Month: June 2006

Work Profanity

I decided today that now that I’m employed I can swear on my blog again, so here is a post involving both work and profanity.

The Top Ten Sources parent company just bought Stylefeeder, which is a of multi-store wishlist, plus a way to share shopping lists, and also works as a way to browse for stuff that other people like. The revenue comes from affiliate programs.

It’s still got some kinks to work out– there’s bugs related to iframes and flash-heavy sites like the Icon Motorsports catalogue, but mostly it’s incredibly neat.

And then there’s the usual risks you run into when you let any random user add content to your site. I added my favorite Threadless shirt to my style feed and tagged it (accurately) as “Threadless t-shirt unicorns fucking.” The site dutifully added “fucking” as a keyword, and then suggested a link to Flickr photos tagged with the same word.

Still, it’s an incredibly neat site, and a lot easier to use than, say, Mugshot.

A family story and three links to the Times

My mother’s father used to read the San Diego local paper, at the time a highly local and highly right-wing rag. He insisted that the New York Times was too influential. My father, ignorant of naval rules, disagreed freely and told him that the Times was influential because it was better, and that he should read it.

Things I have learned in the Times today: There’s an incredible World-Cup billboard in Frankfurt. Frankfurt is a pretty boring town, but it’s going all-out this year. (See also Top 10 Sources for World Cup Soccer). All that new Voice over IP stuff is insecure. It’s vulnerable to brilliant exploits like traditional telephony was in the 70s and 80s. Ohio is replacing Florida as the land of fucked-up electoral politics.

Take that, San Diego Union-Tribune.