A (cosmetic) fix for those Feedburner tracking URLs

January 25th, 2010 · · scorn, web No comments

I’m a huge Google Reader nerd, and a few months ago, Feedburner (an RSS feed provider) started generating long URLs that are used to track outbound clicks in their feeds. Here’s an example:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/solar-eclipse-images-show-dazzling-corona-detail/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Everything after that question mark (in red) isn’t necessary to the user, and is only needed for the feed owner to track clicks from their feed. This isn’t a big deal by any means, but it is kinda annoying to me. I parse my river of RSS feeds and occasionally pass along interesting links to my twitter feed, and I prefer to send the cleanest URL possible. Sure it’s shortened automatically with bit.ly, but it still bugs me, so I’ve been looking for a solution to clean up the URL.

I’m not a big JS coder, but I figured there had to be a Greasemonkey script that would do the trick, and after doing a bit of searching, I found the solution over at userscripts.org. Enter FeedBurnerTrackingQueryStripper. This little Greasemonkey script does the trick perfectly. It’s strips the tracking information from the URL after the page loads. So the feed owner is happy, and the user is left with a simpler URL.

Brick and Mortar shops almost worthless?

January 18th, 2010 · · scorn No comments

brick and mortarOk…that’s an over the top header, but I swear I’m often left with this feeling lately. Heading to BestBuy is a great example. Sure you walk in the store and it seems filled to the brim with stuff, and it definitely is. However more often than not, I feel like I walk out of there without what I was looking for. A battery for this, or a charger for that, lens covers, etc. And it seems to be getting worse, not better.

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Migration to Dreamhost nearly complete…

January 14th, 2010 · · admin 2 comments

UPDATE: Migration complete! 1and1 cancelled! Yay!!

I’ve been meaning to get all of my domains off of 1 and 1 forever. A few weeks ago, I was motivated and started the migration. Thankfully none of my domains are very busy, so it was an easy transition. Domain registration changes are much easier nowadays too, thank god. The old NetSol challenge-response system always seemed to be a pain in the ass. Dreamhost servers seem to be much faster too, and it’s really nice to finally have all of my domains under one roof for both registration and hosting.

A quick reply from GGB

November 9th, 2009 · · scorn, sf No comments

Last week, I noticed a change in the lane configuration for the evening commute on the Golden Gate Bridge. For some reason, they had switched from a 3 North/3 South configuration to a 4 North/2 South setup, which had the negative effect of backing Southbound traffic through the Waldo tunnel, while the Northbound side on the bridge seemed to be sparse for the most part. Initially I thought it had to do with the recent  closure of the Bay Bridge, or even Daylight Savings Time, but it soon became apparent that it wasn’t changing back to the way it used to be.

So, in frustration, I shot off an email this past Saturday to the contact address I found on the Golden Gate Bridge website, and just received the following response. Kudos to them for getting back to me so quickly, even though it wasn’t really with the response I was hoping for.

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Facebook invites are out of control.

September 22nd, 2009 · · scorn No comments

Facebook Event

Below is a “suggestion” I just sent in to Facebook. I doubt anyone will read it, but I figured it was worth a try anyway.

Don’t allow event organizers to contact invitees w/o RSVP

This is a big sore spot for me with Facebook that results in a high volume of social noise, and is one of the main reasons I avoid Facebook for long periods of time. Here are a few things you can do to help your users improve the signal to noise ratio, at least where events are involved:

1) Allow us to opt-out of event invites sent from specific users and fan pages. Some users and fan page operators are promotion dynamos, and the deluge of invites can be daunting. We want to still be friends and fans, but the constant chore of removing events is a pain. We’d still have the option to RSVP to events via their profile or the main time line of course.

2) Event organizers should not be able to contact invitees until we’ve specified an RSVP status. Going through and removing each event can be a lot of work, and giving the organizers direct email (meaning Facebook email) access to us until we do so is unfair. At the very least give us the option to turn this functionality on and off.

Just the latter of these two changes would make a huge difference, so I hope someone up there is actually reading this. The last thing I want Facebook to be (I think you’d agree) is work.