R.I.P. BlogShares
Posted on December 3, 2003 at 2:01 pm | No Comments
Seems that the virtual blog-stock market known as BlogShares has packed it in, with developer Seyed Razavi moving on to other things after a major database failure. He decided not to try and recover from the setback, so after 9 months, his excellent experiment disappears. The final update from the Blogshares site:
Dear BlogShares players,
I am sorry to announce that BlogShares will not be reopening after the current technical difficulties are resolved. Currently, the database server is dead and looks to be for the next few days.
The latest system crash has highlighted to me that deliverying a fun, useful service for the BlogShares community requires an active operator and developer. As most of you are no doubt aware I’ve been neither for the past couple of months. That has led to a decline of quality service, new features and ultimately income for the site and it looked likely that there wouldn’t be enough to pay for next month’s hosting.
It’s been an interesting and very rewarding nine months bringing a bit of entertainment to bloggers (and blog lovers). I’d like to thank especially all those people who donated money or their valuable time, those who became premium subscribers, those who worked on cool toys which made use of the fledgling API and all those who could be found on the forums and IRC channel. You turned a silly fun idea of a mad monkey coder in London into something worthy of the attention by thousands of bloggers and the press.
My goal with the project was always to embrace the power law and to provide a new way of highlighting blogs with a little bit of fun. I’ve been pleasantly surprised of how well it did and stupefied it did it for so long. Now, however, it is time to move on to other things. I’m sure you’ll be hearing from me in the not so distant future. You can also find me at my perpetual home: monkeyx.com.
All the best,
Seyed Razavi
Thanks for the diversion, Seyed.
Downhill Battle: Sticking it to the RIAA
Posted on December 3, 2003 at 9:19 am | No Comments
The boys at Downhill Battle are taking the fight against the Recording Industry Association of America to the streets (and malls) with a new anti-RIAA stickering campaign that kicked off last week.
Using the excellent RIAA Radar as a resource (a site that lists which record labels are RIAA members, and therefore help fund all their misdirected lawsuits), the DB guys are stealthily (if not anonymously) placing their own warning stickers on RIAA-associated discs at their local mega-marts.
Check out the site for the photographic evidence (taken with a digital camera they ‘borrowed’ from Walmart for the day), and order up some stickers of your own if you want to get in on the action.
It’ll be interesting to see if the RIAA, or the stores in question, get their panties in a bunch over this and decide to take action against the Downhill Battle crew. By putting themselves out there, posting pictures, taking payments, and using their real names, they may be setting themselves up for a bigger fight than they planned on. Or maybe that is their plan. Either way, wish ’em good luck and good lawyers.