As of today, my personal blog has moved to Wordpress. Far more "bells 'n' whistles" there, and I can post via email from whereever I have Internet access, even from work.

Do not worry. Blogstream will continue to host my general Site Updates and Domania's Site Showcase. Those blogs stay put as long as Blogstream remains in business.

Why now? In 2006, I was still primarily accessign the Internet with WebTV/MSNTV. At the time, my blog was hosted at Blog City and had remained there since 2003. Unfornunately, my WebTV unit died on me before Christmas 2006. Until I could find a replacement, I was forced to fall back on the old "Jurassic Classic" unit purchased in 1997. This was the original WebTV that hit the market in 1996 with its painfully slow processor, scanty RAM (2 megabytes!), and horribly outdated browser (IE2). No way could I use Blog City -- or most other blog hosts -- with that. I found Blogstream via a Google search, and took a chance. Oh please, I said in my mind, when I signed up and hit the Submit button. Okay, so I have good, if not that customizable, blog. I'm no whiz at CSS, so all I could do was change page colors and nothing else. Plus I couldn't find a way to display the webring navigation code, so I had to do separate page for that.

Now that I have the Wordpress blog all configured, look for a couple new post this weekend. One is in draft now, its topic very timely. Our local daily newspaper has an ongoing feature focusing on children, schools, academic achievement, and the impact poverty and (neglectful) child-rearing has on all fronts. The second is a lovingly gushing essay on my three-year old niece. She started pre-school last week, and Auntie Pam is so proud of her.

Please be advised this blog (at Blogstream) will remain online indefinitely as archive. All are welcome to come over my journal's continuation at Wordpress. Read the posts. Leave a comment or two!

Today, as always since the last year or two, I emptied my WebTV (re-branded MSNTV) primary inbox of spam. Of 150+ emails received, less than 12 were wanted. If I'm away from my MSNTV for more than a day, I spend valuable online time deleting more than 200 to 300 unwanted email messages. Given MSNTV's slowness in connecting and loading, such simple tasks as deleting spam is not an easy feat.

The problem is years old. During the late 90's when MSNTV (still called WebTV by its users) was in in its heyday, the spam was a minor inconvenience. I chalked up most spam received results of posting in Usenet groups, online discussion forums, posting to guestbooks, etc. Looking at the subject lines, I saw a pattern from weight loss gimmicks to cheap Disney videos. Again, of the twenty emails I'd received then, less than six or seven were spam.

As of now, I no longer read my primary MSNTV email via the set-top browser. I set up my Gmail account to fetch MSNTV email from the primary user; I simply read my WebTV email on Gmail via the computer. I also wanted to test a theory, that MSN is using MSNTV as a spam dumping ground, and its primary users' private information has been sold to spambots. I was curious as to why my Yahoo, Gmail, and Hotmail accounts see much less spam than MSNTV.

When I set up POP3 email fetch on Gmail, I created a special "webtv" folder for all incoming MSNTV email. As expected, nearly 100% of wanted MSNTV emails were redirected to the folder; all others were relegated to Gmail's general SPAM folder. In the six months of this set-up, I've deleted less than ten spam messages from the fetched MSNTV email, that is what was sorted and redirected to the "webtv" folder. In the general SPAM folder I noticed something quite interesting. Of every page of fifty messages nearly 90% of those spam emails are from MSNTV. What Google filters from my Gmail account is far less. I'm looking at that SPAM folder, and all those messages labeled "webtv." What a shame that MSN has literally thumbed its nose at those remaining, and stubbornly loyal, MSNTV/WebTV users who still shell out $21.95 to $24.95 per month for what is essentially dial-up. Even those PC users still on dial-up (I was one of them this time last year) get far superior performance and service than MSNTV. Even worse that MSN, who sold the final MSNTV2 last year, has sold its remaining set-top users up the creek, and uses those primary MSNTV user accounts as spam traps.

I still have my WebTV and use it on a limited basis. I love the community, and that is slowly dwindling. I browse the WebTV user newsgroups and see the same gripes: Stop the spam! However, I seriously doubt MSN will stop the spam, despite its claim to the contrary. MSNTV has 5, maybe 6, years until it pulls the plug for good. They, like much of its corporate community, simply do not care.

I had no idea which famous writer my work emulates. I've been told my writings fall somewhere between D.H Lawrence and Danielle Steele. How's that for a combination. What a surprise when I went to I Write Like to discover my style is more to Kurt Vonnegut, another fellow Hoosier. Somehow we Indiana folks have our own way to tell a story.

Technorati Tags: writing, Kurt Vonnegut, Indiana, Hoosier, writing styles, I Write Like

After a brief absence, ULTRALINKS is back! This is a wonderful way to promote your website. Please keep it clean; ULTRALINKS accepts nothing beyond PG13. You may submit your site every 60 days. I submit mine every 3 months or so, and by my site stats following submission, all I can say the list does work. The list needs more support, subscribers, and site submissions.

This once was a list primarily for WebTV/MSNTV users who needed a free, reliable method to promote their sites. Most mailings saw more than 100 sites listed any given week, and visitor-ship to those sites increased dramatically. However, MSN, in their increasingly inglorious disregard for the Little Black Box user, decided delivery of legitimate email lists such as Ultra's be delayed in order to allow more important emails (i.e. SPAM!) to get through.  As of now, anyone who tries to subscribe using a WebTV address will be rejected; a LBB user must have a alternative web-based email address to sign up for ULTRALINKS mailing list.

But sign up anyway, and submit your site(s). Right now there were about 30 listings for this week. Various sites from personal reflections to Arctic-Antarctic webcams to image shares to HTML help. I'd really like to see this list grow and regain the glory MSN took away.

Technorati Tags: site promotion, mailing lists, free stuff

In 2007, when I signed up for Blogstream, my first couple posts were about a once curious but now much maligned Internet appliance that was a most promising device during its heyday.

I got my first WebTV (rebranded MSNTV since 2002) in 1997. At the time this thing danced rings around almost any Internet-ready computer. In fact, most PC's I used at work and in the public libraries were slow in comparison, and that was just in loading the start page. In one of our middle schools, and this was late 1997, the lone Internet-ready computer had to be powered on first or else the Yahoo home page wouldn't load by lunch time. That was how slow the PC's were — on a 14.4 modem! WebTV's modem speed was 33.6.

For those who've never heard of the thing, WebTV was an Internet appliance that only required a phone line and a television. No viruses, no worms that at the time plagued (still do!) PC users. Easy to set up and use, it was a godsend for many a shut-in and elderly person who wanted to be online like their younger relatives and friends. It provided a safe, easy way to connect to the Internet with little on no hassle. Granted, WebTV had several drawbacks: No hard drive to download or save files. It could be slow to connect to the network or load webpages. Disconnects were frequent, and if one wanted to connect to the service at all, especially on a busy holiday weekend (Think Christmas 1997 when I tried all afternoon to connect!)...You get the idea.

Back in WebTV's heyday (roughly 1997 to 2003), almost any task that could be performed with a computer browser could be done, within reason and with workarounds, with the Little Black Box. I built my sites, made banners and other graphic headings, researched topics of interest, shopped online (Amazon, eBay, etc.), searched for and reserved items from the public library, registered for college classes, paid bills and even my state taxes, did my banking, and designed worksheets and support materials for the classroom. One school year I even did my class attendance and end-of-quarter grades on WebTV with much success. Alas, those days are almost no more. The Wikipedia article on WebTV/MSNTV tells a much better history than I can. After reading that article again this week, now I think I know why Microsoft really bought WebTV. My sister's guess back in 1997 was 95% correct.

As of this blog post, WebTV/MSNTV is dying, a victim of misguided — some say coldly calculated — corporate handling. MSN sold the last MSNTV2 until last summer. The second-generation Classic unit ceased manufacture years ago as did the Plus model. In their place was another thin client: MSNTV2, a pseudo-souped up WebTV that has its devotees; however the "Deuce" didn't last long. Sure, it was far faster than the original Classic WebTV, broadband capabilities, and had an upgraded browser akin to IE6 (New Classic still is compatible with IE4, a dinosaur by today's standards). Besides, once Little Black Box (LBB) users migrated to computers, the old WebTV was either shoved in storage or found itself in last summer's garage sale.

Of course it doesn't help that a once adequate customer service has dwindled to virtually non-existent and inept. Before I moved on to high speed Internet, my dial-up service was MSN which I dumped years ago because of lousy service and a lackadaisical attitude towards its customers. And since the LBB subscriber base is shrinking...Please, if anyone truly knows how many people are still on WebTV/MSNTV, let me know. MSN sure isn't telling us.

I swear someone is asleep at the switch as far as MSNTV is concerned. Since late May, the alt.discuss clubs, LBB users' own firewalled newsgroups, have been fouled up. New groups that were created before Memorial Day had yet to show up on MSNTV's newsreader. I tried in vain to access a new alt.discuss group only to get the pop-up "That group does not exist." This was just last week, and the club was crated May 25! Even the alt.discuss.announce, where new groups are announced, has been taken over by trolls and flamers. I had to weed through racist, xenophobic garbage to find any new items Re: if new clubs have been added to the newreader. By the way, isn't hate speech against MSNTV's TOS?

I suppose several MSNTV users have called to complain of the lousy service to date, and I've told the idiots in charge a few choice things. Two things of late have bothered me greatly about MSNTV:

• The spam is out of control. Everyday I'm receiving more than 150 emails; today I got 100 with only 9 messages wanted. My theory is MSN is using MSNTV as a spam dumping ground, or they've sold the primary MSNTV users' email addresses to whoever wants them. Notice that hotmail.com or msn.com email addresses see very little spam in the inbox, but it piles up by the 100's in MSNTV email. MSNTV supposedly has a junk mail filter but it doesn't work. MSN never saw fit to give us a junk mail folder, as does every other ISP/email provider. We complain; they turn the other way.
• Getting back to my sister's theory on why Microsoft bought WebTV. Two reasons:
  (1) To see what made the thing tick. It's obvious the same technology used for WebTV served as springboard for XBox.
  (2) To squelch WebTV. Why not? By 1999 more than a million people subscribed to WebTV service, and of that 1,000,000+ a handful would eventually buy a home computer loaded with Windows Internet Explorer. Well, I now have a home computer with Windows XP. At times I hate it and wished I'd bought a Mac instead. My PC also came with Internet Explorer. Hate that, too. With a passion. I use Chrome and Firefox every chance I get.

  Besides, if all Microsoft wanted with WebTV was to help further develop XBox, then MSN had no intention improving WebTV. No real meaningful upgrades, just a few dribbles to keep the natives placated. MSN doesn't care. To them what was known as WebTV is nothing more than an outdated toy for the poor under-educated masses. That and a convenient spam trap.

  In 2005, out of curiosity, I conducted a very informal non-scientific survey on how people use and depend on that Little Black Box. Five years later, the bulk of those respondents have moved on to the computer, Blackberry, iPad, anything that isn't as backwards or hopelessly stuck in 1999 as WebTV. My own WebTV user survey 2005

  Technorati Tags: webtv, msntv, msn, set top browser, internet appliance, newsgroups, customer service, customer loyalty