I’ve already written about the nasty little sites that scrape complete content from legitimate web sites via their RSS feeds, so I won’t go into huge detail here. Suffice it to say that this particular breed of scrapers, who go by the name of “The Gadget World” but have registered ‘igizmodo.com’ as their domain name (hmm, sounds familiar), see nothing wrong in what they’re doing. They even dare to suggest that our much higher ranked site would benefit from being linked to by a splog. Yeah, I don’t think so.
Here’s the truth (select image for a larger view):
Sure, they’ll deny they’re doing anything wrong, but this screenshot demonstrates that they not only steal content, but hotlink any images. So they’re also using up other people’s bandwidth.
What’s more irritating is that I’ve seen other blogs quoting their site as the original source of a news story. I don’t blame these other sites – it can be hard to tell – but “The Gadget World” is getting credit and revenue for work that other people have spent time and money creating.
What’s also interesting is that, according to Technorati, Retro Thing complained about TGW’s practises about a month ago, but the post has subsequently been withdrawn. I’d be interested to know what happened there – whether TGW took down Retro Thing’s content.
By the way, that link above also shows you just how much content TGW are stealing from other people.
Posted in Blogging | 3 Comments »
Firstly, here’s a brief reminder that if you need to be preparing anything for tomorrow, February 14th, then you’d better make sure you get it sorted today, particularly if it involves deliveries or posting.
And now on to the slightly bizarre nature of Interflora’s reminder service…
Once you’ve placed an order with Interflora, they give you the opportunity to save that date and receive an email reminder from the company a few days before next year’s event. Great marketing idea, and quite useful too, even if you choose not to use their services again.
There are two lists to select the type of event and the relationship. So, for example, you could select “Birthday” and “Mother”, or “Wedding Anniversary” and “Wife”.
What’s slightly odd is that “Funeral” is one of the events.
Funeral?
Since when were funerals for the same person a recurring event?
Odd.
Posted in Funnies | 2 Comments »
Let me tell you that I loathe videos that start playing (with audio) automatically as soon as a web page loads.
I multitask, and I also work with a lot of background browser tabs. For example, if I’m going through my Google News emails, or using Google Reader, I will Apple-click on links to open them in background tabs for reading in full and working from later.
I also sometimes have music on, or a TV window open.
So it’s incredibly frustrating to suddenly hear strange voices or music that I’m not expecting, emanating from my speakers.
It’s then a mad dash through a load of browser tabs trying to work out which one has the pesky video running, in order to stop it.
It’s irritating and it lowers my productivity. Sure, it’s less of a problem for the casual surfer who only ever has one browser window open at a time, but I’m a power surfer who uses the Internet extensively for my work, and I don’t appreciate these kinds of interruptions to my workflow.
Advertisers and webmasters – learn what hacks people off, then don’t do it. There’s a reason why embedded video players have play buttons on. It’s called opt-in. Choice.
Rant over.
Posted in Media | 1 Comment »
I made the sacrifice for Flickr, but I’m getting increasingly fed up with the Yahooisation of popular services (or those with potential).
At least I didn’t have a chance to get too used to MyBlogLog before I deleted my account, now that it’s getting Yahoo IDs. It’s nothing personal, and I did like what MBL was doing, but I can sacrifice any benefits of its community-building for the freedom not to have Yahoo crawling all over my data.
I’ve already got Google keeping tracks on me – I don’t need Yahoo doing it too.
So long MBL – it was fun for a week or so.
Posted in Blogging | 3 Comments »
