This morning, there was a small (magnitude 3.1) earthquake in the “Santa Cruz Mountains”:1 in the small town of Felton. More precisely, three miles NNE of Felton at 37.096N, 122.049W.

You can read all about the quake “here”:2 on the USGS site.

It’s amazing the kind of data that you can find almost instantaneously on quakes. A few minutes after I felt this one, I popped online to see if it had been registered at the USGS. Indeed it had.

I picked up the screenshot of the map above at the USGS’ “Recent Earthquakes in California and Nevada”:3 homepage.

If you want to report feeling a quake, you can do so “here”:4. From these reports, the USGS site also generates “response maps” of the quakes. “Here’s”:5 one for the Felton quake.

And finally, the USGS generates a couple of graphs analyzing the response data. The top is _intensity_ vs. _distance from the epicenter_ and the bottom is _number of responses_ vs. _the time since the earthquake_.

Sometimes the government works.

[6(Response data graphs)]http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/shake/ca/STORE/X40182398/40182398_graph.gif

[5(Felton quake response map)]http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/shake/ca/STORE/X40182398/ciim_display.html

[4(Did you feel it?)]http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/shake/ca/

[3(USGS recent CA and NV quakes page)]http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/

[2(Read all about the Felton quake at the USGS)]http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Quakes/nc40182398.html

[1(Wikipedia on the Santa Cruz Mountains)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Mountains

Here’s an example of a Yahoo! house ad for one of their Widgets — the product formerly know as “Konfabulator”:2.

Kompressor’s are out “too”:3. Coincidence?

I’d say, not bad for an internet ad. It would be cool (or creepy?) if the ad were customized on the fly based on a user’s zip code. I’m sure I have my current zip code on Yahoo! somewhere… yeah, for My Yahoo!.

Here’s the placement of the ad on the original Yahoo! News page. It was a story entitled, “_Rose Parade Gets 1st Makeover in 117 Years_”:1. Pretty general article, but so is interest in weather.

Hey, the ad caught my eye, so it must be working for some folks.

I’d kind of like Widgets if Yahoo! would only fix the Widgets’ propensity to hog all the system resources on my Windows XP box. That, and I tend to have 40 million windows open at once. It would take a major archaeological expedition just to unearth my desktop.

Dual monitors, nine applications open and 13 windows scattered about. Hey, they call it a “windowing system”:4 don’t they.

[4(Wikipedia on windowing systems)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windowing_system

[3(Bye, bye kompressor)]http://www.autoblog.com/2004/07/28/mercedes-dumps-kompressor-engines/

[2(Zoinger on Yahoo!s purchase of Konfabulator)]http://www.zoinger.com/words/archives/2005/07/29/konfabulistic-yahoo-buys-konfabulator/

[1(Original Yahoo! News page URL)]http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051228/ap_en_ot/rose_parade_revamp

Don’t think that blogs are going to be a bigg deal? Well, check out the “digg story”:1 titled “Abusive New York Camera Store Threatens Blogger” dugg by a pretty famous blogger/photographer named “Thomas Hawk”:2.

BTW, 5870 is a GIGANTIC number of Diggs

Still don’t think this is a big deal? Well, here’s a quick traffic rank comparison I did using Alexa of “digg.com vs. Slashdot.org”:3. Ya know, Slashdot’s famous for crushing sites with traffic, exploding servers, enriching Sun/Microsoft/LAMP/Dell with sales, keeping IT departments up all night, etc., etc. — aka the “Slashdot effect”:4.

Don’t know about the spike at the end of the graph, but it’s the magnitude that counts

Somebody in New York is not going to have a happy Christmas, ’cause Santa knows who’s been naughty — and he reads blogs.

Zoinger says, be a part of the conversation… but assume that everyone is listening.

*Update: 2005-12-1*
Wow, when I said that 5000+ diggs is a lot of diggs… well, it’s the MOST dugg story ever… by a lot. Check out the top dugg stories every “here”:5. It’s not going to be a bad Christmas, it’s gonna be NO Christmas.

*Update: 2005-12-1 v2*
Surprise, surprise… Yahoo! actually seems to be reading blogs. Here’s some excerpts from Thomas’ blog “post”:5 on his ordeal with PriceRitePhoto (the offending store).

bq.. One of the things that troubles me the most about this situation is that I found this retailer through Yahoo! shopping and they were perceived to have positive feedback. Is the feedback mechanism for Yahoo! Shopping broken? How could this horrible retailer have a four star rating with 858 ratings? I’m convinced that there is a possibility that many of the “reviews” for this company could be fake. I should though have sorted through the reviews to the worst to see that many others had fallen prey to similar fraud by this company.

p. Further down his post…

bq.. I also received this email today from Joe Lazarus, Director of Marketing for Yahoo! Inc.: “Tom, I wanted to follow up on a comment I added to your post on PriceRitePhoto. I work at Yahoo! Shopping. I passed your issue along to our Customer Care team who will investigate and take the appropriate action per our merchant Guidelines and Terms of Service. I covered some more details in my comment. Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions. ~ Joe”

p. And…

bq.. Update #8: Although I have not heard directly back from Yahoo! or their Marketing Director Joe Lazarus. It would appear at least that for the time being, today, PriceRitePhoto is not operating on Yahoo! Shopping. They are still listed as a merchant there and there is a link to their store but when you do a search by their store for products for sale through Yahoo! you get the following message: “We didn’t find any product results for mid:1016578.” I’m not sure if Yahoo! pulled their listings or if PriceRitePhoto did or if that is just part of what happens when Yahoo! investigates a company. I hope that if after investigating Yahoo! concludes that this company is acting unethically that they will in fact delist them altogether. I will update as I hear more on this.

p. I just did quick search in “Yahoo! Shopping”:6, and was unable to find the PriceRitePhoto anywhere in Yahoo! Shopping (I searched on the store name and for them under a Nikon D50 search and Canon EOS D5 search). So good on Yahoo! for responding, but they clearly need to upgrade their rating system.

Oh, just remember if you are ordering anything online, make sure to use a credit card. If you have differences with your retailer which you can’t resolve, contact your credit card company, and put the order in dispute. I have had great luck in the past getting a refund via this route.

And I am sure that PriceRitePhoto is still in business under other names. Remember it’s cheap to have multiple business/domain names, so watch out out there.

[6(Yahoo! Shopping homepage)]http://shopping.yahoo.com

[5(Top dugg stories)]http://digg.com/topstories/thisyear

[4(Wikipedia on the Slashdot effect)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect

[3(Alexa digg vs. Slashdot)]http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&compare_sites=http://slashdot.org/&y=t&q=&url=www.digg.com

[2(Thomas Hawk homepage)]http://thomashawk.com/

[1(thomashawks dugg stories)]http://www.digg.com/users/thomashawk

…at “antennaweb.org”:1. Oh, it also tells you what type of antenna you need too. And the clickable map interface is pretty sweet (although, not using Google Maps yet).

This is really useful if you are building a Windows Media Center PC. The only way you can record HDTV easily (or at all??) is using the over-the-air broadcasts.

[1(Find you HDTV channels and antenna requirements)]http://www.antennaweb.org

Today I sent myself an email from nowhere from my friend’s Treo. Always on is really coming… even to areas you might not expect.

P.S. The small intro photo is from “actionjax’s”:1 Flickr stream.

[1(Top of the World)]http://www.flickr.com/photos/jperdue/4172146