One of the things I absolutely hate about the internet in general is dead links. See this fuzzy guy here is called My Kong. The first time I encountered My Kong was when I did a guest post over at IT2M. I would link to it, but it’s a dead link. One of the blogs I reviewed used My Kong as its header graphic, and it had the whole story about My Kong. I know… your saying, ”Google it!” You try it… and when you quit by page 5 because of all the King Kong and dog toy crap there, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Why bring this up? Because dead links have irked me for quite awhile, just like the things in this post really irked me, and I wanted to give you a brief history on My Kong since I was calling this post iKong (as a reference to going ape over the ambient stupidity I’ve taken note of lately). If you click on the picture though, it will take you to a site that provides a wallpaper version of My Kong in case you may want it for your desktop… because I’m cool like that.
I <3 The New York Times
So there was a New York Times Article about BlogHer recently. The article ran in the Fashion & Style section of the newspaper and basically talked about the conference, mentioning how BlogHer participants feel they are not taken seriously by Tech and Political blogs. Of course, the person they quote as being disheartened by the lack of links and recognition of women in the Tech and Political field happens to write a blog about having Type I diabetes. Why anyone in the Tech field covering either social media, hardware, software, or mobile apps would mention a blog about Type I diabetes is beyond me… unless they come out with an iGlucometer appendage for the iPhone.
Then of course there was some controversy over the section the New York Times chose to run the article in. Apparently BlogHer participants didn’t feel they belonged in the Fashion & Style section because they are on the cutting edge of technology and politics! To further prove their point, BlogHer had 20 participants accept $500 gift cards from JCPenney to go on a shopping spree of their new Linden St. home furnishings line. Neil got it absolutely right, it’s the circle of life… so stop holding your breath for recognition from the techies and politicos when writing about your new comforters and drapes… be happy with the circle of life you have… or break out of it.
Bennigan’s Beat Out Starbucks
National restaurant chain Bennigan’s decided to close down all their corporate owned stores, with no more than a few hours notice to employees, and file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Chapter 7, for those who may not know, is a liquidation filing. Bennigan’s is dead. Thanks to their corporate mongering practice, there are now thousands of hard working people joining the lines of the unemployed. I personally never thought I would say this, but compared to Bennigan’s, Starbux looks like a saint even after closing 61 stores in Australia.
A much lesser concern in all of this that I have is how long will it take for the “flair” reference in Office Space to be lost to the masses?
Scrappedulous
Are you on Facebook? If you are, you may have once played a game called Scrabulous. Well, if you try to play the game, you may not be able to find it anymore. This is because Scrabulous has been blocked to users in North America after Hasbro filed suit against the developer’s in their home nation of India. Now I will admit that the games are very similar, and that for all intense purposes the creators of Scrabulous wrongfully copied the game. My issue is with Facebook.
Why would Facebook, as a US company, allow a foreign developer to infringe on another US company’s trademark and copyright? Why did Hasbro have to go to India to file this suit? Now please understand, I am no Hasbro fan (especially considering the issues with their Wizard of the Coast division and the authors of the Dragonlance novels that was just resolved), but Hasbro employs US citizens and Facebook as a US company should help them to do that. You would think that since Facebook is facing similar overseas issues, they would be understandable to Hasbro‘s plight.
