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Snippets #43, Wednesday, 22.Oct.2003 (ISSN 1530-9622)
_______________S N I P P E T S _________________________from James S. Huggins' Refrigerator Door ___________________________________#43, Wednesday, 22.Oct.2003 _____________________________________________ISSN 1530-9622
__________0. CONTENTS _____1. PEZ _____2. GoogleWhack _____3. Changes to Snippets Subscriptions
__________1. PEZ Ever had a Pez dispenser? Do you still have it? Did you know that old Pez dispensers are worth hundreds, even thousands of dollars? A couple of days ago I ran into this delightful article on the ABCNews.com site about a Pez Museum in Easton, Pennsylvania. Easton is about 50 miles north of Philadelphia on the New Jersey border. The museum is just down the alley from the Crayola factory. The article also says: --- PEZ have been around for 50 years, 30 in the US. --- More than 3 billion PEZ are consumed annually in the US. --- There is an annual PEZAMANIA convention in Cleveland that now attracts more than 1,000 people and requires the biggest ballroom in Cleveland.
The Article One Page Version
__________2. GOOGLEWHACK If you are a cyberdweeb, you'll enjoy this one. If not, skip to the next. Seth Finkelstein, a gentleman I've never met, but with whom I've corresponded from time to time, has an interesting story about a problem at Google. It also includes some information on a game called GoogleWhack and a result called Google Nack. A "GoogleWhack" is a search-game. You go to Google, search for two words (no fair using quotes) and get just one result. Think about it, it means there is only one document in the whole Google universe that has those two words ANYWHERE in the document. Seth's article includes more about all of this as well as interesting background on the how websites "spam" Google to get better rankings, how Google "fights back" and how something is "broken". Seth's article An article about Seth's article on The Register
__________3. CHANGES TO SNIPPETS SUBSCRIPTIONS I've been sending Snippets out using Gammadyne Mailer (http://gammadyne.com) for sometime. It is a powerful product I can recommend highly. I've had some fun in the last several days doing some programming and making changes. One of the most significant is that I've implemented "double opt-in". Now if you subscribe, you'll receive a confirmation email. You must reply back with the confirmation code to actually be subscribed. It was an enjoyable exercise to program that feature in. I've also added some other features: --- I've improved all the subscription response messages to make them more detailed. --- If you send a subscribe message and are already subscribed, you'll automatically update your "name" in the system. --- You can confirm from an address different to your subscribe address. If you do, both addresses get the subscription notice. None of these really affects current subscribers. But hey, I needed to tell someone.
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