solanasaurus.com

AOL is still suffering the aftermath of a scandal over their disclosure of search terms of their subscribers…

I dare to venture forth and say that my Dreamhost stats tell me what people searched for if they came to this blog via a search engine.

Occassionally, there are some surprises, like this one: “my child is obsessed with dinosaurs“.

Here’s a dino for all you dino-lovers. Don’t let them tell you it’s pathological.

I installed spamfilter Akismet on the comments in this blog. It’s already caught 20 and really saves me the time/trouble of weeding them out. Thanks Wordpress for including such smoothe integration of this tool.

PS: Are those annoying pop-ups gone?

Georgia Popplewell on Global Voices does an excellent job of summarizing the global chatter about Castro’s birthday photos. Have they been doctored? By Adidas?

Ah, the Iranian president’s new blog. No tales of drunken adventures here. And only one post so far. But it’s about 2000 words long and tells his life story.

According to the BBC, he is ready to respond to questions and is even polling readers about whether they think “the great Satan, USA” is trying to start a new world war. Iranian blog-hero Hossein is not impressed with the publicity stunt. Let’s wait and see whether it turns out to be a ‘real’ blog, he says.

Tony Blair had a blog once, which was so ridiculously not-written by himself that he should still be embarassed. This would be an example of mistake number one politicians commit when getting hip with the kids. The kids don’t like being lied to.

German chancellorette Angela Merkel had her own brush with technology recently when she agreed to do a ‘real’ spontaneous video blog the other day as opposed to this picture perfect videocast.

Check this out (link sometimes does not work), for a painfully embarassing example of mistake number two politicians commit. Be yourself, sure. But don’t tell the world you don’t know how to find the Democratic Republic of Congo on the map when your troops are there.

And finally, if you want bloggers to like you and link to you (and maybe some day vote for you). Don’t help uphold a regime that gets them arrested for writing that you suck. Especially if you really do.

My friend Matt’s new blog is full of accounts of drunken adventures in New Orleans. Actually, there are only two posts so far but already his first post catapulted him to local fame. Welcome to the blogroll, buddy.

I got blogged on Global Voices and Slate yesterday. My stats spiked.

Concept blogs work. Here’s a blog full of useless ideas for making lots of money selling stuff you can’t live without.

And here’s a website which automatically checks for misspellings in Ebay auctions to try and sneak you a better deal.

Bloggombiano asks for help researching folk music, folk literature, and especially “urban legends that involve the devil”. Let him know, if you know. He asked me to ask.

Cruising around the blogs of friends:

On Sivacracy, this post on a new mobile phone ringtone that grown-ups can’t hear and kids love. Are you too old to hear it?

Hoder reposted this nice article he wrote for the Guardian on Iran’s official and support Zinédine Zidan’s headbutt and football in general.

Nastasha posted this cover of Time Magazine from when Israel struck Lebanon in 1982.

Bloggombiano says goodbye to a friend who was murdered.

My old pal Dominic Hilton, of the Hilton Global Initiative, has called me a “lefty nut” more than once. I wonder if the position he has given me on his links list between Michelle Malkin and David Frum is some kind of punishment. Or perhaps it is a pre-emptive strategy in case anyone should think we agreed on too much.