Gallery of Obscure Patents

Grok Headline matches for Gallery of Obscure Patents

Obscure URL

Obscure URL 04/19/2004 05:50 AM

Discover the world of obscure URLs made possible by absent minded engineers.  Really disgusting.

Meanwhile, IE is not being too friendly to extensions that attempt to prevent toolbars and status bars from being hidden.  All legit calls I can find to force them to be visible are being ignored.  There are sneaky ways to get the job done, but I would rather not dance around behind IE's back.  If anyone has a legit solution, let me know.

How to Obscure URLs

How to Obscure URLs 04/19/2004 09:57 PM

How to Obscure Any URL: Great, great page on how spammers and scammers obscure URLs so most people don't know where they're going.

These tricks are known to the spammers and scammers, and they're used freely in unsolicited mails. You'll also see them in ad-related URLs and occasionally on web pages where the writer hopes to avoid recognition of a linked address for whatever reason. Now, I'm making these tricks known to you.

Also worth nothing is that this is a great page dedicated to substance over style. One page, very long, full of infomation with no worries about overly-frilly presentation. We need more pages like this.

Via Don Park.

Click here to comment on this entry

Obscure Finnish joke

Obscure Finnish joke 02/01/2005 09:48 PM
Siinä tulevaisuus. :D

Researching Obscure Companies

Researching Obscure Companies 08/11/2004 09:47 AM
Due diligence is required when you receive a hot stock tip.

An Obscure Texas Celebration Makes Its
Way Across the U.S.

An Obscure Texas Celebration Makes Its
Way Across the U.S. 06/18/2004 12:03 AM
Hundreds of thousands of Americans will celebrate Juneteenth on Saturday, the day slavery in the U.S. effectively ended.

Online music to offer the obscure

Online music to offer the obscure 12/02/2003 03:04 AM
Industry experts are predicting that music labels will begin offering obscure recordings through online music services such as Apple's iTunes Music Store. Live recordings, works by obscure artists and never-before-released materials were never released on CD because it made no financial sense -- the demand was too small. With online music services reducing distribution costs considerably, it may finally make sense for the recording industry to release obscure works.

Software patents are bad for coders like
literary patents would be for writers

Software patents are bad for coders like
literary patents would be for writers 06/22/2005 01:49 AM
Cory Doctorow: Richard Stallman, creator of the Free Software movement, has written a tremendous essay for the Guardian on the risks of software patents. Richard undertakes a gedankenexperiment about "literary patents" and the impact they would have had on Victor Hugo as he sat down to pen Les Miserables.

Now consider this hypothetical literary patent: Claim 1: a communication process that represents, in the mind of a reader, the concept of a character who has been in jail for a long time and subsequently changes his name...

These patents would all cover the story of one character in a novel. They overlap, but they do not precisely duplicate each other, so they could all be valid simultaneously - all the patent holders could have sued Victor Hugo. Any one of them could have prohibited publication of Les Misérables.

You might think these ideas are so simple that no patent office would have issued them. We programmers are often amazed by the simplicity of the ideas that real software patents cover - for instance, the European Patent Office has issued a patent on the progress bar, and one on accepting payment via credit cards. These would be laughable if they were not so dangerous.

Link (Thanks, Phil and Eloisa!)

Commentary: 'Standards' obscure new
wireless advance

Commentary: 'Standards' obscure new
wireless advance 01/26/2004 04:13 PM

Unbelievably obscure island has
net-based newspaper

Unbelievably obscure island has
net-based newspaper 08/12/2004 11:58 PM
Ken sez,

Tristan da Cuhna is an island in the South Atlantic. It is a British dependency. At 37 degrees south by 12 west, with about 250 permanent residents who literally live on the side of a volcano, it is considered by many sailors to be the remotest town in the world.

The residents, about 100 households which may have any of seven surnames and who are all apparently related by blood, make a living from issuing exotic postage stamps which have a following in the collector market, and by lobster fishing. There is no access to the island by air, and only a few boats per year put into the notoriously dangerous harbor.

Tristan has an online newspaper now though!

Link (Thanks, Ken!)

Obscure microfetish videos from Japan,
part umptybillion

Obscure microfetish videos from Japan,
part umptybillion 09/10/2004 08:11 PM
Xeni Jardin: The review of Japanese fetish porn video "Zenra Ballet 2" on Something Awful is a hoot.

At a Glance: Get out your copybooks, because you can now cross "ballet" off of the "Big List of Things the Japanese Won't Make Porno Out Of". If you are an avid fan of ballet - but, you aren't such an avid fan that you actually have some modicum of respect for the art of ballet dancing - then you are probably the target market for this DVD. It features exciting behind the scenes interviews, some regular and wholesome non-erotic ballet dancing, and then multiple nude and even sex-filled dance sequences. You have not lived until you have seen a Japanese pirate rip a boner out of his leotard and plunge it into the waiting food-hole of a sassy ballerina.

Sexual Content: Heavily mosaic censored dancin' and a prancin'.

Link (Thanks, Super Nice Guy)

Taiwan's amazing, obscure innovative
tech-toys

Taiwan's amazing, obscure innovative
tech-toys 06/05/2005 11:42 PM
Cory Doctorow: Wired News is carrying an amazing piece on Taiwan's Computex conference, where small entrepreneurial firms exhibit innovative hardware designs they've cooked up in their labs. This is the stuff of those delightful shelves in the back of Fry's and in the technology markets in Chinatowns, with brand-names you don't recognize, that does stuff you've never imagined. The accompanying photogallery makes this look like the kind of show I'd love to go to -- like the awesome Chinese section at CES (the only part of the CES floor I enjoyed the year I went). Link

Update: Simon Burns, who wrote the article in question, sez, "Actually, one of the weirdest, but most interesting, gadgets I saw was barely mentioned in that article. That was an astonishingly tiny video player. How tiny? Hold up two fingers - it's smaller.

They told me the manufacturing cost was below $55. Makes me wonder how long before greetings cards play video. Three years?

There's a little more information in an article I wrote, and Dans Data reviewed a similar product from another company recently.

Munich OSS switch to go ahead, patents
or no patents

Munich OSS switch to go ahead, patents
or no patents 08/12/2004 09:52 AM
Merely paused for thought, says mayor

Online DVD rentals soarSome offer
obscure films, documentaries for buffs

Online DVD rentals soarSome offer
obscure films, documentaries for buffs 09/27/2004 07:30 AM
Thetimesonline.com - Mon Sep 27, 06:40 am GMT

IBM gives away 500 patents

IBM gives away 500 patents 02/01/2005 09:47 PM

In a bold move in the field of intellectual property , IBM announced the donation of 500 patents .

(thanks to Jamie Carroll )

NO MORE PATENTS

NO MORE PATENTS 04/23/2004 01:26 AM

JPEG Hits New Patent-Infringement Snag. Forgent Networks slaps 31 companies with lawsuits alleging patent infringement over compression technology it claims is core to the JPEG image standard. [eWEEK Technology News]

STOP THE MADNESS!  I say anybody who tries to enforce patents on open standards should be shot or put in jail.  Well maybe only shot in the arm or leg - but definitely hurt!

Bad Patents

Bad Patents 06/12/2004 09:38 PM

I can't decide whether the EFF's "Patent Busting" project is too clever by half. Will it really do any good? The big problem in patents isn't that bad ones can be overturned -- especially given how difficult and expensive it can be to do so. The problem is the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and its abysmally lousy record for issuing lousy patents. Until someone -- namely Congress -- tackles the issue of patent quality, getting lousy ones overturned is only working at the margins of a much bigger mess.

Where Do They Come Up With These
Patents?

Where Do They Come Up With These
Patents? 01/16/2004 01:03 PM
Wouldn't it be nice if we could have a day go by without one of these silly patent cases where a "company" (usually consisting of one or two lawyers) gets a patent on something that shouldn't be patentable, doesn't do anything with the patent, and then sues companies that are doing something similar? How is it possibly a "patentable" idea to take the domain name john.smith.name and assign the user an email address john@smith.name? Why is that something that should be patented? Apparently, though, it is patentable, and because of that, Network Solutions and Register.com are being sued. Of course, it's Global Name Registry that runs the .name registry - so it's not entirely clear as to why the suit is focused on the other two players (except, of course, that they probably have a lot more money). I'm curious if someone can explain to me how this patent (and the resulting lawsuit) encourages "innovation"?

We Need More Patents?

We Need More Patents? 01/05/2004 01:44 PM
When I was an undergrad, Lester Thurow's book Head to Head had just come out and was incredibly popular. I was forced to read it for three different classes. In it, he talks about the forces of globalization and how the US, Japan, and Europe (mainly Germany) would compete for world economic supremacy in the nineties. It's been a decade since I last read the book, but what I remember from it was that he was a big fan of government intervention in industry and believed that Germany was clearly poised to beat the US throughout the nineties. Of course, that didn't happen. Now, Thurow is back and saying that the world needs more patents and stronger patent enforcement - but that governments should buy up all those patents. In other words, more big government incentives. It didn't work a decade ago, and I don't see why it should work now either. In the interview linked above, he says that without copyright enforcement there would be no music. Of course, that's not true. First of all, there was music before there was copyright protection for it. More importantly, though, it assumes that there simply can't be any business model for music or intellectual property that doesn't involve copyright protection. That's very uncreative. There are other business models (some of which we've discussed before) and forcing everyone to adopt an obsolete one is only going to hinder, not help, innovation.

All Encompassing Patents

All Encompassing Patents 01/26/2004 12:40 PM

EFF: Let's Bust Bad Patents

EFF: Let's Bust Bad Patents 04/20/2004 09:57 AM
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has created The Patent Busting Project, working with organizations such as the Public Patent Foundation, the Internet Archive and the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse to reduce the harm to innovation and free expression that bad patents represent.

Patents are obviously patented

Patents are obviously patented 02/10/2004 02:55 AM
In a surprise move, the US Patent Office has granted a patent which patents the patent office itself!

Hehe. Actually, the patent is meant to patent the concept of "digital ownership", i.e. the idea that you can "own" things in online multiplayer games. The patent is just so broad that it covers pretty much any database, including the patent database.

This is another example on how the USPTO has just thrown its hands up in the air and basically says "accept them all and let courts sort them out." This is an example on so many countless things that have gone wrong with the system I can't even be bothered to enumerate them anymore... Let me just begin with the notion that the idea of ownership could be patented at all, and end up with how big companies can use this to trounce upon the smaller ones, and you can imagine the rant between those yourself.

Microsoft Wants More Patents

Microsoft Wants More Patents 07/29/2004 01:23 PM
It's unfortunate that companies still feel the need to equate patents to "innovation" when the opposite is often true. These days, unfortunately, many companies feel the need to get patents simply as a defensive measure. Whether for defense or offense, it appears that Bill Gates believes Microsoft needs more patents. The company is ramping up their efforts to file for more patents and plan to extort license them to other businesses. So far, they're off to a good start. Some recently noted Microsoft patents include savin g the name of a game you're playing, showing that someone is "typing a message" in IM software, threa d based email, writing an application in HTML, groupin g programs together in the taskbar, pronoun s used in programming and the concept of giving "kudos" points for style and flair. Well, kudos to Microsoft then, on the style and flair with which they've been granted so many questionable patents.

Software Patents Out, For Now

Software Patents Out, For Now 02/05/2005 09:46 PM
Patent legislation is one step further away from being passed in the European Union today. The Legal "Affairs Committee (JURI) said that the commission should re-submit the controversial directive. The Computer Implemented Inventions Directive" failed to receive backing from the government's elected MEP's.

The <a href="http://www.ffii.org/index.orig.en.html">FFII</a& gt;, a EU pressure group, described the decision as "a powerful statement from MEPs that the current Council text, and the logjam of concern it has caused, is simply not a sustainable way forward." FFII board member Jonas Maebe went on to say "The Commissioner can jumpstart the constructive dialogue by submitting a new and more balanced proposal to the European Parliament this time. By taking into account the countless new facts that have surfaced since the start of this procedure in 2002, the Commission has a great opportunity to reinvigorate the Lisbon strategy."

Poland had previously blocked the directive from coming in to being. It's opposed by groups who want to keep the EU free of copyrights on software, something common to the USA. They argue that rather than helping businesses protect their intellectual property, they act to stifle innovation. Supporters of the directive argue that EU legislation on copyrights is out dated and needs bringing into line with the US system.

The road ahead is un-clear; the commission has a variety of options that it can pursue. The most likely outcome with be a re-evaluation in a few months time. Critics of the directive say the extra time will allow countries more debate over the issue and give them another chance to fully assess its implications.

View: Previous coverage | FFII

Read full story...

EFF takes aim at 10 key IT patents

EFF takes aim at 10 key IT patents 07/06/2004 06:59 AM
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has issued a list of the 10 patents it considers most dangerous to the continuing freedom of use of the Internet and related software. The nonprofit consumer organization is including these patents under its Patent-Busting project which began late last week.

Patents as WMD's

Patents as WMD's 02/05/2005 09:30 PM
From Good Morning Silicon Valley: During a panel discussion at the OSDL Linux Summit, Linux founder Linus Torvalds; Brian Behlendorf, a co-founder of the Apache Web server software; and Mitch Kapor, chairman of the Mozilla Foundation and the Open Source Applications Foundation, spoke out against software patents. "Are software patents...

Pressing Patents

Pressing Patents 04/13/2004 08:32 AM
There are at least 30 more unsettled patent cases involving Microsoft. At the same time, Microsoft is building up a hefty patent arsenal of its own.

Perens on Patents

Perens on Patents 01/23/2004 02:20 PM

Patents and Linux

Patents and Linux 08/05/2004 05:30 PM
The wires are full of news around Linux and Patents, with OSRM claiming that Linux infringes lots of ’em, and IBM promising not to litigate ’em. Well, I go way back on this issue; herewith a software patent war story, flavored with the usual cynicism...

Apple Going Mad On UI Patents

Apple Going Mad On UI Patents 05/14/2004 01:47 PM

Patents and the Penguin

Patents and the Penguin 05/11/2004 09:16 AM

More Microsoft Patents

More Microsoft Patents 09/05/2004 12:48 PM

Getting credit without patents

Getting credit without patents 04/15/2005 04:54 AM

BTW, I'm offering my comment spam buddy under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike license, with a special request. It may be that this is a new way to fight comment spam. If it is, I would like credit for discovering it. I consider this one final attempt to work openly without patenting every innovation. I've been asking for help with this for years. Now on the other hand, if it's not new, as Emily Litella said, "Never mind." ";->"

A great example is this Newcity Chicago article which, once again, gives Adam Curry credit for my work. He doesn't say anything to correct them, that's his problem. The reporter's problem is that he's passing on lies. It's endemic, that's why you have a virtual industry of credit-takers, leeches feeding off the creativity of others, and they get away with it because the reporters are complicit. So please, I have no patience for people who lecture us about the thorough research that the pros supposedly do, if they ever do it, it's a very rare thing.

When Good Patents Go Bad

When Good Patents Go Bad 12/11/2003 12:00 PM

A Tale of Two Patents

A Tale of Two Patents 05/19/2004 07:23 PM
InternetNews.com-1 hour agoGoogle's Gmail could be a huge moneymaker for the search leader. But someone else may have thought of it first. Google got gobs ...

10 Internet patents that are going DOWN

10 Internet patents that are going DOWN 07/01/2004 03:34 AM
EFF has picked its list of ten dumb-and-bustable Internet patents after a public competition, and we're saddling up to gather invalidating prior art we can submit to the US Patent and Trademark Office to have them struck down:

1. Acacia Technologies' digital media transmission patent, which the company defines as covering "the transmission and receipt of digital content via the Internet, cable, satellite and other means." The EFF is worried that Acacia, which has already sued several large communications companies, is unfairly targeting small audio- and video-streaming websites.

2. Clear Channel's Instant Live patent, which covers technology used to produce instant recordings of live concerts. The media giant recently bought the patent and is now going after artists who choose to give fans CDs of their shows.

3. Acceris Communication's voice over IP technology patent. Schultz said Acceris is targeting smaller VOIP players. "They're sending (the) patents to investors," said Schultz, "trying to intimidate the investors."

Link

No EU Software Patents

No EU Software Patents 12/17/2004 06:33 PM

Munich, Germany (23 November 2004). The three most famous European authors of open-source software have issued an appeal against software patents on NoSoftwarePatents.com. Linus Torvalds (Linux), Michael Widenius (MySQL) and Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP) urge the EU Council, which will convene later in the week, not to adopt a draft directive on software patents that they consider "deceptive, dangerous, and democratically illegitimate". They also call on the Internet community to express solidarity by placing NoSoftwarePatents.com links and banners on many Web sites.

It would be nice if someone with some serious design credentials would knock up some more aesthetically pleasing banners.

VLC & European Patents

VLC & European Patents 04/07/2005 05:49 PM

Porno patents

Porno patents 07/01/2004 01:48 PM
Hothothot barely legal XXXX trademark action! Fleshbot probes the depths of the US Patent Office registry for a penetrating view inside the kinky world of sex devices that haven't crossed over from whiteboad fantasy to production line reality. If software that fails to come to market is vaporware, what, pray tell, is an anal orgasm monitor that never materializes? Don't answer that. Link

IBM Has 'No Intention' of Using Patents
Against Linux

IBM Has 'No Intention' of Using Patents
Against Linux 08/05/2004 10:46 AM

Grok Description matches for Gallery of Obscure Patents
GrokA matches for Gallery of Obscure Patents

No more usernames in URLs

No more usernames in URLs 02/10/2004 02:44 AM

This one could get very interesting. Microsoft have announced that an upcoming update to Internet Explorer will remove the ability to include usernames in URLs completely. This is in response to the growing problem of so called "phishing" scams, which use trick URLs to con important information such as passwords and credit card details out of unsuspecting browser users.

Phishing is big business. In this article on SecurityFocus, a loose transcript is provided of a talk by an FBI agent who explains how phishing is used by organised crime gangs in Eastern Europe:

This is bad enough and it's also cruelly funny, but the scary part came in when Dave started talking about the other group behind the explosion of viruses and Trojans: Eastern European hackers, backed by organized crime, such as the Russian mafia. In other words, the professionals.

These people are after one thing: money. The easiest way to illegally acquire money now is through the use of online tools like Trojans, or through phishing: set up a fake Web site for PayPal or eBay or Amazon, and then convince the naive to enter their usernames, passwords, and credit card information. Viruses and spam also intersect in this nasty spiderweb. Viruses help spread Trojans, and Trojans are used to turn unsuspecting users' computers into spam factories, or hosts for phishing expeditions, and thus furthering the spread of all the elements in this process: viruses, Trojans, spam, and phishing. It's a vicious cycle, and unfortunately, it appears to be getting worse. The FBI is working as hard as it can, but the nations of Eastern Europe are somewhat powerless to solve the problem at this time.

IE is so susceptible to this kind of attack that it's not even funny. In addition to the "invisible username" bug I covered last month, a recent discovery compounds the problem by allowing dangerous executable files to pose as safe file types when downloaded from the web. New Explorer hole could be devastating has the full details.

Microsoft's solution is drastic to say the least. Passing the username as part of a URL has been part of the makeup of the internet since at least 1994, and the ability is baked in to a huge range of web client and server software. It's described in RFC 23996. The feature is rarely used however, and the overall effect of its removal from IE is hard to judge. Off the top of my head I can think of only one site that uses it for legitimate reasons: FilePlanet, which incorporates it in to the site's download queuing system (at least last time I checked).

There's an interesting contrast to be made here between open and closed development methodologies. The Mozilla project has had a bug open on this issue for over two years, which has drawn over 170 comments with plenty of great ideas but no approved solution. Microsoft on the other hand have remained silent on the issue until (we can only assume) the bad publicity surrounding it forced them to act, at which point they announced a fix that appears to gly in the face of commonly accepted web standards - but does undoubtedly solve the problem. Of course, with no chance for user feedback prior to the decision it amounts to little less than a decree from God - which correlates directly to their inarguable domination of the browser market, at least in terms of market share.

Of course, the millions of IE users who decline to upgrade their browser will remain just as susceptible as they always were (unless they stop clicking links) - a fact for which we can hardly blame Microsoft. It does however mean that phishing will remain a lucrative scam for a long time to come.

URLs Set in Stone

URLs Set in Stone 01/05/2005 01:19 AM

I've often wondered whether or not you should change blog posts once they're published. While I often do just because I'm anal, part of me thinks that a blog post is a historical record and should be frozen in time.

It's sort of that way for the titles of posts on Gadgetopia since they're used for the URL. For instance, I screwed up the title of this post (it should be "ALT Attributes," not "ALT tags"), but I can't change it because that would change the URL. I'd have to put in a redirect because it gets a lot of traffic.

As annoying as it is on the surface, there's something...pure in this that I like. The title of this entry is frozen in time. It is how it was originally published. Just like a newspaper publisher can't take something back once it hits the newstand, I can't change this title.

This get me to thinking that it would be an interesting...expirement, to MD5 has hthe entire body of an entry and use the result as the URL. This means that you couldn't change one single character of the entry after it was published without completely changing the URL.

I find this idea intriguing. Not enough to try it, mind you, but stil interesting to consider.

URLs vs. XHTML

URLs vs. XHTML 03/11/2003 02:00 PM
After linking a few items on Amazon.com, my XHTML has been broken for who–knows–how–long. It popped up as I redesigned,...

PHPKitchen: Validating URLs with PHP

PHPKitchen: Validating URLs with PHP 08/16/2004 08:45 AM
In a pointer from PHPKitchen.com today, there's a script highlighted for anyone out there looking to validate any kind of URL conforming to just about any kinds of rules.

Autolink URLs in MT Entries

Autolink URLs in MT Entries 08/16/2004 05:58 PM

One of the things I really hate about reading newspaper Web sites is they often include URLs but don’t link them. So you have to copy and paste to open them (or just rightclick with the right Firefox extension).

I don’t want my site to look like a big, dumb newspaper. So I wrote a filter using Brad’ ;s regex plugin to autolink URLs in entries. It hasn’t been extensively tested but it has worked for a the half-dozen or so entries in the Project X blog.

Install the regex plugin and then add this to the top of your templates…

<MTAddRegex name="autolink">s![> ](http://[^<" ]+)!<a href="$1">$1</a> !g</MTAddRegex>

Then add the attribute regex="autolink" to your MTEntryBody and MTEntry more tags in your templates: <MTEntryBody regex="autolink">.

Why Blogger redirects some URLs

Why Blogger redirects some URLs 05/11/2004 01:58 AM
The new Blogger redirects a lot of its links through another server. Ev explains why: it's to keep down comment-spam, to avoid apportioning unwarranted PageRank, and to protect Google's intranet.

Since blogger.com is linked from google.com, any sites we link to could pass on a fairly high PageRank value. (PageRank is one of the factors that determines what results show up in what order for searches.) In order to remove any possibility of unequal ranking of Blogger-powered blogs in the Google main search index, we send links through a URL from which Google knows to ignore PageRank. This way, Blogger blogs earn PageRank only on the basis of their content and other people linking to them, not because they're powered by a tool owned by Google.

Link (via EvHead)

Sweet Mother of URLs

Sweet Mother of URLs 07/23/2004 11:32 PM

sweetmotherof frothygoodnessthatsbadnewsforbud.com: I saw this URL on a Miller Lite ad. It actually resolves. Sadly, it redirects, so you'll never see it in the address bar.

Click here to comment on this entry

Generating One-Time URLs with PHP

Generating One-Time URLs with PHP 12/05/2002 08:50 PM
Not everything on the Internet is designed for archival. Some data is time- or recipient-sensitive and should be protected. Daniel Solin demonstrates how to generate URL access keys for sensitive data with PHP.

Notes and Tips: ".Mac" URLs

Notes and Tips: ".Mac" URLs 04/06/2005 12:19 PM
Here's more about a new ".Mac" URL problem and workarounds.

CGI Redirected URLs and PageRank

CGI Redirected URLs and PageRank 06/19/2002 08:56 AM
When a directory listing with a CGI redirect points to your site, does this benefit your Page Rank?

Friendly URLs in Movable Type

Friendly URLs in Movable Type 02/01/2005 08:40 PM
Arve has written a very nice tutorial covering how to set up Movable Type to use search engine and user friendly url's. Not only does he show how to set up Movable Type so you can customise the url's yourself,...

Canonical URLs and network effects

Canonical URLs and network effects 09/27/2004 08:57 AM
After retracing his steps in order to correctly credit a link he had recently cited, Darren Barefoot wondered whether it had been worth the trouble:

Generally, I just choose the site closest to the source, and credit them. That probably doesn't make sense, as I should be crediting the source where I found them. Or is it important to show the entire 'chain of evidence'? Ultimately, who really cares? [Darren Barefoot: The (boring) problem of attribution]

I think that it is worth the trouble, and that publishing platorms and blogging tools ought to conspire to help automate the tedious chore. The reason usually given is that the original source deserves credit, and that it's unfair to redirect that credit. That's true, but there's a deep systemic principle at work here too. Canonical URLs create powerful network effects that we dilute at our peril. ...

how URLs and ideas propagate through
bl0gs,

how URLs and ideas propagate through
bl0gs, 03/06/2004 01:53 AM
Blog Epidemic Analyzer .. appositi tool .. this

www-idl.hpl.hp.com/blogstuff/index.html
track this site | 9 links

Alf makes grabbing MP3 URLs really easy!

Alf makes grabbing MP3 URLs really easy! 01/17/2004 11:21 PM

m3u generator bookmarklet. Alf Eaton has come up with a m3u generator bookmarklet which will harvest the links to mp3s on a page  you're viewing in the browser and give you a playlist. Drag that last link to your links bar, and try it on this pa ge of songs from Les Ogres de Barback or this page of songs from the klezmer band Sirba (found thanks to Lucas).

[Seb's Open Research]

 

Coolio - once again Alf is leading the way!  I could have used that util over the past few weeks - building all the jukeboxes I've been up to.

Now Alf can take those MP3s he's grabbing and put them into a Laszlo SoundBlox - just like the one I got in my gutter (and Barlow has in his - too!)

Multiple URLs to Same Page in Google

Multiple URLs to Same Page in Google 12/19/2004 03:08 PM
Wild variations on a url are showing up in the Google index. Most often these are a result of a incorrectly configured server, but some feel there is something wrong on Googles end.

Get mailto URLs to open in mutt

Get mailto URLs to open in mutt 05/25/2004 10:14 AM
If you want URLs like mail foo@bar.tld about stuff to work with mutt (or pine, if you patch the code, but blech), you can download a small program I wrote. Documentation is lacking, as is customizability, but hey, for my firs...

Web Sites That Shorten Long URLs

Web Sites That Shorten Long URLs 06/20/2004 08:14 AM
Web Sites That Shorten Long URLs
http://notlong.com/links/

These free web sites can take a long URL and give you back a shorter URL without requiring registration. Since these sites forward a click from one link to another, they are also known as URL forwarders and some do subdomain forwarding. Any of these services will do a decent job, but if you want to study them before you pick one, here is an informal survey of the competitive landscape. [beSpacific June 15, 2004]

Get mutt to open URLs in Safari

Get mutt to open URLs in Safari 05/10/2004 10:19 AM
If you're a mutt user (a very popular terminal-based email application) and you would like to open URLs from your emails in Safari as opposed to viewing them with lynx or elinks (neither is bundled with OS X), here's what you...

Gallery of Obscure Patents

The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: obscure urls how to obscure urls