Cross Canada

Sometimes a person goes the extra mile to raising awareness for a cause he believes in. Quite literally, Wayne Cho is one such person - he is running across Canada to raise awareness for anxiety and depression.

The fight is close to home for me. I have suffered from General Anxiety until the age of 30, when I took up long-distance running and began to have my anxiety under-control. Growing up, I always began the day with this intense worry feeling in my guts that something was going to go wrong and I worried about everything. I didn’t know that what I had was anxiety until I went back to school to study psychology. Ironically, that was a year after I began running and discovered that I could control my worries.

Wayne certainly deserves to be applauded.

Being Open

John Gruber on OpenDNS:

The other thing about OpenDNS is that it is fast, fast, fast — for me, it makes web surfing noticeably faster than using the default DNS servers I get from Comcast.

I have noticed this ‘speed’ boost as well as what appears to be a quicker consumption of DNS changes than that of my ISP, Cox Communications.

This is in addition to the management and security features offered through OpenDNS, including those mentioned by Rob Griffiths:

Consumer Reports touted Firefox or Opera over Safari because of the built-in anti-phishing tools in those first two browsers; Safari has no such built-in capability. There is, however, a free service you can use that will give every browser on your Mac a full set of anti-phishing tools (and additional tools, if you choose to use them). This service is called OpenDNS, and it’s a free replacement for your Internet service provider’s (ISP) domain name servers.

Which is to say using OpenDNS would be a worthwhile option for anyone using a browser.

BBQ Serenade

As well-traveled southerner, I love BBQ almost as much as I love fresh seafood. So, this little ditty is near and dear to my taste-buds. I can almost taste the Carolina pulled pork…

Kitchen Sink

After much self-debate, hand-wringing, and the few minutes it took to download and install, I have moved the content management portion of the site to Movable Type 4. I will be moving older content (but not all of it) over as time permits. Unfortunately, comments will not be part of the transition.

That’s it.

Redesign #27

Previous visitors may feel like it's 2005 all over again, and they wouldn't necessarily be wrong. In digging through archived files, I rediscovered a basic design I started back in 2004. The design briefly graced this site before I felt one of my usual urges to start over. Well, it's back and while the design was originally layered over an extremely simple backend I hacked together around the same time, TextPattern has managed to survive this latest fiddling.

Why the sudden motivation? Quite honestly I had just grown tired of the site not representing its owner, me. A redesign has been long overdue and I hope to gradually revive the aging design and functionality. Granted, I also need to toss in some much needed content.

My newest hurdle is figuring out how to incorporate more of the development projects I have been working on over the past few years into what is a largely design-based sampling of work. My focus, after-all, has shifted far more into the realm of software engineering than before.

For now, I'm just pleased that I took the relatively few hours it required to get this much done.

Zeppelin Delight

Merlin Mann:

If How the West Was Won sounded any huger, we’d each only get to listen to it once, then we’d die. Huge.

Start with “Immigrant Song.” Hammer of the Gods, indeed.

Mmm… Good stuff.

Window Shopping

Hand-illustrated collection of mid-century shop window designs. (Via Airbag)

In postwar America, everything pointed to a bright, shiny future. Sheer optimism and opulence informed everything from automobile design to architecture, infusing design with larger-than-life planes and curves. Storefront design of the era is particularly indicative of this phenomenon…

Page preview

Old World

Illustration of the “Principal High Buildings” of the Old World with respective heights noted in feet along with color coding by the primary construction material. (Via inertgreymatter)

Diagram preview

Map O' Tubes

2008 Web Trends Map from Information Architects.

In terms of traffic, Tokyo station is the center of Tokyo. That’s why Google (which is slowly becoming a metaphor of the Internet itself) has moved from Shinjuku to Tokyo Station. Google continues to push new modules into the main lines in an attempt to occupy the center circle.

Trend Map focus on main lines

Defining Evil

What does one do when accusations of fraud are presented with a complete lack of incriminating evidence? If you are dealing with Google and the charges concern click-fraud in the AdSense program, then a whole-lot-of-nothing. You can plead your innocence and request information regarding any supposed, invalid clicks, but you will be answered with form-based responses and rejection.

This all, of course, fits nicely in with Google’s terms for participating in AdSense. As such, those who are ‘found guilty’ have little recourse or options for legal action. Any money one has earned as a part of the program is funneled back to the advertising participants, regardless of whether a dime of it was legitimately accrued.

It is certainly understandable that Google wants to minimize fraudulent clicks so as to protect its advertisers’ investments and its own reputation. The advertisers who participate in the AdSense program are already taking a gamble that click-throughs will lead to a purchase or other such monetary gain. Google has a responsibility to see that these investments made are not being abused.

But it appears that Google has become overzealous in its crackdown on click-fraud. There is a level of expectation when it comes to false positives in a system of this magnitude. The problem is in how Google is approaching possible abuses of the system. Sites with suspected, invalid clicks are given only one notice, that their AdSense account has been canceled. What is absent in this communication is any information on appealing the decision. There are ways to attempt an appeal, but such attempts rarely appear to be met with anything short of rejection.

As was mentioned prior, and what appears to be the greatest disservice to its customer base, Google will not provide information (or evidence) as to how the clicks in question were determined to be invalid, nor will any be given as to aid the account holder in determining where said clicks occurred or originated from. Thus, even if an AdSense participant is innocent of any involvement in the supposed click-fraud, there is little that can be done on their part to prove that innocence.

Oddly enough, the information that Google requests when one does attempt to appeal an account cancellation is comprised of the very details that Google is already in possession of.

Google may certainly have lived up to its mantra of “do no evil”, but the manner in which it has done so might have more to do with how it walks the line between ‘evil’ and basic customer disservice.

[Disclaimer: I am not, nor have I previously been a participant of Google’s AdSense program. The opinion expressed here is purely as a close observer of how the policies involved can negatively impact those, likely, rare cases of “innocence”.]

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