Not too long ago I heard a rumor that Twitter, the (only!) social network site I would pay to use, was erasing ancient tweets.

The rumor turned out to be half true, as Twitter was only hiding them from users’s profiles, so the tweets could be searched (if you knew what you were looking for). Thus my first major geek drama ended as quickly as it began.

But…

…it made me nervous about where my data was. But being the typical slacker at the time I did what all typical slackers (and average politicans) do when a crisis emerges–nothing.

Fortunately my friend DPOM* (who is also my spiritual mentor) wasn’t pleased with my slackerhood (he daily kicks my butt) and motivated me to move ALL of my data upon my own servers, with the exception of Tumblr (because we both think its cool!).

*I’ve nicknamed this friend DPOM (which is an acronym for Daysman, Preserver of Men) although he is known by a much more popular name by many of my friends in the US and abroad.

Fast forward to today and my blogs are now hosted upon WordPress instead of Blogger, and after stumbling upon VaultPress I decided to pay premium to back up my data in 9 different locations (11 copies total).

But I still wanted to secure my tweet data. REALLY bad!

I decided that I was going to start a second blog, mainly because I didn’t want to host the tweet data here. But the question was, which domain was I going to buy?

I looked into Darnell.TV, but didn’t like the name (as I didn’t want it to be known for videos) and Darnell.cc appealed to me but DPOM thought it was stupid (we always debate) so I didn’t purchase that one either.

Months passed…then a year…but despite DPOM’s insistence, I refused to do anything about Twitter unless I had a domain ready (I’m the “need end vision” type of guy).

Then I heard that the .CO domain was available so I quickly snapped up Darnell.CO and (to the annoyance of GoDaddy) called custom service 4 times in 8 hours (or was it 5? It wasn’t 6! I think?) to verify if my purchase went through (since there was a backlog of registrations).

I used the Twitter Importer plugin (by Brad Touesnard) as well as adopted the p2Theme WordPress skin (seen below in the video) and thus Darnell.co was born!

Unfortunately Twitter Importer only imported 4 months of data (ghetto!!!) but I’ll be content with what I have.

I’m using Twitter Tools to post tweets from my microblog to Twitter, and I’ll be blogging through HelloTXT iPhone app (I’ll link a review of the app later) as well as the official WordPress app when I need to insert some images (HelloTXT sadly doesn’t upload them to my micro blog).

So thus I spent half a day setting up a micro blog in order to satisfy my weary soul (and DPOM’s too!).

And while I will still blog longer entries (like this one) here, I’ll be posting most of my frivolous thoughts upon Darnell.CO from now on. See you there!

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So I’ve been busy this weekend checking out a dozen (or is it 2 dozen?) blogging platforms, with the goal of finding inexpensive blog services that might appeal to those trying to “go pro” (as many of my friends/family are starting to post their thoughts online now).

My goal is to find a dozen services that one can blog under for less than $25/year (and yes, I’m serious).

In order to narrow the field down a bit, these platforms must also allow users to customize the layouts and (most importantly) give them the ability to insert ads or affiliate links).

Thus far I’ve found 7 blog platforms that meet these requirements (ranging from the obscure to the popular), although truthfully I am looking for more.

Anyways this is just a random note of mine, and so if this info bores you to tears, rejoice! You’re not a geek!

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Have you ever written anything (whether on a blog or in a book) only to have it copied completely and ported over to a random site?

Welcome to my world ladies and gentleman!

Back in the day when someone stole my content (which happened weekly), I would simply send a cease and desist order, or if they were anonymous I would contact their host (who more often than not shut down the scum’s site).

That was when people who were stealing my content were from nations that acknowledged copyrights.

Fast forward to today: there are now dozens who are daily stealing my content (sometimes very brazenly), with many being hosted in nations that either do not recognize US copyright laws or if they do recognize it, refuse to do anything because they currently hate my government (think China).

Since I am getting tired of this “cat and mouse” game, I think I’m going to embrace TechCrunch‘s policy and instead focus on creating great content (translation: ignore the thieves).

Will this work in the long run? Who knows! But until I can build an army of robots to lay the vicious smack down against these thieves skulls find an affordable solution, I’m going to stop sending cease and desist orders (as I’m not too sure how effective they are in English overseas).

– Posted from my iPhone

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I’ve decided to pull one of my blogs out of the BlogBurst Network, due to the fact that content theft on several of my blogs is getting out of hand. Although this is a “sign of popularity,” I have decided to remove my space blog from its ranks before it became to popular.

Although this may hurt my blog in the short term, I feel like this will benefit me in the long run.

I may also decide to launch a mini-blog network to serve as a “home” for all of these blogs, as Google seems to be compensating me nicely for maintaining eloquent posts.

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I noticed this after I published and article on The Blog Herald.

Here is a screen shot for the world to enjoy:

I guess now they can stop whining about how the world doesn’t love them.

Exit Question: With Hot Air being listed, does that mean that Google News is no longer biased towards liberals?

Exit Question 2: Am I sounding like Allah Pundit? And is Allah Pundit even a Muslim?

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Apparently their is a site stealing content from one of my weblogs, Inside Orkut.

I am not going to mention the site here (or the host) but I hope to resolve this issue privately in order to spare the hosting company bad media that can be picked up by the ever vigilant Google bots (aka Google spiders).

I’ve ran into this problem before, but thankfully the person in question last time apologized and complied (in essence, removed the offending posts as well as the site).

Hopefully a peaceful solution can be found as I have better things to do than dealing with content theft.

Update (1/11): Problem was resolved. Thanks Mr. [Host Company]!

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