Posts tagged “URLs”
- Want 33,000 classic sound effects for free? Check out the BBC Sound Effects Archive.
- I am very much concerned about the many, many, many possible negative consequences of nefarious, incompetent, and/or misguided generative AI. Ruining wikipedia should have been on my bingo card.
- A University College London demographer’s work debunking ‘Blue Zone’ regions of exceptional lifespans won an Ig Nobel prize. I always thought blue zones sounded fishy.
- Ugh. Scientists are worried that persisting cognitive issues sparked by COVID-19 may signal a coming surge of dementia and other mental conditions.
- Philip Moscovitch‘s Halifax Examiner article Beyond the Link Tax: Journalism and the Changing Nature of the Internet contains some interesting ideas about potentially taxing megacorporations to subsidize good reporting. But what grabbed me was the line, “Essentially, what we are seeing is the slow death of the hyperlink […]” Sites like Threads, Instagram, Twitter / X, et.al. have a vested interest in keeping you from leaving. They are, in fact, designed to make it more difficult for you to get to the “rest” of the Internet. I have been occasionally combing through old posts here and it is alarming — for someone who’s been blogging regularly for more than a quarter of a century — how many links simply no longer work. And I’m not talking about links from twenty years ago which should work but don’t (because the site’s gone offline or developers didn’t bother to redirect URLs). I’m talking about links from just a year or two ago. The wayback machine has been a fantastic resource to help me find archived content, but it’s not perfect and it’s grossly underfunded for how important it is to anyone who cares. See also: link rot
- Speaking of being extremely online, you should read Reclaiming Social Media in a Fragmented World. I love the concept of POSSE and it’s been something I’ve really tried to remember the last few years, especially after what’s happened with Twitter.
- On Ghost Networks: Ravi Coutinho bought a health insurance plan thinking it would deliver on its promise of access to mental health providers. But even after twenty-one phone calls and multiple hospitalizations, no one could find him a therapist.
There’s an excellent Kia Sorento commercial right now featuring a sock monkey and a monster (and some other kid toys). They go bowling and the sock monkey gets a tattoo. The best part, though, is the song. It’s How You Like Me Now, by The Heavy. You can find it on the album The House That Dirt Built on iTunes.
Sidebar: I just noticed that the latest version of iTunes now lets you easily post a song or app to Twitter or Facebook. (Savvy guys, those Apple engineers.) But here’s something extraordinarily odd: The URL that iTunes provides for the link is absurdly long. The one for the song mentioned above is http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-house-that-dirt-built/id328490302, which is seventy characters. Twitter only allows 140 characters! Why in the world isn’t Apple running their own URL-shortening service?
Daily David
Random links from the world wide web
WordPress Wednesday: LaunchPad
LaunchPad is a killer WordPress “domain parking” theme. It’s the perfect way to let visitors know that something cool is “coming soon” when you’ve registered a domain name but haven’t yet had a chance to actually build anything. This high-impact, minimalist layout (example) comes pre-configured with two RSS subscription options — via email or feed
TinyURL! Bookmarklet
In which I explain how to create a handy bookmarklet
Easily Mispronounced Domain Names
Brilliant: Easily Mispronounced Domain Names Go Tahoe!
A Rant about Keywords and URLs
A day or two ago I was pinged by a co-worker from my previous job. He wanted to know why, during its recent redesign, I didn’t include keywords in the URLs of the pages on a site I originally built a long, long time ago. I told him that there was no concrete evidence anywhere
SpoilerKits
No detail has been overlooked! The URL’plate compliments the chrome detailing on any vehicle. The letters are bold and stand out. They are easy to read, even at highway speeds!
require www in URL
It drives me nuts that you need to enter the www to get to the University of Florida Home Page. Just typing ufl.edu won’t get you there.
Available Domain Names
More from the These Are Still Available Department: flatoutbroke.com elephantcool.com gangstertripping.com runningaroundincircles.com departmentofelephants.com shecameinthroughthebathroomwindow.com