Copia

Looking into upgrading my home broadband to business grade, I've casted about for options. Comcast is my current provider for digital cable plus cable broadband, and I've been happy with them, so I called to ask what they could do for me.

Their quote for (Comcast Workplace Standard) was $110 per month for 6.6Mb down and 768Kb down and 5 static IPs, with a promo waiving installation fee and taking $20 per month off for the first 12 months (requires a 24 month commitment).

Sounded good, and seems it must be. I went hunting around sites such as DSLBroker to find business broadband options for Superior, Colorado, where I live. I found nothing but plans on the order of $200/mo for 1.1Mb symmetric; overall I didn't find anything that even came close to the value Comcast was offering. Does anyone know whether I'm just missing something? Do you have experience with business-grade broadband at home?

[Uche Ogbuji]

So a few minutes ago I got a call. Caller ID says 1-999-999-1234. Already suspicious. I worked IT at a call center and know how easy CID is to manipulate. They could have chosen something less obviously a fake. Anyway I answered for some reason and there was a guy with a strong Indian accent telling me he was calling from the "U.S. Government Grants Department" and that I'd won a $12,000 grant for being a good taxpayer. The only catch was that I must not use the money to do anything illegal. This is a new scam on me, so I asked him a bunch of purposefully silly questions while I googled "government grants scam". I gather from the results that the idea is to get your bank account number for a supposed wire transfer to the account, and they just arrange the wire to go the other way. Surely enough, my phone friend soon asked me for information about my bank and I rang off. I hardly suppose I need to warn anyone about these guys, but for what it's worth...

[Uche Ogbuji]

"Scripting Flickr with Python and REST"

In his latest Agile Web column, Uche Ogbuji shows us how to use Python to interact with Flickr as a lightweight web service.

This Agile Web installment is fairly straightforward. I look at the several Python libraries for accessing Flickr from programs. They range from low level, thin veneers over the official Flickr API to the one higher level, more Pythonic library. And of course there's the obligatory package I just can't get to work.

[Uche Ogbuji]

The rumblings about innocent people getting caught in Google's super-secret spam and fraud detection systems is becoming impossible to ignore. The more I hear stories from folks I respect (Ned Batchelder's case is the latest I've run across), the more I think Google has a burgeoning problem of its hands. Google's benefits greatly from its "do no evil" reputation, but this reputation is starting to wear some seriously grungy shadows.

I'm also pondering the off chance that I may myself have fallen victim to some over-zealous fraud cop at Google. Recently I noticed that my personal home pages disappeared from Google search results. I recently changed to a hacked-up CherryPy set-up for these pages, and my first thought was that I'd done something violating some prime directive of search engine optimization. I've never paid much attention to SEO, so I figured I'd look into it when I had a moment and fix meta tags or whatever was looking skunky to Google's indexer. Then I noticed that the pages in question continue to occupy their typically high ranking on Yahoo search. I know the two indexes use different algorithms, but the contrast seems too sharp to be a question of simple metadata massage.

Then while doing research for my article "Google Sitemaps" I happened across this discussion of "exclusion" and "reinclusion" from Google indexes. This is the first I've ever heard of such matters, but it does rather feel like what happened to my home pages. I can't imagine what I would have done to fall afoul of Google's anti-fraud system considering I've never been the slightest bit interested in SEO, and my high ranking has always come because a gratifying number of people seem to like and link to what I write.

I'll be looking further into whether Google might have excluded my pages, but regardless of what's going on in my particular case, based on what I'm reading about Google lately, I'm beginning to think the company is really straining with the effort of balancing good vibes and break-neck growth.

[Uche Ogbuji]

"Google Sitemaps"

Uche Ogbuji's new XML.com column, "Agile Web," explores the intersection of agile programming languages and Web 2.0. In this first installment he examines Google's Sitemaps schema, as well as Python and XSLT code to generate site maps. [Oct. 26, 2005]

And with this article the "Python and XML" column has been replaced by a new one titled "Agile Web".

I wrote the Python-XML column for three years, discussing the combination of an agile programming language with an agile data format. It's time to pull the lens back a bit to take in other such technologies. This new column, "Agile Web," will cover the intersection of dynamic programming languages and web technologies, particularly the sorts of dynamic developments on the web for which some use the moniker, "Web 2.0." The primary language focus will still be Python, with some ECMAScript. Occasionally there will be some coverage of other dynamic languages as well.

In this first article I introduce the Google SiteMaps program, XML format and Python tools.

[Uche Ogbuji]

I keep getting invitations from friends to sms.ac. The friends are the sort of people I'm certainly happy to communicate with, but I'm always suspicious of joining such on-line clubs because who knows what the real agenda is? I was certainly not surprised when meetup.com went C.R.E.A.M.y and started shaking down granny-tea-cosy get-togethers for dues.

Anyway, do any other savvy techies use it? Is it worth the (apparently free) registration? Do they seem like just the next generation of scum who happen to have taken some of my friends, or are they legit? I tried a few google searches but didn't find anything helpful.

Disclaimer: I have no problem with sites charging for services, and indeed, I'm happy to pay for several of my on-line services, but I can't stand bait-and-switch. B&Sers deserve keel-hauling, matey.

Updated Thanks to Mark Baker for pointing me to good reason to stay well away from SMS.ac.

[Uche Ogbuji]

Was in the Bay Area Thursday and Friday to do some work at Sun's Menlo Park campus, and rented a car for the flings from SFO to hotel to Sun. Wound up in an Oldsmobile Alero from Hertz car rentals. I'm not sure whether I've ever driven an Olds before, but this one is palpable evidence for why that whole division got the sack. The car is crap. The last car to come off an Oldsmobile plant in 2004 was an Alero. They should have just closed with a washing machine instead.

It feels bigger on the outside than my 1994 Hobda Civic (now that's a great car), but it's way smaller on the inside. I felt like I was being fitted for my funerary pine box, or something. It handles like a blimp, and the convenience controls such as the central locking seem to have a mind of their own. It was the first rental car I remember getting with more than 10,000 miles (it had 14,000) and my guess is that Hertz wasn't able to off-load it to any gullible dealer.

On the other end of the spectrum, when it's time to finally give up the Civic (maybe this year; we'll see), I think I'm fiending for that Toyota Prius. My Dad has one. It's a great car. Knocks it out of the park in gas mileage and emissions, has a sterling reputation for quality, and drives smoothly as sweet cream butter (much like my Civic does even now).

[Uche Ogbuji]

Comcast is my cable broadband provider. Looks as if they're having a major outage in my area. My network connectivity has been flaky all week, and for the past three days the situation has been enarly intolerable. I've called a couple of times and get recorded messages acknowledging the problems, and basically telling me the queue is so long there's no point hanging around on the phone.

I suppose these things happen, but when the Internet is your main supply line, it really bites, especially when they take an age to fix things.

[Uche Ogbuji]