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The Gazette ... Issue: 202 (08-12-2003)
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Topics in this issue
Johnny's Ramblings In the Crosshairs A Word from Our Sponsor Forum Watch Coders Corner Scumbag of the Week |
Changes Afoot !We're changing things again here at Jimworld, bringing in some new staffers, and blazing new trails in the forums. Thanks for sticking with us while the dust settles here ... in the end, your JimWorld will be a much better place. |
| Johnny's Ramblings |
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As mentioned briefly in the last issue of The Gazette (http://www.jimworld.com/gazette/issue-201/), I have made some hiring decisions regarding the day-to-day operations of JimWorld. In looking at the overall makeup of JimWorld, including all areas -- not just the forums -- it's pretty apparent that I simply cannot stay awake long enough to manage the whole thing. Honestly, I don't know how the heck Jim did it all those years.
Anyway, I broke down the various tasks and decided to "in-source" them to selected members of our crew, based on who I feel that I can work well with, who I feel will do the best job, and who I feel has shown the initiative and tenacity to warrant a more side-by-side role with me. The new staff and I have been working together for the last few months on various tasks. I'd like to take this opportunity to reintroduce them to you now, and invite you to welcome them aboard as full-time JimWorlders... Chris Logan (Logan): Sponsorship Recruiter/Ambassador Chris will be tasked with finding us new advertisers and sponsors, getting more company reps online, and getting "The JimWorld Word" out to the masses. Chris has demonstrated an initiative in this area that you've all had the chance to witness almost daily. I'm confident that he will be "the answer" for us in this area, given his tenacity and contacts. Elisabeth Osmeloski (skiguide): SEO Manager/Content Editor As the premier SEO resource community, it only makes sense that we employ what we teach. Our sites must have perfect, morally correct SEO tactics in place. Talk about pressure! Lis is most certainly up to the task, and her reputation alone makes her the optimal choice for this position. Pete McNamara (OAC): The Ultimate Website Pete will have the task of scoring and ranking all submissions for this very prestigious award. Pete has an eye for detail (more so than most of you know), and will do an outstanding job of not only scoring sites, but offering advice, and really being able to separate fact from fiction, better than most people I've met. As this area of JimWorld has the potential to be a big revenue producer, I feel that it's important to place it in the most capable hands -- so I did. Bill Dalton (unreviewed): RSS Newsfeeds Creation and What's New JimWorld generates news. We know that, and now it's time for everyone else to know it as well. Bill has a knack for being everywhere at once. He will be scouring our forums and articles daily to generate a real "RSS" news feed that we'll be distributing out to all of the major news sources: Google news, Moreover, and so forth. Also, he'll be out there finding interesting news items and posting summaries and links into the appropriate forums to help generate some topical conversation. Melissa Martin (Sinoed): SCUM Master ScumWare.com is woefully out of date -- Such a shame for the Web site that started it all. Sinoed was there at the beginning, has a lot of passion for this, and will be in charge of keeping the site's content, listings, news, and everything else up to date. We want ScumWare.com to be the only place people need to look at when trying to learn more about these dopes. Kelly Beil (crash): Free Site Templates Reviewer We get many submissions each day to FST. Kelly will be charged with downloading the submissions, cleansing them of viruses, putting together a sample site, and then re-uploading them to the server. It's a tedious job, but FST is probably the busiest domain we have, and its mission statement mirrors Jim's entire philosophy. She does a great job with troubleshooting HTML and has a good eye for quality. As you all know, she can be a pain in the butt sometimes... but that just what this area needs! Patrick Hartman (patrickh): Marketplace Manager The Marketplace is a new area for JimWorld. Eventually, we'll be getting rid of the "I Need Paid Help" forums in favor of a real live job posting (freelancers) board. This will generate some income for JimWorld, as well as be a much more usable system than the old forum was/is. Patrick will bring a lot of organization and timeliness to this area, which I have a feeling will need quite a bit of supervision. Susan Erler (WinningWays): Gazette List Manager/Editor As someone that makes a living doing newsletters, Susan is perfect for this role. She'll be editing my content (which will be a huge task...), and making sure that all unsubscribe requests are honored, that the list is clean, and that all replies to the Gazette are personally answered. Welcome aboard everyone! On behalf of the entire JimWorld community, I'd like to say once again what an honor and a privilege it is to work with each of you every day. You have taught me, inspired me, and kept me focused. I am humbled to have you as part of the team, and I know that JimWorld is what it is in part because of your past contributions -- and will be even better with your new roles. |
| In the Crosshairs |
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I thought I'd let you know some of the things that we're working on over the next few weeks to give you an idea of what's coming both to JimWorld and to The Gazette.
In the forums, we'll be reworking the entire private messaging system to make it more user friendly and manageable. Right now, it "just works." I'm fixing to make it "work really good." We're also going to be adding a user/post rating system. In the coming weeks, we'll be talking more and more about "The Marketplace" at JimWorld. This will be the place where you can network with other JimWorld members, post jobs, and hire one another. Eventually, this will replace the "I Need Paid Help" forum, as it's more organized and geared towards letting everyone conduct business with one another more easily. The week of August 18 is the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, CA, hosted by Danny Sullivan from searchenginewatch.com and Internet.com. Many of the JimWorld staff will be there in attendance, notably, Jennifer Laycock, Elisabeth Osmeloski and Andy Beal participating in some of the panel discussions. Expect a full report both in the forums and in the next issue of The Gazette. We'll give you the low-down and the real tasty bits, so that those of you who cannot attend will know all of the important stuff -- who can't hold their liquor, who fell asleep on the lawn, which speaker had the worst breath -- and more importantly, who's moving and shaking for REAL in the search engine world. Stay tuned! |
| A Word from Our Sponsor |
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By show of hands, how many of you use the Google toolbar in your Internet Explorer? It's pretty cool, but it could be better. It could have links to all of the great content here at JimWorld instead of just Google! Well, I'd like to introduce everyone to your new best friend, the JimWorld Browser Buddy. We've spent quite a bit of time in designing a toolbar of our own -- one that has the same functionality of the Google Bar, but that's more, well, Jim. After trying about 30 different toolbar creation systems, we stumbled across a new system called, simply ToolbarWizard (TBW). This is a simply incredible system. Unlike every other toolbar creator out there, TBW is completely WYSIWYG. As you design the toolbar, adding buttons and search boxes, you get to see (and use) your toolbar in real time. Set-up of the toolbar is an absolute breeze. With other generators, we wasted hours trying to figure out their cryptic configuration files, figuring out how to register .dlls, etc. TBW shields you from all of that, with an incredibly simple to use interface and one-touch publishing. Simple, efficient, and elegant. Setting up the JimWorld Browser Buddy took me literally, about 2 hours all told, and the result is one heck of a great toolbar. TBW's designer is FREE for download, so you can play with it all you want. You only pay when you're all done and ready to deploy. And unlike so many other toolbar creators, the cost is just a hundred bucks or so ($127 to be exact), instead of thousands. If you want a toolbar for your own Web site, this is definitely the choice for you.
Toolbar Wizard: http://www.toolbarwizard.com/index.html?jimworld JimWorld Browser Buddy: http://www.jimworld.com/toolbar/ |
| Forum Watch |
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First off, I just want to say how pumped I am to be on board as an Admin and to let you know that starting with this issue of the Gazette, I'll be writing this column for each issue. What better way to start off my first week in The Gazette than to shake things up a bit. Here goes... ;)
Since Jim Wilson came up with the concept of having moderators in a forum nearly six years ago, things have changed. When Jim started the idea, moderation was an essential (and brilliant) step in managing forums. Today, those of us at JimWorld feel that the concept has run its course and that it's time to move on to bigger and better things. So, just like Jim would have done, we're taking a radical step. By the time you read this article, there won't be a single moderator left in the forums. Instead, we are introducing a team of individuals to serve as "Forum Guides." Unlike moderators, these folks (we'll be calling them "JimGuides") will not be the forums' police force. They won't be moderating posts, making edits, deleting posts, or sending out warnings to members. Instead of "ruling" the forums, JimGuides exist to help you learn and to guide you through questions, problems, and conversations. They'll be writing articles and how-to guides to get you started, and they'll be out there in the forums to help you come up with unique solutions to any problems you might be having. We've scoured the Web and our own forums for some of the most knowledgeable and personable folks in the business, and we've recruited them for these positions for one of several reasons: 1.) They are a known expert in their field and bring an amazing level of knowledge and experience to their assigned topic. 2.) They have an uncanny ability to explain concepts and ideas to our members in a way that is easy to understand. 3.) They are conversation sparkers. They breathe life into their forums by offering opinions, ideas and perspectives that are unique. Think of a JimGuide as that friend or member of your family that is a computer nut. You hang out, talk and chat with them just like you would any of your other friends. But when it's time to buy a new computer, or upgrade your system, you know that they're going to give you excellent, unbiased advice about what to buy and where to get it. Every now and then, this person might share some news about a new computer program or piece of hardware. This person isn't going to butt into conversations and pretend to be an expert when they're not. They're also not going to throw out an "I'm the expert and this is how it has to be" speech. Our goal is that JimGuides will be your friends, your mentors, and the reason that you keep coming back to JimWorld. To get great answers to your most important questions. You'll be able to identify JimGuides by the word "JimGuide" next to their name when they post. You'll also see them listed at the top of the forum they've been assigned to. So now you're wondering... hey, that's great and all, but who's going to do the dirty work? Who'll clean up the spam? Who'll track down the members who keep finding new ways to break the rules? Well, John and I will continue to deal with the major issued as Administrators, but we've also assembled our very own task force, comprised of a few forum members who are willing to scour the forums for these types of issues. The task force will be similar to the old moderating system, but with some notable exceptions: 1.) The task force members will be "regular members" 99.9% of the time. They won't have a special designation to set them apart from the rest of the members. 2.) When they need to edit a post or send a warning, they'll do so under a single, shared username. This protects their identity (so that they can enjoy being "normal" members the rest of the time), and it also gives our members a common username to correspond with when issues do arise. Many of the new JimGuides are already listed on our Staff List. You can view the list here (http://www.jimworld.com/apps/staff.php). Keep an eye out for an upcoming Forum Watch where we explain how readers and forum members can apply for open JimGuide positions. Jennifer Laycock (thejenn) http://www.jimworld.com/apps/webmaster.forums |
| Coders Corner | ||||
The next time I see something like this in a PHP application, I'm going to get in my car, drive to the author's house and shake the cobwebs out of their head:
It would be much clearer, and achieve the same result, if done this way:
Here's a great article series that talks about "acceptable" coding practices in PHP: http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/tim20010101.php3 And the Perl Equivalent.... http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlstyle.html |
| Scumbag of the Week |
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SpamArrest.com. Remember them? I talked endlessly about how wonderful they are in a previous Gazette issue, and even ran their banners here at JimWorld for a few months. Their "service" did such good a job on my inbox, that I just had to tell you about it. Thanks to SpamArrest.com, I have a spam-free inbox, which is great... for me. Not so great for everyone that emails me, though. It was pointed out to me by one of our members (dax) that SpamArrest was not all that they claimed to be. So, I did some digging, and lo and behold, dax was right.
The way that SpamArrest works is that when you are one of their customers, they download all of the email from your real inbox. Then, they check it against their database, and make available to you the messages from individuals that you have approved. For the remaining email messages, SpamArrest sends an email message to them, asking them to verify themselves. If they do (by clicking a link in the email message and entering a password), their email is also made available to you. The net result in my case, was that out of the 8,000+ emails a day that I receive, only the 100 or so that are from people that I like actually get into my inbox. Beautiful, right? Well the ugly part is that SpamArrest is able to build, based on which individuals went through that verification process, a list of thousands of email addresses that are valid, read by a person, and more importantly, read by a person that would click on a link in the email. Unbeknownst to me, and most SpamArrest customers, is that while SpamArrest is protecting me from spam, they're secretly harvesting the email addresses of everyone that has validated themselves to be allowed to email me. SPAMARREST HAS BEEN SPAMMING THAT LIST. On one hand, they protect me, and on the other hand, they're spamming all of the people that I "white listed" and trust. Screwing me, and annoying my contacts in the process. While they've not yet admitted to selling this list off, I can only imagine that's going to be their next step. While this policy is alluded to within their privacy policy, the privacy policy is NOT made available at all to people as they verify themselves (verification page example: http://spamarrest.com/a?107411106:76542). Very shady indeed. SpamArrest has not responded to my email messages or phone calls in relation to these findings. Their owner has made some public statements, however, which are quite alarming... "Our privacy policy states that we are allowed to contact "senders", that is, the people who send our customers e-mail. Please refer the section entitled "HOW DO WE USE THE PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT?". ... and ... "Every person who got this e-mail from us has either sent an e-mail to one of our customers, or been added to one of our customer's white list explicitly." I have stopped using spamarrest, and am looking at alternative solutions to my uncontrollable inbox. I recommend that anyone that's using spamarrest.com's service stop doing so immediately, and look for another way out. Right now, I'm evaluating a program called "Spam Bully" that apparently operates much like spamarrest, but without using a 3rd party server, so the information is all kept privately on your own computer. Stay tuned to The Gazette for my findings. For More Information: http://www.avnonline.com/issues/200302/newsarchive/021403_1.shtml http://static.samspade.org/spamarrest.html http://www.politechbot.com/p-04457.html http://spamarrest.com/privacy.jsp http://www.spambully.com |
| Payment Due Notice |
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The Gazette is not free.
It is 'Helpware.' This means that you are granted the right to participate, read, and learn from us, if you agree to contribute. Learn something, from here or anywhere else, and pass it on. If you see a Webmaster who's struggling, help them up. If you see someone making a mistake, offer some fix-it advice. In short, you get out of JimWorld, and the Internet, what you put into it. The more you give, the more you get. Even if you get nothing in return, it's important that you share. Karma always comes back around. Trust me, this will make you feel better, and will help a lot of people get their sites running better. OK, you're on your honor. |
| Summing It All Up |
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The opinions expressed here are purely those of the editor, John Cokos. All other small print clauses apply. Such as: Use at your own risk. Nothing in life is guaranteed. Let the buyer beware. A stitch in time gathers no moss.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole, or in part, without the express written consent of the author. Feel free to send this document in its entirety to as many of your friends as you want. We appreciate that and thank you. Our sites are generously hosted by the Hosting Experts at SimpleNet: http://jimworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=simplenet For information on advertising in the Gazette or any of the JimWorld properties, please refer to our advertiser information page: http://jimworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=advertise ** This publication is registered with the Library of Congress, Washington DC - ISSN: 1099-8438 To unsubscribe, simply click this link: Gazette Subscription Manager You will be removed and will not ever be resubscribed again. |
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