Marked for Dearth

The AdWords API, a project I’ve spent most of my time working on recently, launched today. The API lets you interact with Google’s advertising system programmatically. It’s probably too geeky for, say, your grandmother to appreciate, but if you have an AdWords account and have written a for-loop or two in your day, go check it out.

What can you do with it? Well, you could always carry out Phil’s “Eye of Sauron” scheme on an unprecedented scale. If you’re into that sort of thing.

A few weeks ago, I bought an iRiver iHP-120.

Pros:

1. Supports lots of different codecs (mp3, ogg, wma, wav, asf). A significant fraction of my music is in Ogg Vorbis format, so this feature was central to my buying decision.
2. A long battery life. Sixteen hours is four more than the latest iPod.
3. A big honking eight-line, back-lit LCD.
4. Built in radio tuner and voice recorder. I’ll barely use the former and probably never use the latter, but it’s still nice to know that I can.

Cons:

1. Nothing beats the iPod’s UI. The iRiver only lets you scroll through your music at a constant speed, which really gets annoying when going from Aha to, say, Machinae Supremacy.
2. If you want to browse music by artist/title/genre, you first need to build an index. This takes a little while but is manageable. The really sucky part is that the iRiver needs to reload the index each time you turn it on. As a result, about 45 seconds will pass after you press the “on” button but before you can play music.
3. Building an index requires installing custom software. The iRiver’s bundled music management software is technically unnecessary because the player really just looks like an external hard drive to the operating system. Unfortunately, you need to install the (Windows-only) software in order to browse by song attribute.

From a recent interview:

Some things here are cases where there is a clear competitor. If you take our guys who are competing with Google, they understand exactly what they’re measured against and how everybody thinks Google walks on water, and they’ve got to surprise the world.

He’s just cranky because he looks like a turtle.

Normally, falling off the face of the blogosphere tends to work itself out. Fewer posts means fewer readers to remark about the half-abandoned state of things. Outgoing links are few, incoming links are none. Ashes to ashes. A veritable dearth of activity, one might say.

But if you’re affiliated with a high-profile company still drenched in post-IPO publicity sludge, the blogosphere has a way of finding you. Despite the fact that I’ve remained quiet for the last month, Philipp Lenssen has drafted me into this fine list. Now that my blog has officially been pegged to my employer, this seems like a good place for a disclaimer.

The views, opinions, plugs, solicitations, and bad jokes found here are mine alone. Though Google had the exceedingly good sense to give me a job, its owners, managers, and employees are completely uninterested in this blog and have nothing to do with it. There.

See you in another month…

China Mieville’s new novel is out. Translated to German, its title is Eisenrat. I can assure you that my name change endeavor would have been much expedited had that been — well, you get the idea.

Let the record show that I didn’t actually enter Phil’s “Name My Conference Rooms” contest. Can’t I mock those who bungle the order of the planets in peace? Or, for that matter, use the word bungle?

This morning, I received an email from “support@ebay.com”:

Dear valued eBay member:
It has come to our attention that your eBay billing informations are out of order. If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and update your personal records you will not run into any future problems with the online service. However, failure to update your records will result in account suspension. Please update your records by August 30th.Once you have updated your account records your eBay session will not be interrupted and will continue as normal. Failure to update will result in cancellation of service, Terms of Service (TOS) violations or future problems.

To update your eBay records click here:
http://cgi1.ebay.com/aw-cgi/ebayISAPI.dll?UPdate

eBay Update team
http://www.ebay.com

I glossed over the message text and clicked on the hyperlink. Since I had recently changed credit cards, it was entirely plausible that my eBay billing information was outdated. But, as you might have suspected, SpoofStick immediately alerted me that something was off-kilter: You’re on debsirin.ac.th.

It seems that a student at the Debsirin School in Thailand was phishing for my credit card number. All he got was a world of pain!!!

OK, maybe not. But at least my credit is safe.

For Arnold Schwarzenegger, life sometimes imitates satire. From today’s New York Times:

Asked to describe his governing philosophy seven months after toppling Gray Davis in California’s recall election, he said, “Crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of their women.”

Nice.

I’m adopting a cat from the Safe Haven Animal Sanctuary. The lucky feline was recently rescued (by a former bodybuilder) from an apartment complex where strays were being poisoned to control their growing population.

“You’re not gonna have much trouble surpassing my generation. If you end up getting your picture taken next to a naked guy pile of enemy prisoners and don’t give the thumbs up you’ve outdid us.” (Jon Stewart, William & Mary Commencement 2004)

“I think I should begin by acknowledging your disappointment that I am not Jon Stewart. Think how I feel. Your disappointment that I am not Jon Stewart will last one morning; I am disappointed at not being Jon Stewart every morning of my life.” (Tony Kushner, Columbia Class Day 2004)

“What did Lincoln give America, apart from the Town Car?” (Ali G, Harvard Class Day 2004)

“Four of you — and I’m not at liberty to say which four — will go on to magnificent careers in the porno industry. I’m not trying to be funny. That’s just a statistical fact.” (Will Ferrell, Harvard Commencement 2003)