There is a LOT that can be done with free online services — sometimes things that probably go way beyond what the service creators envisioned.
Business
Choose Your Fucking Words Carefully
NOTE: This isn’t about choosing one political side or the other. Any idiot could have said the following quote. Apparently some idiot did.
Mitt Romney ‘Shellshocked’ After Lost Election, Adviser Says
from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/08/mitt-romney-lost-election_n_2095013.html
OK — so let me get this straight. This dude thought he was capable of being THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and yet losing an election leaves him “Shellshocked” ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
I don’t even know how many “?!” that actually requires at the end of the sentence. It might need more.
Best Headline: What Your Breasts Need Most At Night
A good headline should step into your prospects head and be part of the conversation — either by continuing a pre-existing thought or by creating curiousity about something new.
Although this wasn’t the main headline on the magazine cover, it was immediately attention-grabbing.
From the October 2012 Cosmopolitan magazine with Zooey Deschanel on the cover:

Pre-Internet: How Did People Make Nasty Comments?
It used to take some genuine effort to say nasty stuff to someone. If they pissed you off, you had to contemplate it, get a pen and paper, write out your thoughts, fold it up, put it in an envelope, bring it to the Post Office, wait on a line to mail it, and then wait the 3 to 10 … Read more
Google Adsense: Your ads have recently appeared on websites you haven’t authorized.
Yikes! What an icky message for a Monday morning! I log into my adsense account and see this message:
Your ads have recently appeared on websites you haven’t authorized. To avoid lost revenue, make sure to authorize any sites where you display ads by visiting your account settings.
Only is looks like this – with the bright yellow to let me know it’s a warning I ought to be frightened about:
OK. So I look at my account settings page and see under: Sites authorized to show ads
I have Only allow certain sites to show ads for my account selected and it tells me the unauthorized site translate.googleusercontent.com has been showing my ads.
Privacy is Dead, but seriously Atari.com WTF???
I have long felt that privacy is dead and I have started to put together a 30+ part series on privacy is dead because it pops up everywhere, but this just takes the cake and eats it too.
Atari is:
- apparently in business – who knew?
- has Nolan Bushnell speaking for it (I have no idea what his level of involvement is)
- releasing some neat HTML5 code to make it easier to make games in javascript called the Atari Arcade SDK and CreateJS
https://www.atari.com/arcade/developers/
https://createjs.com/#!/CreateJS
and you can currently play these remakes of classic Atari games
(the technology is cool, the gameplay is like the programmers had no idea what was fun about the original games)
https://www.atari.com/arcade#!/arcade/atari-promo
Now, I’ve thought javascript was a crappy idea since forever and it used to run REALLY slow, but I guess everyone is all hopped up on it for all sorts of modern stuff and hopefully it is being made to run better and faster. Although my gmail still annoyingly crashes every once in a while.
I guess anything is better than flash.
Anyway, it seemed like it was useful to create an account on atari.com. First name, last name, and birthday are all required fields. OK fine. I expect that. But I didn’t expect them to PUBLISH that info. WTF???
Problem accessing secure pages and other web pages on amazon newegg and more
For a week or two (I’m pretty sure this started before Hurricane Irene) I’ve been having trouble accessing secure pages on amazon.com. I can’t see my past orders, reach my Amazon Cloud Drive, or now even place a new order. I discovered today that I can’t get the newegg.com site to work either — so I’ve got no way to order computer stuff I need.
At first I thought it was something corrupted on my main computer.
I’ve tried Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari browsers. Then I tried my older computer that’s running Linux. I’ve tried my laptop.
Nothing works. On amazon and newegg I can’t access any page that’s secure.