Alphabetical List of My Most-Visited Websites

Here's a stereotypical apology blog post, referencing the lack of recent blog posts, which only further highlights the lack of blog postings. At the moment, there are only three live posts for the last year. That's current, but it might change. A peak under the hood shows that there are often blog drafts that get saved but not published. You can see that over the life of this site, I've got 974 posts saved but just slightly more than half actually published. I often have a seed of an idea to share so I save a quick one- or two-line note on the idea.

Let's pad things up a bit. Here's a fun experiment. Over the last year, I've been thinking about the detritus of my Internet history and found it might tell you a lot about what I browse through in my spare time. I use Google Chrome right now and my browser will bring up a suggested domain with the entry of just one letter. So here with no particular apology or emphasis are the alphabetical list of what comes up first for each letter. Some of these sites I like very much and would recommend. Some of them are just practical. None of these are work-related, as I use a different browser profile for work. Note that some of these may not be safe for work, so you've been warned.

1. Amazon.com - We have a prime account, watch prime video and do quite a bit of online shopping here. We bought nearly all of our Christmas gifts this year online. That being said, as a company Amazon is lead by a rich oligarch I'd personally toss into the sea given the chance. I could rant about this for a while, but the recent trend of wealthy assholes playing astronaut while the world suffers makes me ill. There's some hypocritical actions here, buying from a company that I am so uncomfortable with. But I'm fully in support of government action against the company. Me personally boycotting any one company won't make that much of a difference.

   Second to Amazon, the most-frequently visited sites that start with "A" include some I own:

   • Arconati.us - A wiki for our family tree
   • Arconati.net - A 'news' blog about our family
   • Arconati.name - under construction
2. So... pretty early here we run into a webcomic that I follow for it's story and artwork, but the content is very much pornographic in nature 99% of the time. Not too worried to admit that, but I won't link it here. Instead, I'll link the second runner-up, Blogger.com. Obviously that's the blog software I use to publish this site and quite a number of others. I'm kind of on the fence about recommending it as a platform, as Wordpress seems much more likely to receive consistent development. Perhaps someday I'll migrate permanently, especially if Google ever drops the platform. I'm still bitter about Google Music.

   Here's a few of my other blogger blogs, besides this one.

   • Quotes Archive
   • Arconati Comedy Awards
   • Arconati Kid Korner

   Some runners-up for the "B" category...

   • Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc - Where I work currently.
   • BibSonomy - A nerdy social bookmarking tool that I've been playing with for a while as a del.icio.us replacement.
3. Google Calendar - For a while now, in our family, we have been using a shared calendar to organize events and work schedules. Did I mention that both my older kids have jobs now? So keeping track of who is going to be where has been much easier with a shared digital calendar.
   • A runner-up for this list is CNN.com, which is one of a few trusted news sources I turn to when called for.
4. d20MONKEY by Brian Patterson - Here is another webcomic I followed very closely for a long time. This comic was largely about Dungeons & Dragons, and a gaming group of friends and their various interactions both in and out of game. The final post in the story was published late in 2020, but I have still returned here to catch up with the story from the beginning, read about some of Brian's homebrewed material and to await the next story called Innsmouth Garden Society.

   There are a number of other Dungeons & Dragons related domains that come up in the list for "D" here that I should mention.

   • D&D Beyond - a great site for D&D 5e players to create characters, campaigns, and encounters. I've been using this for all the games I've been running lately and it's just great.
   • donjon; RPG Tools - another great site with a bunch of D&D tools for game masters to help randomly generate character names, monster encounters, maps, and treasure.
   • 5etools - This one is a secret treasure trove.
   • The Hypertext d20 SRD - and one more great RPG site, although this one has fallen down the list a bit with some of the others I frequent more often.

   Also coming up for "D"...

   • Google Drive
5. Example Domain - This is an example site, but I use it more often than you might think to test just about anything from my browser to my network connection.
6. Fantasy Name Generators is another site I use often for Dungeons & Dragons, to come up with a quick list of character names very quickly. And there are generators for different species and different themes. Do you need ten Ewok Names from Star Wars? How about Legendary Creatures based on the names of real-world legends? Or how about Maiar Names from Lord of the Rings?
7. Gmail tops this list, but coming in a close second is another webcomic I've followed for the longest time. It's also based on D&D and it's called Order of the Stick, hosted on Giant in the Playground Games. It follows the adventures of a stick figure band of adventurers out to save the world.
8. How Many Days Until Star Wars? was a website I visited often to see the latest countdown to whatever was going to be the next Star Wars movie in the saga. I first learned about it back before Episode VII, then watched it closely for Rogue One, Solo and Episodes VIII and XI (not necessarily in that order). It appears the domain is no longer serving a countdown timer anymore, replaced with a generic "coming soon" message. That may be because there are no current plans for a full-length Star Wars film, only short-form shows and shorts on Disney+ for the moment. There ARE rumors of upcoming projects that will be developed, but no release dates yet.
9. Imgur - Here's one of the few social media sites I still enjoy. Kind of an anonymous image/gif/video sharing site, very much started as a quick way to share images on Reddit. It's just a fun place to see new images every day, funny and irreverant.
10. JustWatch - The Streaming Guide - This is a great site if you have multiple streaming sites and would like to watch a particular film that occurs to you, but you aren't sure what streaming site it might be available on. If you create an account and set your preferences for the streaming services you do have, you can get immediate search results specific to you.
11. Google Keep - My favorite note keeping app, connected with my Google account. You can make shopping lists, idea lists, long form notes, capture photos, draw doodles, all kids of stuff. It connects with your email, calendar, Google appliances, and so on.
12. LinkedIn - Another social media site. LinkedIn is a professional profile site and for the most part avoids a lot of the issues of other sites. I visit infrequently enough that I'm surprised to see it come up first. Since I've been off of Facebook for so long, this is the only way I keep in touch with former coworkers. I've also been doing a bit of networking with other musicians more recently so that's fun.
13. Twitter - And one more social media site, which comes up next for it's mobile.twitter.com subdomain. I dumped the Twitter app off my phone but kept browsing to the mobile site. It turns out the mobile version was also "better" at the time in desktop browser so I stuck with it. Nowadays I can't tell the difference visibily, but I keep typing 'M' when I want to check out Twitter.

    Any more 'M' sites?

    • Musescore.com - A sheet music repository as well as a great composition/arranging tool. I've use Musescore for a while now, but I've been using it lately for arranging band music.
14. NPR - One of my favorite news sites these days. Back when I was commuting to work and Reese was driving me, so she could have the car, we would often listen to and discuss the topics on the 1A show. I now listen to the show occasionally through the podcast app in Spotify.
15. Reddit - What can I say? I like Reddit despite the toxic reputation it sometimes has. This one comes up for the old.reddit.com subdomain, which I prefer on desktop. I used to have an account that I used, but now I just browse the frontpage as a guest.
16. Pinterest is a surprise, since I don't think that I visit this site very often. I save inspirational ideas for gaming, fantasy maps and music reference stuff.
17. Questionable Content is another webcomic I follow regularly. It's about a bunch of 30-somethings living in New England. It's modern day, except there are robots everywhere and there are a few other subtle differences because of that.
18. Reddit comes up next, and I browse the front page on my phone. On desktop I prefer the old.reddit.com as it's more my speed. Again, I stopped using my actual account years ago, but still browse as a guest. Pretty sure it's not a place I'd recommend to a lot of people, as it can be a shithole. Perhaps I should take my own advice? A second "R" site is another adult-rated webcomic, which I won't be linking to.
19. I use Craigslist sometimes (which comes up for "S" because of stlouis.craigslist.org), searching for a good deal on a used trombone or marvelling at the free stuff people attempt to give away.
    • Additionally, Spotify comes in second for "S" in my browser.
20. Tumblr was the first social network my kids wanted to join. Strike that, Reese wanted a MySpace page from a very young age, but we said 'no' for so long that she eventually gave up. When she was old enough for an online account, we suggested Facebook but she wanted Tumblr. Which I had no experience with. So I signed up for Tumblr just to have a way to monitor what the kids were doing. After a while, I started to really like it so it's become something I check daily.
21. Utopia Studios, a rehearsal hall and recording studio here in St. Louis. I first learned about this place back in my Bullseye Womprats days, but I've been there a few times since then and it's nice. I don't really have much else that comes up for "U"...
22. Google Voice comes up for "V" and that's how I have my personalized cell number.
23. Woot is an online deals site that I've been a fan of since before it was a subsidiary of Amazon. I first learned of this site back in 2003 or so, and they specialized in having one special one-of-a-kind product deal for 24 hours (or until they sold out) and then they'd never have it again. Honestly, not as much of a fan since they joined the parent company. Their deals just don't seem as great.
24. xkcd is another important web-comic that I've followed for a good long time. I know I've mentioned them a number of times before. Very simple, usually one panel, stick figures, usually science related, often quirky and obscure.
25. YouTube is always good for some entertainment.
26. Zyi Li Music and Entertainment! I've recently mentioned my band MO ECHO, and of course our website comes up first for "Z". I check the site's calendar and other resources to see where I need to be, but also to keep up with the other lineups.

And that's the alphabetical list of everything that comes up in my browser suggestion box when I type in a single character. I sort of skipped numbers and special characters because most of them bring up nonsense results. Except I did include 5etools above with the "D" and other Dungeon & Dragons sites. Otherwise, these are the ones that I browse first and fastest alphabetically. I hope that was interesting.

I May Have a Problem: Collector of Music - 25,000 Songs

This past September, I wrote a post where I bragged about collecting over 20,000 songs in my Google Music library. Well, I'm up over 25,000 songs now. In fact, my total at the moment is 25,989 Songs. The site layout has changed a tiny bit to match up with other Google products, but otherwise it's still same.

If I load up the service and go with a full shuffle of music, I never know what I'm going to get. It's interesting that I've got so much eclectic stuff; ethnic Russian music from my coworker friend Gary, EDM podcasts, Top 500 Songs from Rolling Stone Magazine, 8 bit video game music, horrible music from Lance Gargoyle (ugh), NPR's All Songs Considered, and more and more and more. Still, it seems that even with random shuffle, there is a loose thread pulling through the music that Google lines up on any given day. Sure, services like Pandora and Spotify Radio try and line up stuff that's related, but Google's shuffle just sounds like something else is invisibly going on behind-the-scenes.

Collector of Music - 20,000 Songs

I reached a personal milestone this past week I'd like to mention here. I now have over TWENTY THOUSAND songs on my Google Play library. I'm sorry, let me say that a bit louder…

20,000 Song Files!

Check out the screen shot below of the menu and you'll see the little highlighted section. That's a lot of music.

I'm not sure I've ever owned 20,000 of anything. And for the most part, I legally own all of these files, at least as much as anyone can claim to own music. Sure, back in the day I did my fair share of Napster, WinMX and Kazaa (*cringe*). But that's a few computer migrations ago. I still have those old files packed up in mothballs, perhaps retrievable but not easily. A larger portion of the music in my Google Music library arrived completely free, but still legally.

First, I should start with an introduction to Google Music for those of you who don't know. If you have an Android phone, you should be familiar with the official app store, otherwise known as Google Play. It's where you browse and get new apps for your phone. You can also purchase music, ebooks and digital magazines.

But my introduction to Google Music came before I owned an Android phone. In fact, my first smart phone was an iPhone I got from my work. Through the iTunes store I found there was a music section with a "iTunes Single of the Week" and I checked it regularly to get that free song. Sometimes it was pretty good, sometimes just blah. One standout that I still listen to regularly is a Gregory Porter song called Real Good Hands.

In the iTunes store, when you clicked a song it got downloaded and added to your iTunes library automatically. And it also got added to your phone at your preference. Each song was brand new. Additionally, I was getting exposed to a lot of international / world music due to the one coworker friend from Armenia that had a huge collection. Come to think of it, we had a lot of different music backgrounds in that department at the time, and I was constantly hearing something new. And I was also in a band at the time, getting exposed to all kinds of new music there too.

Somewhere along the way, the company switched cell providers and were offered iPhones OR Android phones. I didn't switch, but some did. And they discovered quickly that whereas Apple's iTunes had a free single each week, Google Play had a new free song almost every day. But you didn't NEED to have an Android phone for it, just a Google account (like Gmail). Not only did they make these songs available for free download, they also had an online library where you could store them as well as any other mp3s you wanted to listen to -- up to 20,000 at the time. There was a plugin you could get that would sync upload your whole iTunes library. Since having my collection in more than one place seemed attractive, I set that up pretty quickly. It was easy and I could continue adding new songs form the iTunes store and they'd be synced up to Google Play in a day or two. I could then listen to the same library from my computer at work AND my computer at home AND my phone.

In addition, there were several free music blogs that I subscribed to. You can subscribe to blogs/podcasts in iTunes and I grabbed a lot of files here. I could review some of them, but I'll just quickly list.

• Song Exploder
• Coverville
• Fluxblog
• Paris DJs
• OverClocked ReMix
• Aurgasm

I could list more, but that's a sprinkling. I had all this music coming into my iTunes library from various sources then uploading to the Google Play library and it grew. And grew and grew. And of course, I was also adding music from my physical media CD collection. Keep that up for weeks and weeks and months, and now years and here you go.

Somewhere along the way, I switched from iTunes mostly with a little bit of Google Play to the opposite. Additionally, Google's music library limit was increased to 50,000. And I'm pretty sure that if you've downloaded the music from their free/paid service it does not count towards that limit. Google has stopped promoting and giving away free music in favor of their radio service, which I pretty much eschew in favor of Spotify or Pandora when I'm in the mood for that. I could write a post in response to the folks I love who favor physical media, be it CD or vinyl, but I kind of get it so I won't talk about that here.

Not on Google Street View

I was discussing Google Street View today and I meant to show someone that I had been captured on one of the camera passes back in 2012. Here's the post from last year when I mentioned it and embedded the picture viewer. Except the bad news seems to be that the image of me waving out my car window is no longer available. Despite the fact that the folks at the big G have added some 'time travel' features that allow you to see the same place from different times their mapping car has passed the same spot, none of the currently available images feature me or my car. Not sure why, but that's the situation.

I was thinking of the website because earlier this week I passed another Street View car. The pictures take a while to be available on the site and I'm not sure if I'll be visible or not, but this time around I'll be sure to capture screen shots.

Working in Marketing is Confusing

I'm one of two minds.

I follow web marketing news as I've done for many years, even before my business card said "web marketing" on it. If I haven't mentioned it before, I used to say that I hated marketing. But my wife waded through that and corrected me. I really like marketing, but I hate being marketed to. And from that, I've become adept at noticing when I'm being marketing to aggressively and when the methods used overstep certain privacy walls I like to keep intact. I also feel this improves my abilities as a marketer and my moral compass that guides me towards doing it correctly.

That's why seeing an article like the following one gives me two separate and distinct feelings. First check out this Ars Technica piece on how Gmail has changed one aspect of how images in email are used.

Ever wonder why most e-mail clients hide images by default? The reason for the "display images" button is because images in an e-mail must be loaded from a third-party server. For promotional e-mails and spam, usually this server is operated by the entity that sent the e-mail. So when you load these images, you aren't just receiving an image—you're also sending a ton of data about yourself to the e-mail marketer.

But Gmail has made this irrelevant. They are caching all images on their own servers now. They will download all emailed images, which triggers the marketing software to indicate the email has been opened (when perhaps it has not) and then obfuscating the actual user's information. Gmail has essentially put themselves between their user and the email marketer.

On the one hand, I'm excited about this because as a Gmail user, it means my personal information is a little better protected from anyone marketing to me or researching me. On the OTHER hand, I work in email marketing and this is going to potentially change how we measure who has opened our emails and how many of them successfully read them.

As an aside, it could be argued that Google is doing this in Gmail not JUST for user privacy protection, but so they can surreptitiously learn all of the information from those images themselves... and perhaps turn around and sell that information to their AdWords users. But it's likely they could already have been doing that previously.

There I Am on Google Street View

Although I'd nearly forgotten about it, at some point last year (2012) I was driving in to work at SoTel, and I passed by the Google Street View car. Being an informed geek, I've known about Google Street View since it's very controversial beginnings. I've been interested and at times mildly alarmed at the lengths to which Google seemed to be going to build this weird photographic database of common everyday locations. And I knew vaguely what the cars that took the photos looked like. My house was not yet pictured but many locations I was familiar with happened to be.

So on my way to work one morning, I was running a tad late. But suddenly there in front of me in the opposite side of the street was a very obviously branded Google car. Behind the wheel was a bored looking young woman. My window was down and I leaned out and waved my arm in the most obvious way I could manage.

Of course, logically the photos wouldn't appear on the site right away. But it was not clear how long it would take to update. So every few months, I'd take another look at the street where I was but it wasn't updated yet.

Then I checked it again today.

View Larger Map

That's kind of awesome. I'm famous!

Update

The picture of me on Street View has been updated and I am no longer there. Here's an update post.

An Honorable Mention of Mentioning People

I've blogged since 2003 or so and one of the features I've always been hassled with was how to easily link to someone else. I mean, it's very easy to use the built in link tool and simply enter the proper URL of their personal website or blog or ... whatever. But my problem is recalling the right URL. For instance, let's say I want to link to my friend Vincent Le Pes III's website. He's a musician, web developer and all-around cool guy so perhaps I want to share a link to his site. However, I always have a moment's pause here as I try and recall the exact URL of his site specifically -- www.vincentlepes.com -- since I don't go there every day and I don't have the bookmark handy. In case you don't know this, misspelling a URL can lead you down a dark path. If you don't believe me, try going to www.whitehouse.com instead of www.whitehouse.gov. Inevitably, I end up going to Vinnie's Facebook profile and then his About page. Sure, it's handy but it seems like there are too many steps. I've always wanted a shortcut of some kind. I start to type out his name (or the name of some other friend) and the Blogger tool completes it for me and adds in the link. Facebook has had a feature similar to this for their posts and comments for a few years now, so it stands to reason this is not impossible.

I didn't really notice it right away, but it would appear that Blogger has added just such a feature recently. They talk about it on Blogger Buzz and explain how this feature works with Google+ to link your friends' names at your choice to their profile. It does not escape my notice that this is their profile on the social network, which might be somewhat private or might not. But it is not linking directly to their site. Still, it's a potentially cool feature.

It's kind of funny that my second thought regarding this feature was... "I wonder how many people I can annoy with this new toy?" Suddenly this feature seems a bit dangerous. Oh well, time to put the question to the test.

Say hello and a big HAPPY NEW YEAR to Lisa Arconati, Matt Armfield, Shashi Bellamkonda, Michelle Behymer, Ian Baird, Eric Berger, Amy Bliss, Amanda C. Peterson, Andy T., Adam Hallas, Andy Scott, Ben Durnell, Eric Baggett, Brad Vonder Haar, Cale Fischer, Chris Coy, Cathy Nicol, Chris Stoddard, Shawn Duncan, Don Krutewicz, Rachel Duncan, Mike Damewood, Dave McCann, Mike DuBois, Dan Kennedy, Erin Moloney, Erin Steinbruegge, Eddie Parker, Cari Schueller, Eric Patmythes, Aaron Eversgerd, James E. Arconati, Jonathan Frazier, Fayth Kleg, Scott DuBois, Alex Foster, Matt Galligan, Gina Ronat, Gina Maness, Mike Goggin, Greg Simms, Angie Garner, Heather VanMeter, Russ Henneberry, Jerry Henderson III, Jason Kevin Hill, Ryan VanMeter, Travis Irwin, Robin Rath, Jeremy Stoeckel, Janet Lackey, Jeremy Polen, Jeremy Zhang, Jacalyn Rausch, Joseph Madden, J.D. Pohlman, Toni Phillips, Scott Kingery, Brandon Kendall, Lisa Keller, Andrea Kuehnel, Jordan Koene, Lexi Long, Stephen Lotz, Adam Lefever, Mark McCoy, Nils Rurack, Robert Noles, Nikomas Perez, Jonathan Needleman, Nathan A. Tuskey, Jayme O'Renic, Jason O, Tracy Papproth, Mark Page, Robert Amos, Sparky Walkup, Tracy Papproth, Tolga Tanriseven, Tony Mast, Josh Brink, Valerie Starr, Wain W, Timothy Yow, Jeremy Zhang ...

Note: As I go through this process, these listings are showing up in alpha order, but sometimes by first name and sometimes by last name,.. and sometimes by email address? With this setup, I'm likely to have listed someone twice... Errrk! Usability fail!

Also notable are a few folks who don't 'technically' have Google+ profiles, but I email them often enough they got invites somewhere along the line. However, if Google/Blogger allowed me to link to them here, I kept it. There were a few names that did not become links. If you see your name and you'd rather I removed you please let me know immediately!

It does occur to me that I just made a very public list of nearly all of my friends, exposing important information about me in addition to possibly exposing their information without their permission. It gets all the privacy-loving hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. I'm guessing that you all each got some sort of notification emailed to you OR posted to Google Plus OR both. Perhaps you even have to approve my link or something. Perhaps not. My intent is test the technology a bit and wish you all a sincere Happy New Year. I apologize in advance for any inconvenience. If you are mad, I owe you a beer or coffee. Let's catch up.

Take the Search Engine Optimization Quiz

I didn't know how well I expected to do for this interactive quiz about Search Engine Optimization. I wanted to do really well, but am humble enough to know that I don't know EVERYTHING about keyword placement and research. I know experts at work in this field that I respect and am in awe of them in some regard. But some of these questions could be subjective or debatable. I don't want to pile on the excuses, but I was also in a bit of a rush to get it done because it's so late at night.

SEO Newbie - 64%

But considering my role's focus is separate, I'm pretty happy with the result. It is just one measurement. Anyway, enough about that.

Are you an SEO Expert? Take the Quiz!

Found via The SEO Investment.com.

Protecting My Children (from Google)

I've noticed this evening that my oldest, Reese, has discovered Google. At first this doesn't sound bad, but it can be and I'll explain why. It's my fault really. Sunday night, she was getting her school supplies ready for a new school year. She has a three-ring binder with a clear plastic sleeve on the outside. She wanted a picture in the cover that would express something about her and asked if I knew where she could get a picture of a volcano. She is very much into science and wants to be a volcanologist when she grows up. This is great and I encourage it. Thinking in the back of my mind about Google Images, I promise her I will find her a suitable image on the computer.

Later, however, I am feeding Lucas and I don't have a spare hand to help her out when she wants it. She asks me how to find a volcano picture herself and I tell her about the search box in the browser (Firefox). She types "volcano" and I show her the link in the top left to images.

Awesome! she squeals at the plethora of images. I smile a bit and go back to feeding Lucas from the bottle.

She finds one she likes and prints it out, then goes on to find some tornado pictures too and prints one of those out for the other side of the binder. She likes tornadoes as well, though they scare her a bit more. So she might be a meteorologist.

When I looked over her shoulder tonight, she is browsing tornado-related videos on YouTube & Google Video. I'm minutely concerned that the videos might be scary or inappropriate for her. I'm moderately concerned that the videos that she would be looking for might be linked to OTHER videos that are unrelated to volcanoes or tornadoes and are extremely inappropriate for children. But the real kicker, the issue that has me extremely concerned is the community aspect of sites like YouTube. Random people of any age can post comments on almost every video and can say whatever they want. For instance, someone with a penchant for using the f-word (misspelled without a 'c') posted their reaction to a clip Reese saw depicting a fictional F5 tornado hitting a major metropolitan area. The video, though scary, was fine as far as I was concerned but the text on the page in the comments...

This is a gray area for me. I want my children to have access to technology and know how to use it. Modestly, I'd like them to know more about it than any of their friends considering I'm such a proud geek. And cuss words --though I wouldn't tolerate my children saying them-- aren't really the worst element out there.

Feeling: conflicted.

Periodic Google Pagerank Report

And now it's time for another quick report on the Google Pagerank of the various websites that I manage. This is starting to mean less and less to me the higher it goes. I have traffic, but I really don't have the traffic I would have expected from the ratings but it doesn't really matter.

• Arconati.us - 0
• ArcoJedi's Holocron (this site) - 4
• Arconati Kid's Korner - 0
• Arconati Comedy Awards - 0
• Seamist Inn • Dungeons & Dragons - 0
• Arconati.name - 2
• Musical Holocron - 1
• Friends of ArcoJedi - 3
• R-Quotes - 3
• Arconati News - 3
• my del.icio.us archive - 4
• Arconati Family Tree Wiki - 3
• Ferguson Christian Church - 3
• Mudhorny - 3
• Colorburst Video - 2
• Happy is the Bride - 0

In summary, the Arconati.us has taken a bit of a dip, and the sub domains have followed it down.

More Information

• google/pagerank
• google
• Search Results for google pagerank

TechLifeBlogged - The Overview

Okay, so here is an overview of a story involving blogger, blogspot domains, spammers, Google Pagerank and me. The subtitle of this one could also be:

How I Got a Site With a Pagerank of 5 With Absolutely No Work ... and Then Gave it Away

It began when I was reading through some blog posts about del.icio.us integration with blogs. In one good post there was a comment recommending a site with a post explaining How to Create Those del.icio.us Link Posts. By the summary in the comment, it sounded like exactly what I was looking for. Unfortunately, the link was dead and I was confronted with the blogspot 404 error. The URL was:

techlifeblogged.blogspot.com/something

Even though it wasn't there anymore, I noticed the post URL had a Pagerank of 1. Curious, I checked the root directory of this blog and found that the root had a Pagerank of 5. So even though the site was not there anymore, it was clear that the blogger had done a lot of work posting and promoting the blog. Now it was gone. It had either been deleted or the blogger had changed the URL (perhaps posting over FTP).

I had some experience with posting a blog with blogspot for awhile and then switching it to a hosting provider. Sometimes this worked really well and sometimes it didn't depending on how Blogger set it up. In one example, I'd had http://arco-friends.blogspot.com/ but wanted to set it up with a subdomain on a hosting account at http://friends.arconati.name/. Prior to switching these settings within the Blogger dashboard, I modified the template to redirect using JavaScript or a meta refresh. I'd done this more than once:

• http://arconati.blogspot.com/ » http://arconati.net/
• http://mudhorny.blogspot.com/ » http://www.mudhorny.com/
• http://lisa-is-30.blogspot.com/ » http://lisa.arconati.us/

I'd also more recently used Blogger's new feature for Custom Domains, which allows you to actually point your DNS to Blogger's servers. Hey, it's like free hosting!

• http://arcojedi.blogspot.com/ » http://blog.arconati.us/
• http://arco-comedy-awards.blogspot.com/ » http://comedy.arconati.us/
• http://arco-kid-korner.blogspot.com/ » http://kids.arconati.us/
• http://seamist-inn.blogspot.com/ » http://seamist.arconati.us/

The cool advantage to this latest feature is that the old blogspot URL actually redirects to your domain with a search-engine friendly 301 redirect, meaning any listings in the SERPs and inbound links will still work correctly with no JavaScript needed.

However, between the first list and the day that Blogger added the Custom Domains feature, there was one site that didn't quite work out that well. When I went to set up and move - http://arco-quotes.blogspot.com/ - to - http://quotes.arconati.name/ - it didn't work out quite as well. I set up the redirect correctly, but moments after changing the settings to FTP, the old blogspot site was showing PAGE NOT FOUND. A blog I had built up with almost 250 posts and was well listed in the search engines was now gone. Minutes after I had discovered what happened, I did the natural thing and posted an emotionally reserved rant called BLOGGER SCREWED ME.

With all this as a back story (phew), I was staring at the techlifeblogged URL and wondering what happened to it. Still being curious, I wondered in my head how long Blogger kept blogspot subdomains before they went back into circulation and someone else could get them. So I went to the dashboard page and attempted to sign up for that as a new blog. I assumed it wouldn't work.

And I just about fell out of my chair when lo and behold, it did work. All of a sudden, I was the administrator of a site that had a pagerank of 5! But then the dilemma sets in. What did I just do? What do I do now? Naturally, I blogged about it --can you sense the theme?

TechLifeBlogged - The Beginning

Okay, what has just happened tonight was that I was browsing around and found a link to a blogspot site that was giving 404 page not found errors. I was sad cause the content I wanted was on it. I checked the root of the blog but was still getting 404 errors. Curious, I decided to try signing up for this subdomain and assumed it wouldn't ... [read more]

So I posted that and I waited. Not much happened. I wondered if anyone was actually coming to the site. I also wondered if the pagerank would drop very quickly, so I kept my eye on things.

TechLifeBlogged - Google Pagerank

As of today, the pagerank on this site as measured in both Firefox and IE is currently 4. When I ... [read more]

Thinking about it the next day, I tried just using Google to see if I could find where the original blog had gone and it was surprisingly easy. I posted again, linking to the original TechLifeBlogged and browsed around a bit enjoying the site. The blogger was a good writer and a geek like me. I had to get in touch with him. I found the contact page and hovered my cursor over the email link... and then wasn't sure what I would say.

Thankfully I was saved from the trouble. Scott Kingery, owner and writer of the TechLifeWeb Network posted a comment on what was once his blog but was now mine. He confirmed what I had already guessed. That he had owned and maintained that blog for a long time and then switched to a hosting plan. Without realizing it, he lost the 'blogspot' address that he had been promoting for so long and a spammer picked it up. When it became available again, I was the first to notice while simply browsing around.

By the end of this weekend, Scott should have his old blog address back. I am going to be adding him as an admin and then when he logs in he should be able to remove me. Prior to hearing from him, I briefly entertained turning this into a project for myself and using it to promote my own interests in technology, hardware, software and web development. But besides the fact that I'm already very busy, I just can't morally do this. Even if I had never figured out who Scott was, I'd always have assumed that someone out there had lost something that was their labor of love. I know it sounds stupid and sentimental and pretentious, but I just couldn't do it.

Any comments? What would you have done in my place? What would you have done in Scott's place? Thanks for visiting and thanks to Scott for being understanding!

TechLifeBlogged - Google Analytics Results

Update: This blog post was originally posted at TechLifeBlogged, but has been moved and archived here. The full story begins here and ends here.

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I've got an update about this site. First off, I found a site simply by doing a Google search for 'Tech Life Blogged' and I discovered a site that was most likely the original prior to posting the blog over FTP. Please visit the actual and most likely original TechLifeBlogged.

Secondly, the preliminary Google Analytics results have shown that only ONE other person besides me visited this site in the last 24 hours. It was about noon today CST and they were from or near Williston, Vermont. The clicked a link from Lifehacker.org. They probably didn't find what they were looking for and left quickly. And hey, if that was you, sorry!

TechLifeBlogged - Google Pagerank

Update: This blog post was originally posted at TechLifeBlogged, but has been moved and archived here. The full story begins here and ends here.

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As of today, the pagerank on [techlifeblogged.blogspot.com] as measured in both Firefox and IE is currently 4. When I signed up for the blog, it registered as a 5 but has dipped a little.

I've mentioned Google PR on my blog multiple times.

• Google Hiccup Gone For Now
• Let's Do the Google Shuffle Again
• Alexa
• Google Pagerank Dip
• Google Pagerank Shuffle
• Holy Pagerank Three Batman
• Google Pagerank Achieved

But having a site with PR of 4 or 5 is pretty impressive. My question that I'm wrestling with morally is whether or not I should really USE this site or abandon it. The previous owner was a spammer. If I benefit from this, am I not also associating myself with this spammer?

The question is not JUST a moral one. Google may have this site on a bad list, and any site or person associated with it might get marked as spammy also. Hmm...

Any comments? I've installed Google Analytics on this site to see if I can discover more about if anyone is coming to this site and from where. I'll post results when I have them (probably in a few days).

TechLifeBlogged - The Beginning

Update: This blog post was originally posted at TechLifeBlogged, but has been moved and archived here. The full story begins here (on this page) and ends here.

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Okay, what has just happened tonight was that I was browsing around and found a link to a blogspot site that was giving 404 page not found errors. I was sad because the content I wanted was on it. I checked the root of the blog but was still getting 404 error. Curious, I decided to try signing up for this subdomain and assumed it wouldn't work.

Well, it did and I'm faced with a quandary. I now have a blog that somebody else used and worked on for a while. It's gone, either lost or abandoned, but now what do I do with it? I feel weird, like I cheated or am guilty of something.

I am not a hacker NOR am a black-hat person at all. I did this rather randomly. However this site ...hmm.

Further investigation has shown that it was one of those rather nasty spammers who signed up for a blogspot account but have it redirect to their spammy domain. Check the Google cache if you doubt me. Still, I felt very weird, like I'm painting a big target sign on my forehead for what I just did.

If you have a complaint about this, please post a comment below. If this is your former blog and you want it back please comment as well and I'm sure we can find a way to work it out so that you get it back after we prove it was yours.

Google Hiccup Gone (For Now)

I had previously posted some comments that my Google Pagerank on some of my sites had taken a bit of a dip. I've posted over-posted about this in the past probably out of vanity, or perhaps curiosity. It's an interesting measurement for me. I remind myself I'm not selling anything, and also that the actual PR number does not guarantee search rankings.

Here is a quote from my last post on the subject.

Today from work, I checked and Arconati.us has a 1 and Arconati.net has a 0. Even Mudhorny.com has dropped to 0. All of these sites previously had a 2.

I'm initially sad for a moment, but then I recall that I'm only really doing these sites for myself and my family. I'm not selling anything. And also, as I need to remind myself and anyone else who obsesses with Google's Badge of Worth that it should not be the accurate measure of the success of a website.

Well, it would seem that all three sites; Arconati.us, Arconati.net and Mudhorny.com; have all come back with PR of 2. Most likely, Google's index was just updating and they temporarily appeared low.

As an interesting tangent specifically about Google, Blake Ross --the creator of Firefox-- posted something interesting about Trust and how Google had lost his. Anyway, it caught my eye.

Go Trillian!

Trillian is one of my favorite pieces of software and I found a fan / community based site for Trillian.

For those not in the know, if you use multiple pieces of software for instant messenging online, Trillian should be your new best friend. Through one program you can connect to AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Chat, MSN Messenger and many more.

site:arconati.us - Google Search

When I check a Google Search for "site:arconati.us" I see the following.

Results 1 - 1 of about 2 from arconati.us

That's not good. Also, it would appear (from home) that my PAGE RANK is gone. It shows 0/10.

site:arconati.us - Google Search

Results 1 - 10 of about 277 from arconati.us. (0.19 seconds)