May 2008 Archives
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May 30, 2008
New MovableType AntiSpam Service Supports WordPress?
I just got this from the folks over at SixApart:
We’re thrilled to let the entire Movable Type community know about TypePad AntiSpam. It’s our new, totally free comment spam blocking service for your Movable Type blog, available as a beta test version right now, that you can enable by installing a simple, free plugin.
Powered by Movable Type’s sister service TypePad, this new AntiSpam power works for all Movable Type blogs version 3.3 or later, as well as WordPress, and connects directly to the smart Junk Folder system built in to MT. By learning and adapting over time, TypePad AntiSpam just keeps getting smarter. And because TypePad AntiSpam is Open Source, just like Movable Type itself, expert users can even run their own antispam services and tweak to their heart’s content.
I'm quite glad it supports MT 3.3. It's quite curious, though, that it works with WordPress. One could see that as yet another move on their part to grab WordPress folks by seeing how good their stuff is. But the better way to look at it is that the better spam blocking gets across all blogs the more likely we are to see a reduction in spam attempts because the cost of entry will continue to rise. That's a Good Thing. I'll be installing this. Why, you might ask?
Read the rest of "New MovableType AntiSpam Service Supports WordPress?"May 29, 2008
MetroFi Shutdown Notice
Well, we knew this was coming, but it's really too bad. Having WiFi around is nice like this. I suspect that folks just didn't know it was there or didn't know you could get it for free. Additionally, it wouldn't work with mobile devices. And, of course, plenty of coffee shops and bookstores have WiFi and, if you have a choice, you'll choose the closer signal.
My experience with it was mixed. The issue was that the signal was coming from the road. So, the easiest place to use them from was in a parking lot near the road near the "tower device."
Anyway, here's the letter I got:
Read the rest of "MetroFi Shutdown Notice"May 26, 2008
The Playmobil Experiment
So, a few months ago my wife begged for a Playmobil set. I looked over what she wanted and thought it seemed fine. She ordered it. When I got out here, I got to see it all set up. It was a great, happy forest scene across two pieces of furniture.
Then her brother came out to visit this weekend. And, without prompting, made some changes. This prompted Laurie to create a collection on Flickr, in my account, for our Playmobil Expirement. Her text on the collection sums it up best:
A tranquil forest setting comes into contact with household visitors...
So here's how it works.
We have this great Playmobil set that looks a lot like our house, yard, etc. We set it up in the spare bedroom, which will eventually be a kids room, but for now is a guest room. Then we invite our houseguests to customize it as they see fit. And we document the results in picture and video form, as well as do an exit interview to make sure we understand what we're seeing...
The normal configuration will be available later. Laurie had to reset it and we haven't had a chance to take those pictures just yet. These are more entertaining, anyway.
May 18, 2008
Going Social
I'm trying to be more social. Not in the classic sense, of course. After all, I'm a geek which, by definition, means I fit many anti-social behavior patterns. Now, I seem to recall people calling me anti-social when I spent all my time hiding in my room and communicating with dozens of others doing the same thing on a MUD. I still have a hard time seeing that as being anti-social, considering most of the time I'd be socializing since I scripted my MUD client (tintin++) to handle most basic actions.
Anyway, I'm rambling on (that was a tag-line on my blog at one point). My point here is that I've started to use and/or join with a variety of the social networks. I've been on Flickr since early 2005 but never really used it much, for instance.
Why the change?
Read the rest of "Going Social"Blog Comments, Spam, and Disqus
So, as most know, I was very busy at work until just about two weeks ago. What happened two weeks ago? I left where I worked. The point? Before two weeks ago I didn't have any time at all to deal with comment spam. Nor have I had time to deal with the fact that my blog needs to be upgraded to MT4, which I'm sure will help some. That doesn't help the fact that yesterday I sorted through over 22,000 comments and 99.96% were spam. As an aside, if you've done a real comment in the last 6 months and it's not posted it never will be now.
However, I don't think upgrading to MT4 will help 100% considering the motivation of the spammers. Even sorting through a few hundred isn't something I really want to do. So, I've been evaluating Disqus for the comments. Using Disqus will provide a number of benefits. However, it also comes with a couple of negatives. First, the negatives (that's just the way I am).
As a blog owner, I want control over the comments. Using Disqus, I have full control over the comments but they aren't in my database. According, the a FAQ, though, with the MovableType plugin, the contents will be rendered via the API from the server side, so I don't have to worry about search results or anything like that.
If Disqus goes away, or even just goes down, so would my comments. For my blog, that's not critical but it would be quite annoying. They've recently had such an outage and have responded to it quite well, in my opinion. Still, It's a risk.
Disqus also requires a form of login. Well, even if it doesn't require a login, I want to require a login, so this negative would apply regardless of using Disqus or not. In any case, this will raise the bar for people commenting. I've definitely gotten a reasonable share of real anonymous comments. Do I really want those? Maybe not, but they have added to the conversations. Requiring, however, is the key to spam reductions and the key to increase the value of the comments. Disqus supports many systems so I'm confident that folks will have some place they can log in to, assuming they'll trust Disqus.
The positives for me, however, outweigh the negatives.
Read the rest of "Blog Comments, Spam, and Disqus"May 12, 2008
When a 7.8 Isn't Top News
I started going through my Google Reader feeds when I ran across folks blogging about the earthquake in China some number of hours ago. From the chatter about it, the quake sounded pretty big.
So, I figured I would go over to msnbc to check out more info about it. The top story, though, wasn't about the quake. Instead, it was about a large storm that went through a few states killing a couple of dozen people.
What a night, huh?
The quake, on the other hand, was supposedly felt from Beijing to as far south as Hanoi. That's a rather large radius, especially to not make top spot on news sites.
Don't get me wrong; the storm is probably more correctly the top news. That's really the part that's sad. It's even the same on Google News, which is supposedly all automatically generated.
Anyway, I'm off to find happy news. Does that exist anymore?
