Mobility of data is becoming an important issue these days. Many people’s data is stored on third-party Web sites, whose data formats are not specified. The data cannot be exported (e.g. for upgrades or migration) either, so there’s a lockin involved in many such Web services (think Web 2.0).

Possession of one’s data would be a selling point. So why are sites not providing this facility? Why is its implementation assigned such a low priority? Simply put, sites wish to elevate exit barriers and make it hard for customers to walk away. But there is a cost here. This leads to resentment. This leads to backlash, which DRM, for example, comes to show us.

Let’s just integrate facilities for import and export in all user-driven Web sites. Export at the least — one that relies on standard protocols for containing data — should be crucial. Without import facilities, quick flow of SPAM is not an issue, in the case of public-facing sites such as Digg.com. Just take del.icio.us for example.

My two stories at the very top of Digg.com (click for full-sized image)

IGG has possibly made a mistake by opening its doors to a wider crowd by augmenting its sections and encouraging short and lame postings. I was at times modded down because my comments were “too long”.

A friend of mine tends to agree that Digg was much better over a year ago. Even Slashdot is orders of magnitude more mature than Digg nowadays. Slashdot’s trolls have moved elsewhere and someone must ‘absorb’ them. Also, Digg is increasingly becoming people’s blog aggregator (just seen someone submitting 10 links to his blog in one day). This lowers the overall quality and raises ‘noise’ level. Maybe Digg is a victim of its own traffic-generating reputation, as well as ‘democratic’ nature (making it possible for inaccurate news to hit key pages).

will start with a proposition that I repeat rather often: Alexa ranks are flawed. Usually, for most sites, they are utterly meaningless.

It is difficult to argue this when faced with Alexa-happy people, but the figures cannot be trusted. It is a toolbar that acts in a similar way to spyware which drives these ranks. The A9 toolbar for Firefox used to have the same effect. Recently however, Microsoft grabbed A9 by the balls and forced them to drop the toolbar. No more Alexa manipulation on Macs and Linux boxes. So where do we end up?

Alexa aligns with Webmasters’ surfing habits. Netcraft figures, on the other hand, align better with system administrators’ surfing habits. The two can intersect. The shown figures are, by default, calculated from a three-month average of pageviews. One can view daily reach though to see how it goes willy-nilly when a few regular visitors use the toolbar. The exception to this might be the very top sites, although the definition of traffic still matters.

Manipulation gets harder at that stage where top sites get ranked. Many people game Alexa as well. Do not trust Alexa ranks. Ever. Use Netcraft if you want something that’s not just an alternative, but is also better in the sense that fewer people game it. Here are some example statistics from two top site.

• Netcraft rank for Netscape: 341^st
• Netcraft rank for Digg: 867^th
• Alexa rank for Netscape: 479^th
• Alexa rank for Digg: 79^th

See? No alignment between Netcraft and Alexa figures at all. Not even for top sites. These so-called ‘realistic’ figures collide and contradict one another. Alexa has become one these “everybody steals, so I can as well” sort of thing… grossly biased. While people continue to game Alexa it remains a strange animal.

OU may have been wondering what happened to my blog. For the past couple of week I have been writing for another blog and I added copies of my entries to my personal space. To provide some background I’ll quote a page that I recently added to boycottnovell.com. It’s merely the motivation — the raison d’être if you like — which I added to the About page.

“If the Microsoft corporation, whether it wishes to be part of this ecology in a genuine and sincere sense or not, if it succeeds in getting one distribution to pay royalties for the distribution of free software, other distributions will do so. They will have to. That will then succeed in marching the commercial sector away from the non-commercial sector, and Microsoft then will be able to use its patents to sue to block the development of software in the non-commercial sector without the fear of suing its own customers, which is the force that now constrains them from misbehavior with their patent portfolio.”

       
       –Eben Moglen, Software Freedom Law Center

I am working in collaboration with another person. As the About Us page introduces us:

• Shane Coyle is the Founder of EDU-Nix.org.
• Roy Schestowitz is a Ph.D. Candidate in Medical Biophysics at Manchester University. He advocates the use of Open Source technology in the public and private sector, as well as uses his background in computing to make personal contribution to the Free Software movement.

If this blog ceased to be fun, please drop me a line. I can probably separate the topics and set irrelevant material aside.

HIS title of this post was chosen for a dramatic effect. Have a look at the following Netscape profile. I love this guy’s articles/essays, but I can’t help but feel like he’s using Netscape as his personal blog aggregator. In Digg.com, for a change, he gets other people, maybe his regular readers, to submit (probably without request). His domain was at some point blacklisted, after em masse burying.

Like I said, I love what he writes, but it would be nice if he actually participated in Netscape (see profile stats). I am aware of another site that does the same thing (e.g. Linux screenshots).

There is a similar problem in Digg.com. I am aware of two people who keep doing this (Seopher and Locust). Others were told off for linking to their gateway/corridor pages (robbing actual articles) and they appear to have been banned or vanished due to discouragement. But that’s a wholly separate problem. I am more concerned about the former, so I thought I’d share, or at least give a heads-up to the Digg and Netscape communities.

I ought to emphasise the fact that these people only link to their own site/s. They use Netscape as a link farm that goes in one direction.

This is great news to bloggers.

In a major victory for bloggers, forum participants and Web publishers, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday that individuals cannot be held liable for publishing defamatory statements written by others.

Some Webmasters fail to keep track of content that’s contributed by others. At least the legal dangers are now gone.

CCORDING to various sources (including a seminal report from TechCrunch), Digg seeks to be acquired. The reactions are, as expected, largely rants that express dissatisfaction, particularly within the Digg community. I spotted this one comment the other day.

“If News Corp buys it, you can find me a Netscape.com or some other similar site.”

It is just one among many which speak of Slashdot, Netscape, or mention News Corp./Fox as the evil creature that could take over Digg. All in all, this is probably good news to all sites which compete with Digg. I don’t think that any company with the needed resources (and interests) is truly benevolent.

• Google – would pull “democracy” out of Digg, especially if you IP address is Chinese…
• Yahoo – would sell your Digg details…
• Microsoft – would eliminate the Apple and UNIX/Linux sections…