Today’s Ugly Ass Website: KMOX.com
For those not from St. Louis, KMOX is a really big and old new radio station. Below is their website located at kmox.com. Clearly they aren’t familiar with what makes a good website and thus, they are today’s Ugly Ass Website:
Click on it for the full size.
Kevin Rose to Squeeze Out Another Startup
According to Om Malik:
Business Week poster boy Kevin Rose is rumored to have teamed up with Daniel Burka also of Digg, and first time entrepreneur Leah Culver and has started a new company. Rose and Burka have worked closely on tools like Digg Spy. Burka is one of the main designers of Digg.com. Rose and Burka have worked closely for nearly two years.
Apparently the startup is to have something to do with instant messenging, but frankly who cares. Not only that, it really doesn’t even matter if the product is any good, because no matter what he does, he will have his little TechTV The Broken Revision3 Digg army of preteen script kiddies march right over and praise whatever he does. I’m not saying that Digg is lame or that Revision3 was a bad idea, all I’m saying is that it doesn’t matter. No matter how far advanced the world gets or how many more people get broadband in their home, the internet will always be run by preteen male nerds and the current set of preteen male nerds love Kevin Rose. Some day the man may be president.
What I’m really getting at is: You feel like making me a job offer Kevin? I’m good. I’ll stunt double for you if you want. Think about it.
Full disclosure: I happen to look a bit like Kevin Rose (I’ve been told) and because of this I prefer to spend at least two to three weekends a year banging chicks and stealing startup money from suckers in San Francisco. If you happen to look like Alex Albrecht please get a hold of me since I am currently in the market for a wing man on these trips. Benefits include all the free slightly chubby geek ‘poon you can handle and nothing else.
Diggriver.com
Digg’s mobile site diggriver.com has relaunched and both looks a works great. You can even login and digg stories right from your mobile now. I don’t know about you, but when I’m sitting on the train or, lets face it, on the can, thats a prime digg reading moment for me and has now improved quite a bit.
Nice work.
A Twitter Confession with Questions
I’m not going to lie. I’m hooked on Twitter. Its fun and everyone is on it.
I still have some questions though:
1. Where is this going to go? How long will it be cool? Is it going to die before Summer hits or will it find a niche in the web somehow?
2. Who’s going to use their API to make the first really amazing application? Twittervision is cool, but will there be any really useful apps in the near future?
3. Why don’t I have more friends and followers? Self answer: All my friends and co-workers are way to slow and none of them use Twitter.
4. Assuming some really cool app comes around will the fact that you have to be a Twitter member slow its usage in any group other than hard-core bloggers?
5. Why is it so fucking hot in my apartment right now?
6. What did Lindsay Lohan do to suddenly get sexy again?
7. What was I talking about?
justin.tv is the ultimate reality show. Justin has a camera mounted on his head and he is piping live video to the web 24/7. Pretty cool. Two things though: 1. I wish they would have some info on how they set this up. Its an interesting setup and I would love a peek on how they did it. 2. This is a computer geek we are talking about. How will the viewers handle the awkwardness of him “waxing his wifi antenna” so to speak the usual amount of 5-10 times a day? Maybe some type of warning system should be put in to place?
Either way, its interesting especially for you people that are really into reality shows…or watching dudes whack it in the first person.
Looking for something to do on your lunch breaks at work? Check out: tv-links.co.uk and watch excellent shows like Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia…for free…right in your browser.
I have no idea how long this will last, so use it up while you can.
…Seriously watch Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia though, its probably the funniest show on TV.
View Mobile Versions of This or Any Other Blog
Quick version:
After frustration over viewing blogs on my cell phone, I made not only a mobile verion of Hell Yeah Bitch! .com, but an interface that any mobile user can use to view any site with an RSS feed and not be bothered by excess styling and such. Check it out right here: hellyeahbitch.com/mobile
Long Version:
I recently got a Windows Mobile Smart phone (the T-Mobile MDA) and I love it. However, I soon found out that trying to read a website on it sucked. I really like the RSS reader PRSS, but I’m not much of a “feed collector” I’m old school in the way that I just like to visit sites and read whats there. I was beginning to think that everyone just used RSS readers on their mobile devices until I read Robert Scoble issuing my very same complaint on his site earlier this week. Robert followed up that complaint with jubilation today as he demoed Dave Winer‘s mobile version of TechCrunch: techcrunch.scripting.com Give it a click and check it out. Its just the content part of TechCrunch with little to no styling. For Robert and I, it was the answer to our dreams:
This rocks. Rocks. Rocks. Now I can read TechCrunch while walking around tonight’s TechCrunch party.
I hope Dave wraps up this server-side aggregator and gets every blogger to implement it so I can read every blog on my phone.
Thanks Dave for scratching my itch.
I commented on this article too with equal excitement. But after thinking about it for a second, I decided to wait on Dave, but instead make my own. So after an hour of coding and a few hours of playing with it, I give you the Hell Yeah Bitch! Mobile Site Viewer (hellyeabitch.com/mobile) Its simple. Its easy. It does just what I want it to do and nothing more.
Yes, I know about Bloglines Mobile. But I prefer this. With our version you don’t need to sign up, or create a site list of your feeds, all you do is just plug in a URL and read what they have in there feed. It doesn’t keep track of what you have read and what you haven’t. It never will. This isn’t an RSS reader, this is just a way to view a site in a nice format for your mobile device. I have an RSS reader app on my T-Mobile MDA, and I still will. I will use the Hell Yeah Bitch! Mobile Site Viewer to read any and all blogs (or anything with a feed) that just need to peak at and read.
Notes:
I said “blog” because the app is dependent on the target site having a RSS feed. Specifically RSS. At this time it doesn’t support a site that just has an ATOM feed. UPDATE 8/22/06: It now supports ATOM feeds.
If you use the option to remove HTML from the listings, I still translate new line characters into
‘s so the paragraphs stay correct.
Yes, unlike Dave Winers, I styled the page with a little bit of CSS. If you want to turn that off you can with the “No Styling” option. I’m sorry I can’t send something out the door with out at least a little subtle styling…it’ll catch cold!
I should say that its built off of MagpieRSS which is great.
Future features? If more people than me end up using this, I would love to put a list of the most viewed sites on the front page. Kind of like community bookmarks. Other than that, I see no more features added. This was meant to be simple. It will stay that way.
Like I said before, I made this in a little over an hour earlier today so there will be a few bugs that I haven’t caught in my use in the last few hours. Please contact me with any bug reports, feature requests, or undying affection you have for me.
Ok I have to stop writing this and playing with the code, my girlfriend is yelling at me from the living room, I should go. (Yeah, the mobile web is cool, but this is a living, breathing girl!) Please leave any notes here or contact me directly.
Gratuitous Kate Beckinsale and Friends Photo #21
So I’ve been having problems with my internet connection lately. Every once in a while it will just drop off and my modem can’t connect. I call in to see if its a neighborhood wide outage, and its not, so I get stuck doing some technique called “power-cycling” read out of a script by Jeff the ass-hat because “…it might be your router.” So finally I get through to Charter that its not my router, I’m not an idiot, and they need to at least come check my line to see if that is the problem. I make an appointment for July 12th. Of course the appointment is 9am – 5pm so I have to take off work and wait all day for this guy to show up. The day before the appointment I decided to call Charter and confirm my appointment. I get this India chick that is impossible to understand and is apparently a moron. There is no appointment in the computer for me on the 12th so I get a little miffed, but still calm, and I say that I took off work for this and someone needs to show up tomorrow. So after some back and forth she says there is a new appointment scheduled and tries to get rid of me. I stop her and we have this exchange:
Mike: “I’m sorry, but this has been a bit of a mess. Can you just tell me Yes or No, will someone be coming to my house tomorrow?”
Her: “Ok. Ok. [ long pause ] Ok.”
Mike: “What? Look I took off work for this. I just need you to tell me Yes or No if someone is coming tomorrow.”
Her: “Ok. Ok. Ok…”
Mike: “Seriously, I don’t want to wait at home all day for nothing. Please tell me Yes or No. If its ‘No’, thats fine, I just need to know one way or the other.”
Her: “[ long pause ] Ok. Ok.”
Mike: “I’m really not trying to get angry with you right now. But you need to give me a Yes or No!”
Her: “I put the appointment in…Ok?”
Mike: “Give me the number to the dispatch because I’m going nowhere with you. You clearly don’t want to help me at all. Don’t say Ok.” [ she gives me the number]
Her: “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Mike: “You’re kidding right?”
[Click]
Its gets better. She gave me the wrong number. And after almost an hour of talking to other people I get someone that tells me that there is an appointment set up for me and it was entered earlier that day. I say, yes, there probably is the India lady entered it. The lady on the phone says: “Well lady you talked to earlier inputed the appointment for the 18th, not the 12th.” The 18th! That India bitch was just going to let me sit at home all day on the 12th and she knew no one was going to come! Screw that bitch! If the answer was No (as I know that is was) just tell me so I don’t sit at home like an asshole! Stupid bitch! ….so….anyway I finally argued my way into them giving me an appointment on the 12th and that was that. Seriously though, what the hell? Why would you do that to a person. I was being cool, I just needed a simple confirmation and she wouldn’t give it to me even though she knew that without that information I would be fucked. Bitch!
This was 3 days ago and, if you’ve noticed, I’m still pissed. All I want to do right now is look at Christina Ricci and her new sexy make-over. The good news is I can make that happen. One pic here, one pic after the jump. Enjoy. I need to go calm down.
Pictures via: blog NYC
Has this happened to you?
This is where I work. Working for a ‘last-mile’ internet provider means that I’ve had to go to a lot of places that a well-fed and pampered West County kid from St. Louis would never, ever, ever expect to end up. I’ve climbed numerous water towers to install antennas and modems. I’ve been up on free-standing towers to sight-in 15 mile wide wireless links, making millimeter-by-millimeter adjustments to get things just right. I’ve hitched my laptop up to more rooftops than Michel Dell ever imagined one of his notebooks would ever see (add to that a few crawlspaces too, and you’ll begin to get the full picture). I’m on gravel roads more often than paved, and my territory is roughly 70 miles wide E-W, another 70 going N-S. Running coax or Cat-5 around 100 year old farm houses is a weekly event, and I’ve actually almost gotten used to the unbelievable reek of cows and pigs.
But not until today was I unable to do maintenance on some of our internet equipment because of a nippy horse. Until today. Click on the photo for a larger version.