Blogcritics In the News

Let it never be said that our Blogcritics aren’t newsworthy.

Ryan Irelan was featured in the NY Times yesterday – how cool is that?

The compulsion to get noticed by some of the big fish in the blogging world is tempting for many, however, because it can lead to significant traffic increases. Ryan Irelan, a recent college graduate in Chapel Hill, N.C., discovered this when he posted a plea for donations for his cat’s surgery on his blog. The posting was picked up by The Doc Searls Weblog [kick ass Doc!], which gets thousands of page views a day, and as a result Mr. Irelan saw his own daily traffic increase to 300 page views, compared with his usual 20 to 30.

“Creating something odd or unique or funny that a lot of people link to is a good way to get a huge spike,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s the most honest way of approaching it.”

Word, Ryan, word.

Then our favorite “unemployed system administrator” Laurence Simon was feted in Wired for kicking Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) square in the jimmies:

The apparent violation was discovered by Laurence Simon, an unemployed system administrator from Houston, who was poking around Hatch’s site after becoming outraged by his comments.

Milonic’s Woolley said the senator’s unlicensed use of his software was just “the tip of the iceberg.” He said he knows of at least two other senators using unlicensed copies of his software, and many big companies.

Continental Airlines, for example, one of the largest airlines in the United States, uses Woolley’s system throughout its Continental.com website. Woolley said the airline has not paid for the software. Worse, the copyright notices in the source code have been removed.

“That really pisses me off,” he said.

A spokesman for Continental said the airline would look into the matter.

Woolley makes his living from his software. Like a lot of independent programmers, he struggles to get people to conform to his licensing terms, let alone pay for his software.

“We don’t want blood,” he said. “We just want payment for the hard work we do. We work very, very hard. If they’re not prepared to pay, they’re software pirates.

Hah, flipping, hah. Nice work Laurence, now quit dicking around with maniacal Mormon senators and write something for us.

Blogcritics rule.