As PlateWire's popularity continues to grow, I have noticed more web sites of a similar nature launching on a regular basis. After some discussion with other webmasters (including AboveAverageDriver.com's Chris) I came to the conclusion that this niche market would benefit from having one single clearing house to exchange messaging of license plates.

For instance, say Joe in California, witnesses Suzy's teenage daughter driving recklessly down the highway. Perhaps Joe does contact the authorities but they deem it low priority. So Joe goes home and send a "wire" to the plate, using AboveAverageDriver. Suzy on the other hand is registered on PlateWire to receive a notification if any of her plates are messaged. WIthout PlateXchange, Judy would have not received the message regarding her daughters reckless driving (unless she would have checked on AAD's website).

PlateXchange offers an Open Source system for web sites to communicate license plate packages amongst themselves.

So if you run a license plate based web site, or have a neat idea that you think would take off, but have avoided launching it, because others have something similar, now is your chance to participate in a growing network of niche web sites!

http://www.PlateXchange.com/

For those of you wondering, yes, PlateWire is down, has been down for over 15 hours at last count. Why is PlateWire down you ask? Thanks to the great folks @ 1 and 1 (Note: Sarcasm). Since January I have experienced numerous outages with the server where PlateWire lives and everytime 1 & 1 claims its this or the other, most often blaming me. Turns out they have faulty network hardware and don't care much for honoring their 99.99% uptime clause in their contract.

Please, if you are looking for a hosting provider, dedicated server, virtual server, web hosting, whatever, please DO NOT even consider 1 and 1 unless you enjoying getting jerked around by incompetent, inempt individuals who could give a damn that your livelyhood is going down the tubes.

Apparently I am not the only person that has been affected by their incompetence, Dmitri from San Fran launched 1and1Sucks.info which delves deep into issues with this joke of a company.

On a lighter note:

Yes, It has been a while since I've updated my blog, but have setup a plan to update more frequently. I plan to publish some technical articles, especially focusing on Microsoft Silverlight, a wonderful new product that in my opinion will revolutionize web development as we know it. I'll also be delving into LINQ and all of the neat new features of Orcas.

So I'm playing around with yet another video social networking site Stickam. I do like the live video chat and IMHO it has promise, although there are still quite a few bugs to work out.

Here is a quick video I uploaded for testing, it's just me playing some guitar and improvising, so please don't be too harsh

So, the time is here, America's political history is about to change dramatically; historic events are about to unfold before our very eyes, I for one am excited. I intend to research each canditates' position thouroughly and choose the individual who I feel will make more positive impacts in our country's future.

Tonight I plan to participate in Hillary's Web Cast
(http://www.hillaryclinton.com/action/conversation/conversation.aspx?sc=8)
which is a good use of technology, hence the question that I pose:

My question to Hillary is two-fold: What is your opinion of the growing trend of web sites that are forming communities of online citizens who are aligned towards similar goals in regards to social reforms?
What is your technology stance; how do you feel technology will shape and color your campaign and possible term in office?

"Wow". That is about all I was able to say for several hours after witnessing myself on CNN; The news that I grew up watching, is now watching me!

First off I'd like to give a huge thanks to each and everyone of you that continues to participate in PlateWire. The response has been wonderful and we are glad that we are able to develop something that people find useful, something that is producing positive results!

Please note, that currently it is just myself (That will be changing in the very near future!), and I know there are some minor bugs here and there; I am working day and night to upgrade the site to handle all of the demand. Please keep the feedback coming, I make it a point to read each and every comment, and respond to as many as humanly possible.

To answer a few common questions:

• How do you plan to moderate PlateWire? -  I am developing a community driven system which will allow registered users to "Flag" other users behavior, such as offensive or rude comments or wires. If said user receives X "Flags" from the community, their account will be suspended, and all of their input will be made invisible.
• Some users complain about the registration process -The steps are outlined in the registration page, but we do agree it can be a little confusing for some. We are developing template based registration procedures, which will be geared toward novice or advanced web surfers, which should clarify this.
• Do I have to register my Plate to use PlateWire? - No, you can choose to register as a pedestrian or a cyclist, which does not require that you register your plate. Plate registration serves mainly for the purposes of notification if your plate has received a wire.

To one and all, Happy Holidays, may they be safe and merry!

Mark Buckman

Right around the time I was putting the finishing touches on the initial version of PlateWire, I had an awful experience at a local dealership when seeking service for our family's Land Rover, Molly. The way I was treated by the dealership, Rosenthal Land Rover upset me so that I decided to vent my feelings publicly (notice a recurring theme? . I registered and posted http://RosenthalSucks.com and within days I was amazed at the response I received from other ex-Rosenthal customers, apparently I wasn't the only one they had treated like a 2nd class citizen, it seemed to be regular pattern with these guys.

Obviously, Rosenthal was not very happy with the web site, and asked me on several occasions to take it down. I replied, on what grounds? My claims we're truthful and not slanderous, I was only educating other individuals before they too became victims of Rosenthal. So I offered them this solution: I developed a small site (inspired by this incident) RespectThyCustomer (very, very rough, I've hardly put 4 hours into it), and offered Rosenthal a solution; send RespectThyCustomer 100 or so happy customers that give Rosenthal a positive feedback on the web site, and I would freely hand over the RosenthalSucks.com domain to them. They declined, well actually they never even acknowledged my offer, I guess they don't care to make happy customers?

In the midst of everything thats been going on this week, I received an email from the Internet Sales Manager, inquiring about my current car needs; "Perhaps we missed your business last time or you decided to put off your purchase for a time, but you now have a need for a new or pre-owned vehicle. ". So now they know exactly what I want and when I want it? When did they invent the mind reader, I'm sure other dealerships would be interested in their technology :-P

The funny thing is this; RosenthalSucks.com is actually the reason that PlateWire got it's first article in the Washington Post! A  reporter had contacted me about RespectThyCustomer, and the reason behind it. During our conversation I mentioned PlateWire, and the rest as they say is history.

The sales manager at Rosenthal has since emailed me letting me know I have been removed from all email sales list, you'd figure they would have done this previously, but their incompetence does not surprise me.

It is my ardent belief that a new age is just over the horizon, an age in which the voice of the people will become so loud the powers that be will no longer be able to drown it out.

Let your voice be heard!

My inbox overflows, so many people to write back to, so little time!

Email has been pouring in from all over the world! So many people that understand and love the concept! The overwhelming positive feedback has definately sparked some new fire into this project.

1/3 of all of the feedback we have received from Platewire has come from Canadians requesting that we allow them to post as well; I was not aware of how many people commute back and forth between the states and Canada; in turn, we have decided to add Canadian plates and provinces as soon as humanly possible.

I have made a solid decision to not over advertise on PlateWire, I have long term goals for this project and wholly intend to make a service that will last for generations. PlateWire will be a dependable, reliable, and reputable service that people can turn to not only for venting their frustrations, but to take a further look inside of themselves and their part in the human condition.

Hopefully I'll have the new servers in place sometime tonight and can start turning on search and voicemail services again.

Appearing on T.V. is odd, they don't even have camera men anymore, they sit you in this tiny room thats just a few degrees cooler than hell, with this huge robotic camera coming out of the ground staring right at your mug and wire you down so they can speak little voices in to your ears.

So many people from my past have come out of the woodwork all of the sudden.... I wonder why?

Wow! What a day, the Washington Post's Eric Weiss wrote an article that featured my website, http://platewire.com (Washington Post Article Online). I guess the article first went out in last nights' late edition. I was under the impression that we had until this upcoming weekend to launch our new version, nope! At about 2 a.m. I decided to look at our traffic, lo and behold, we had over 10K visitors! So with a quickness I removed certain modules that werent quite ready for showtime , and sans the final design (long story) we pre-emptively launched PlateWire Beta 5.

I'm currently slammed with testing and tweaking all of the new features and functionality, so there will be little sleep for me for the next few days.

I plan to have all features installed and tested by Friday.

Please keep the wonderful feedback coming, we love to hear your thoughts and ideas!

Live long and prosper,

bAd mArk

Yahoo! now has an electronic version of a time capsule.... it has a very nice free flowing interface, and it caught my attention for quite sometime. I've created my own entry, dedicated to my best friend, my wife.

http://timecapsule.yahoo.com/capsule.php?i=117458&t=love&l=en

So I received an email inviting me to preview Crazy Egg, something I am positive I did not request to be notified of on launch, how did they get my email?

Anyways, I guess the whole point of this product is to give you a "Heat Map" of where users are clicking on a web page. Has anyone used Google analytics? They do the same exact thing, and better yet they dont slow down your website to a crawl. I'll be honest, I gave this product an honest attempt (Why dear God?) but only to be dissapointed even further. Crazy Egg in nothing but investor hyped fluff that will go absolutely no where.

My 2 Cents.

Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design helps us to understand a product.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is durable.
Good design is consequent to the last detail.
Good design is concerned with the environment.
Good design is as little design as possible.
Back to purity, back to simplicity.

-Dieter Rams

For sometime now, my wife and I have been sharing one vehicle, our trusty Land Rover Molly (Molly was the center of attention during the Rosenthal Sucks experience), so this past weekend I finally broke down and decided to go get me another car. I receive in the vincinity of ten "Pre-Approved Financing" automobile offers (where do they get my name?) so I pretty much played iny miny miney moe and decided on a Ford dealership nearby, Kip Killmon's Ford.

I wasn't really set on a particular model of car, just something small, 4-door, 4 cylinder, newer model. After a quick tour with my salesman Sam, I decided on a 2006 Toyota Corolla S-Type, silver, black interior, only 4K miles. While we did the test drive, Sam and I got to talking about music, he asked me if I had ever heard of an album by Steve Winwood by the name of "Go". I never had, he explained that it was a project he did with some other musicians, he couldent remeber their names, only that it was released around '76 or '77. He claimed that he had searched for it in numerous record stores but had no luck. He also is one of the few people remaining that doesnt have a computer or use one for work, he had never checked online.

I offered to take a look and see if I could locate it for him, since he said it was an absolutely amazing album. When I got home (In my new Corolla) I decided to use my Jedi searching skills to come across this yet to me unknown album. After a few minutes I found out that Steve Winwood did collaborate with a japanese musician by the name of Stomu Yamash'ta on an album named "Go". Unfortunately iTunes did not have this available for download, Amazon had some used copies, but I was heading back over to the dealership in a couple of days and wanted to get something for him sooner. After searching Google for "Stomu Yamash'ta download MP3" I came across LegalSounds.com an outfit based out of Russia. They advertise downloadable MP3 tracks for $0.09 a track! Yes, thats right, not $0.99, but under a dime a track! Not only are they supa cheap, they had some tracks that until now, I was unable to find. I have spent several hours going through my memory banks to drudge up some old songs I never thought I'd be able to find digitally, their library is definately filled with some obscure and rare tracks, a treasure trove for those searching for tracks not normally found on iTunes or Napster.

As far as I can tell, they are completely legit, my assumption is that they are paying licensesing fee's at Russian rates and then reselling to the international market. So until I find out otherwise, LegalSounds is my new one stop shop for rare and hard to find music tracks.

Take into consideration everything mankind has accomplished, especially during the past century, science, technology, quality of living, etc; and still we must all suffer the reality that is the Department of Motor Vehicles.

White males are more than eight times as likely to kill themselves as women of the same age and the risk increases as they get older, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

Bought a new toy! Motorola Q! Windows Mobile 5.0 (Already built an application in Visual Studio 2005, had a bit of an issue with certificates when I went to deploy, but found a quick and easy way around it here), 1.3 Megepixel camera, bluetooth (This really cool PC remote control feature), chock full of geek fun!

Atomic engineering helped to develop 110 Ghz circuit speed, a Guiness world record?

So, I went to purchase a copy of LiveStats server for a client that wanted the best web site analytics package out there, and lo and behold, DeepMetrix has been purchased by none other than Microsoft! I guess it doesn't come as much of a surprise since Google purchased Urchin and integrated their technology into Google Analytics and AdWords.

Notice my Google ads not working?

I am currently disputing charges of click fraud with the behemoth, they claim that this site caused click fraud, yet they fail to show proof or even give any details. I have furnished log files, testimonials, what else do these people want? Just an ant against a giant. Oh well, guess they will just keep my earnings and I'll switch to another link network. You gotta love shady business practices such as this.

I have lost all respect for Google.

If you don't secure your wireless router, it an almost certainty than at some point or another, someone will use your network.

If you don't really mind, or have a spare wireless router and a linux box (doesnt hurt to have some *nix skill either), you can turn your cyber-thiefs upside down! This page describes some very easy steps to serving your thieves upside down content, or even blur just enough to be annoying. This page has my vote for the day, I'm loading up a Linux distro as I type, gonna have some fun!

Upside-Down-Ternet

Someone close to me, for the past 2 years has been proud to be a SuicideGirl. It was a well deserved honor, for Inocencia (Her SG Name) is an amazing and wonderful woman. From early on she was quite fond of the community of awesomely talented and empathetic individuals. Although with time, she began to get the feeling that the staff, particularly, Missy, were somewhat 2 faced.

One day, Inocencia, came across a website offering pornography content, licensed content you could "lease" to use on your very own porn site. For some reason the girls in the sample pics seemed awfully familiar to her. She then realized the pictures she was looking at were actual SuicideGirl pics, without the familiar SG logo, she was looking at pictures of her friends! How did this happen, she thought? With a little investigation she actually found out that SuicideGirls had actually sold the content for that exact purpose. This was absolutely appaling to Inocencia, she submitted her pics to a web community of like minded individuals, who appreciate the girls as art, not as meat.

Angry at this fact, she decided to vent, to whom else, but all of her friends on SuicideGirls. She made a "Journal" entry mainly venting how she felt and that she felt betrayed by Missy. Lo and behold, not 2 days later, Inocencia goes to login as she regurlarly does and she is redirected to "Renew your membership" page.

What ???

She asked if I could log in and see what was up, I agreed.

Once logged in, I went to her profile and was floored to see that she was "Archived". I ran a quick search through the boards, and found a posting by Missy, it read "For private reasons Inocencia has requested to be archived". What? She requested to be archived? This was absolutley ridiculous!

So, I in turn decided to post on my "Journal" a little message of what I thought of this, mind you I am a paying member. This was my post:

"Actually, Inocencia DID NOT request to be archived, she was archived without so much as an email notification. The most likely reason is that Inocencia reported on her blog that SG is actually licensing their content to PORNOGRAPHY SCUM in order to generate revenue. The truth of the matter is that SG is no longer run the way it was started, it has become a money hungry machine who does not care about the people it tramples along the way.
Inocencia was repeadetly asked to modify or altogether remove her blog entries, what happened to free speech?
It's a sad truth Missy, why do you lie, Inocencia never asked to be archived."

Not 4 hours after my entry, I decided to check if I had received any comments, after login I was unable to reach my profile page. I checked in my account settings, and this is what I saw:

Well, so much for free speech and open minds. I absolutely love what SuicideGirls was when it began, now I'll just sit and wait for the death of this souless abomination.

SuicideGirls
2001-2006
R.I.P.

Update October 17th 2007

Read what other BS SG is pulling on a photographer, geez Missy do you have a soul?
http://apneaticmedia.com/

Just announced, CNN has just launched a new department, I-Report and it's recruiting the entire world to become reporters!

They even include a ToolKit which gives some trade secrets for taking the perfect photo or video.

The proliferation of video devices and computers should make for a very interesting experiment. I beg to wonder how much CNN will censor or shape the reports submitted by users to their own agenda.

I am one of those "old timers" when it comes to HTML design, heck I still remember using Archie to find good junk! Hence, for the longest time, I avoided using CSS for anything other than maintaining look and feel when doing web design, HTML tables were the only way to go for positioning elements on a page.

One of my first attempts was RespectThyCustomer, I was intent on adding rounded corners, an almost mandatory feature for any site looking for the over-hyped Web 2.0 moniker. So I went a Googling for some rounded corner CSS examples and was bombarded with 1001 different way to do one thing. Baffled, and not wanting to spend way too much time, I began looking for a wizard, something that would take all of the grunt work out of this task that is supposed to be menial. I came across several different wizards, none of which truly impressed me, but I settled on one, and trucked forward.

Today, after speaking with a good friend, he showed me his little wizard that he built. Wow, was I impressed (yes, his CSS Kung-Fu is much better than mine), not only is quite adaptable, the code is quite small, and it can be actually be emailed without necessity of attaching an image.

Check it out here!

Thanks Dave!

So, have you heard of LinkieWinkie? An enigma, wrapped inside of a puzzle that calls itself a social experiment.

"a very altruistic little site and loves to be talked about." - Quote

A spider of some sort that crawls the blogosphere in search of mentions to itself. Using it's uknown logic, it then adds links back to the reference on it's home page.

When you run a WHOIS lookup you get this:

Registrant:
   Denise Russell
   33 Kirby Drive
   Telscombe Cliffs
   Sussex
   BN10 7DY
   UK  
Record created on 22-Jun-2006

So we can deduce that the "creator" of this little project hails from the UK and this domain was registered fairly recently. It seems to have developed quite the following based on its traffic stats in a very short time, perhaps just all the blogos-buzz.

Yes, I'll bite as well, I'm interested to see where this leads and curious as to the amount of traffic I'll receive if my link does make it on to the home page!

I'll report any findings back here, Cheerio!

Other sites where LinkieWnkie is mentioned:

http://arteccentrix.blogspot.com/2006/07/what-is-linkiewinkie.html
http://thisbiochemicallife.com/2006/07/26/what-the-hell-is-linkiewinkie/
http://www.senserely.com/james-the_meaning_of_linkiewinkie.php
http://rumboard.com/2006/07/linky-winky/
http://thepinkpanther.typepad.com/pinkie/2006/07/follow_up_linki.html

PS:

http://www.linkiewinkietracker.blogspot.com/
http://postmodern-living.blogspot.com/2006/07/linkie-winkie-take-3.html

moo.fx is a superlightweight, ultratiny, megasmall javascript effects library, written with prototype.js.

It's easy to use, fast, cross-browser, standards compliant, provides controls to modify Height, Width, and Opacity with built-in checks that won't let a user break the effect with multiple crazy clicks. It's also optimized to make you write the lesser code possible.

moo.fx has been successfully tested with: Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. It should work in most of the gecko browsers too. Only Height and Width will work in Opera, since that browser does not support opacity.

The developers of this library have done it again, an excellent release from Italy, this years World Cup champions!

Get your copy today!