If you’re seeing this message, that means the new nameservers are doing their jobs. Yay.

I’ve been shopping for a new web host for ages. I found A2Hosting a while back, and liked what the had to offer quite a bit. I was then prompted to pull the trigger when Merlin Mann offered a 20% off FOR LIFE code over on his blog, 43Folders. (I won’t post the code here, you gotta go to Merlin’s blog to get it.) So, here I am. If you are in need of a good hosting service, take a look at A2Hosting’s info. If you want feedback from me, personally, though… come back in a few months. :)

PS: Something is messed up with the install/setup. Many links are 404, atm. Working on it, but it may be later this weekend.

PPS: Awesome. Moshu over at the Wordpress support forums set me on the right track to fix the problem. Bonus fix: My RSS feeds are back.

So, I’ve been using twitter sporadically. I’m still feeling it out and not sure if I will continue using it, but signs point to yes. For now.

It’s like a weird form of irc-like chat in slowmotion, where you start off ignoring everyone in one gigantic world-wide room. Everyone is also ignoring you. You can befriend somene, which means you have essentially unignored them and now receive their messages. They’re not seeing yours, though, until they befriend (or “follow”) you.

You can also see who someone is following, but not who is following them.

I’m r3v there.

Also, for a complete waste of time, check out the mesmerizing Twittervision.

Scott Kurtz, the PvP comic guy, has had an idea that will shake the foundations of Web 2.0. The various revolutionaries and masterminds behind Flickr, Tumblr, Zooomr, Twittr* and all the rest can collectively hang up their whiteboard markers. The epitome of Web 2.0 has been conceived.

I’ll let you visit Scott’s blog to discover the wonders of Poopr.

*=I realize it’s “Twitter” but they apparently didn’t get the memo about dropping the last vowel. In an unrelated note, I’m considering changing my name to Christophr.

I’ve been using the online bartering service, BarterBee, a while now and I thought I’d share my experiences. (In the interest of full disclosure, that link tells them that I sent you and I should get 5 points for each person that joins and requests an item. You get 5 points just for signing up.)

The way it works is that you sign up and list what Games, CDs and/or DVDs you have to trade. You assign a point value to each item and people use their points to buy them from you. When someone requests the item, you drop it into a Barterbee envelope, sans case, and send it off. When they get your item, you get your points.

Points, the currency of Barterbee, are worth about a dollar each. (In fact, you can actually buy points from Barterbee at that price-point. So I guess it’s exactly a dollar each.)

Thus far, my experience has been nothing but great. I’ve sold/traded off about 18 games and movies and have 4 more in transit. In every transaction I have received more value (i.e points/dollars) than I ever would have if I had I tried to sell the items to a used shop or via eBay. Sometimes as good as a 5-to-1 ratio. Often about 3.5 to 4 on PS2 games.

I’ve only requested DVDs so far. There’s a good selection of XBox games, but hardly any Xbox 360 games. No surprise there, though, the system is too new. There are also tons of games for other platforms. Even Atari 2600 games.

I haven’t used the service for Music CDs or PC/Mac games yet. I think LaLa.com, which Annette uses, may have cornered the market of the former. I plan to make use of Barterbee for the latter, whenever I can work up the energy to dig the games out of boxes.

Speaking of LaLa.com, Barterbee could learn a couple things from LaLa. I’ve watched Annette do the LaLa transactions a few times and it slighlty less cumbersome than BarterBee.

I’ve added a new link to the “SocialNetworking” category of links. It’s for LibraryThing, a social networking site about books. It’s not the first one (I believe reader2.com (also linked) holds that honor) but I do think it has a lot of potential.

They recently got hit with a tidal wave of traffic, thanks to the WSJ and BoingBoing linking them on the same day. Since they have managed to survive the onslaught (after a few upgrades), their userbase and database have both grown tremendously.

The site allows you to enter your library of books, then rate, review and tag them as you see fit. The possibilities are plentiful from there. You can find people who thought similarly of the book as you did, and then see what else they’ve enjoyed. You can also see people who’s collection is very similar to your own, and then peruse it to see if they’ve got anything you might be interested in.

Be sure to check out the Zeitgeist link. Lots of good timesinks for readers there.

Also, the site supports importing catalogs of books from other book websites and apps such as Delicious Library.

My Library Thing links: My profile & My catalog.

My comment spam (which you aren’t seeing, because I moderate all comments from non registered users) is coming from a couple of IPs in Amsterdam. Dutch fuckers. Now, I realize that the owner of this particular machine may not be the spammer. It could be a compromised PC that’s being used as a bot, yadda, yadda, yadda. I don’t care. Screw them both.

If you don’t take the security of your machine seriously and you connect it to the Internet, you are part of the problem. That means you, 85.255.114.130.

Search results for: 85.255.114.130 Read more »

Using some very intricate scientific formulae, the giant brains over at certifyr.com have determined that I am 19% Web 2.0 compliant. Well, if I try real hard, I’m actually 31% compliant. Depends on if I include some ambiguities such as “Founder has a blog”. I definitely marked mispelled/silly name though.

Ok, so it’s more aimed at web businesses, but it’s still amusing. Thanks to Eric for the link.

I’m now running Distributed BoingBoing because I think it’s lame that Smartfilter is blocking them. dbb,php is a project of Mark Christian which you can find here.

For more on the BoingBoing v Smartfilter stuff check out some of the links below.

Via Boing Boing:

Distributed BoingBoing, for those blocked by censorware: Xeni Jardin:

BoingBoing reader Mark says,

Hey, guys. I really hate SmartFilter, and I just knew there had to be something I could do. This idea came to me a few days ago. It’s called Distributed Boing Boing — it’s a very simple script that anyone can put on their server. When people visit that page, it automatically fetches Boing Boing and serves up through their server — sort of an automatic mirror. The code gets rewritten automagically to keep links working through the proxy server. It doesn’t require any configuration, and it’s totally safe — only files hosted on *.boingboing.net will get passed through. Help spread the word and help keep Boing Boing flowing.

PS: You guys rock. Seriously, I love this place.

Link to Distributed BoingBoing. Thank you, Mark!

Previously:
- SmartFilter, BoingBoing, and Adult Baby - Diaper Lovers.
- Xeni’s NYT op-ed: Exporting Censorship
- BB banned in UAE, Qatar, elsewhere. Response to net-censors: Get bent!
- PRI’s “The World” on SmartFilter’s BoingBoing “nudity” ban
- NY Times on SmartFilter’s not-so-smart “nudity” block
- Saudi Arabia joins league of BoingBoing-deprived nations
- BoingBoing’s guide to defeating Censorware
- More BB posts on SmartFilter

This time I am testing using MarsEdit with WP. Exciting, no?

Now this is a pretty neat use of web-tech. It’s rather interesting in a Modern Anthropology Meets The Internet sort of way. (They really need to tie it back to Google Maps now though. That’d be nifty.)

Mapping Google News: “CousinLarry writes ‘A neat project called Buzztracker.org has been mining Google News for over a year and keeping track of relationships between geographic locations mentioned in articles. The results are some really cool maps that actually seem to reflect the ‘buzz’ of the day - check out the Vatican clusters from earlier this month, or the global New Year’s chatter. You can also dig down into the articles from which the maps were generated.’”

(Via Slashdot.)