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What Will Happen to Flickr?

Ever since Microsoft began its attempt to takeover Yahoo I started thinking about the future of Flickr. That’s really the only Yahoo service I use (and I pay for). Microsoft does not have a good history with web services. Yeah, at the beginning of the web everyone had a Hotmail account, but they quickly fell behind in the times with that. They couldn’t keep up with the features and storage of other competitors, like Yahoo and Google. It seems that every attempt they’ve made has failed. Does anyone actually use Microsoft’s Spaces? Can anyone actually find anything via their Live Search? Personally, I think Microsoft’s Live search has to be the worst search engine out there.

I know thinking that Microsoft going in and breaking a winning formula (winning in the user’s views, not necessarily in the business sense) probably isn’t going to happen, but it is Microsoft. I don’t have much faith in them. No, they won’t rewrite Flickr to use ASP.NET or something crazy like that, but I do worry about what they can do to mess up Flickr. I also think that a lot of the passionate Flickr users, especially the ones that were there pre-Yahoo, will definitely not like the change of hands and move to a new photo service. I really wish Google would spend some time developing their Picasa and Picasa Web services, up the storage allotment, and make it a real competitor in the online photo storage market. It has great potential, and with Microsoft trying to take over Yahoo, now would be the perfect time for them to woo users. Of course, I may just be paranoid about what will happen to Flickr, but it’s a service I pay for and a place where I store my photos, so I do wonder about the future. Do I really want to feed my money and data to Microsoft? Not likely. If Microsoft buys Yahoo, will you stay with Flickr? Will you move somewhere else? If so, where?

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15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense

Here is a great article article from Scientific American. It’s a shame when people throw away logic for fairy tales, myths, and fables. I have to wonder where this country is going. Seems each year a foaming at the mouth religious nut is attacking science and scientific facts. People really are clueless when religion gets thrown into the mix. How else do you explain how stupid people are for believing that dinosaurs and man walked side by side? I’m sick of it. There is a reason the time period where religion flourished and logic and reason subsided was called The Dark Ages. Then came the Enlightenment, an age of reason. Is America heading towards another Dark Age? If you’re religious, fine, that is your right, but don’t come preaching to me and don’t put it in the science class.

There’s a Whole Lotta Sleepin’ Goin’ On

So, at around 4:30 this morning Missouri and Illinois experienced an earthquake that registered 5.2 on the Richter scale. Everyone on the news and at work this morning was talking about it. I slept through it. Didn’t even wake me up slightly. I’m kinda bummed. Besides that tiny earthquake (around a 2) I experienced when I was like 10, I’ve never been in one. I would have liked to feel it a bit, just for the experience. It seems that no matter what nature throws at me, I can sleep through it. While in college, a tornado touched down on campus and caused a fair amount of damage. Everyone was talking about it. It made the news in St. Louis (I went to MSU in Springfield, MO) and my mom even called me to ask if I was ok. I had no idea what she was talking about and was upset she woke me up during my between-class nap. In the future nature, if you want to wake me up, you’re gonna have to try a little harder than a 5.2.

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Feedburner Broken API

For a few weeks Feedburner’s API has been broke. If I try to pull the statistics of the title and URL of my posts it comes back “NO TITLE.” The statistics package I use, mint, has a Feedburner pepper and it has been showing NO TITLE for quite a while. Apparently this has been reported but has yet to be fixed. Come on Google, fix your stuff. If you’re going to provide an API, make sure it works. I want to see which posts people are viewing and clicking in my feeds. NO TITLE doesn’t help me very much.

Domain Switching

I’m considering moving my blog over to pieceofshep.com. This was where my blog was originally set up long ago (maybe four years ago). The domain fits better with my blog’s title obviously. The only thing I’m worried about is what’s going to happen to all the search engine referrals. I can use an .htaccess rewrite to forward the URLs from mikeschepker.com to pieceofshep.com and that should work ok. I just need to figure out what rules I need to 301 mikeschepker.com/blog/wp-permalink-structure to pieceofshep.com/wp-permalink-structure. I have some good searches on my site and would not like to lose that incoming traffic. This may take some research. If anyone has suggestions, let me know.