by Hesperado

Of the many disquieting aspects of the whole Perry Affair (i.e., the disturbingly, but unsurprisingly, Islamophiliac tendencies of the popular “conservative” candidate Texas Governor Rick Perry ), one particular aspect smell fishiest.

The links Spencer provided in his article about the seemingly pro-Islam bias of the Texas school curriculum which Perry collaborated on with a Muslim leader (“His Highness” the Aga Khan) seem to have been scrubbed: the links no longer work.

Spencer then recently wrote a new article about this scrubbing — “All traces of Perry/Aga Khan curriculum removed from web.”

However, what Spencer neglected to mention seems even worse.

In the nearly 100 comments to the first Spencer article, toward the very end of the comments, a helpful reader (named “joublough”) posted this:

“FYI

It is now available only in cached form here.”

At the word “here”, joeblough posted what he said was a new link, a link that works — unlike the link Spencer used.

However, when I just now tried both Spencer’s link and joublough’s link — not only did both fail to work, but both links have exactly the same URL!

See and compare:

Spencer’s link:

The requested URL /search?sclient=psy&hl=en&safe=off&biw=1294&bih=728&source=hp&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.saisd.net%2Fadmin%2Fcurric%2Fsstudies%2Fmhcp%2Fmhcproject.html&pbx=1&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.saisd.net%2Fadmin%2Fcurric%2Fsstudies%2Fmhcp%2Fmhcproject.html&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=40302l41605l1l41957l6l4l0l0l0l1l231l791l0.2.2l4l0 was not found on this server.

joeblough’s corrected, new link:

The requested URL /search?sclient=psy&hl=en&safe=off&biw=1294&bih=728&source=hp&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.saisd.net%2Fadmin%2Fcurric%2Fsstudies%2Fmhcp%2Fmhcproject.html&pbx=1&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.saisd.net%2Fadmin%2Fcurric%2Fsstudies%2Fmhcp%2Fmhcproject.html&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=40302l41605l1l41957l6l4l0l0l0l1l231l791l0.2.2l4l0 was not found on this server.

Both are exactly the same. This would not seem possible, unless the URL joeblough provided — which was supposed to be different — was changed after the fact; or unless there is some technical way to transform links already published on the Net into links that have become duds through scrubbing.

Furthermore, the link that Spencer provided leading to information less seemingly damning to Perry — “This supposedly tough part of the Perry/Aga Khan curriculum…” — continues to work just fine! Try it!

Even though Spencer points out the flaws of that “supposedly tough” part of the curriculum which seem to expose it for Islamophiliac weakness if not dhimmitude, the argumentation Spencer used may have been deemed too subtle to worry about affecting the average reader — and voter. Thus, no need to scrub it.

In addition, a reader critical of Spencer’s article links, in a comment, to the cached curriculum with the same link that doesn’t work. However, when he links to “Wiltse’s lesson plan” — “That’s where you find Wiltse’s lesson plan: among the lesson plans developed by the 80 teachers who attended these sessions” – the link works fine (here it is).

I have already blogged about some of the ties between the Obama administration and the anti-Mubarak uprising in Egypt (see Obama Supports Islamist Takeover Of Egypt). The Muslim Brotherhood is waiting to take over the government in Egypt as soon as the opportunity presents itself. (See Egypt: “Populist Revolt” or Muslim Brotherhood?.)

The Jawa Report has figured out that Google has a connection with Obama, the anti-Mubarak uprising in Egypt, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

That is no surprise. I have discussed issues with Google Blogger here and here. Suffice it to say that Google Blogger has repeatedly deleted or restricted access to legitimate counterjihad blogs. In addition, despite the notable successes of the SMACKDOWN Corps, Google’s YouTube continues to be a favorite spot for hosting jihadi videos.

From The Jawa Report:

February 07, 2011

Connecting the dots: Googles former Google CEO Eric Schmidt Obi Ones Tech Czar

In 2008 Schmidt stated he would not serve as technology czar in Barack Obama’s administration if he was asked.

In 2009 Obi One names him as one of the tech czars

In Jan 2010 Schmidt resigns as CEO of Google. He will still continue “as the executive chairman of the company and act as an advisor to co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin”

In 2010 State Dept lifts ban & issues visa to Tariq Ramadan Tariq Ramadan’s grandfather founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

In Jan 2010 Googles ME exec Wael Ghonim went missing in Egypt. He was detained by Egypt gov and was released today

More than a week after his mysterious disappearance in Egypt, Google executive and political activist Wael Ghonim has been released from government detention on Monday, the State Department told the Wall Street Journal[...]

It remains unclear what role, if any, Ghonim played in organizing the Jan. 25 protest movement itself, the largest Egypt has seen in more than 30 years. However, he played a prominent role in online activism in the months ahead of the historic protests.

Last year, Ghonim was one of four administrators running the first of the major Facebook pages that became a virtual headquarters for the protest movement, according to a collaborator in the political opposition, and also according to an Internet activist familiar with the situation. Mr. Ghonim also set up the official campaign website for opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei and volunteered as a tech consultant for other opposition groups, according to Ziad Al-Alimi, a senior aide to Mr. ElBaradei.

Mohamed ElBaradei has Muslim Brotherhoods support.

Obama stated in his interview with O’Reilly ‘some factions strains of the MB ideology are against the US:

“The Muslim Brotherhood is one faction in Egypt. They don’t have majority support in Egypt, but they are well organized and there are “strains of their ideology that are against the U.S., there’s no doubt about it,”

MB is against the US, democracy and all things Western. They want the Islamic Caliphate to rule the world and make no bones about it on their website.

“Allah is our objective; the Quran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”

Read it all.

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(Posted on 1389 Blog – Antijihadist Tech and Fort Hard Knox)

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“Ping? What are you talking about? Sonar? Golf clubs? A duck in a children’s book?“

Guess again!

In the world of the Internet, ping has two meanings:

• For everyone, ping is a simple test to see whether your computer can connect to a host.
  • Story of Ping, written by its creator, Mike Muuss
  • Accessing ping from Windows XP: Click the Start button, click Run, enter cmd to get to a command window, and then enter ping host_url or ping ip_address.
  • Just Ping is an online web-based ping utility.
  • Example of how ping is used: A service tech enters ping yahoo.com in a command window. If the connection is up, it’ll come back with Yahoo‘s IP address and the time it took to get a response. If the ping fails, the service tech enters ping 216.109.112.135 (Yahoo’s IP address). If the second ping succeeds, there’s a problem connecting with the domain name system; if not, there is a problem connecting to Yahoo.
• For bloggers, ping is a signal that you have changed something. You’ve updated something on your site. Now you need to tell the rest of the world that there’s something new for them to retrieve.

The second meaning of ping is what you need to do whenever you blog.

“But why? Don’t those search engine crawlers go out and get every blog on the planet?”

Some search engines, such as Google, do work that way. Trouble is, they take their time getting to you. If you aren’t already on a link path from another site that they’ve been crawling just now, it may be awhile before they run across your site.

• Use Google Webmasters Tools to monitor your site’s status with Google.
• Google aficionados who are using a Google Sitemap file should remember to rebuild it regularly.

Other search engines, aggregators, blog catalogs, and social websites are user driven. They rely on bloggers to send them a ping whenever there’s new blog content. That’s their cue to go fetch whatever new material is there and save or index it accordingly.

“So how do I issue a ping?”

You issue a ping by sending a message to a ping server that identifies your blog’s URL. The ping does not send any information about the updates you have made to your blog. Instead, the ping server tells the appropriate search engine(s) to go to your blog URL to retrieve that information.

Some blogging systems or blog post editors can be set up to issue pings automatically. Alternatively, you can go to the ping server’s website through your browser. You’ll be presented with a simple form to fill out with your blog URL and sometimes also the blog’s name. The ping is issued when you click on the button to submit the form.

Wikipedia’s Ping_blog article has a long list of ping servers that bloggers may want to use. This list may be somewhat overwhelming, and is not entirely up to date, so here’s a shorter list of sites that you will definitely want to consider using after you update your blog:

• Technorati Ping Form
  If you are a serious blogger and your blog is not already on Technorati, you should sign up and claim your blog.
• Blogrolling Weblog Update Form
  Your site may be included in one or more blogrolls that are supported by Blogrolling. If the blogroll is sorted by most recent update, this will move your blog to the top of the list.
• Google Blog Search Ping Service
  Repeat every time you update your blog.
• blo.gs Ping Form (Yahoo)
  Select Blogs tab, then select the Ping Weblogs.com icon.
• IceRocket
• FeedBurner (if you issue your blog’s feed through FeedBurner)
• Weblogs.com Ping Server (Verisign)
• Blog Flux Pinger (bulk ping utility), login required)
• Ping-O-Matic! (bulk ping utility)
• Pingoat (bulk ping utility, stein hoist to Tom)
• Google Blog Search Ping Service

Also see:

• Blog Troubleshooting: “Uh oh! My blog won’t display!”
• Twitter 101

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Looking for the next big thing? We Web 2.0 aficionados hear about the latest and greatest social web applications every day, but each one seems to be described in terms of its competition. Each fledgling “killer app” entering the field is touted as the next “Digg killer” or “Twitter killer” or “Facebook killer.” But here’s an application, still in beta test, whose purpose differs enough from what’s already out there to warrant being considered on its own merits.

What makes Gleamd so different? Let’s start with what Gleamd isn’t. Unlike other fixtures of the social web, gleamd isn’t primarily about its own user base. In other words, if you’re a Gleamd user, it isn’t about wowing everybody with your own multimedia talents, your eye for cool websites, or your nose for news scoops. It isn’t primarily about making business or personal connections with other users, even though you certainly may meet like-minded fellow users on the system.

Then what is Gleamd all about? It’s about promoting other people whom you find interesting and worthy of notice. This can include anyone other than yourself who has at least some presence on the Web, and merits more attention than he or she has received thus far. The media superstars and A-list bloggers already have their ways of reaching the public – this is about promoting lesser-known people who may be more deserving.

Who’s behind gleamd? Let’s hear from developer Matt McInerney, a/k/a mattmc on Twitter, who also runs graphic design website and blog Pixelspread, Twitter sci-fi novella ZombieAttack, among other things:

Right now I’m the only person working on Gleamd. It was my idea that I decided to put together and get out in the world. I created it basically because it was a resource I wanted to use myself. We’ve been featured in a lot of blogs so far, and I hear a lot about “popularity contests”, but to be honest, I really think the site is proving to be more than that. First of all, it’s definitely not HotOrNot 2.0. I wanted to create a meritocracy, so submitted people are going to be judged on their accomplishments. Of course there are the web celebs like Leo Laporte and Kevin Rose that are bound to be submitted, but I’ve been pleased to see that the A listers don’t dominate the popular list all the time. The way we calculate the recently popular, which is based on votes just from that day, new and interesting submissions have been given a chance to rise to the top.

I’ve seen comparisons of Gleamd to people search engines like Spock, but I think we differ by giving our users something to look at. Spock is great if you know what you’re looking for, but you aren’t just going to Spock and find interesting people you haven’t heard of without doing a lot of digging around. Gleamd solves that problem pretty quickly by letting users put in their two cents.

Comparing to other social media or social networks, I don’t think we’re competing with places like MySpace, Facebook, or VIRB. We’re not trying to replace your favorite social networks at all. We’re trying to give you the opportunity to find interesting people and maybe even make connections you would have never made otherwise. Maybe you’ll find someone cool on Gleamd, find them on VIRB, and go add them. Who knows. So while we have profiles and friends on Gleamd, they are kind of minimal, and definetly not the focus of the site.

So how can I get involved? If you want to join the private beta, stop by Gleamd and leave a message for Matt. Gleamd still in the private-beta stage only because it’s very new, not because Matt wants to exclude anybody. He’s eager for more users who want to participate actively and give the system a good workout, so don’t be shy!

Now what? As soon as you get a user ID, you can start inviting buddies (like-minded fellow users on Gleamd), and you can begin submitting biographical information about what Matt calls “interesting people doing interesting things on the Web.” Go ahead and submit some people who aren’t already well known, such as interesting people you know from other social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, YouTube…you name it.

You don’t need to be an experienced writer or blogger yourself to participate; it’s perfectly fine to put in a few words of your own about why the person is cool, and link to other sites such as Wikipedia or your subject’s own blog to round out the details. If you enter a website or email address, the Gleamd editor will automatically post it as a link. Then check one or more category boxes that apply to your subject (e.g., Artist, Athlete, Entrepreneur, Vlogger) and submit the bio. If you realize that you’ve made a typo or have forgotten to check a box, not to worry; you can edit your own submissions later.

What keeps Gleamd from being infested with spammers, self-promoters, and other Web 2.0 bad actors? Matt has explained that Gleamd already provides some safeguards:

• Gleamd has a team of moderators. They don’t intervene to promote or block bios according to their own tastes, but they do weed out the clowns who are spamming fake Viagra or pimping the latest penny-stock scam. Unlike Digg, the moderators at Gleamd are actual, identifiable human beings! You can notify Matt himself or the moderators if you notice somebody abusing the system.
• Gleamd automatically checks for duplicate submissions.
• Gleamd users are allowed to make only one submission every thirty minutes. This hampers the unwanted activities of spambots and pay-per-submission promoters.
• Gleamd discourages users from submitting themselves. In my opinion, this is a good idea, though I have no personal knowledge about how strictly this is enforced.

What would I like to see in the new Gleamd user interface? I’d like to see more robust searching and filtering, perhaps on geographical keys, as well as the ability to see what your buddies have submitted and voted on. That way, when Gleamd scales up to handle a larger user base, each user will have the tools to navigate to the biographical pages that match that user’s interests.

What’s coming next? Gleamd has attracted some investors, so a new user interface is in the offing. There’s also a brand-new Gleamd wiki, where beta test participants can leave comments and suggestions. So if you join the beta test and you think something is missing or needs to be tweaked, go for it!

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If you are not a liberal when you’re 25 you have no heart, and if you’re not a conservative when you’re 45, you have no brain.

This saying, sometimes credited to Winston Churchill, seems to hold a bit of universal truth, as does the notion that the young people of a generation affect change, while the older folks lend stability. This certainly seems to be the case when it comes to politics online in the 21st century (allowing, of course, for exceptions such as the Young Republicans clubs and the die-hard hippies).

Web 2.0 technology affects our lives online in the form of blogs, online citizen journalism sites (social news), wiki’s, folksonomies, social networking sites, collaborative bookmarking sites, podcasts, aggregators (e.g. RSS), semantic web, collaborative software, and other online scenarios in which users create and share content such as graphics, news, information, technology, creative writing, software, photos, and videos. The original World Wide Web gave us the opportunity to share information by posting what we had to say, and by reading what others had to say. Web 2.0 takes that concept to the next level, by giving users the opportunity to collectively influence what information is available and how the information is distributed.

Today’s twenty-somethings grew up online, and generally seem to be more intuitively tech-savvy and more comfortable with online collaboration than those of us that are older (“older,” in this case meaning anyone over 35!). It is no wonder, then, that there is a noticeable liberal/progressive majority in the politics discussions of any of the social networking sites, which extensively utilize the newest technologies and the art of collaboration.

Largely due to Web 2.0 technology as well as increasingly interactive search engines, there is a growing body of knowledge online that is taking on a life of its own, and it is very influential. Features such as Google PageRank assure that the majority view of any issue is likely to be the first available information on any given topic. Anyone interested in the accuracy of the information that is being disseminated online, needs to have a voice in this increasingly important global discussion.

As conservatives, we need to understand and utilize Web 2.0 technology if we want this body of knowledge to even partially reflect our values, attitudes, respect for history, and vision for the future.

(Go to Part 2 of 3)
(Go to Part 3 of 3)

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Jenn Sierra (author)
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(Go to Part 1 of 3)

When I was growing up, if I had a question, I was often encouraged by a parent or teacher to go look for the answer in a dictionary, the encyclopedia, or in the library. Students of all ages have it a lot easier, as they often need to go no further than their closest internet connection, so that they can Google, Yahoo, or Dogpile, or Ask Jeeves for the answers to their questions.

It’s so easy, and convenient. Just type in a few keywords, and voila! Often hundreds of pages of information is instantly available on any given topic. But we don’t sort through all of those pages, do we? I personally almost never go past the first, second, or rarely the third page. So who controls what information populates those first pages?

There is an entire career field dedicated to getting websites promoted to this highly coveted location, called search engine optimization (SEO). There are directories, crawlers, and paid listings. Organizations such as SearchEngineWatch.com offer suggestions online for getting websites closer to that front page, and explaining the hierarchy of search engines.

Google PageRank’s webmaster center explains, “In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.” High quality sites, as it turns out, are pages that have a lot of traffic, and have lots of other sites linking directly them. See a pattern? The more links you have to your site, the more traffic you will get, hopefully resulting in more links. There is a compounding effect.

Why do conservatives need to understand this? As we discussed in part one, there is a noticeable liberal/progressive majority in the politics discussions of any of the social networking sites, which extensively utilize the newest technologies and the art of collaboration. This is also reflected in the information that is available online through a typical search.

The compounding affect of the search engine algorithms assures that the majority view will continue to be the majority view. Want to test this theory? Try the following searches in any of the search engines, and see if the first page leans right or left: Iraq war, immigration, or gender.

Curious about where your favorite websites rank on Google? Try this free PageRank checker.

(Go to Part 3 of 3)

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Jenn Sierra (author)
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We’re always hearing about what Google is doing next, but now readwriteweb has a great article about search innovations taking place outside of Google.

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I’ve been using the Omgili search engine to locate online discussions on my favorite topics for some time now, but today I discovered two new beta projects by the Omgili folks: Omgili Thumbs, and Omgili PowWow.

First, what is Omgili?  Omgili is to the discussion forum what Technorati is to the blog.  It is a search engine designed specifically to find online discussions using queries.  More info is at the FAQ page and the Recent Queries page.  The process is very simple; users simply enter the topic they are researching, and Omgili provides a list of online discussions on that topic.

Omgili PowWow added the feature of allowing users to register, and develop profiles, so that they can find and be found by users with similar interests.   Users are able to exchange messages online, either publicly or privately.  Users can post new discussions, and there is a polling feature in the works which looks interesting but is not yet functional.

Omgili Thumbs takes this search engine to the next level, by allowing users to submit existing online discussions (from any forum), comment on, and vote for and promote online discussions they like or give a “thumbs-down,” to those they don’t like.

I still have one question, and have not yet been able to find the answer.  I have posted the question as a discussion on Omgili PowWow, and will post and update on this blog when I receive an answer. The question is this: ” Where in the world did the name ‘Omgili’ come from?!”

Jenn Sierra

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