posted in Computers, Internet, Programming | 1 Comment

Facebook is broke!

Checking Facebook tonight, I got a notification that I had hidden some applications from my news feed.  Thank you very much, Facebook, but I didn’t need reminding. So I canceled the notification and clicked on something else.  It reminded me … Continue reading

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Yahoo! Mail customer care stinks

I am currently engaged in a week-long struggle with Yahoo! Mail’s “customer care” about an email that they’re blocking.  Since the beginning of the year, my server has been sending a daily report about crawler performance to me and to … Continue reading

Posted in Idiocy, Internet | 3 Comments

Getting attention the new way

So let’s say that you’re a musician on your way by airplane from Point A to Point C with a stop at Point B. Trusting the airlines to handle your luggage, you check your guitar. While sitting in the airplane … Continue reading

Posted in Internet, Music, Odds 'n Ends | 1 Comment

Web video: Searching for standards

Web video is all the rage these days, with seemingly everybody getting into the action.  The 900 pound gorilla, of course, is YouTube.  Estimates of YouTube’s size vary from 100 million to 250 million videos.   My suspicion is that it’s towards … Continue reading

Posted in Internet | 2 Comments

Broadband and the business of media

Earlier this week, Time Warner Cable announced plans to expand their use of metered broadband:  charging customers by the gigabyte rather than providing the all-you-can-slurp service we’ve come to know and love.  As a TWC customer, I have mixed feelings about … Continue reading

Posted in Internet | 1 Comment

Stack Overflow

For most of the ’90s, I was a part of TeamB—a group of volunteers who helped answer questions on Borland’s Compuserve forums.  I met a bunch of really great people doing that, got some free Compuserve time, a few trips … Continue reading

Posted in Internet, Programming | 2 Comments

Music everywhere

One of the benefits of what I’m doing for work (we’re building a media search and discovery site) is that I find all kinds of different music all over the Web.  Sure, there’s lots of commercial music out there that … Continue reading

Posted in Internet, Music | Comments Off

Should VPN be this hard?

Last week we moved the crawlers from our office to a real data center where we can get more, and more reliable, bandwidth.  Getting everything installed and working wasn’t too much trouble, although the next time I have to do … Continue reading

Posted in Computers, Internet | 2 Comments

One more time: the Internet is public

[Note:  As Michael Covington pointed out, there's plenty of privacy on the Internet--just not on the World Wide Web.] I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I keep running across people who don’t understand that there is no privacy on … Continue reading

Posted in Internet, Web Crawling | 2 Comments