Internet
Boston Herald hunts Craigslist
Many analysts say one of the causes of the decline of the newspaper industry has been Craigslist, which has co-opted what once one of the most profitable parts of the newspaper business, classified advertising.
Well, some time ago the Boston Herald decided it wasn’t going to take this lying down. Every time there’s a crime story with any kind of hook to Craigslist, the Herald plays it up. If someone sells something online and they get robbed by the buyer, the headline will scream, “Craigslist!” If police clean out a nest of prostitutes using a local hotel to meet johns, the Herald headline will note that the trysts were arranged through Craigslist.
Of course, before the ‘List was a gleam in Craig Newmark’s eye, criminals were setting up dupes with fake offers to buy through newspaper classified and ladies of the evening were peddling themselves through ads in “alternative” newspapers and magazines, so this isn’t a problem unique to Craigslist. But that doesn’t matter to the Herald, which is fighting tooth and nail for its very survival. It doesn’t mind getting into the gutter with its rival, unlike the well-coiffed and oh-so-proper other newspaper in town, the Globe.
Thus it didn’t surprise me this morning to see the front page of today’s Herald blasting in huge type: “Cops hunt Craigslist killer”. The “Craigslist killer.” Oh, you know that the paper’s editors are hoping that the sobriquet sticks. And they offer not one, but four articles in the paper today about the heinous crime, including one profiling “escorts” advertising on Craigslist who are now in fear for their lives.
This is indeed a tragic crime, but apparently the Herald isn’t above making sure its mortal enemy gets shackled to the criminal who committed it.
N.B. Don’t get me wrong. I much prefer the Herald to its pretentious rival on Morrissey Boulevard. It’s the one newspaper I subscribe to and I find its editorial focus much more compatible with my own outlook. I’m just pointing out that the Herald doesn’t have pure motives here.
Photo credit: Flickr.com user AntyDiluvian. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Friend me!
I sometimes forget that while I find myself writing and hanging out in many corners of the Internet, many of my friends only know this blog. Yet, there are several social media sites where I’m much more “present” than here at Bettnet these days, mainly for the quick, slice-of-life thoughts and moments. And I know that many of you have found me in those places, but many have not.
So occasionally I will post here to remind you where else you may read my musings if you so desire:
- Bettnetlog: My tumblog where interesting links and an aggregation of material from other places I visit ends up.
- Facebook: I’ve friended a lot of people there. I’ve found it a great way to re-connect with people I’ve lost touch with.
- Plurk: Plurk is like Twitter but with a twist. Conversations are much easier here than on Twitter. Lots of Catholics here.
- Delicious: A bookmarking service where I save links to interesting stuff online
- Friendfeed: Another place that aggregates my online presence, but it’s more wide-ranging and it also includes commenting.
So if you’d like to friend/subscribe on any or none of those sites, please feel free. Of course, I’ll still be posting here with about the same regularity as I’ve been posting.
Lighthouse Catholic Media update
Back in August I wrote about my frustration with Lighthouse Catholic Media, a Catholic apostolate that distributes CDs of talks by popular Catholic authors and others. Read that short post to see what I was dealing with, but the gist is that they would not stop sending me their sales and marketing emails despite my repeated entreaties.
I believe I was extremely patient with them, waiting literally over a year before taking the final step, which was to write my blog post. Only then, when I had publicly exposed their behavior did I get a response. Finally they sent me a check for the small affiliate money I’d earned in the brief time I’d been an affiliate plus a bunch of CDs and a book I hadn’t asked for. they also requested that I take down the original blog post. I refused, on the grounds that nothing I’d said was untrue, that it reflected my experience, and that others who might be thinking of doing business with them should have the whole picture. They repeatedly made efforts to contact me and today I received a phone call—while I was at work no less—from the company’s president.
He accused me of slander, to which I responded that as a former journalist I know the definition of slander and this does not fit. Then he said that as a Christian I had to forgive. I told him that I do forgive him, but that doesn’t mean he gets to sweep this under the rug and make it disappear. He complained that there are plenty of anti-Catholics out there trying to undermine Catholic apostolates and that Catholics shouldn’t do it to one another. I responded that that he shouldn’t give cause for complaint then. He retorted that my is the only complaint online out of all the hundreds of plaudits they’ve received. So I asked why then does he care what one Catholic blogger says out. Mine is but one opinion and anyone looking online for information about his company will see my one comment amid the sea of others. Heck, he should look up my name and see the nasty stuff people have written about me.
In the end I agreed only to update the original blog post to reflect the fact that they finally heeded my requests and stopped emailing and that I have not received any further emails from them.
Lighthouse doesn’t have to win my trust back because I have no desire to interact with them. They’re not on my radar anymore. But if they want to ensure that my lone blog post doesn’t affect their efforts let them earn it back among those who would write compliments on other blogs and sites. Let them prove me wrong in the marketplace of ideas, not by badgering me to make my blog post disappear.
What Band are You Meme!
We all love memes, right? Well, even if you don’t (and I don’t love all of them), this one was kidn of fun. It’s the Band and Album meme.
- Band Name: Random Wikipeda Link
- Album Title: Random quote generator (take the last four words from the first quote on the page)
- Album Art: Flickr Interesting Photo (pick one)
Here’s what I came up with for Band Name, Album Title (“It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.” (H. L. Mencken). I cheated a little to make it fit), and Album Art.
And the album cover:
The meme comes from The Catholics Next Door
As if barbershop quartet were not nerdy enough…
... How about a Star Trek barbershop quartet?
And yet I love it!
[via GeekDad]
3 Days, 3038 Photos
3 Days - 3,038 Photos from Robbie on Vimeo.
This is a fun video compiled from over 3,000 photos taken in a 3 day span in and around Boston. Nothing profound, but a very cool use of technology. Since this was taken with a digital SLR, the end result is effectively High Definition video, so click through to the Vimeo site for the full effect.
Catholic World News enters a new era
Catholic World News is dead. Long live Catholic World News… as the all new Catholic Culture project! A couple of years ago Trinity Communications, the company behind Catholic Culture—and longtime provider of CWN’s technical infrastructure—purchased Catholic World News from Philip Lawler, editor and publisher. And now, they’re taking CWN to the next level by incorporating it into Catholic Culture.
This has particular significance for me since I was there at the beginning of CWN and worked alongside Phil for 9 years. I even created the first iteration of CWN’s web site back in 1997! But now CWN is no more, except as a header for a section on the Catholic Culture site.
But that’s okay, because the new Catholic Culture site is great! Phil and Trinity have taken the best part of CWN—the insightful and knowledgeable commentary—and expanded it while preserving the parts no one else was doing as well, including breaking Catholic news and providing links to the breadth and depth of coverage of issues and news of interest to Catholics.
Under the News section are Feature Stories, which is the original reporting CWN is known for, and NewsPlus Stories (the old “NewsBytes”), now with added commentary to give context for other media outlets’ coverage. Under Commentary, you’ll find commentary and analysis by Phil, Jeff Mirus, and others; the Catholic Culture blog, where Phil and Jeff write brief bits; Off the Record, where our old friend Diogenes continues to hold court; Catholic Culture Insights, the archives of Jeff’s weekly email newsletter; Letters to the Editor; and Sound Off, which is the combox for the various articles. The Culture section holds most of what was the old Catholic Culture site, including reviews, information on the liturgical year, the text of the Catechism, the Catholic dictionary, and so on. Best of all there are a bunch of new RSS feeds for keeping track of all this great information.
Keep in mind that the site is still in beta, so there will be occasional glitches, but I’m excited by the promise we see here. Oh, and did I mention that the former pay service is now free, although they are now donor supported. Which means you better feel a moral obligation to support this excellent apostolate if you receive benefit from it, just as much as you would if it were still a mandatory subscription.
I’m happy to see CWN grow and expand into a whole new and promising form of Catholic news and analysis site. Bravo to Phil, Jeff, Peter, and the whole gang at Trinity!
Stay away from Lighthouse Catholic Media
Update 12/9/08: At the request of LCM’s president I am updating this post to inform any interested person that following the posting of this entry (and only after) I was contacted by LCM and assured that my emails were purged from every database and that they were sending me a check for my affiliate earnings. Of course, to add insult to injury I received yet another email after that fact from a regional sales manager who was keeping a separate database, which I told them is part of the flaw in their business model. I have not received another unsolicited email from them in about 4 months.
Some time ago I responded to an email offer to bloggers from a group called Lighthouse Catholic Media. They sell CDs containing talks from noted Catholic speakers and to expand their business they were offering a portion of sales to bloggers who placed LCM ads on their blogs. I did so because I thought it would be a win-win: readers get good Catholic content and I get financial support for the blog. Unfortunately, that financial support never materialized—I don’t think I got a single affiliate payment—and then the other side of LCM became apparent.
Lighthouse Catholic Media operates like a multi-level marketing scheme that just won’t let go. They send a constant stream of emails with strategies for selling and how to increase sales and how to market to all your friends and neighbors and fellow parishioners and pastor, etc. There are constant invitations to regional call-in sales meetings and state call-in sales meetings and local call-in sales meetings. It’s like “Glen Garry Glen Ross” with the cursing.
And no matter how many times I’ve asked them to stop emailing me, how many times I’ve politely informed them that I no longer wish to take part, no matter how many times I’ve firmly ordered them to stop or I will report them to their Internet Service Provider as a spammer, they. Won’t. Stop. Emailing. Me!
So they’ve asked for it. I’m now exposing them as the slimy Internet spammers they are who seem to be more interested in the number of sales they can make and how much money they can earn over the content of their “Catholic” CDs. Their attitude clearly shows they could just as easily be peddling real estate CDs or little cans of SPAM for all their attention they give to, you know, the Gospel.
My advice: Stay away from Lighthouse “Catholic” Media. they are a sleazy outfit I would trust with my credit card and would not enrich in any way.
Small world
Talk about your small world. I just found out today that a fellow on Twitter who follows me is the son of good friend from church. The guy, Marc, starting following me a few weeks ago. He and his wife live in Salem and he’s a web developer, so I decided to follow him back as it’s nice to get to know new people. Today, he put up a link to photos of his one-year-old daughter at her birthday being held by his dad. So I click on the link—I’m a sucker for baby daughter photos—and, lo and behold, his dad is my friend Paul and then I see his wife, my friend Kris. (Who also reads this blog; Hi Kris!) What are the odds?
Melanie talks about similar small-world encounters, like her friend Betsy who is also a reader of my blog who suddenly, one day, realized that the Melanie I was talking about marrying was her friend Melanie.
It’s funny that I seem to have these types of encounters a lot. It really is a small world.
Photo credit: bass nroll at Flickr.com. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic license.
Oldest copy of the Bible now available on online
Ten years ago when I was telling people about the Internet and how the Vatican was setting up a web site, an image I often used to described the promise of this new medium was that of access to previously difficult-to-access information. I would point out that the Vatican’s libraries hold ancient manuscripts, including millennia-old copies of the Bible, that only very few accredited scholars would ever get to see and wait until the day those manuscripts are imaged and put online for anyone in the world to see at their own computers.
That day has come.
The British Library has announced that it will make the complete Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest, most complete Bible in the world dating from around 350 AD, available online for the first time and all in once piece for the first time in decades. The Codex Sinaiticus, so named because it was discovered in St. Catherine Monastery on Mount Sinai in 1844, has been divided in pieces almost from the time of the discovery, with large sections being held in Britain; Leipzig, Germany; and St. Petersburg, Russia. As of Thursday, high-resolution images of 100 pages will be available at www.codex-sinaiticus.net and the rest will be added over the next year.
Think of what this will mean for scholarship of all kinds. Whereas research on rare or precious documents used to be limited to those with access and the ability to travel to far-flung places, now scholars and non-scholars will be able to get a better view of the document than even if they were physically present. (You’d never be allowed to actually touch such a precious treasure.)
The Saint Song
Xt3 – Official WYD Social Network
The Archdiocese of Sydney has launched its new World Youth Day social networking site called Xt3. Also, check out the cool 30-second spot on that page produced by Grassroots Films, creators of such fare as “The Human Experience”, “God in the Streets of New York”, and “Fishers of Men”.
As usual, it’s very cool. Those of you in the younger demographic will have to tell us old fogeys whether you like the site.
An open source animated short as good as Pixar
Big Buck Bunny from Blender Foundation on Vimeo.
This short cartoon was created by the users of the open-source modeling software Blender and released under the Creative Commons license. Pretty impressive. Isabella loves it.
St. Columbkille, Patron Saint of BitTorrenters and Net Piracy
I propose that we name St. Columbkille (Columba/Colmcille) as the patron saint of BitTorrent and other forms of Net piracy.
Tradition asserts that, sometime around 560, he became involved in a quarrel with Saint Finnian of Moville over a psalter. Columba copied the manuscript at the scriptorium under Saint Finnian, intending to keep the copy. Saint Finnian disputed his right to keep the copy. The dispute eventually led to the pitched Battle of Cúl Dreimhne in 561, during which many men were killed. Columba’s copy of the psalter has been traditionally associated with the Cathach of St. Columba. A synod of clerics and scholars threatened to excommunicate him for these deaths, but St. Brendan of Birr spoke on his behalf with the result that he was allowed to go into exile instead. Columba suggested that he would work as a missionary in Scotland to help convert as many people as had been killed in the battle. He exiled himself from Ireland, to return only once again, several years later.
So St. Columba made an “illegal” copy of someone else’s property and so defended his right to make such an unauthorized copy that he was willing to go to war over it. Sounds like a lot of Net pirates I’ve encountered.
Photo of Cathach of St. Columba in the public domain via Wikipedia Commons.
Ha, ha, I’m in heaven and you’re not.
I thought this was a parody at first, but evidently it’s not. If you’re an Evangelical who believes in the Rapture—the theology behind the “Left Behind” series of End Times books—then you believe that at some point all the “real” Christians are going to disappear into heaven (be assumed?), leaving behind all those poor benighted non-believers who will have to endure the Apocalypse and have one final chance to give their lives to Christ as their personal Lord and Savior.
But say you’re a tech-savvy Christian who wants to give your non-believing friends and family one last chance — or at least a final “I told you so”— then you need to sign up for “You’ve Been Left Behind.” YBLB is an email service that will send one final message to all those people who have been “left behind”. As their press release puts it:
This website allows the customer to edit all documents and addresses at any time. This online site is run and programmed by Christians. It employs a “dead man’s switch” to automatically send the Emails after the Rapture of the Church has taken place. Multiple safeguards have been put into place to prevent premature sending of stored documents.
Customers of You’ve Been Left Behind Get an account with 250MB of storages space. And can upload any document to send to as many as 62 email addresses. 150MB are stored 256 bit encrypted. Those documents can be individually sent to up to 12 specific email addresses. 100MB of unencrypted storage can be collectively sent to another 50 email addresses. A blog is also available to customers with prewritten documents for the customer who does not have the time or prophecy knowledge to write their own general letters.
All this for only $40 per year. Every year. And all the proprietors have to do is … nothing. The perfect business plan.
