billso.com

HELP PAGES AND TOPICS

• About Bill Sodeman and billso.com
• Academic honesty
• APA formatting and style
• Article titles
• Categories for articles and pages
• Comments about articles and pages on this blog
• Courses that I teach at Hawaii Pacific University
• Finding references for papers and assignments
• Mobile support for PDAs, smartphones, mobile phones, iPhones and iPods
• Privacy
• RSS feeds that readers can use to receive new posts automatically in a feedreader or email application
• Tags displayed in a cloud, with links to archive pages for each tag.

SITE NAVIGATION

If you have a suggestion for a new service, email me.

The menu at the top of the site has links to several landing pages and features.

Almost every page, post and article on this blog is available through several landing pages:

• site search – available at the top of the right sidebar, along with a Google search field.
• sitemap – a list of every page and the most recent articles on the site, along with a list of monthly archives.
• direct access through URLs - students do not need to log into Campus Pipeline to access this blog.
• lists of related posts or articles, appearing on some articles and pages.

I use the terms “posts” and “articles” interchangeably – they mean the same thing. These pages are linked to specific dates on the site calendar, and they’ll appear on the home page, as well as the daily, monthly and annual archive pages.

I also maintain dedicated pages for my courses and specific topics. Pages are not linked to a specific date, but they do display the most recent date they were edited.

USABILITY

I’ve added print-friendly links on the pages and articles. The print-friendly links had been removed on 5 April 2008 because of a software bug. (Added 16 May 2008)

Mobile and PDA users are automatically directed to a specially formatted version of the site at m.billso.com. Our server detects and supports most mobile web browsers. (added March 2007, updated February 2008)

There’s a calendar on most pages of this site. Links display the posts for specific days. I also list assignment due dates on the calendar for my courses.

Our favicon appears in the address bar of most web browsers. This is a miniature version of the mighty billso logo. Look for this icon in your bookmarks, favorites, newsreader and address bar.

BILLSO.COM FEATURES THAT HAVE BEEN DEPRECATED OR REMOVED

I was using reCAPTCHA as a spam deterrent in the comments boxes. I added the feature on 6 June 2007, and disabled it on 5 May 2008.

I used to repost my articles on Facebook but I stopped that service in Janaury 2008, because Facebook doesn’t provide efficient tools for managing comments on its site.

Our custom button allows users to search the entire site within the Google Toolbar. Free software required. Supports Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows and the Mac. (added 6 June 2007)

The New York Times had an article in today’s edition about a web site I’ve never heard of - Legacy.com. The Times and 300 other US newspapers pay the site to post obituaries, and the site found a profitable business model in the process. Mourners can pay a fee to make the “guest books” available for a longer period of time. A traditional guest book allows mourners to write their names and thoughts at a funerl ceremony. An online guest book, like those offered by Legacy.com, let anyone with Internet access post a comment.

The web site devotes 30% of its annual budget and 60% of its employees to reading and removing over 200,000 “inappropriate comments” from the online guest books. Examples from the article include the following comments, which we were all deleted by Legacy.com employees:

“Everyone gets their due,” a former client writes of an embezzling accountant. Or, “I sincerely hope the Lord has more mercy on him than he had on me during my years reporting to him at the Welfare Department.”

Others are subtler: “She never took the time to meet me, but I understand she was a wonderful grandmother to her other grandchildren.”

“Reading the obit, he sounds like he was a great father,” says another, which is signed, “His son Peter.”

Many of the other deleted postings are spam, adversting caskets, religions, and pharmaceuticals.

Another site called MyDeathSpace.com posts over 25 profiles a day for recently departed MySpace members.

USA: From Sean Bronner: Russell Simmons has let signs go up in his loft, overlooking Ground Zero. The intent is to get these signs in any shots of the World Trade Center site that might go on tv during the RNC. As more right-wingers visit Sean’s site and live vile comments, the page gets ranked higher in search engines. It’s all part of our own little Wende as described by Jonah P. Langenbeck and inspired by Bruce Sterling. Boing Boing!

Hawai’i: The Hawai’i PUC has changed its mind, and will hold public hearings on the sale of Verizon Hawaii to the Carlyle Group. Yes, that’s the same Carlyle Group that was featured in Fahrenheit 9/11. When the sale was announced in May, the PUC said that written comments would be accepted. But Time Warner, Pacific LightNet, and local unions and consumers are voicing their reservations about the sale.

USA: Yahoo! News - Uncle Sam Mothballs Screening Program: You should also see Bruce Schneier’s comments on false security. “Electronic Frontier Foundation senior staff attorney Lee Tien said in a statement: ‘Finally, the Department of Homeland Security has recognized what EFF has been saying all along: the proposed CAPPS II system would be an ineffective, expensive, and unnecessary invasion of travelers’ privacy.’ David Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told The Washington Post: ‘The effectiveness was never demonstrated, and we always thought it was likely to provide a false sense of security and divert resources.’”