Lindsayism.com

Do or Do Not, There Is No "Make Facebook Group"

Hello, MySpace? I'm just calling again to remind you that I'm never calling you again.

SEO Killed the Title Line Joke

...But maybe Tumblr is bringing it back. Today, Doree Shafrir (whose Tumblr blog I've been reading obsessively, along with Ricky's, Spencer's and Balk's) has an article about Tumblr and its young creator in The Observer. Tumblr is already subconsciously making me want to blog more and more frivolously (if possible), as the last two days attest. (And Emily's come back, with the same inspiration.)

Tumblr is great for personal sites with no growth ambition, like this one (I'm considering a switch.) So far, I've only read friends' Tumblrs (in Google Reader RSS, the way I read Facebook updates and everything else I read on the web - I highly recommend it) but I could see subscribing to Tumblrs of funny people I don't know. My favorite thing about Tumblr is the return of the title line joke, which has been basically killed by Search Engine Optimization (for optimal SE placement, title lines should be descriptive and contain proper nouns, they should not be abstract or "inside jokes.") It's nice to see my favorite bloggers writing without filters again. It feels a little like the old days. Professional bloggers should keep personal blogs as well, if only for their friends.

(End of dorky boring thing. For now...)

Update: Network Solutions Stealing Domain Names: Confirmed!

(Update to the post below about the Network Solutions furor)

A reader named Joel sent in these screenshots of his own little experiment:

f*ckyounetworksolutions.com:

Search 1: Available:

Search 2: Available:

Search 3: Taken:

This is an extremely important issue for democratization on the web. Network Solutions phone number: 1-800-333-7680.

Update: I called to complain, and they confirmed this:

"these domains are held with a Web-page notice saying that they are available for sale for a four-day period. This gives the Network Solutions customer a window of opportunity to purchase the domain before it snatched up by a scammer, Mitchell aid."

But (and this wasn't in the Times story), Network Solutions confirmed that their domains cost $34.99/year, while their competition sells them for less than $10/year. Once you search for a domain on NS, you can ONLY buy it from them. It's basically an anti-competition issue. Boycott Network Solutions!

It's Not Paranoia...

I KNEW IT!!! I buy a lot of domain names, and every time I search for a new domain idea I'm paranoid that my searching for it will cause it to be automatically registered. Turns out, that's now the case. Not sure how we can make this stop other than by raising awareness, so read the article and be aware!

Doncha Just Love the Internet Sometimes?

I am such a nerd for this kind of shit: blogger freeze-frames Leave it to Beaver and transcribes the text of a letter that was never supposed to be seen by viewers:

"Lew Burdette just hit a home run and Milwaukee leads seven to one in the series. This is the last line of the filler material of the note. No, my mistake, that was only the next to last. This is last."

What strikes me is how contemporary the writing style seems -- the conceit it's based on makes it self-aware and aware of its own cleverness in a way I'm only guessing wasn't as popular in 1958 as it is now. It's like, McSweeneysesque or something.

band names galore!

I'm really late to the Kathy Sierra internet misogyny debate, but it's really hard to take it seriously when it includes serious sentences like this:

"However, Chris and I (and others) still strongly disagree about whether people who are respected and trusted in our industry (like the three of them) are giving tacit approval when they support (though ownership, authoring, and promoting) sites like meankids and unclebob."

Also: this caption.

Obviously the possibilities are endless, but I just imagined a conversation occurring where her college roommate says: "I bought a big box of tampons at Costco but Poony Poon over there used them all."

you were there, and you were there, and you were there

I know this is everywhere (as it should be), but this commercial by We Are the Web.org warms the cockles of my little internet nerd heart. [And brings back sweet memories - The Tron Guy! The Peter Pan guy! The kittens, my god, the kittens! (Just ignore the subservient chicken, we all know that shit was Burger King)]:

Can't get it to embed but it's here. )