Category: English

Spotback and Picli followup

During my use of Spotback‘s rating tools, I had a few comments about their service. I sent them to the contact person over there. I must say that they took my comments seriously, and they were very kind. I don’t think that will implement / or have implemented my remarks, but they sure are listening.

Now, Spotback’s service is open to any anyone. I was mostly impressed by the high ability to customize their widgets. You can really do almost anything with them, including playing with all the bits and pieces, and using CSS to change everything.

I am quite lazy, and I’m not so good in matching colors (well, I’m a boy), so the only thing I did was make a fast translation of their widget to Hebrew. Now, my Hebrew posts contain a Hebrew version of the widget. Anyway, they seem to be on the right track.

Picli

I wrote a somewhat nasty post about how Picli (the Digg for photos) can be gamed easily. I was very surprised that hours after that post, someone from the Picli contacted me. He explained that the current voting situation is temporary and asked me if I had more comments.

Again, I was impressed from the seriousness of the company. I hope that they will improve and have a good product (tough competition ahead…)

Both companies are young, highly motivated and have great ideas in hand. I wish them Great Success!

A Holocaust Song

Today is the national remembrance day for the holocaust. The radio plays the same old songs over and over again. Most of them are too old, and they just remind of standing up for hours, rehearsing for the remembrance day ceremonies at school.

I want to offer a different song. The lyrics aren’t related to the holocaust. It’s the music. When I hear this song, I always imagine that I’m hiding in the freezing cold Polish winter under the barracks, trying not be heard by the Nazi patrol that is barking and flashing their torches. The howling wind hides the sound of my teeth.

Nick Cave – Stranger than Kindness.
[audio:http://yohayelam.com/recordings/Stranger-Than-Kindness-Nick-Cave.mp3]

As a descendant of European Jews that immigrated to Israel in the 50s, many of my relatives were murdered during the Jew’s (and others’) holocaust of WW2. For me it’s something that is mostly in the history books. For my grandmother, and the whole generation, WW2 is still something that they keep talking about. Many conversations feature “I was in that war”.

I’ve visited Auschwitz about 2 and a half years ago, during a trip with my family. That day was a bright warm sunny day. Green fields, birds and empty barracks. That was weird. The might of the evil that happened there in the 40s contrasted the pleasant present. Despite the nice weather, it was quite a hard experience.

Auschwitz, Poland

Today, there are terrible things happening around us. No, not as horrifying and systematic as the Nazi extermination machine, but do we realyy care or do something about the major massacres in Darfur or the concentration camps in North Korea? Never again?

Photo Digg can be easily gamed

Picli.com, a new site that is the “Digg for Photos” launched recently. It aims to be a site where users can share links to photo. The site is totally immature. There are various flaws. The biggest problem is the easy “gaming” possibility. This is how I did it:

Picli.com, a new site that is the “Digg for Photos” launched recently. It aims to be a site where users can share links to photo. The photos can be uploaded, or linked from other places.

The site is totally immature. There are various flaws. The biggest problem is the easy “gaming” possibility. This is how I did it:
Continue reading “Photo Digg can be easily gamed”

Every Third Visitor uses Firefox

Every third visitor of this humble site used Firefox to access it. Firefox – 34%, Internet Explorer 63%. The rest goes to Netscape, Safari, Opera and others.

This data (from Google Analytics) refers to March 2007. The usage of Firefox grow month over month. is very similar to the data presented by W3Schools which is the first result for “Browser Statistics” using Google (yet again).

Continue reading “Every Third Visitor uses Firefox”

Political Protest Songs – The Mixtape

Here is a mixtape of 10 favorite political protest songs. You are welcome to listen to them here or download them as one mp3 file:

Listen:
[audio:http://yohayelam.com/recordings/PoliticalProtestSongs.mp3]

Download

I took my original list of 5 political protest songs, added 5 more, mixed them and put them here.

This is the list:

  1. U2 – Sunday Bloody Sunday – from a live performance in Rome (1987).
  2. Tracy Chapman – Talkin’ Bout a Revolution – from the album Tracy Chapman (1988).
  3. The Times They Are A Changin’ – Bob Dylan – taken from Essential Bob Dylan (2000). The song was recorded in the 60s.
  4. Ignoreland – R.E.M. – from Automatic for the People (1992).
  5. Russians – Sting – from The Dream of the Blue Turtles (1985).
  6. Fitter Happier – Radiohead – from OK Computer (1997).
  7. Have A Cigar – Pink Floyd – from Wish You Were Here (1975).
  8. The Queen is Dead – The Smiths – from The Queen is Dead (1986)
  9. The Restless Consumer – Neil Young – from Living with War (2006).
  10. Rockin’ in the Free World – Pearl Jam (originally by Neil Young) – from Live: 07-11-03 Mansfield, MA (2003).

I like all these songs’ lyrics and music as well. Most of these songs are popular mainstream songs, and a few are less known.

Like in the previous mixtape, Remember to buy the original albums. I’m not encouraging piracy of any form. If I’ll be asked to remove this mix tape by the owner’s of the rights, I’ll obey at once…

There are lots of other excellent political protest songs. I created the list with some small help from this Vikki entry.

If I missed something really great (and I probably did), please tell me. I hope you’ll enjoy it.