Several members have asked me why there have been glitches on the websites over the past day, so I figured I'd write up a blog series on the subject. Here is part 1:

I received an email Friday from Google, telling me that they had shut down my Adsense account. No reason was given, as happened with me a year ago with an account I had set up for another website. Whatever I didn't like about Google beforehand, I really can't stand now. I know that it's nearly impossible to get away from Google since they have their fingers in everything, but I have decided to try, bit by bit. The way I see it, Google owe me a lot of money. The first time they canceled my account, I had $160 of earnings for the previous month and $100 for the current month - all of which they kept. This time around, they took about $160 for the previous month and about $70 for the current month. Thus, Google owe me $490. I've tried contacting the Better Business Bureau, but the Google people flat-out lie to them, and nothing gets resolved. There's no use trying to go to small claims court against a company with billions of dollars in capital.

Aside from their totalitarian tactics with the Internet, two of their executives were caught meddling in the affairs of Egypt a few weeks ago, and many other governments are slamming the gavel on Google's information harvesting tactics, which invade the privacy of millions of people. They push for the corrupt Net Neutrality laws because of loopholes that would given them immunity and tons of cash. They also dodge taxes with so many other loopholes that they pay at about a 3% rate in the United States, where a company like WalMart pays over 30%. I'm sick of their corruption and want to distance myself from it.

Last night, in my rush to remove all traces of Google Adsense and replace it with JumpTap before some friends came over from out of town, I missed some code references that broke parts of DSiPaint.com. These have been fixed.

I will be looking for an alternative to Google Analytics on all the websites. There are several. I just need to find the one that will work the best. I may even go with a self-hosted solution.

Onward to blog 2...