Month: August 2010

Which Canada do you “like”?

ethernick

Here’s something to consider about Facebook fan pages. According to The Montreal Gazette, Canada has only 334 fans. But in taking a look at Government fan pages for Canada, which one do you follow?

While all of them say they are “government” which one is really the government? There is no ownership info; no info what-so-ever.

I’m reminded a little of Seth Godin’s Tribes, before you start raging ahead of the pack to lead, do a quick search to make sure someone else hasn’t already started. And, if they have, just click “like”

Admitting the F%$#& Up?

ethernick

Magic Utilities

Yesterday, I admitted to a deep dark secret… well not really. It was an admission that I was having problems with my website. But did I say anything on @breakingthedial? Nope. Why? It would have helped. And it got me thinking of something that I battled with at school.

Here’s two schools of thought that I think are battling it out in radio.

The Magic of Radio vs. The Truth ( aka Transparency )

To those in the know, there is a magic that happens when you listen to a great radio show. It just flows from song to sweep, through the commercials. And it’s like a wonderful tide that washes over your ears. And you are unaware of the folks running around booths, or mic failures or Burli blips. And it’s the “making it look easy” that gives it a magical quality

But on the web, nothing is magic. There is the truth behind everything, and to pretend that you are an all knowing, infallible creature means your hiding something. Enron and Kathy Lee Gifford taught us that.

When something goes wrong, what do you do? Are you the cat that rolls off the end of the table and won’t admit that anything happened? Or do you admit the oops and move on?

I’m sure there is lots of grey area, that it’s not just one or the other. How do you respond?

My XML + XSLT Question: Can it be evil?

ethernick

I’ve been playing with XML & XSLT on and off for 6 years. I’ve toyed with parser scripts. I think, at some point, I even wasted a few days making an ant compiler to generate a static site for a client of mine… but that’s as far as it went.

Recently, I decided to play again and set up an experimental playground over at ethernick.com. What’s fun about it ( “there’s no place like 127.0.0.1” kinda fun ), is that it’s all XML. Right now, there isn’t a single html page. I’ve parsed out RSS & RDF, plus i’ve even applied XSLT to a quasi-HTML index page. But don’t let the letters fool you, it’s not HTML.

What caught my eye, was that although the very first page is “.xml” and it uses XML doctypes and XSLT calls, Google decided to index it as if it where HTML. So I added a fake

What I ended up thinking is – if Google sees something else, is this a potential hole for scamming? Here’s the story I play out in my mind:

Say I work for a seedy business. And at that business my job is to lure unsuspecting people to see my site. These unsuspecting people may be even be fooled to click on a link or two. And while people are clicking away to unauthorized sites and scammy links, Google doesn’t see any of it. They are unsuspecting, because to them, it’s a little page with a couple of paragraphs.

Now…I admit this isn’t fully thought out. I admit that there are holes. I’m wondering, in real world practicality, why would someone make a page for real-estate, and then show them porn. It’s more of a surprise factor than anything. So, is it really a problem after all?

I don’t know. But I guess that’s why it’s an experiment. I guess the discussion is open.