A couple of reports, from HotAir and Jason Calacanis stating that a mob of users at social networking darling Digg is working together to bury posts from conservative bloggers, SEO’s and other people they’ve decided they don’t like.

This following the recent decision by Digg to un-ban a long list of sites previously banned for alleged spamming, included most (if not all) of the blogging SEO community.

As Jason Calacanis rightfully points out, the bury process at Digg is not transparent in that user names are not attached to bury requests, which itself leads to the accusation that mob rule is currently in vogue at the site. Certainly the screenshots at HotAir would indicate nothing more than malicious behavior by the mob.

Have you been buried or banned by Digg? Let us know in the comments. It’s a story I’d like to do a bit more digging on (pardon the pun).

 

Tags: Digg

Originally posted on February 26, 2007 @ 6:59 pm

A fair bit of noise around lately in relation to the scalability of SixApart’s MovableType blogging platform. I’ve not used the current version so I can’t chime in on this, although having said that the older versions scaled like set concrete. But amongst the noise it looks like the battle has become personal, with SixApart’s Anil Dash attacking Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) head Matt Mullenweg.

From the comments at Corante:

Anil Dash: “We’ve got the biggest dedicated development, support, and product team working on Movable Type that has ever been focused on any installed blogging tool ever. And they’re not drifting off into creating bulletin board software, or writing wiki apps, they’re just focused on kicking ass with the most powerful blogging platform around.”

then:

Matt Mullenweg: As someone that makes blogging software with probably not the biggest team ever, and also drifts off to make bulletin board software and wiki apps, I can safely say that it hasn’t had an effect on product success in the market. One of those drifting distractions was also an anti-spam system, which seems to have worked out well and is now one of the most popular plugins for MT.

Anil, I have a lot of respect for you. MT actually has a lot of great things in its code, and I’m sure you can make its case without making oblique digs at open source projects and competitors whose entire company is probably smaller than your aforementioned product team.

Matt once again demonstrates that he’s got a lot more years in terms of wisdom than he has in physical age.

Are we seeing the start of an all out war between SixApart and Automattic, or is this just more petty snipping that is typical unfortunately of large stretches of the blogosphere, even including the occasional commenter here at 901am?

Either way, the high moral ground in this battle was clearly won by Automattic.

One to watch.

Originally posted on February 26, 2007 @ 7:26 pm

Redmond based uber-company Microsoft is on the move again following the rather large anti-climax of Windows Vista, with news that it’s expanding into the Medical Search and Warship Operating System markets.

On the triage front, Microsoft has announced the acquisition of Medstory Inc., a California based startup with search software that applies artificial intelligence to searches of medical and health information in medical journals, government documents and on the Internet.

Peter Neupert, vice president for health strategy at Microsoft told the NY Times that the purchase of Medstory was a first step in a broader company strategy to assemble technologies that will “improve the consumer experience in health care.”

“Clearly,” Mr. Neupert said, “search is a critical part of that better end-to-end experience for consumers.”

Obviously using Windows Live search wasn’t an option for Microsoft…could you imagine the results you’d get if you were in a life threatening situation?

Meanwhile in the Atlantic Ocean, Her Majesties Royal Navy will be upgrading their previously ancient computer equipment that includes 24-bit, 1MHz machines each with about 25KB of RAM, to new computers running Windows for Warships.

Windows for Warships comes to us from Microsoft in conjunction with BAE Systems subsidiary Insyte, the UK’s only provider of warship command systems, and is based on Windows 2000 code.

Type 45 destroyers currently being launched will include Windows for Warships, followed by retrofits on the British Submarine fleet, including the V Class that carries multi-tipped ICBMs.

I’m sure the people of the United Kingdom will sleep much more comfortably in their beds tonight knowing that their first line of defense is running Windows.

Originally posted on February 26, 2007 @ 6:48 pm