Word Processing on the iPad: Wahhhhh!!!!!!

Tags

cloud, ipad, novel, technology, writing

I wanted to be able to work on the same word processing document on my Mac (assuming I get it fixed someday), my PC when it’s running Windows, my PC when it’s running Ubuntu, and my iPad. Maybe on my iPhone too, at least for quick edits and whatever. That’s what I wanted. But there’s more. When working on this document, I wanted to be saving and overwriting the same file on the same cloud-based service, rather than emailing different versions of different drafts back and forth to myself to open them in these various environments.

This is not a strange set of wants.

I’ve been using Evernote for writing drafty versions of my documents in all these different environments, seamlessly, and it is indeed sweet for drafty versions. but Evernote is not a word processor. I’m past the Evernote point. It’s time to generate some professionally-formatted manuscripts out of my mess, you know?

I’ve owned Pages since it came out for iPad. It is the most full-featured word processor I’ve seen on the iPad, but it doesn’t have Dropbox integration. I have a feeling that maybe it used to, before iCloud existed. I am not sure of this. I decided to try it anyway, but couldn’t figure out how to get iCloud integration to work on my Windows PC. I could get to the control panel applet, and see my docs, but I couldn’t open them. And then I remembered Ubuntu. I wasn’t even about to try to get iCloud going on Ubuntu. That’s a headache I don’t need. There’s probably a way (dear Ubuntu-using friends — I know you are about to start typing a comment which will tell me all five hundred and twenty-seven steps I need to take to make iCloud work with Ubuntu — and that’s cool, I appreciate it, but never mind). So Pages is out. Pages would be perfect if all my writing devices were Apple products, and all my operating systems were Apple OSs. But they are not.

Google Docs looks like crap on a crap stick on the iPad. Are they joking?

The Zoho Docs app is read-only.

iAWriter is text-only — it literally saves your documents as ASCII .txt files — so there’s no formatting beyond simple paragraph breaks. That won’t do.

I ended up settling on Docs2 HD, after about two hours of looking, and installing different apps, and being disappointed.

This was supposed to have been much easier than it turned out to be. On the bright side: all this “work” made me feel productive, even though I got absolutely no actual work (non-quotation mark work) done.

Now I’m going to take a shower, and maybe when I have gotten myself all clean and patted dry and sweet-smelling and powdery, etc., I’ll be able to do some actual work work. I’ll keep you posted! The idea is to reboot Snake-Boy Loves Sky Prince with an all-new, all-revised, all-compact and flowing version of Chapters 1-3, and soonly.

Survival of the Spammiest

Tags

blogging, spam, spambots, technology

I don’t know for sure how spambots work.

I know the basics. Somebody installs a program on a computer somewhere that comments on blogs. I’m talking specifically about commenting spambots here. These comments contain links within them, either in the body of the comment itself, or as the “homepage” of the fictional commenter himself/herself, in cases where the username of the commenter is a link to a “homepage.” I imagine that most spambots just scour the net for standard-looking comment forms (the fact that everybody has kind of standardized on a few blogging platforms probably makes this easy) and fill them out completely at random. I also imagine that there are more sophisticated spambots that try to find posts that would be a good match for the spammer’s “target market,” probably by using keywords.

All of these things I imagine, I imagine because I have looked at the moderation queue for my blog (and for my websites that preceded the idea of blogs, but which were similar to blogs in enough ways to attract this kind of spam) since about 1995. I have never seen an actual spambot in action, but I have seen the results of their activities. Most of us have.

Simple fact: a spambot comment wants to be approved. Spambot comments which are not approved phase themselves out of the system. Comments that are approved get posted more frequently and more widely.

As you may have noticed, random words get changed in spam comments — many of them look like something a Freshman with a thesaurus would have written. “This bulletin of yours is a primary resource for anybody researching into such a subject,” for example. “I love the design of your weblog presentation template!”

I think of those random changes as mutations.

In every way, really, they are like little organisms, these spambot comments, subject to evolutionary pressures: the ones who survive long enough to reproduce are the ones that are good at tricking moderators. Like anything subject to such pressure, spambot comments are getting smarter, stronger, faster.

Here’s a sort of timeline:

• 1996: Buy Viagra now! (click this link to buy Viagra now)
• 2000: Buy V1agra n0w! (click this link to buy Viagra now)
• 2005: Purchase the stuff that VIA bly GRows A hardon (click this link to buy Viagra now)
• 2012: The categorical imperative is the central philosophical concept in the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Ke$ha! On my cock — (click this link to buy Viagra now) — can you believe it? Blame.

Just as the hawk, or the eagle, or the owl is perfectly adapted to locate, ensnare, flay and fillet, then devour a rodent or a snake, this new spam comment is indisputably superior in every way, a streamlined killing machine. I mean: who wouldn’t click that final link?

We are doomed.

(Note: sarcasm. Also note: that final spam example is real, from today’s trawl.)

Diary Comic: I Miss the Web

Tags

early web, feedmag, nostalgia, suck.com, technology, the fray, web, word.com

My examples of weirdness, now that I take the time to look at them, weren’t all that weird, really. They weren’t even very different from one another. So much for me and my stupid nostalgia!

There is something different about creating websites now, though, and it’s not just that the tools have matured so it’s easier for everybody to play. I swear to God this isn’t an elitist argument. Or, at least, it’s not motivated and driven by elitism. But here’s the difference: today, you say to yourself, “I think I’ll start a blog,” and you kind of know what a blog is. Or, “I think I’ll start a podcast,” and etc. But back then, you’d say, “I think I’ll start a website. What the fuck is a website?” You had no idea. So you had to make it up. Did that make for better web experiences? Probably not. But it was invigorating and scary and awesome to create stuff and put it out there in whatever format you invented for yourself at that particular moment. Does anyone feel invigorated, scared, and awed by posting to Facebook? Or even to a Tumblr? Maybe. I don’t. Do you?

Artwork from Adventures Into the Unknown # 1. It has been represented to me that this artwork is in public domain. Even if it isn’t, I claim Fair Use, bitches!

Why I’m Not Afraid of Facebook

Tags

facebook, social media, technology, web

I remember when CompuServe seemed indomitable. I remember when AOL “took over the Internet.” I remember when people thought MSN was going to become a dangerous monopoly. I wrote an article about how dangerous that big-ass bookmark bar that came with Internet Explorer 1.0 was, because it came preloaded with corporate links. I was wrong. People went their own way. And, seriously: doesn’t anybody remember how big and important MySpace was for a while there?

The web always wins. The web’s leaders always change. I’m not afraid of Facebook.