Astounding Incompetence Seen at FoxBusiness.com!

On Monday, February 4, users clicking on any of the right-most links on Fox Business expected to see a story on Microsoft/Yahoo.


Instead, these hapless clicking saps saw this!


I've been following the Yahoo-Microsoft acquisition/merger/hostile takeover closely and went over to FoxBusiness.com to sample their reactionary take on the deal.

Lo and behold, all of the links on the right side of the page (to something called "EMac's Stock Watch" are broken. They link to the incorrect URL "http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.co/" (should be ...foxbusiness.com, of course).

This error, which resulted in the diversion of millions of hits to a broken link, tells us a few things about Fox's Web operations: first, they don't have any kind of error-checking in their CMS, second, the people running the CMS are bad typists, and third, nobody at FoxBusiness.com even reads their own site, much less makes sure the links work. Fourth, FoxBusiness.com's webmasters don't think enough of their property to install a customized "Error 404" page. "Let them read MSNBC" must be their corporate mantra.

Truly appalling, incompetent webmastering. Rupert, it's time to clean house!

DailySonic.com, Pioneering Podcasting Site, Falls Silent

DailySonic.com, "a free mp3zine / podcast for the hip-clectic crowd" has gone silent. Launched in early 2005, DailySonic uploaded device-agnostic MP3 files whose content was an NPR-like mix of news, narration, and licensed underground music content.

DailySonic's four New York-based founders, Aaron Taylor Waldman, Adam Varga, Anni Katz, and Isaac Dolom, didn't seem to care too much about whether DailySonic.com ever made money; they just wanted to do something cool on the Web, and it was precisely this quality that gave DailySonic purchase with its listeners. Unfortunately, the Web's very voraciousness augers against the pure of heart; the fun and cool can turn into a hellish grind in just a few months, unless of course, one can motivate people through fear or greed, which usually destroys friendships. Perhaps the four friends decided that they wouldn't let a Web site get between them.

Sadly, nothing remains of DailySonic's quirky podcasts, so it will be impossible for the world to know just how cool this site really was.