Archive for September, 2006

Sold car!

Thursday, September 14th, 2006

Hey, I sold the car that prompted this whole thing! Awesome! Not quite as good as selling a billboard, but close enough I suppose.

And hey, if anyone is selling a car in the Kalamazoo, MI area, then let me know! Here’s what I’m looking for:

  • Under $5000
  • 4 doors
  • Newish (no older than 1998)
  • “shiny”
  • Under 15,000 miles/year

If anyone has an idea, send it to me at dustin@virtualroadside.com! Thanks.

Testbed Errors

Sunday, September 10th, 2006

I’ve received some complaints about the testbed not working under non-IE browsers, and so I’ve modified the testbed to warn you about using local files. If you’re not using IE, then it is not possible to use the testbed without modifying your browsers security settings.

If you are using IE, you may ‘upload’ any image or file you wish. However, if you are using Firefox or some other browser, you must specify the valid URL of a file somewhere that the browser can access. If anyone has a decent hack around this, let me know! In any case, the testbed checks the filename you pass it and tries to determine whether the file is local or not.

Hope this clears up some of the confusion! 🙂

Newspaper Article!

Saturday, September 9th, 2006

Check it out!

http://www.westernherald.com/news/2006/09/07/News/Student.Invents.Unique.Way.To.Buy.New.Car.By.Way.Of.Internet-2261304.shtml

Also, looks like I’m the #1 result on google for ‘virtual roadside’! Pretty neat!

New Facebook News Feeds

Thursday, September 7th, 2006

I thought I’d take some time to write something unrelated to the Virtual Roadside for a minute. Most of the people I know (in college at least) have a facebook account, and most of them are probably aware of the new changes there. I guess theres a few thoughts about that I’d like to share.

a) If I had created one of those massive groups to protest it, I definitely would have tried to cash in on it. I know, its pitiful. But 500,000 people in under two days? I’d love that kind of traffic. It’s been amusing to watch the traffic numbers go way up on those groups and the amount of people just flocking to it..

b) More serious note — On these groups there, it seems like a lot of people keep saying the same thing: Why can’t we come together for important issues, like AIDS or starving children or “The Virtual Roadside” :-p or something that actually matters? Its amazing how much people talk about it (hey look, I’m doing it too!), but really there aren’t any serious efforts to resolve that problem.

Actually, I’ve been trying to think of an effective way to solve that problem, and I’ve got a few interesting ideas I might play with in the future…

c) All of the information people are complaining about is already available publicly, and I think this should serve as a huge warning to people about websites — everyone has access to them, and if you put something stupid there, be prepared for everyone to see it!

Of course, at the same time, I have mixed feelings about this. I understand point C above, but at the same time I recognize that a lot of people are complaining about the loss of their perceived privacy — personally, I think the posting of certain types of information should be opt-in (like whether you added a friend, or wrote on someone’s wall) and other should be opt-out (like if you updated your status, or wrote a new ‘note’, or some other ‘sensible’ public information). I dunno… lots of mixed feelings here about that. Leave a comment and let me know what you think!

Oh by the way, continue letting your friends know about ‘The Virtual Roadside!’. Been getting lots of traffic, thanks for that! 🙂

Another ad SOLD!

Monday, September 4th, 2006

Looks like another ad has shown up on the homepage! Thats a total of three ads worth $930! Looks like they got in just in time for the Herald article this week. I’m still working on getting some more press, so look for more announcements here!

I have to say, thanks to everyone for the support. The only way I’ve been able to sustain this kind of traffic is because of you. Continue telling your friends, posting on blogs, and together we can make this another “piece of Internet history”!

This is good. 🙂