We recently noticed that both the Tagroll and Linkroll that power the Bookmarks page have not been working since July 26, when the good folks at Delicious.com (aka Del.icio.us) rolled out a major update. Until the bug is fixed on their end, and the data feed's service restored, bookmarks and tags will not be visible. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Follow-up to the previous posting (and after reading an article about scraping in Wired Magazine titled "Data Wars"): Until there's a better way to control the display settings for the News Aggregator feature, without having to change the source code for the module that powers the RSS feed aggregation and display, we have elected to restrict this feature to members only. Even though we don't use bots, and full credit and link-backs are provided. Sorry!

The Lookdeeper News aggregator has just been opened up to non-members. In addition, new feed categories have been created, and new feed sources will be added over time. Enjoy!

We just performed a minor site update to address several critical security vulnerabilities (they're always critical) and fix some minor bugs.

A new feature has been added that allows members to upload audio files to the site. Once posted, a file can be streamed, but not downloaded. So this is not file sharing, get it? ; )

A nice feature of the upload utility is support for ID3 song information. So any metadata such as Title, Artist, Album, Genre, etc. that was embedded in the file (either through iTunes, Winamp, or some other music software) will be preserved and saved along with the audio. Additional metadata including encoding format, compression rate, and file size, is also determined and saved for every file. Why? Because sometimes that's important information.   read more »

Based on some constructive user feedback, posting comments no longer requires you to preview them first. That being said, it's still a good idea to preview your comments before posting them. Heck, sometimes it's even a good idea to leave them for at least an hour to give yourself a chance to cool off before hitting the submit button. ;-)   read more »

There is now a contact page. Messages can be sent to either "accounts", "feedback", or "administrator" using an online submission form.

Additionally, the ability to embed 3rd party video into blog posts has been added. Most major video hosts are supported, and others can be enabled if there is demand.

Finally, an anti-spam security feature has been implemented (via Captcha) to reduce the chance of spam being submitted in comments.

Beginning in September, Lookdeeper.com will activate user accounts for new member requests. The site features currently only available to full members will become available to all new members as well. Membership requests received between now and the September launch will be reviewed, activation confirmation emails will be sent out following the launch.

Just updated the site's engine with the latest critical security updates and bug-fixes.

This marks the Nth iteration of LookDeeper.com. Originally founded in September 1999, LookDeeper.com has been an enigma at the best of times. I don't expect that will change much. What I do expect is that it will continue to serve as a platform to host thoughts, experiments and research into online technology and its intersection with culture.

As they say in the old media, "stay tuned, we'll be right back!"