What is hotlinking? Its when you place an image or file of any sort on your website and directly link to where you found it, instead of placing it on your own webhost’s servers.

Why is it wrong to hotlink? Because, basically, its theft. All webhosts charge for bandwidth usage (in one way or another) and so if you hotlink to another website’s images or files you are stealing their bandwidth instead of paying for it yourself.

Also, they might pull a switcheroo on you if they find out about your stealing activities. And what is a switcheroo? Its when the actual owners of the file change the file to be not what you thought it was: Here’s an example:

An Italian politician found a nice image of the pantheon online and used it on his website, it looked like this:

The owner of the image got a little miffed as his hits sent her bandwidth through the roof. So, after no replies to her ‘cease and desist’ request, she pulled the old switcheroo which resulted in his website looking like this:

Pfffff! Today’s lesson is: Don’t Hotlink

Thanks to the B3ta newsletter for this story.

This pretty much sums up the current state of British politics to me!

<<Clickio Pickio

If you believe that the world would be a better place without organised religions, this is a great website to visit.

Its founders have set up an entirely new (or rediscovered) religion based on their belief in the deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster who invented the Universe one night after he had a bit too much to drink (That’s why life is a bit weird)

Its a really good religion to be a part of - Instead of 10 commandments they have ‘Eight I’d Really Rather you Didn’ts’, and their Heaven has a beer volcano and a stripper factory - Brilliant!

Oh, they’re also really quite into Pirates.

Arrgh!

Another great site courtesy of the brilliant B3ta.com; This is a website which lists real emails people have received from their mothers.

My favourite so far is this IM exchange:

Go Here:

http://postcardsfromyomomma.com

hee.

Back in November last year (2007), Greenpeace decided to hold an online poll to decide on a name for a Humpback whale as promotion for their campaign to save a bunch of whales from being killed.

Some of the top names included Aiko, Libertad, Mira, Kaimana, Aurora, Shanti, Amal and Manami, but they only got one percent of the vote each. 2nd place went to Humphrey with 3%. But the winner, with over 78% of the votes, and proof of the incredible power of the internet to do very silly things, was Mr Spashy Pants.

You can find the full story on wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Splashy_Pants

And you can also find a fantastic list of other internet phenomena here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_phenomena

Via the B3ta newsletter, here’s a link to a very amusing video of Phil Schofield of This Morning fame made to look like he’s singing about (and on) drugs.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=31569285

This is Cassie, SassyCassie86, and she wants to be Paris Hilton’s new best friend.

Luckily for her, it seems that MTV is running a competition where the person with the most votes from their website will see that special dream come true. And they’ll make some telly about it, which would be very good telly if our Cassie won, I’m sure you agree.

B3ta have got a sort of campaign going, and they got some clout on the interwebs, so join in:

Click Cassie’s picture above to go vote, Go Cassie!

  I had a sat nav disaster of my own yesterday. The little blighter has sent me down narrow roads before, but never onto uphill 6 foot wide mud tracks with trees on them; which is what happened.

Stupidly, as I was only 0.5 miles from my destination, I decided to persevere. I ignored a dead-end sign, I ignored a hand-written sign which said “abandon hope all ye who enter here” or something similar, I even got out of the car and moved the tree out of the way. But another couple of hundred yards on I was thwarted by a man-made bollard constructed of boulders and scaffolding poles. I had to back up and go the long way round (0.2 miles longer).

So today I’ve been looking for other unfortunate stories, and here’s what I’ve found:

The UK’s Top Sat Nav Disasters

and this:

Top Ten Tips for Sat Nav Safety

Yep, this is the website for The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, Or VHEMT for short, or Vehement, for slighty less short.

Why, you may wonder, is anyone advocating the extinction of the human race? Because its good for planet Earth of course! As they say in their introduction: ” Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth’s biosphere to return to good health”

They claim to have millions of supporters, but as they are a movement not an organisation they can’t back this up with any names or numbers, although they do link to a supporters site with over 1400 subscribers!

Incidentally, they do also link to a cool short video which shows what would happen to New York if all the people vanished; Sort of a poor man’s “I am Legend”, no sign of Will Smith though.

Link to the video is Here.

  Trifter.com has compiled a list of viagra-inspired foods from around the world. They come in three categories: Foods that look like viagra (like the viagra spam mousse shown above); Foods that are the same colour as viagra; and foods that claim to have similar medicinal properties to viagra. Its well worth a look.