Web

I recently unsubscribed from Barnes and Noble promotional emails, which I was getting, I think, because I signed up for a Barnes and Noble membership card the last time I was in Columbus. That’s the best guess I can make, anyway - I’ve never purchased anything from their website.

When I went to the unsubscribe page and submitted my email address to be removed from their list, I was shown this:

Your email address has been successfully opted out from Barnes & Noble promotional e-mails.
Please note that this change will be in effect within 10 business days. Thank you.

Is there any legit reason for it taking up to 10 business days? Technically speaking, I don’t see why it would take more than a few minutes, at most. I would assume that the email addresses are stored in a database, and when it’s time for a promotional email to go out, their system pulls the addresses out. While I’ve only dealt with MySQL databases, I can’t imagine that a database system which required 10 days processing time to remove one entry would be very efficient!

I suppose the reality of the situation lies in one word of that sentence: business. By telling their advertisers they’ll keep email addresses in the loop for 10 days after someone requests to be removed from the list, Barnes and Noble is probably making a heap of cash.

Oh well - certainly not a big deal, but it is something to chuckle about. I note that it doesn’t take 10 days for the ad emails to start showing up after you’ve signed up for a service of some sort.

I like Wikipedia - love it, in fact. It’s a wonderful resource, and is a testament to what is possible when a lot of people put their heads together and get down to work (even if there is an awful lot of arguing between the editors). I check something on Wikipedia once a day or so; at the very least, I’m looking something up there once every two or three days.

But… (Saw that coming, didn’t you?)

The fact that Wikipedia articles come up as the #1 result for so many things is a bit irksome to me. Yeah, it’s a nice resource, but what is its pagerank, 312? (It’s 8, actually.) I can’t think of any specific examples other than the one that I just ran into now, but there have been numerous times in the past when I’ve searched for something, and thought “huh, the Wikipedia article is first in the results? Weird.” The one I ran into a moment ago is the search “discworld.” To me, the fact that the Wikipedia article about the Discworld series ranks higher than Terry Pratchett’s site about his own books is a little peculiar. Yeah, Pratchett’s site is #3, but, while I’m all for the best resources being listed first, I think the author’s own website about his own books should have more weight than the Wikipedia article.

What do you folks think? I suppose when one looks at the big picture - that Terry Pratchett’s site is visible “above the fold” - it’s not a big deal at all. Certainly, it’s not something I’m going to get upset over. But on principle, do you think the author’s site should come up before Wikipedia’s article about the book series in question?

I just got an email from AGLOCO [referral link] letting me know that the viewbar for their program has been released and is now ready for download. I figured I’d throw out the word about this site because it seems like an interesting idea. Here’s a blurb from their site:

AGLOCO™ is the first Internet based economic network, which enables you as a Member to ‘Get your share of the internet.’ Advertisers, search companies, online merchants and other businesses currently pay lots of companies to deliver people like you to them to get your attention and sell goods. With AGLOCO™ they will be paying YOU.

AGLOCO™ is also a global community of Internet users whose active Members can be paid for all their online activity. By downloading our proprietary Viewbar™ technology, members benefit from engaging yet unobtrusive content tailored to their interests. AGLOCO™ also pays its members to refer their friends to the community (and for those friends to refer more friends through four levels of extended referrals.)

I’m not really sure how the program will end up faring. All Advantage was popular years ago, but went the way of the dodo with the dot-com crash. Whether AGLOCO will turn out to be a decent way to make a few bucks while reading the daily news, we’ll see. If you’re interested, check it out.

Update: Just an FYI: their site seems to suffering badly from all of the folks who are trying to download the viewbar. I’m not even able to connect to the site right now. If you can’t get it working, check back later; I’d say it’ll be fine once it isn’t being hammered.

(As an aside… what’s up with the name Agloco? If anything, it’s memorable, I suppose…)

I try avoid writing posts here solely to share a single link, but I’m going to break my rule for this: I Can Has Cheezburger?. I learned about I Can Has Cheezburger? when it moved onto the WordPress.com platform. The site is basically a funny picture site, specifically, funny animal pictures (the vast majority involving cats), with captions. I’ve been subscribed to it in Google Reader ever since I came across it. Here’s the latest one posted, to give you an idea of what the site offers:

If you don’t find that hilarious, you probably won’t like the site. (And if you don’t find that hilarious - what’s wrong with you? ) Here, I’ll try one more to sway you to the awesomeness of the site:

If that doesn’t sway you, I give up.

When I completed the sign up process at A Small Orange the other day for my new hosting, at the bottom of the page, there was a brief blurb about OpenDNS. I’d never heard of it before, so I checked it out. After using it for a few days, I’m happy with it. Here’s a snippet from their site:

OpenDNS helps you navigate the Internet in a safer, faster, smarter and more reliable way. Our service is free and requires nothing to download. OpenDNS doesn’t replace your existing Internet connection, it just makes it better.

Here’s a link to their features page. If you’re interested in using their service, here’s their getting started page.

While the security features and the speed boosts that OpenDNS provides are all very cool, I think one of the coolest things they have is the CacheCheck. CacheCheck let’s you force OpenDNS to check the DNS servers for any given domain. If they’re not up-to-date, you can have OpenDNS update them on the fly. This is quite a bit different than how most DNS servers work: if they’re out of date, too bad. You have to wait for them to update. Granted, if someone isn’t using OpenDNS, they’ll still have to wait around for their ISP to update their DNS information. In other words, what are you waiting for? Set it up; it’s easy.