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15-07-2003, 08:31 AM
|  | Admin | | Join Date: Dec 2002 Age: 40
Posts: 1,258
| | | GeoExpat gets its one minute of fame!
1 minute down ... 14 more to go in a very Andy Warholian way for this site.
We got our first major press article written up by The Register (an ultra cool and irreverant IT website). http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/31734.html NATO hunts missing WMDs in Hong Kong Quote:
The hunt for elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction has shifted to Hong Kong.
You'll recall the popular prank page created by a British pharmacist and Register fan Anthony Cox. His spoof tops the Google search results for "weapons of mass destruction", and so hitting the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button takes you straight to the page.
Well, reader Shiram Chaubal in Hong Kong was baffled when he began to receive thousands of hits on his website, GeoExpat.com, an English language resource for expats on the former British colony.
Turning to his referrer logs, Shri discovered that they were coming from Google users typing "weapons of mass destruction i'm feeling lucky" into the search engine. Among the visitors are WMD-curious surfers from NATO, as this snapshot of the GeoExpat.com logs illustrates.
Perhaps they need a simple HOW-TO? It could avoid future disappointments for the cream of military intelligence. ®
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15-07-2003, 10:02 AM
|  | Registered User | | Join Date: Feb 2003 Age: 28
Posts: 68
| | yo Shri,
No looking back from here.
Perhaps, e-desicool can ask Bush for a USD cheque, as geoexpat showed them a hope of finding WMD (for a while)  | |
15-07-2003, 10:05 AM
| | Admin | | Join Date: Dec 2002 Age: 40
Posts: 1,258
| | Unfortunately the banks in HK charge too much for cashing US$ checks. 
Would be cool to walk into a bank with a check signed by Dubya though.  | |
25-07-2003, 11:30 AM
| | Admin | | Join Date: Dec 2002 Age: 40
Posts: 1,258
| | Simon Parry over at http://www.reddoornews.com picked up the story in the Register and did a local version, which was carried in the SCMP today. http://hongkong.scmp.com/hknews/ZZZ4SRK5DID.html Quote:
A Hong Kong website operator has inadvertently been caught up in the hunt for weapons of mass destruction after an internet glitch started directing defence experts from around the globe to his site.
GeoExpat.com website - usually used by expatriates to sell fridges and sofas or to find out where the best restaurants are - has been getting up to 2,000 hits a day from people curious about Iraq's supposed hidden arsenal.
The hits began after a prankster posted a joke web page, which pops up any time someone uses the Google internet search engine and types in "weapons of mass destruction" and then uses the "I'm feeling lucky" search button.
About a fortnight ago a lively chat thread discussing the prank started on the GeoExpat.com site, which was started by Shriram Chaubal. Suddenly, anyone trying to find the bogus web page using the Google search engine was directed to GeoExpat.com.
Mr Chaubal, 36, said he had been getting between 1,500 and 2,000 hits a day in the past fortnight, some of which could be traced back to Nato and other international defence agencies. "It's quite a novelty for us," he said. "Usually we just get people looking for a nightclub in Hong Kong, not people looking for weapons of mass destruction. There have been a lot of very strange three-letter acronyms that stand for different defence agencies hitting that thread. We have some sophisticated logging software so we can see where the visits are coming from. They included Nato and the EU.
"We could have redirected the thread but we found it entertaining watching all these hits come in from organisations around the world who would not normally come anywhere near our website."
Mr Chaubal, who works for a computer software company and runs GeoExpat.com in his spare time, said he did not feel threatened at coming under the potential scrutiny of the weapons experts.
"I haven't found it sinister," he said. "I just think it's all amusing."
The bogus page, created by British pharmacist Anthony Cox, takes Google users to a fake error message which reads: "The weapons you are looking for are currently unavailable. The country might be experiencing technical difficulties or you may need to adjust your weapons inspectors' mandate."
Mr Cox claims he has received a message from the United Nations weapons inspection team in New York telling him: "You cheered up our office."
| 13 minutes left .... | |
26-07-2003, 12:38 AM
|  | Registered User | | Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: In the Lair of the Village Idiot's Apprenctice
Posts: 2,160
| | | scmp links should always beprefaced by "unkinkable'-took them long enough.
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