The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

Over at Global Nerdy, the tech news blog that my pal George and I run…

• 10 Things You Need to Ask Before Picking a Domain Name Registrar. In which I point to Tucows CEO Elliot Noss’ article which reminds us that with domain name registration, cheaper does not always mean better.
• That Reminds Me of a Story… Some links to a couple of articles talking about the impending demise of the dead-tree version of the newspaper and a story about the perceived influence of blogs.
• Big Content 1, Cablevision 0, Apple ? “Are things going so well in Hollywood that Big Content can take their cable-operating friends to court as well as their internet-based frenemies?”
• No Web Presence? It Might Hurt Your Job Prospects! Many recruiters and HR departments Google candidates, which means that if you don’t have a web presence, you don’t “exist”.
• The Downside of Having a Web Presence (or: Kathy Sierra vs. the Anonymous Web Thugs) It’s a cross-posting of this article — make sure you read it.

Wigu comic from February 20, 2002.

Barely minutes after I dashed off a quick post about how having a web presence can greatly improve your job prospects in the high-tech world, I found out about Kathy “Creating Passionate Users” Sierra’s article that reminds us of the downside of a web presence, especially if you’re a woman.

She writes:

As I type this, I am supposed to be in San Diego, delivering a workshop at the ETech conference. But I’m not. I’m at home, with the doors locked, terrified. For the last four weeks, I’ve been getting death threat comments on this blog. But that’s not what pushed me over the edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and sex posted on two other blogs… blogs authored and/or owned by a group that includes prominent bloggers. People you’ve probably heard of.

What follows is her description of some very nasty threats made against her, and as a result, she’s decided to cut back on blogging, cancel her much-anticipated appearances at the O’Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference and call the police (and with good cause: remember, death threats are illegal, and hey, don’t dismiss ’em until you get one yourself).

I can only have the vaguest understanding of what it feels like to get a death threat. The warning that I got over the phone from the creepy guy from Quick Boys Moving and Storage — “Remove that comment. That’s all I’m going to say” — was somewhat unnerving. I imagine that getting death threats and seeing Photoshopped photos of yourself in gags is far, far worse.

I am reminded of a line from Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash — the one about the sexism in high-tech circles being a particularly bad case, since male techies often consider themselves “too smart to be sexist”.

I encourage all of you to speak out against these evil and illegal actions and do what you can to make sure stuff like this doesn’t happen again. And, if you’ve got the time and inclination, please leave a note of support over at Kathy’s blog.

Hang in there, Kathy. We’re all looking forward to your return.

Over at the Tucows Blog, we’ve got a new article by our CEO Elliot Noss titled Questions to Ask Before You Pick Your Domain Name Registrar. Here are the questions, each of which Elliot goes into further detail:

1. What is the registrar’s primary business model?
2. Does the registrar make transfers as easy as the rules allow?
3. Do you allow for easy locking and unlocking of domain names?
4. Does the registrar make it easy to opt-out of auto-renewals?
5. Do the registrar tie domains to its services?
6. Does the registrar offer Whois privacy? What are its privacy policies in general?
7. What are the registrar’s policies on compliance issues like litigation, ownership disputes and WDRP?
8. How easy is it to contact the registrar?
9. What happens when my domain expires?
10. Are the people selling you your domain name a registrar or a reseller?

If you’re thinking about registering a domain name anytime soon, this article is a worthwhile read.

Some of the terms and concepts covered in the article might be unfamiliar to you, but worry not: this week, I plan to write some articles explaining some of them. I hope that this will clear up some of the confusion about domain name registration.

One more thing: in the interest of full disclosure, I work for Tucows, a company that is a domain name registrar and for which Elliot Noss is the CEO.

Here’s an interesting ad for Snickers chocolate bars that shows how the world has shrunk. It was shot in Jeddah, the post-production was done in Amsterdam and the soundtrack is a tune by a hip-hop group from Kuwait (and apparently is in English):

Great visuals, but damned if I can remember what the product being advertised is.

Welcome back to the working week!

For today, the last Monday of the month, some Monday-related entertainment. First, here are some scans from The Executive Coloring Book. It may seem mildly amusing today, but it must’ve been downright subversive to some when it was first released in 1961 (here’s a review from Time magazine, dated Frdiay, December 29, 1961, in which it’s reviewed alongside the equally counter-culture Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book, written by good ol’ Shel Silverstein.

Image courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

Continuing with the “Monday blues” theme, here’s the song of the week: Ween’s Push th’ Little Daisies, a classic that Rik “Please, the name is DJ Stinky Poo-Poo!” Young introduced to me during his sets at the Caribbean Club back in that wacky summer of 1992. As with all songs of the week, this will evaporate in a week [Update: A week has passed and the song is now gone]. Enjoy!

Click to download the full-size version [945K PNG image].

For your Photoshopping pleasure, here’s a file of Leonidas heads on a transparent background [945K PNG image], ready to cut and paste into photos to hilarious effect. It’s useful for all sorts of things, including animations like the one shown below…

If you’re a regular reader of BoingBoing or the geek-friendly comic xkcd, you’ve probably already seen the strip in which Cory Doctorow gets name-dropped:

It turns out that the line in the last panel is more true than you think. Here’s a photo that I took at his birthday party in 2002, with Mr. Doctorow sporting his mail-order Mig fighter pilot goggles:

He might not be wearing a cape, but that shiny purple ‘Decepticon’ shirt is a pretty good substitute.

As for blogging from a hot air balloon, how about from a Mickey Mouse balloon chair? Here’s a shot of him at the original Toronto OpenCola office, taken March 2000:

“What I would I do with a million dollars of VC funding? Tell you what I’d do, man. Two computers at the same time, man.”

Here’s another shot taken ion the same session, from another angle.

Oh, those Web 1.0 salad days.

Anyhow, I hope this proves something about Doctorow’s Law: Any exaggerated statement about Cory Doctorow is closer to the truth than you might think.