J-Walk & Associates, Inc.

One Less Excel Blog

As of today, the world has one one less Excel blog. And it's my fault.

This morning, someone alerted be to a Wordpress-hosted blog called MaxExcelDev, run by Jim Hambly, "a Systems Analyst and Application Coordinator for a large health care company in Virginia."

Mr Hambly should have known that he can't just copy content from other sites and post it to his blog as if it were his own work. I'm all for sharing things related to Excel, but there's no excuse for outright theft of other people's work.

Thanks to the folks at Wordpress for being responsive to my DMCA notification.

- Reader Comments -

Following are comments in response to this item.
The most recent comment is at the bottom.

1. By Debra Dalgleish. Comment posted 21 January, 2009 1:50pm

   He has a blog on Live Spaces too:
   
   http://maxexceldev.spaces.live.com/blog/
   
   One of the articles is from Dick's site, not sure who owns the rest.
   
   Deb
2. By John Walkenbach. Comment posted 21 January, 2009 2:31pm

   Others at his Live Spaces site came from Andrew's Excel Tips, Excel Hints, and Ozgrid. One of his posts might be original. But it looks kind of familiar. He might have copied it from one of my books.
3. By Dick Kusleika. Comment posted 21 January, 2009 4:11pm

   I see at least two of mine on there. I'd recognize that poor writing style anywhere. So did this guy refuse to take them down when you asked, or did you go straight to the DMCA?
4. By John Walkenbach. Comment posted 21 January, 2009 4:45pm

   There was no contact info on his site, except for his name. So I contacted Wordpress, and they told me how to submit a DMCA thingy.
   
   If you Google MaxExcelDev, you can see at least some of the taken-down site in Google's cache. The material is copied verbatim, and he even hot-linked to the original site's images!
5. By Tim Mayes. Comment posted 22 January, 2009 12:13am

   Good job, John. I will never understand how people can live with themselves when they do stuff like this.
6. By Chandoo. Comment posted 22 January, 2009 2:51am

   Good job John,
   
   Wordpress.com does have very good DMCA support. One of my excel articles was stolen sometime back and poor chap let the blog send a trackback to me. So I followed it and left a comment but nothing happened for a day. Next day I used the top bar to complain and bingo the site went down.
7. By Ross. Comment posted 22 January, 2009 9:36am

   there's some of my posts on there tooo!!!
   The cheeky git!
   
   http://www.blog.methodsinexcel.co.uk/2006/01/28/streamline-your-excel-toolbars-2/
   
   Well spotted Jon and Debra, can we get him off live space too?
8. By John Walkenbach. Comment posted 22 January, 2009 10:28am

   To get the Live Space site closed, someone who has had their material copied has to file the complaint. I didn't see any of my material there, so someone else will have to do it.
9. By ross. Comment posted 22 January, 2009 3:53pm

   I clicked on the "report abuse" button and went through the steps. That was about 8 hours ago, and I have not check my e-mails yet, the site is still up though. Will report back as events unfold!
10. By John Walkenbach. Comment posted 22 January, 2009 5:33pm

    Remember, it's a Microsoft site. There's a 90% chance that nothing will ever happen as a result of contacting them. I think Microsoft is still trying to figure out how the Web works. They're good at putting new stuff up, but then it always seems to die on the vine. Next thing you know, it's gone.
11. By Andrew. Comment posted 26 January, 2009 3:25pm

    Maybe I should be annoyed but this guy is kind of funny. What a silly man, not nice
12. By Ross. Comment posted 27 January, 2009 7:45am

    I got an e-mail back from MS, I have to send them some stuff to them all legal stuff. It's to much effort for me to sort it all out - it's only 2 blog posts! It's not very good of MS, why they cant just pull the page I don't know, if I get a spare hour I want to spend on sorting it out then I might do it, but I probably wont.
    Shame MS are so bad at stuff which should be so simple.
13. By Dick Kusleika. Comment posted 29 January, 2009 3:06pm

    I've composed a DMCA complaint that I'll be sending registered mail to Microsoft tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.
14. By ros. Comment posted 30 January, 2009 5:04am

    I wonder then Dick, it they will just remove your bits? I had a look at the form thing they send through, but i'm f~~k~~ if I'm gonna send a letter to get my posts taken of an MS site! talk about donkeys, some human could fix the problem in about 2 mins. Oh well, let us know how you get on.
    Cheers
    Ross
15. By Ken. Comment posted 06 February, 2009 5:02am

    It looks like the posts are still up but now have attribution.
    
    http://maxexceldev.spaces.live.com/?_c11_BlogPart_BlogPart=blogview&_c=BlogPart&partqs=amonth=1&ayear=2008
    
    Interesting that the IMG links throughout the site apparently refer back to the original sites' servers.