bc Archives - Page 864 of 959

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

Why has Web 2.0 Been (Relatively) Quiet on Net Neutrality??

The point is that I searched through Technorati, and could not find the usual Web 2.0 suspects writing, but just pointing people to fun videos that are cutesy; they are not really taking the banner of Net Neutrality.

I have discussed this with a couple of other bloggers – and wonder if Web 2.0 has not rushed to this because they are so caught up with themselves. Do they think that the banners of open source, community Web, and whatever the buzz words du jour are going to save their companies? If you look at the Web 2.0 sites -Facebook, Riya, YouTube, Second Life, Songbird, BitTorrent and others – they are total bandwidth hogs. Look at how much Second Life is growing, to the point that it is holding virtual conferences, virtual concerts. But at least is it suited to find ways around the potential costs of the loss of Net Neutrality, as it already charges for membership.

And, well, since Friday it is even a bigger issue since the House rejected Net Neutrality.

Now, while the big Net companies – MSFT, Google, Yahoo – have been to the hill to fight for Net Neutrality, the other side of the debate has just been as active. But is smarter and better at lobbying. Just imagine if the Web 2.0 companies rallied their users to send a letter or email to their Senators and Congressman. Would not those voices be heard, or am I a little too Mr. Smith Goes To Washington?

Net Neutrality: Who voted for What?

The largest telephone and cable companies such as AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner want to be able to decide which websites run fast, slow or not at all. They want to be able to charge extra money for fast service and if web sites donÃ¢â¬â¢t pay extra then theyÃ¢â¬â¢ll be doomed to a slow connection.

Net Neutrality wants to ensure that all sites get equal treatment.
The supporters of Net Neutrality include leading high-tech companies such as Amazon.com, Earthlink, EBay, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Skype, Vonage and Yahoo. Prominent national figures such as Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig and FCC Commissioner Michael Copps have called for stronger Net Neutrality protections.

For More Information check out the Net Neutrality FAQ
Yesterday the House of Representatives voted NO for Net Neutrality. The list below shows the people who voted. I have arranged them by state so you can easily see how your representative voted. If you are FOR Net Neutrality and your representative voted NO then donÃ¢â¬â¢t vote for him/her in the next elections.
[THE COMPLETE VOTING LIST FOLLOWS]

The Marching Morons Strike Again [Read more…]

Hello

This is me. I’m Liz. I’m the nice one.
I love 9rules Network. This Not a critique of the blogs there.
I never imagined in a million years it would be taken as such.
I’m sorry it was mistaken for that.
My apologies. I am truly sorry if that was not clear..
It saddens me to think someone would mistake this as something like that.
I’m so very sorry to all of you and so embarassed.

So I set the record straight.
I loved 9rules and everyone I met there when I was member and I still do.
Paul Scrivens has only been good to me. I consider him a friend.
This piece was simply meant as study in how quicky readers can sometimes make decisions
That was all.
As my dad use to say, “Only believe 1/2 of what you see, and none of what you hear.”

Sincerely,
Liz

PS. This was a post about the mathematics of a customer’s quick scan. 13,5% of 111 made a “I wanna look later list. Read the post again. There is no critical malice in it. It is an emotional observation of my own behavior.
_______________________________________________________________

Going Down the List Again

A week ago the 9rules Network announced 111 new sites had been selected to join them. I had the interesting experience of going through the list of 111 domain names looking for the blogs of folks I knew. I learned a few things from that experience that I think are worth sharing.

UPDATE: It seems I need to update this. These are the response of a cursory look through a bunch of 111 blogs that I knew nothing about, except that within them there were a certain number I already knew well. I had a limited lime as I went through list to capture those that immediately grabbed my attention. This doesn’t mean those that didn’t have something wrong. I wasn’t judging a contest. I was supershopping as some customer on timed reconnaissance might do. There is no intended implication that the blogs I left behind have anything lacking. This is about 15 unnamed blogs I happend to pick up on my way through a list of 111 that were selected.

Think of these as observations from the field. Do what you will with them.

I don’t pay attention to domain names. I pay attention to titles. That meant I had to check every single one just to be sure I didn’t miss a great blog — a blog that has, for one reason or another, a domain name that is wildly different from its title. If you have a different name on your blog, make sure that folks know about it, before they have to go through search engines to find you.
Too much going on and nothing to look at. There were several sites that couldn’t hold my attention for longer than a second. They made it easy to click on.
I was in a hurry to get to the short list. Some bloggers actually said they weren’t good enough to be in 9rules. I decided to agree with them. When there are too many choices in a short time space, customers look for reasons to say no. At least I know that I do.
On a second look, only 6 of the 15 blogs I bookmarked still hold my attention. I collected what I thought were 15 winners. I went back to check them out tonight. I couldn’t remember what I saw in most of them. Most seemed unremarkable. Had they blown their wad to get in? Did they not stand up to a longer look?
This is not the time to think that folks won’t notice. One of the 15 still has the same post up — the post that says it was chosen to be in 9rules.

Only 6 out of 111. Granted I went through the list fast and furious, but . . . even 6 out of 15 is disappointing. . . . I’m going to keep watching all 15 of them. I’ll let you know whether things change.

PS — I still like the ones I knew were great going in.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
9rules Picked Great Ones
See the entire Customer Think Series on the SUCCESSFUL SERIES PAGE

EchoEcho on and on and on

June 11, 2006 by Liz

Use at Your Own Risk

This is SO COOL and SO DANGEROUS. If you know what small bit I do about coding, it might be a good idea to back up your template files before you start playing with this new toy. . . .

Great Find: EchoEcho
Type of Site: Encyclopedia of information on how to build and maintain websites — This section: HTML Basics
Permalink: HTML Basics: http://www.echoecho.com/html.htm
Target Audience: Every blogger can find something useful on this site

Content: On the home page of EchoEcho, you’ll see this quote

“It’s easy to explain simple things so they seem to be complex…
to explain complex things so they seem easy – that’s the real challenge!”

The webmaster at EchoEcho has taken on the above challenge, and goes further by attempting to add the word complete. I’m not using hyperbole when I call this an encyclopedia of information about building websites. EchoEcho is a hosting company that knows how to establish credibility through ezine artitcles, tutorials, a forum, online tools free resources, even a quiz.

The Tutorials are divided into three categories each of has subcatagories that cover several topics, talking each one many levels deep. Here are the categories and categories you’ll find there.

Page Building: HTML, Javascript, CSS, DTML, XML.
Component Building: Design, Flash, Java, Free Java Applets, Java Programming Tutorials
Server Programming: ASP, Cold Fusion, PERL, PHP, SSI

I’ve set the link to the HTML Tutorial on the titleshot below. Click on over. EchoEcho is a reference to keep.

There’s no questions that every blogger at every level can use this resource.

EchoEcho has plenty of tools and things to learn, do, and make here for free — ways to add unique details, ways to differentiate your brand, ways to add to your blog’s curb appeal . . . ALSO ways to overdo the bells and whistles BIG TIME . . . ways to screw up your template too, if you you’re like me.

I think I’ll ask friend to come along when I explore this site. I could get into some real trouble easily.

Good luck and enjoy!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
I’ll be adding this Great Find to the NEW BLOGGER Page.
You’ll find other pages there and in the Tools and Stat/Tech categories.

Net Neutrality 6-11-2006

June 11, 2006 by Liz

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

absolutely nuthin but net neutrality

two things: first the internet is the most democratic medium in the history of all media.

caveat, there are still vast swaths of population without access.

secondly, the internet is democratic because it’s end-to-end. the internet was designed with no gatekeepers. it’s based on a layered end-to-end model with no central control (inventor of the internet said that, no not al gore, but i didn’t get the guy’s name).

consumers take it for granted that every application and website are treated equally because it’s always been that way. title 2 of the communications act provides for non-discrimination of information.

the problem is that these rules are about to change in the communications language moving through congress.

the communications company want to get into video over broadband, and turn the internet into a cable tv model.

Net neutrality extremists should stop playing engineers

Our own VoIP blogger Russell Shaw has decided to rebut my position on Net neutrality. Here is my response to Russell.

Russell Shaw says:
George then adds that if everyone is contending for the same bandwidth on an Internet backbone at the same moment in time, then the priority-service packets should never exceed half the total available bandwidth. He feels no network provider that uses their senses would violate such a policy, because that would cause service to degrade to the point that many customers would be alienated.

Here’s where I differ. I don’t think the designation of priority packets should be permitted. That opens up at least the possibility of favored Internet access to content partners. Plus, because of hubris, as well as the law of unintended consequences, I think that network providers may overestimate their ability to maintain system-wide quality for those packets that have not been blessed with what I could colloquially call “most favored packets” standards.

Russell, of course you don’t think this is a good idea when you have no understanding of traffic engineering. One of the comments made to me in my blog was that instead of implementing QoS, a Telco should simply add bandwidth to solve the problem. The knee jerk reaction to this would be “this sounds great” but the problem with this line of thought is that you can add 10 times more bandwidth and you’ll still need QoS.

Unspun: Jim Cooper so totally on notice
[Read more…]

Easy File Backups

June 10, 2006 by Liz

You Know You Oughta

When he sent it, Keith said, “Share it with your readers. Let them save some money from expensive backup too.”

Great Find: Using Gmail to back up files with ease
Type of Article: How-to back-up files
Permalink: http://techie-buzz.com/technology-buzz/using-gmail-to-back-up-files-with-ease.html
Target Audience: Every computer user

Content: Keith Dsouza describes himself as pretty fussy about backing up his files. So he’s just the guy you want writing a post about how to do it. The post is short and sweet. It tells you how and it tells you why.And it does so in Keith’s most readably friendly writing style. End of story. Click the title and go to see his new blog, Techie-buzz.

608 techie buzz Using Gmail to back up files.Jpg

Thanks, Keith.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Thanks to Week 33 SOBs

June 10, 2006 by Liz

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

muddy teal strip A

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this badge’s validity, send him or her directly to me. This award comes with a full “Liz said so” guarantee. It is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame. Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss