Ed Bilodeau

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This weblog had moved: http://www.coolweblog.com/bilodeau/

# Notice (Oct 19/05): So ends my stay here on Blogger. This morning Google implemented an anti-spam 'feature' that forces me to answer a challenge phrase when I want to post to my own blog. No notice of the change, nothing. Worse is that it doesn't even work! I type the phrase, submit, "An error occured", post deleted. Damn you, Google. Chances are I will revive my blog somewhere else, sometime soon. I'll post the new coordinates here as soon as they become available. (BTW, I'm unable to post anything to my RSS stream, so I'd appreciate it if readers could spread the word and ask people to take a look at this notice)

Update (Oct 19/05, ~noon): After a frustrating few hours (and not just trying out alternatives to Blogger), I've decided that this is a good time to take a break from all this. A day? A week? Who knows. But I need to step away from it before I pass a heavy magnet over the whole mess.

Update 2: According to this post, the reason I'm seeing the CAPTCHA (challenge phrase) is that Blogger has classified my blog as spam. Thanks. User for five years and now I'm spam. I searched the Blogger site, but there is no mention of how to get the spam flag turned off. There is also no way of contacting anyone at Blogger. Wow. Spam they say I am, so spam I must be. Maybe it is time to take a break.

Friday, November 05, 2004

Where was the impact of the web in the election? : Before I forget: I wonder if people invested too much energy into the web, weblogs, etc to get people out to vote, not to mention vote for their own candidate. People googlebombing Bush or Kerry for whatever reason. It seems like these technologies were all supposed to make some sort of difference, to help people to make informed decisions. Maybe they were more of a distraction, an easy one for the more technologically minded? Their blog circles facilitated and supported a delusion that Bush's defeat was inevitable. People launched their web sites and blogged and blogged and blogged while all the real action was happening elsewhere.

Update: More discussion on the role of the web, etc in the election on the Nov 5 Gillmor Gang (about 18 minutes in).