04 January 2009

Stuff that doesn't work

It seems that I'm not the only one finding problems with (see Notes from underground: Ping Technorati, Ping Technorati).

Anali's First Amendment: Ping Me Please!:
I've been trying to get Technorati to ping my blog for 18 days now and it still won't do it.

Apparently this has been a problem for many people, since PING is a huge topic in their support section. Hopefully they'll fix this soon.

For this blog, the Technorati site shows:

Notes from underground Last Pinged 25 days ago

and another blog (updated yesterday)

Khanya Last Pinged 11 days ago

And for some of my other blogs it's been even longer.

And if the problem is as widespread as it seems to be, then it means that other sites that use Technorati rankings and "authority", like Amatomu, are relying on incomplete and inaccurate data when they rank South African blogs according to their Technorati rank.

1Adii Freelancer & Business Strategist
| by adii ranked 1288 on Technorati
2Marco's Blog
| by marcog ranked 5831 on Technorati
3Ninja Monkeys!
| by Vaughn ranked 14926 on Technorati
4Online Reputation Management
| by ViperChill ranked 19454 on Technorati
5AfriGadget
| by hash ranked 20878 on Technorati
6Cape Town Daily Photo
| by kerryanne ranked 25556 on Technorati
7SA Rocks
| by nicharry ranked 28099 on Technorati
8Vinny Lingham's Blog
| by Vinny Lingham ranked 28411 on Technorati
9Cherryflava
| by Cherryflava ranked 30835 on Technorati
10Web AddiCT(s);
| by rafiq ranked 35747 on Technorati
11The Vegan Diet
| by Vegan ranked 37082 on Technorati
12So Close
| by Tertia ranked 38755 on Technorati
13Skinny laMinx
| by Heather Moore ranked 40190 on Technorati
14Nic Haralambous Writes
| by nicharry ranked 41404 on Technorati
15iMod - Anything & Everything Web
| by Chris M ranked 43057 on Technorati
16Affiliate Lounge
| by dreampunchboy ranked 44457 on Technorati
17Mike Stopforth
| by mikestopforth ranked 47546 on Technorati
18Architectradure
| by cati ranked 47970 on Technorati
19Eric Edelstein
| by Eric ranked 51581 on Technorati
20iScatterlings
| by iScatterlings ranked 56528 on Technorati
21Khanya
| by SteveH ranked 56528 on Technorati
22Wozafriday
| by Ddavef ranked 60261 on Technorati
23Hunter of Genius
| by MaxKaizen ranked 61585 on Technorati
24SprayGlue
| by SprayGlue ranked 61585 on Technorati
25bloute
| by sparrows ranked 64717 on Technorati

The Technorati people are forever fiddling with their pages "look and feel", which makes stuff more difficult to find. If only they put as much effort into fixing the basic functionality, to make things work.

I don't know about other people, but I usually look at Technorati to see what's going on in the blogosphere right now.

Yesterday, for example, I wanted to see who was blogging about Helen Suzman, who died on New Year's day. No one, according to Amatomu (Search for "+helen +suzman " returned 0 results). No point in looking at Technorati, because posts about a January death will only appear there 3-4 weeks later to judge by the ping rate. So in the absence of any posts on the topic, I wrote one on In Memoriam: Helen Suzman.

But of course I should have looked here. That would have told me who was blogging about Helen Suzman now instead of having to wait a month or two for Technorati to catch up.

It's no use for Technorati to play with the bells and whistles. If the piston isn't connected to the wheels because the connecting rod is missing, that engine ain't going anywhere.

Most misused words of 2008

List of Banished Words Released for 2009 | Firstcoastnews.com | Local News:
They're the words we used incorrectly, too often and sometimes for no good reason. Lake Superior State University has released its annual list of the 15 most misused, overused or generally useless words.

The words are submitted by the public and the school's faculty narrows the list to the fifteen most notorious. This year, a symbol made the cut.

Hat-tip to A conservative blog for peace.

Among the overused words and phrases are are carbon footprint, icon and iconic, and I agree strongly with those choices.

Even after discovering what it was supposed to mean, for me carbon footprint still brings to mind the image of a trail of footprints in the coal dust in a coal yard.

Icon (so spelt) was skunked by Apple computers, who began using it for the little symbols on a computer screen about 25 years ago, so I have long used the spelling ikon for the real thing. A conservative blog for peace notes :
Just because a writer recognizes something does not make it an icon (a visual symbol or representation which inspires worship or veneration) or iconic. It just means that the writer has seen it before.

Other terms noted as being misused were maverick and bail out. Some, however, had escaped my notice, like monkey and staycation.

01 January 2009

The (mis)uses of literature

Hat-tip to Inside Candy for this pointless quiz.

Why start off the year with a pointless quiz?

Well, I was woken up at 3:00 am by the burglar alarm, and after checking to see that no one was trying to break into the house, made myself a cup of coffee and began looking at blogs because the burglar alarm company usually phone to find out if everything is all right, which they did after an hour. They said their control room had been disrupted by a storm. Happy holidays.

So this quiz asks you a bunch of pointless questions and then tells you what book you are.

So they gave me a book and a cookieless fortune cookie to add to my already long list of books to read. And it's something to do while you're waiting for the burglar alarm company to get back to you.




You're Siddhartha!

by Hermann Hesse

You simply don't know what to believe, but you're willing to try
anything once. Western values, Eastern values, hedonism and minimalism, you've spent
some time in every camp. But you still don't have any idea what camp you belong in.
This makes you an individualist of the highest order, but also really lonely. It's
time to chill out under a tree. And realize that at least you believe in
ferries.



Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

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