Automatic page refreshes are so 1998

Dear CNN.com, MNspeak, and the internet at large, I don't know if you are aware, but automatically refreshing the web page I'm reading is extraordinarily annoying and completely unnecessary. There was once a time many years ago where automatically refreshing a news site or any number of other types of pages was useful. These days, however, I believe it actually drags down your reader's experience on your site. If I want to see the latest version of your page, I will click the Reload button in my web browser, thank you very much. I do not care to be in the middle of reading something then have the page suddenly reload itself. Now I have to hunt down what I was reading and pick up where I left off, assuming the item I was reading wasn't old enough to be archived off of the front page. And God forbid it's a longer item, and I have to go through this process multiple times before I finish.

To eliminate any confusion, the type of page refresh I'm talking about includes those in <meta ...> tags and javascript setTimeout() and setInterval() calls that unceremoniously reload the entire page you are viewing. Why in this day and age of RSS, AJAX, Flash, and hell, even iframes would you still use auto-refreshes? I will concede that there might continued value for mobile versions of websites where timely delivery of information is key (think live sports scores and stock prices), as there are still a great number of mobile devices that do not support Flash (iPhone anyone?). But taking away a reader's choice in the age of Web 2.0 and ubiquitous connectivity tells me that you just don't get it.

Jeremy to Microsoft Live "quality" bot: you're doing it wrong

I don't recall exactly how long ago it was, perhaps a few weeks or months ago, but I started noticing a few odd referrals in the traffic stats for one of my other blogs. At the time, this was happening at least a couple times a day. I would see one-word searches coming from search.live.com. It took me a few days to realize that this was some sort of Microsoft search bot. Since it only hit my site a couple of times a day, I didn't think much of it. But this morning I checked my stats, and out of 128 unique visitors for the day up to that point, 18 of those visits were from the live.com bots. That comes to 14% of my traffic. I did a search and learned that these are "quality control" bots of some sort. Really, Microsoft? What is so special about your search engine that you have to skew everyone's traffic statistics? I have not once had a human referred to my site by the live.com search engine, so I have no qualms over hiding my site from their bots entirely, or generating completely bogus content specifically for them. Either way, I've set up my web stat software so that range of IP addresses is filtered. Surely Microsoft can find a better method of controlling their quality. Wait, look who I'm talking about. Never mind.

Screensaver won't start in Windows XP

For several months -- perhaps as much as year -- I grew increasingly frustrated as my screensaver on my Windows XP desktop abso-friggin-lutely refused to start in any semblance of a consistent manner. At first, it seemed to have something to do with Outlook 2003. I'd turn off Outlook, and it seemed to kick in correctly when I left it idle. As it turned out, that perceived behavior was a red herring. Given that I have an LCD monitor, I was growing concerned that burn-in was inevitable. Unfortunately I simply didn't have the time to look into it. That and the fact that I primarily use my laptop put this annoyance near the bottom of my long to-do list.

Finally last weekend, I had enough. I had googled this issue half-heartedly when it first started happening, but this time google yielded immediate results. Users in several forums having similar problems had wireless USB mice like my Logitech laser mouse. The suggested solution? Shut down the computer, unplug the mouse, attach a USB to PS/2 connector, and plug it into the PS/2 mouse port. After one false start where I wasn't paying attention and plugged my Logitech webcam into the PS/2 port instead of my mouse ("Why isn't my webcam working? Durrrrrrr..."), I plugged her in, booted up, and lo and behold, it worked. My screen saver has been consistently working for the last several days with no issues whatsoever. I suspect that using the PS/2 port instead of USB will mean I'll lose nifty features like low battery warning messages from the Logitech monitoring software, but I can live with that if it prolongs the life of my monitor.

XBStore and XBStore.com

Lately when doing my semi-regular searches for HDTV models I've noticed a new "store" consistently popping up with the lowest prices on televisions, cameras, and other products. XBStore.com. Their prices are significantly and suspiciously lower than everyone else. For a while, I couldn't find a single word about them online. Well, it turns out there's a good reason why. A WHOIS lookup of xbstore.com reveals the domain was just registered just a couple of weeks ago to someone overseas (Spain?). And finally tonight I found this thread. The site only takes wire transfers. How. Very. Suspicious. Now I have no proof, no firsthand experience with this site, and it is within the realm of possibility that they are legit. However, my personal opinion is that all signs point to XBStore and XBStore.com being a slapdash scam site. So buyer beware. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Registrant:

XBStore Company
Calle Mayor, 40
Zaragoza, NA 50001
ES

Domain name: XBSTORE.COM

Administrative Contact:
Melendez, Rodrigo contact@xbstore.com
Calle Mayor, 40
Zaragoza, NA 50001
ES
+34.942940116 Fax: +34.942940116

Technical Contact:
Melendez, Rodrigo contact@xbstore.com
Calle Mayor, 40
Zaragoza, NA 50001
ES
+34.942940116 Fax: +34.942940116



Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
Record last updated on 20-Jan-2007.
Record expires on 18-Jan-2008.
Record created on 18-Jan-2007.

Domain servers in listed order:
NS7.IXWEBHOSTING.COM 71.18.255.99
NS8.IXWEBHOSTING.COM 71.18.216.3


Domain status: clientTransferProhibited
clientUpdateProhibited