2006 September — contentious.com

Monthly Archives: September 2006

Apologizing: Good for Your Reputation

September 29, 2006 – 11:37 am

Often I’m amazed at how the universe conspires to hit me over the head with a theme, yelling “You MUST blog this!” That’s just happened this morning on the theme of apologies. Particularly, how crucial apologies are to public discourse — and to re-establishing broken trust with your core community and the general public.
Everyone messes [...]

By Amy Gahran | Posted in Content Style & Business, Conversations, Net Effects on Society, Real World Writing, Voices: Blogs, etc. | Comments (0)

Google Adsense: DMCA policy

September 26, 2006 – 9:18 am

Following up on my earlier posts: It turns out that Google has a policy for its Adsense program regarding abuses that involve infringement of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). They explain in detail how to file DMCA-related complaints.
Note that this is not a strictly online process. They require a written and signed complaint [...]

By Amy Gahran | Posted in Net Effects on Society, Resources, Voices: Blogs, etc. | Comments (0)

Shutting Down Sploggers via Google Adsense

September 25, 2006 – 1:48 pm

As I mentioned before, as far as I’m concerned, hunting down and shutting down individual splogs is a waste of energy — because a splogger can set up another (or dozens) of new sites quickly and easily for each one that gets shut down.

Many bloggers have been discussing this issue, with a deluge of often-heated comments in the wake of these posts.

Somewhere in that multilayered discussion, I saw someone mention what seems like a way to take constructive action against sploggers that’s more meaningful than shutting down a single splog. My apologies, I can’t recall who offered this suggestion.

Anyway, Google Adsense is the most common financial incentive program used by sploggers. I can’t remember seeing a single splog that didn’t carry Google ads. One Adsense account can support a multitude of splogs. Google ostensibly doesn’t approve of splogs, and apparently will cancel Adsense accounts for sploggers who abuse the program.

Therefore, when you find a splog, you can report it to Google and ask them to close the associated Adsense account.

Back on July 10, Quick Online Tips explained how to do that…

By Amy Gahran | Posted in Content Style & Business, Net Effects on Society, Resources, Voices: Blogs, etc. | Comments (0)

Why hunting sploggers is a waste of energy

September 22, 2006 – 3:49 pm

The 8th circle of hell: Future home of every splogger on earth.

Several popular bloggers, including Shel Israel, Allan Jenkins, and Jeremiah Owyang, lately have been voicing consternation over the last few days over what appears to be a large-scale, wholesale theft of their content by a splogger site: Bitacle.org. (No, I’m not linking to Bitacle, [...]

By Amy Gahran | Posted in Conversations, Net Effects on Society, Voices: Blogs, etc. | Comments (1)

Why Most CEOs Shouldn\’t Blog

September 18, 2006 – 3:56 pm

A couple of days ago, my friend and colleague Dave Taylor wrote a sure-to-be-provocative blog post, Why Jonathan Schwartz Should NOT Be Blogging. He also was quoted on this topic in a Sept. 16 AP article, and his posting explores his thoughts in more depth — a great strategy for getting more mileage out of [...]

By Amy Gahran | Posted in Content Style & Business, Conversations, Voices: Blogs, etc. | Comments (0)

Beyond Blogs: Moleskine Goes Where the Conversation Happens

September 18, 2006 – 3:52 pm

Like many media pros, I’m a die-hard fan of Moleskine notebooks — especially their small, unlined reporter’s notebook.
Moleskine notebooks aren’t fancy. In fact, this brand’s reputation hinges almost entirely on quality, and on a vocal, dedicated community of customer evangelists — such as Merlin Mann of the popular productivity site 43 Folders.
Therefore, when sharply worded [...]

By Amy Gahran | Posted in Content Style & Business, Conversations, Voices: Blogs, etc. | Comments (0)

Why I Ditched Most of My Feeds, and Changed to NetNewsWire

September 11, 2006 – 12:14 pm

I was just overwhelmed. My "system" felt organized at first, but it got to be chaos. So this weekend I made some radical changes in how I use feeds.
For a long time, I’d kept over 400 feeds organized into about 20 topic areas (environment, energy, science, women, law, etc.) bundled into my former favorite feed [...]

By Amy Gahran | Posted in Amy's Adventures, Feeds (RSS) | Comments (0)

How Movie Theaters Might Thrive in an On-Demand, Long Tail World

September 10, 2006 – 4:02 pm

Last night, my husband and I went out to the movies — something we rarely do, since we think movie tickets are drastically overpriced and prefer the convenience and selection of Netflix. However, every once in a while we still get the urge.
Since we were in the mood to mock, we went to see the [...]

By Amy Gahran | Posted in Content Style & Business, Media Musings, Net Effects on Society | Comments (0)

Katie Couric, via search feeds

September 6, 2006 – 4:05 pm

Yesterday, my editor at Poynter Online, Bill Mitchell, asked me for ideas for covering how Katie Couric’s debut last night as the new CBS Evening News anchor is playing online.
Well, I honestly didn’t watch her show last night. I was really tired and went to bed early. I almost never watch TV news anyway. However, [...]