Last weekend, I saw someone post that Eric Ward was dead. The name rang a bell for me — someone from my past in online circles — but I couldn’t quite connect it, and asked an online friend from the 90s if he knew him. The name didn’t connect for him. Still, it was really familiar, but I couldn’t quite figure it out.
Online Life
“Free” Ebook Download Scam
I Get Google Alerts for my name. One recurring one had me baffled for a bit, and another more recent one made me laugh. First, I was baffled that several times per week, I get alerts saying you can get (“FREE!”) a bootleg ebook copy of my True Stella Awards book.
Mailchimp Makes a Monkey of Us All
In my recent post about watching the Internet “grow up,” I noted True was a driving force in setting the “best practices” around email publishing — I pushed the first true Email Service Provider to add features I wanted, and one of those features was “double opt-in.”
Watching the Internet Grow Up
A Note from Darryl in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, suggests, “I know you have been around since the beginning of the internet as one of the longest (and also I would say one of the best) running e-newletters. I ran across this story in Time magazine and thought it would be an interesting article to add into your weekly post.”
This Can’t Go In the Newsletter
I Wanted to Cover a Story, but I knew there was no way I could put it in the newsletter: it would cause the issue to be trapped by about 90 percent of readers’ spam filters.
Why I’ve Removed Google’s Ads
It’s a Matter of Control.
As of today, I’ve turned off Google’s “Adsense” service on this site.
This is True went online in the first half of 1994, so True has been in business longer than many big names in the Internet biz, including Google (1998). As a classic feature column, I received (and turned down) syndication offers from two different newspaper syndicates, including one of the biggest in the business, because I wanted full control of True’s publication rights — including its online presence. I’m not about to let Google control what I write about in this context!
Hillary vs. Trump: The Votes are In!
I Really Hate to Keep sending traffic to Facebook, since they’re eating the Internet already, but man have I been having fun there lately. Baiting the political partisans is like shooting fish in a barrel: easy and hella fun.
The Biggest Mistake People Make Online
The threat from criminals online continues to grow. It’s not just “hackers” but actual criminal activity, backed by organized crime, and perhaps even some governments. They want your passwords, especially for bank and other financial accounts, so they can drain them for you, and they use some pretty tricky and often sophisticated means to get them, either from you, or from sites they break into.
Forging My Own Path
What Would You Include as significant milestones in the “history” of weird news?
Cut Out the Middleman
While Looking for Something Else, I came across this letter from a reader dated May 30 …2005:
Webby Come Lately
In June, This is True celebrates 21 years online — a pioneer in online publishing that predates Facebook, Google, Amazon, and the vast majority of other web sites you can find online today.
Facebook: What Are They Selling?
To answer the very important question of the title, you need a little background, which is illustrated by a question from reader Steve in Texas:
Some time ago, I “Liked” the This is True Facebook page, but almost never see any posts. I figured you weren’t active until I went back to the page, and saw a ton of stuff I thought was great! How come I’m not seeing it regularly? I see most posts from my friends.
The Taylor Swift Cop Video:
Call Me a Contrarian
OK: Call Me a Contrarian. Sure the lip-synching cop was entertaining! The song is fun, and who can’t like the earnest and drop-dead gorgeous (and cute!) Taylor Swift?
The Pomplamoose Problem
An Interesting Article on the site Artist Empathy (yeah, I hadn’t heard of it before either) discusses “The Pomplamoose Problem”…
NASA Outreach on Social Media
As a life-long NASA geek (and former employee of a NASA center), I pay reasonably close attention to the goings on at NASA. I spotted something in my Facebook feed, though, that made me roll my eyes about how not to inform the public about something that should be of great interest.
20 Years …and Counting
This Week Marks a Huge Milestone for This is True: the end of its 20th year. It started as a bulletin board item outside my office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The first one, dated 26 June 1994, was written to go into my business plan — I hadn’t actually gotten distribution set up. As I was working on the tech, I kept writing a new column each week and, when it went online in July 1994, it was an instant hit, quickly ramping up in circulation.
Facebook: Starting to Circle the Drain?
Facebook is about to get worse — a lot worse — and I think my days there are numbered. I can’t be the only publisher getting ready to give up.
Band of Brothers
A story in this week’s True absolutely demands that I include the video mentioned in the story, so it’s being published here (with the video) rather than in the newsletter. From True’s 29 September 2013 issue:
Bashing the “Lamestream Media”
A good friend “shared” something on social media not too long ago that really made me roll my eyes.
Keep Your Head Up
On Sunday I saw my wife had posted something on Facebook that really struck me. It was a “Share” of another friend’s “meme” graphic, and here it is: