Last week, my haiku site, tinywords, appeared as the 30th-40th result on a search for haiku on Google. This week, it’s not in the top 500. What happened?

I think Google is punishing me for mentioning the word “haiku” too many times in a previous post, which I admit I did in a fit of pique.… Read the rest

The essence of good conversation is give and take. The problem blog-based “conversations” is that the essential give and take is almost always missing. I might say something provocative on my blog, and you might be moved to comment, but that’s usually where the back and forth ends.… Read the rest

I think it’s time we all agreed that the “nofollow” tag has been a complete failure.

For those of you new to the concept, nofollow is a tag that blogs can add to hyperlinks in blog comments. The tag tells Google not to use that link in calculating the PageRank for the linked site.… Read the rest

The premise of Kindred is that Dana, an African-American woman living in the late 1970s, is suddenly transported back in time to a Maryland slave plantation in 1819. It turns out that she’s been called back in time to save the son of the white plantation owner–a boy who, she soon learns, is one of her ancestors.… Read the rest

Best application for MTurk I’ve seen yet: Someone asked people to “draw a sheep facing left.” Compensation per sheep: $0.02. Total number of sheep drawn: 10,000. Their web site shows every single one, and yes, you can buy the sheep: The Sheep Market

Background: Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is a sort of virtual, distributed sweatshop for online piecework.… Read the rest