See One, Do One, Teach One

I personally do not use google’s blogger service; however, I always appreciate that they open up their upcoming services early for testing.  Google Blogoscoped reports that http://draft.blogger.com/ will get a blogger user early access to a ton of new features.  How to use these new features would be excellent fodder for new tech-recipes…

Also from Google Blogoscoped is news that google analytics now has clickable referral links. So now you are one click away from seeing what others users are saying about you around the web.

Did you hear of browzar this week?  The less than 300K download was suddenly the answer to completely safe browsing! 

Ummm, no.  It’s a wrapper for Internet Explorer that tries to delete your privacy information as you surf.  Scott Hanselman discovered very quickly that it does not even do that very well. 

It also redirects all a user’s searches to overture.  Wow, that’s like spyware 101.

A few people bought it hook, line and sinker:

• China Martens, InfoWorld
• Martin McKeay, ComputerWorld
• Jordan Running, Download Squad
• Michael Pick, RobinGood
• Sam Sethi, TechCrunch UK
• Rafe Needleman, cnet
• Digg promoted it to the front page; however, users were quick to start commenting on its true nature.
• Slashdot posted about it as well.  Users there started discussing its status quickly as well.

So what started this wave of browzar pain?  A press release!  Yes, many of these high-profile bloggers saw the press release and posted about it as soon as possible. 

So who is more to blame: Ajaz Ahmed for releasing this junk or the bloggers who repeated his propoganda?

My favorite new read-for-pure-pleasure blog is FastAndLoud. The author, FFF, approached me a few months ago with the idea. He wanted to express his politically-incorrect views on our modern culture in a freeform, blogish format.

(Of course, doesn’t everybody?)

However, we gave him a little piece of server space and he has never looked back. His articles were quickly burning up digg and shoutwire. Here’s a few that you’ve probably heard about already:

• The Definitive Myspace Whore Collective
• View blocked sites from work or school
• Record labels continue to sucker punch music consumers

Now, he’s selling a ton of his wit-based swag. No fair! We are not even selling tech-recipes swag yet!

Check out his site and subscribe to his feed–you’ll either be amused or offended on a routine basis. Isn’t that all that we can really ask for?

Long list of blogger hacks to help customize your blog.

Make really ugly html by using the Blogger for Word add-in