a crank’s progress

INTERNALMEMOS.COM - Internet’s largest collection of corporate memos and internal communication
Glad this wasn’t around 2 years ago . . .

Another one of Mark Pilgrim’s little gems. Creating links for the Amazon affiliate program is tedious since you can’t look up the item from the “build a link” page. You have locate the item, get its ID, then login and create the HTML. What a pain.
I’m thinking that, given a title, pyAmazon can run the [...]

I got a job today, and it pays the munificent sum of $112 a day. Trouble is, it’s just one day/8 hours a week.

Network Tries to Foil Ad Skipping
Now, a new cable network has elevated the practice beyond the occasional, building such anti-ad-zapping efforts directly into its business model.
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The entire schedule of the new network, Fine Living, has been specifically set up to incorporate various forms of advertising that can foil the abilities of personal video recorders like [...]

The FuzzyBlog!
There is already NO sense of value for software on this country — at least depending on the market segment. If you are a consumer buying a $500 computer then you don’t value software. And you really don’t even understand how a CD-ROM of office can be worth the same as the [...]

MediaGuardian.co.uk | New media | Signs of the times
Douglas Rushkoff writes in the Guardian:
[ . . . ] a company like AOL never had a future. AOL was a training ground: an introduction to the internet for people who didn’t know how to deal with FTP. None of us thought it could last, because once [...]

MediaGuardian.co.uk | City | Case moots AOL Time Warner demerger
AOL Time Warner chairman Steve Case has floated the idea of spinning off the troubled America Online internet unit, prompting renewed speculation that the company could demerge next year.
via Wade

my first call from a funeral service telemarketer today . . . . . I don’t even have my AARP card yet, and already I’m being solicited for longterm (really long term) real estate purchases.

Fierce Highway: Carter to blame for Hussein?
A college undergrad opines:
Is the recent Nobel Laureate Jimmy “Aww Shucks, Looky There Ah’m President” Carter to blame for our recent problems with Saddam Hussien? This editorial from UPI certainly thinks so.

President Carter’s shilly-shallying over Saddam in 1980 led to Western coffers being enriched by a $1,000 billion of [...]

Nonprofit to Create Open Source Software
“I haven’t seen any evidence that there’s a hole in the market here,” he said. “But all the rational people have been completely wrong about most of these markets. So the fact that this sounds loony is probably a good thing.”
It must be my time spent as a newspaper copy [...]