Linkrot followup. Because I have archives of this weblog going back to 1997, and DaveNets going back to 1994, I have a pretty good idea which pubs take linkrot seriously and which don't. The NY Times, even though they have a gate that keeps the search engines out, has a perfect record. My pointers to the Times are good going back to the beginning. The SJ Merc, which I and others blasted over the last few days, has a lousy record, but (this is important) they get extra heat because they have Dan Gillmor. Other pubs such as Fortune (yesterday's top link) are even worse. Not only do they break links just months after articles run, they have the gall (the kind I don't admire) to redirect to their home page, and they open a popup ad on every click. Their servers are god-awful slow too.
To give you an idea of the damage caused by Knight-Ridder's transition, just do a Google search for Dan Gillmor. Google is very confused too. The first thing they say about Dan is “Cofax Error.” Now is that the same guy who wrote the piece about domain names not being important because Google can find you even if you have a whacked out url? Of course I would point to that piece, if I could find it. 
[Scripting News]