Beware of Quechup

Jed Hartman posts a warning that if you let Quechup search your email records for other users it will spam your contact list to get other people to sign up.

So don't do it.

In fact, be wary of any "social networking" site that asks you to do this. As he recommends, check the net and see what other people have to say about a site before signing up.

I personally received three copies of my friend's invite to join Quechup, so I was suspicious already.


ETA: and when I tried to cancel my membership it says "Unable to log deregistration details." -WTF? lame lame lame lame lame.

(second attempt to cancel, using one of the set causes instead of 'other' appears to have gone through.)

Tobias summarizes a topic very well. :)

If anyone interested in the SFWA DMCA abuse story has not read Tobias Buckell's summary, with quotes from many people including a Coda from the SFWA president, I recommend you do.

(Long story short: SFWA used a DMCA-based request to pull copywrited material from document sharing site Scribd; their list was flawed, and the site pulled material from authors SFWA was not authorized to represent -- material the authors actually wanted to have up there. Many authors railed about the abuse of authority and posted more public material just to demo that it's all right (a win for the public, IMHO). SFWA promises it will not happen again.)

ETA: Steven Silver points to what he says is an even better write-up on Scalzi's blog

Dancing in the Streets

In case you have not heard, there will be dancing in the streets of downtown Ann Arbor today from 2 to 7 pm. Perhaps they got wind of who won the Hugo Awards or the nice list of Guests of Honor for Montreal's Worldcon in 2009. :)

There will be things for kids to do at the dancing festival, including an instrument petting zoo, which I think is quite a keen idea.

Congrats to all the award winners. For those of you who, like me, could not make it to Japan, I recommend checking out Chris O'Shea's photos of the awards ceremony to get a feel for the thing. Ultraman! So very cute and nifty.