Endmark is a simple little thing.  What it does is adds a little end-of-article symbol to all of your Wordpress posts, similar to the symbols found at the end of magazine articles.

Now, for magazines the purpose of the symbol is really to show where the article ends, or rather that it ends and is not continued on another page.  On a blog, that’s more obvious anyways, so the purpose of it is cosmetic.  Still, I wanted it for one project, so I made this.

If that sounds like a nice addition to your blog’s style, then head over to the Endmark Wordpress plugin page and give it a try.  Let me know if you notice any bugs or have any comments or requests.  I’ll do my best to keep it somewhat maintained.

By the way, you can see Endmark in action on this very blog.  For example, there’s an Endmark at the end of this line.

The hard drive is fine, but inaccessible for two weeks while I ship off the hardware for repair by Dell.  The insane luck part: I ran a backup the day before it died. I try to do them regularly, and I ought to automate the process, but it was by sheer luck that it failed right after a backup.

I’ve tried to be good about backups, as I’ve had a few hard drives fail over the years.  It certainly paid off this time. So as a public service, this is me, reminding you, back up your work.  Now would be good.

It’s a Dell XPS M1330, for those keeping score.

Update: Purolator dropped off my notebook already, good as new.  Here’s the timeline for my repair:

• Tuesday afternoon: The motherboard fails. I call Dell, they spend a few minutes trying to diagnose it then tell me I’ll have to send it in.  Unfortunately, the warranty is in Staples’ name, where I bought it, so I had to update my information, which I’m told takes about 24 hours to complete in their system.
• Wednesday morning: I receive an email from Dell saying that the update of my info is complete.  I call them back, and they arrange for my notebook to be shipped to them.
• Thursday morning, 9:00 am: Purolator shows up to drop off a box.  I remove my hard drive and place the notebook in the nicely padded box.  I slap-on the pre-paid shipping tags and  I call back Purolator.  They come get the box that afternoon.
• Monday morning, 8:25 am: Purolator arrives with my repaired notebook. Everything seems to be in order.

Pretty quick, I think.  I’m fairly impressed by Dell this time.  (Now, I have to get back to work!)

Most of the interface remains unchanged, though it’s supposedly much faster.  The way widgets work is the most obvious of the changes:

The upgrade went smoothly on this blog (so far), and I’ll be rolling it out to my own sites, and some of my clients’ sites, over the next couple of days.

If you use the service, you probably know that Entrecards, which used to show approved ads from community members, and paid you in credits, and allowed you to advertise on other Entrecards, now show paid ads 50% of the time.  You can reject paid ads, and check an option (it’s not checked by default!) to only allow approved ads on your widget, but that doesn’t change this core change in the purpose of Entrecard.  OK, so that’s not what Entrecard was to begin with, and not what we signed up for.  But maybe we’ll all make some money, so let’s hear them out.

It was recently announced that algorithms would be developed to determine who gets payouts first.  The algorithm would attempt to determine your value to Entrecard’s community as a whole.  Feel the love.  Here are the criteria:

1. How many cards you drop / how frequently
2. % of paid ads you approve
3. % of Entrecard ads you approve
4. Listings you create / completed sales in the market
5. How many credits you transfer to others (indicative of contests, tips, and generosity)
6. % of credits you spend on Entrecard ads

Ok, so, I have to be willing to approve most of the ads coming my way, even if they’re irrelevant to my site and inappropriate for my visitors?  I have to participate in this weird marketplace community that trades goods and services for Entrecard credits (I thought those were for advertisements, but whatever.  I can pay 1EC for some guy to follow me on Twitter.  Yippee.).  And I have to hold contests for my credits, or just give my credits away?  You want to buy my credits, but only if I give some of them away first?

Of course, Entrecard has always been more valuable to those who have the time and energy to drop cards all day, to round up huge amounts of credits and hold contests to give them away, etc, etc.  But there was value in it for those of us with work, school, social lives, and, uh, blogging to do anyways.  I got a bunch of junk traffic, and a bunch of valuable traffic.  I got new eyes on my blogs.  I got comments.  But now, the value of the advertisements I place has been halved, since paid ads will show over mine 50% of the time, unless I, too, pay.

So, what motivation do I have to support paid ads on Entrecard? Whether or not I ever see a dime for showing paid ads on my site is completely uncertain.  It looks like if I become more active with Entrecard, I maybe, kind of, could see a few bucks.  But if I cash out the entirety of my credits right now (i.e. if they’d let me), I may be able to eat at McDonald’s.  Y’know, if trying to cash in credits weren’t enough to give me a heart attack.

News. Flash. I get more money than that from Google AdSense where I use it, and I don’t have to jump through hoops to get them to pay me.  I don’t have to run around visiting other AdSense sites and clicking on ads to get a return for the ad space I’m using myself.

Who would join Entrecard after this?  Here’s the pitch: “Put this widget on your blog.  We’ll show paid ads on it.  We might pay you for them, but, sorry, if you’re not going to play our little dropping game, you’ll be last on the list.  But why wouldn’t you want to participate?  Aren’t you a team player?  We’re all about community here.”

What makes Entrecard think it’s cool to push paid ads onto my site and say, “Hey, I’ll get you later”?  Entrecard was great as a community site where everything was about bloggers working together.  But this gradual change into a paid ad marketplace sucks, and the fact that it’s happening slowly has some bloggers excited about the idea that their credits could turn into cash.  So much so, that some people seem to be hoarding credits away rather than using them to keep the free half of the system moving.

I’m trying to have faith that this will work itself out, so I haven’t removed my widgets yet.  Maybe if I just reject paid ads and focus on the original intent of Entrecard, I’ll still get value from it.  Or, maybe the system will improve and I’ll eventually get some money from it.  Entrecard isn’t neccessarily doomed, but I don’t think they’re on the right track.  So, we’ll see.

I joined a community-driven, cooperative ad network.  Now I’m in a paid ad network.  And not a very good one.

It looks like GeoCities is on the way out. Yahoo! posted a notice on the site’s homepage that it will no longer allow new signups for the service, and will be closing it down entirely later this year.  They promise to explain why this summer.

Back in 1999, when the Internet was nice and bubbly, Yahoo! bought Geocities for $3.57 billion dollars.  I don’t think it went well.  They’re probably getting more press now than they’ve had since the acquisition

GeoCities started going downhill for users before Yahoo! entered the scene, when they started pushing more ads and floating watermarks onto the sites.  When Yahoo! bought them, they got worse.  I’m not sure what even happened to my sites back then, but by that point I was moving on to better hosting, and would soon be buying my own domains.

Still, I can’t help but to feel a little saddened as we say goodbye to GeoCities. I first learned how to make websites there, and although I’d probably laugh if I ever saw them again (and I fear I may have used the <blink> and <marquee> elements at some point), it’s hard not to be at least little nostalgic.

The new version of Microsoft’s browser is ready to go.  And just as IE7 was less annoying than IE6, IE8 promises to be even better, with updates to its rendering, including expanded CSS support.  Better AJAX functionality and RSS tools are also included.

The main features of the new browser, though, revolve around security, privacy and speed — IE8 is supposed to be a much safer, faster browser to use, brining it closer to its fast-moving competitors.

The browser is set to launch at around noon today, according to Microsoft.  When the final becomes available, it’ll show up here.  I guess this afternoon I’ll need to take it for a spin around my sites, and my clients’ sites, to make sure everything plays nice in IE8.

Hopefully this also encourages some people (and IT departments) to move away from IE6, now that it’s two versions behind.

Game developer Infinity Ward, the company behind the immensely popular Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is calling on gamers to submit suggestions for its next title via Twitter.  In order to submit a suggestion for Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2, or answer the current question posed by the dev team, just include the hash tag #MW2 in your tweet.

The company has launched a web app to compile the replies, which is now live at twitter.infinityward.com, and is already collecting huge amounts of feedback from the dev community.

This is a great thing for Infinity Ward in a number of ways.  For one, getting lots of feedback and identifying the trends is just going to make the game better, which is great for the company and its customers.  Additionally, it’s building better relationships with their target audience, and helping them ensure that its games remain in gamers’ minds between releases.  (Good call on this one @fourzerotwo!)

The new dashboard on my Xbox Living blog.

The Wordpress team has been busy, it seems.  It wasn’t that long ago that the Wordpress Admin had design change, but this takes things further.  The buttons feel very Safari/Apple-inspired, but the interface still feels like Wordpress.  I’m going to have to play around with it, but I’m finding it very easy to work with.  I haven’t struggled to find anything yet.

So far, I’m impressed.

The Canadian party leaders participating in the debate.

In Canada, New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton (@jacklayton) brought pieces of the debate right into Twitter.  He apparently had a team working behind the scenes to offer NDP responses to some of the things said by the other leaders (mostly Harper).  During the debate, several “fact check” tweets were posted, linking to various statements on the NDP website that offered the NDP account of what really happened.

Most of the other candidates have Twitter accounts too — Prime Minister Stephen Harper (@pmharper), Green Party leader Elizabeth May (@ElizabethMay) and Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe (@gillesduceppe) are all up there.  The only Canadian leader who doesn’t seem to have an active Twitter profile (at least not one that I could find) is Liberal leader Stéphane Dion.  @stephanedion isn’t following anyone, and has only a “Hello Twitter!” statement from over a year ago.

I’ve followed all of the leaders, but so far only Jack Layton and Stephen Harper have followed me back.  (Seeing “Stephen Harper is now following you on Twitter!” pop up in my email was amusing to me.)  I’ll be disappointed if Elizabeth May doesn’t follow me, but she hasn’t posted a tweet since the debate, and it looks like she genuinely manages her own Twitter account.

I do hope that whoever becomes Prime Minister does keep using Twitter.

I was repeatedly seeing “Call Failed” when I tried to make or answer phone calls.  I would answer my phone, for example, and a few seconds later it would abruptly drop the call.  At first I assumed it was Rogers’ fault… just because it usually is.  But in this case, it was not.  The solution is simple.

Turn your phone off.

The iPhone is a computer, and as you’re probably aware, computers suck.  They don’t always work like they should, and after some time, they need a restart.  Powering off the phone and turning it back on seems to fix the problem.  I’ll try to remember to restart my iPhone each time I charge it.  (Thanks to the guy in the Rogers Plus store for letting me know.)

I’ll admit, I felt a little stupid after that.  Normally, when I call a support desk or ask for help, I’ve already tried the obvious stuff like restarting my PC, checking all the cords, etc.  For some reason I wasn’t expecting the same with my phone.

I hope this helps someone.