If DuggMirror is Breaking the Law, So Is Google…

The recent front page story regarding the legality of DuggMirror shows a general lack of knowledge regarding internet laws and their current conception. At issue here is whether DuggMirror is violating fair use laws because it provides advertisements on pages that are duplicating the content of the actual owners. In the real world, we would all say that this is definitely copyright infringement. Hold on, not so fast. The DMCA has offered exclusions which, while originally intended to target caching by internet service providers, have protected the ability for sites to cache other sites without asking for expressed permission (Section 512B). Google’s caching service has qualified for this safe harbor before, and it likely that duggMirror would accept the...

Bah Humbug

It is rare for me to speak ill of anyone or any organization, especially around the holiday season, but I just have a few bah humbugs today. (1) RegisterFly. I. Will. Never. Use. Registerfly. Again. After now going on 20+ days, they have yet to register the previous 10 domains I purchased. Bah Humbug. (2) To CommissionJunction for not releasing funds on time around the holiday season. Because they were off by two days, it may be a week or more before I get paid. Bah Humbug. No tags for this post.

HTML Pie Chart

So, one of the most annoying things out there when it comes to creating graphics for the web are pie charts. You can do it by hand in a graphics program, download a PHP class and custom-implement it, or you can do it in a program like Excel, take a screen shot, crop and resize and upload it. Any way you look at it, creating HTML pie charts is pretty ridiculous. That is, until now. I threw together a front-end for a popular open source (GPL) php class for generating Pie Charts using GD (GDGraph by Makko). The tool located here, http://www.virante.com/seo-tools/html-pie-chart.php, makes creation of pie charts as easy as filling out a few forms. I have also added a nice little Javascript implementation so you do not have to go through the front-end every time you...

Web Page Packrats: The Top 25 Del.icio.us Users…

As a casual user or del.icio.us (the popular web 2.0 bookmarking site), it always amazes me to see individuals who have even a few hundred bookmarks. My curiosity piqued, I took a few minutes to throw together a script that, in conjuction with Google and del.icio.us, was able to find some of the biggest users of del.icio.us. Below are the top 25 by my calculations, with estimates of the total number of bookmarks they have on del.icio.us. Did you make the list? User Bookmarks planetoid 10260 alancordova 10000 katiesays17 9930 julan 9450 yerfatma 7870 Preoccupations 7680 snfg 7440 tolvuvit 7390 maidenhalo 7310 yesmar 7120 tomz 6940 joaom 6630 mymarkup 6500 hustwj 6470 maratimba 6230 tsupo 6070 bswrchrd 6000 rblackwe 5350 owen 5240 erniesthings 5240 ravee_27 5230...

The $500,000 Google Picture Frame

Ever wonder what kind of Google Love you get when you spend over half a million dollars on Google AdWords in a given year? We manage some pretty sizable adWords accounts here, so it is always nice to see what Google is sending their big advertisers. Well, this year’s Google gift of choice is a digital picture frame with a Google logo on the bottom right. It is a pretty neat little device, about 5 inches tall and 6.5 inches wide. The whole thing is maybe a half inch thick not-including the stand in the back. It runs on either batteries or the AC adapter it comes with. It has quite a few features including: Rewind / Fast Forward / Stop / Play / Pause Record with internal mic Sound (small speaker in back) USB connection to computer SD Card Slot MMC Card Slot...

Ruby on Rails Used to Create 1999 Script!

Awesome! Ruby on Rails has been used to write another incredibly innovative script orginally programmed in 1999! Thats right, Ruby on Rails is Awesome. Unlike other platforms and languages for the web that have been used to seamlessly run web services for the last 10 years, Ruby on Rails allows you to create those same programs using Ruby on Rails! It is no wonder that programmers have been flocking to Ruby on Rails, kind of like lemmings! Lemmings are so cute! I bet that means that Ruby on Rails programmers are cute too! Check it Out! Facts about Ruby on Rails! 1. People who use Ruby on Rails are totally sweet. 2. Linux is secretely coded in Ruby on Rails and ported. 3. Ruby on Rails was used in the discovery of penicillin and in every Star Wars film except...