Yesterday we launched the Valve Media Ltd Hub, which will be the central port of call for the Valve Media selection of sites & services. It has been launched online as part of the CSS Reboot launch schedule, being launched on November 1st. We hope you like the design and hope we can be of service to you. Some of it still needs to be completed, so please keep checking back. Hopefully we'll get some of the other sites online soon as well.
Pop on over and check out what we offer - there's a lot more we're planning on doing and some things which are not listed that we already do (but soon will be) so if you have any questions then get in touch.
I just went to the Adsense site, but instead of going via www.google.com/adsense I accessed it via www.google.co.uk/adsense. Since I had installed IE7 on my XP laptop, it alerted me to the fact that the SSL certificate did not match the URL, firstly by displaying a page asking if I wanted to continue and then by turning the adress bar a kind of pink colour.
Although there is nothing amazing about that, I just found it funny that Google didn't purchase another SSL certificate for the .co.uk domain or even a wildcard one and use subdomains instead, hence the idea of going on the cheap side. Google is a company afterall and even the big ones like to keep the costs down. A better point is that the more evident security warnings will help reduce the number of issues that the average Windows user will get fooled by, hopefully.
It has once again been a while since my last post, time goes quickly. Anyway, we've all known that with things online moving towards the simple ideas, it has long been thought that the sites that provide things that the masses want will be popular. In the case of YouTube and many others people are saying "Why didn't I think of that?"
Looking back it's easy to ask the question but it's not very productive. I'd spend my time trying to think of the next best thing to attract the attention of a big company so hopefully they'll buy it, but it's not as easy as it sounds else everyone would be doing it.
Good luck if that is what you're also trying to do and well done to the YouTube founders.
I just tried sending a reply back to Vodafone customer services regarding an issue I've got with my online account. I used my Gmail account (of course) only to get the following sent back:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 8): 550 5.7.1 Mail from
64.233.182.186 refused - see http://www.dnsbl.sorbs.net/
After a quick check, I found that it was a Google assigned IP address. After doing a search of the SORBS database, it was confirmed. It's interesting to note though that the PTR record has changed from what was listed at the time of the SORBS database entry to nf-out-0910.google.com but that would not avoid the block, since it is IP based. The change must have been for another reason.
Address: 64.233.182.186
Record Created: Sat Apr 22 04:30:03 2006 GMT
Record Updated: Sat Apr 22 04:30:03 2006 GMT
Additional Information: Received: from nproxy.gmail.com (nproxy.gmail.com [64.233.182.186]) by desperado.sorbs.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 670B611439 for <[email]>; Sat, 22 Apr 2006 13:15:05 +1000 (EST)
Currently active and flagged to be published in DNS
If you wish to request a delisting please do so through the Support System.
I noticed that Sun is one of the companies involved in SORBS, so I tried sending an email from Gmail to my Sun address but it went through okay, strange. Maybe Sun is part of it, but not actually using it. Anyway, it seems that people who are using SORBS can't currently receive mail from Gmail users.
The funny thing is that Google is part of SORBS too - so part of it, but blocked by it! If Google were using SORBS, then it would mean that Gmail users would probably be unable to send email to other Gmail users unless Google had something in place to always allow it, regardless of any blocking list or system. Maybe Google are using it, but I don't think they currently are.
Aftering seeing the current block myself and typing this post, I did a quick Google search and found discussion about this issue. It seems that Spamcop have also blocked Gmail, but at present the IP in question is not in the database. The blocks are due to Gmail not including the injecting user IP in the headers, which in one respect gives an element of privacy but something that nobody else really does and it also allowed spammers to hide.
I guess I won't be emailing Vodafone for a while, not from Gmail anyway. I wonder what other companies are using SORBS, that I won't be able to contact using Gmail? This is an example of when free email isn't always the best option but I'm sure it will be sorted out soon.
Although a lot of the time Google is great for finding what I am looking for, sometimes it does not return any related results, even for common subjects. When this happens it is annoying, as although there are other search engines which can be used, a lot of people, including myself only ever use Google these days. At this point in time, the question to be asked is:
When Google does not have the answer, what do you do?
If you fancy building something interesting, StompBox is something that is a good idea. There are commercial products on the market, but building one yourself can be a lot more fun.
The StompBox is a WWAN (Wireless Wide Area Network)access point & router. If you like working on projects to build things, then this will more than likely be of interest. Since a flash image is provided to get the system to boot, the problems that were encountered getting that working have already been resolved.
All you would need is a sticker on your car or other form of transport stating that your vehicle is a wireless access point. The price tag associated with this project is quite low as well so worth giving it a go. I might get around to it at some point!
The Gumball drivers can be tracked online using a service which maps the location of each car via a GPS receiver in each car along with some software that either runs on a mobile phone or PDA.
It's a handy system which is probably in use by courier companies for example but having it in use on the Gumball is good. Some drivers have switched it off because there are reports that various police forces are using it to help them catch drivers going over the local speed limits in various countries.
Ben pointed out to me recently that Flickr is still using AdSense on the site pages, which I found amusing. I wonder how long it'll be before they are removed, if at all? Maybe Overture could be used instead. Time will tell.
I downloaded and installed Firefox on my desk computer at work today, then proceeded to get a number of extensions. Then I noticed that it crashes every now and again. I'm not sure what is causing it, but first things first, I'll remove or disable the extensions one by one and see if that eliminates the problem. If so, I can then avoid any problem plugins and see if anyone else is having any problems, as it could be a conflict with certain ones I am using.
I've been meaning to give Firefox a proper go for a while but had not got to that task yet, with the news that there may be no support for IE7 on Windows 2000, I'm sure a lot of other people will swap to an alternative browser than IE at some point. Being able to manage bookmarks and having the option of sharing them via a central file stored on a server is a good advantage, as well as being able to browse with tabs.
These features have existed in Firefox for a long time and as we all know IE is lacking in a lot of functionality in comparison with Firefox and a number of other popular browsers such as Opera.
I use Furl and del.icio.us at the moment, but I'll be looking to using them more to store and manage my bookmarks in combination with browser plugins to allow easy access and management from virtually any browser.
We're seeing a lot more services being used over the web which make access to information we want available from any Internet connected computer, by accessing data stored on servers and eradicating the need to be locked down to an individual computer.
I'm still having to use GPRS at the moment because I can't get a 3G signal where I am currently staying and also there is no date for the ADSL being activated. I'm probably going to be moving to another place in the next few months, so I'll be able to sort things out there. For the moment I'll just have to deal with this really slow GPRS connection when I am not at work.
Soon using GPRS or 3G connections on trains will be a thing of the past. On the train, users can now connect via standard 802.11b Wi-Fi and using onboard equipment, a conversion to 802.16d is made. The system does not need to wait until 802.16e is available, so the implementation can be started earlier. Currently the service is free to use but from June T-Mobile will start charging users. I'm sure a lot of people will use this service as it'll mean real broadband speeds are available on trains instead of limited more by using 3G and GPRS.
As all of the base stations along the track are not yet in place, the system switches users over to GPRS when there is no Wi-Fi signal, of course the user may notice the slower speeds but at least the conection will be maintained. I'm sure it won't be long before we'll be playing online games on our PSP consoles over Wi-Fi.
After the recent announcements regarding a new Google service that allows users to upload videos, it's now available. You can use your existing Google account to login. If you have lots of video and want another distribution platform, then this service could be ideal.
People will be able to search for material and your video matches will show and since a description and other information can be provided you can increase the chances of people viewing your material. Of course, any DMCA violations will be investigated so it's not worth uploading material that you do not have permission to distribute.
It'll be a really good tool for people making videos to share their material via Google which is used by so many people. The fact people can charge others to download their material, is an interesting feature. What will be next, audio uploads?
BuzzTracker has been busy mapping Google News for quite some time now. If you're interested in certain news topic, you can easily find a lot of different news stories in relation to that topic or search via a certain geographic area. It's a tool which I'm sure will be used quite a lot, give it a try.
In what is the first of a kind, a PSP portal has been setup to allow you to easily browse to various sites on your PSP. You can access the Internet via the browser in Wipeout Pure and by changing some DNS information you can visit any site.
If you want to read a comic on your PSP you can also do that already. There will be a lot more on the way, no doubt.
Google has launched a new feature which will save us time when looking for answers. Certain queries will now produce the exact information you require as part of the search results. The link from which the information was gathered is also displayed so the site will get some publicity from that.
I've tried it and it did not appear to work for the examples listed in the article I read or for a number of other search criteria that I tried. It's in the early stages of development implementation, so maybe it's not working at the moment but when it starts helping out with more answers to questions, it'll be great.
Amaztype is pretty smart for searching for books. At the moment only the main Amazon site is supported but it's going to expand. It allows you to search for books and not only are the covers displayed, they are displayed taking the form of the letters of your provided search criteria, mine was Linux.
Details are provided on each book and you can then be taken to the appropriate Amazon listing if required. It provides a new look to searching Amazon and keeps things nice and simple as well as providing just the information you want.
Gmail has increased the amount of space available to accounts to over 2GB and although the increase rate has slowed down, it's still going. I'm sure we'll see increased space being provided by other providers shortly if previous examples are followed.
I'm more than happy with 1GB so anything else is a bonus. If the size of attachments are increased on Gmail people will use it to store a lot more files.
If you visit the Gmail page today you'll see the counter gradually going up and up. Each account will have 2GB by the end of today and with plans for this to increase even more in due course, the other providers have got something to think about. It's the Gmail 1st birthday, so Gmail are dishing out more space as a present.
You may have also noticed Google Gulp. An interesting read, but of course in case you have not yet been informed, it's the 1st of April which means it's the biggest day for pranks and jokes of the year so Google Gulp is probably a joke, but we said that about Gmail. Maybe Google are expanding and taking on the drinks industry. Who knows, you could be asking for a pint of Google in no time!
It appears that WordPress has been using spam related methods to work the Google index. Due to the high PR of the WordPress site, hidden articles have been created that relate to topics commonly found in blog comment spam. Using AdWords & pointing the advertisements to these articles causes more hits to the WordPress site which of course makes the site more appealing to companies that might want to advertise on the WordPress site.
As well as that, artcles were provided by Hot Nacho who pay people to write short articles on various subjects. Those articles then appear on high ranking sites such as WordPress and Matt was paid a flat fee for hosting the artcles and add banners.
Apart from the financial gains that are possible, it's not much different to what a lot of us did a while ago by trying to fill up the first page of results on Google for common blog comment spam subjects, such as Viagra. Although we didn't have any financial motive for doing so, it's spam just like what Matt has been doing with WordPress but we didn't use any hidden methods or do it for financial gain. Even if all proceeds would be going to the project, the search engines Google & Yahoo! see what WordPress has been doing as spam and for the momemnt have removed all traces of the site from their indexes.
On the other hand, it's using the power of those search terms to get the project site to show up on the first page for a lot of spam related topics and so removing the spam sites from the first page or top results. That in itself is good, it's basically using the spam related words and a high Google PR, much like the blog related spam aimed to use to higher PR of blogs.
I think what bothers a lot of people is not the method used, but the fact it was not announced. People don't mind any financial gains for the people that make the project happen or for the project itself, if it is announced. All of this was done on the quiet without anything being said. For people that support the project to find out in this manner, is not the best.
Everyone makes mistakes but the key is being able to learn from them. Obviously Google does not like what has happened, so it won't continue but it's the support of the project itself and the WordPress name that could loose out. Bad publicity spreads easily, yet good things take a lot longer to become known.
Ben uses WordPress now, I'll ask him to post about what he thinks about it, especially since he has not posted in a while, but there are reasons for that. The main thing is that others can learn from this and be sure to make public issues which the community should know and not have to find out in a way which causes damage that could have been avoided.
There are varied opinions on the matter, although not a user of WordPress, I think that even announcing what was going on would not correct the fact that the methods used were asking for trouble. For example, if Google refuse to list any WordPress links in the index from now on, that has caused a lot more damage that the increased hits and advertising revenue would have generated for the project. Even so, it's not a worthy case to all jump on Matt. Think about all the good work that has been done, people should be thanking him.
Yahoo! is going to increase the amount of storage space available on free Yahoo! Mail accounts. At the moment the limit is 250MB but the new storage limit will be 1GB, which will put it level with Gmail. I'm wondering if Hotmail will be the next to upgrade again, since we all know they follow each other like a flock of sheep.
Most people I know have an account from all three providers and will still probably use all three for various things regardless of the features or space provided per account. Really, out of all three, there is no winner from the point of winning most users over totally as I'd say it'll be a small minority that use one service exclusively.
More storage space can only be a good thing. These limits will mean that seperate storage accounts that are available, will no longer be needed, especially if the interfaces that services such as I-Drive provide are available via Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo Mail! for free or a small charge. There are lots of free online storage providers too, but unless backed by a big company usually they don't last very long as a free service, as with most free online services.
That might be true, but compromised Windows systems on ADSL or cable Internet links, don't really constitute systems that have been compromised and possibly had sites that they host defaced in the generally accepted sense. You might remember the days of the Attrition defacement mirror or one of the currently updated alternatives. The systems that hosted all of those sites were defaced and more often than not, security was circumvented by a human.
Reports such as this one, fail to even consider that bots running on Windows systems are probably the result of a worm or trojan for example rather than a human actually attacking a system individually. The worm attacks are mostly automated in all respects.
To attribute the status of most hacked country in that sense as we know it, due to a vast number of bots running on Windows systems belonging to computers owned by people who really don't have a clue how to use them, let alone computer security is laughable.
It's not a true representation of the amount of systems that have been compromised, simply because to arrive at a reasonable result all angles would have to be covered and taking results gathered statistics of bot networks is certainly not enough to justify the title being given to the UK or indeed any other country.
e-Scrabble has received a cease and desist order from Hasbro, who created this game. I'm sure it's because the Scrabble name has been used. If the name is changed, will they still be intersted in trying to close the site down?
The amount of users is high so it would be sad for them to see the site go, but looking at the letter it seems Hasbo are referring to use of the name and board game rules. I'd simply change the name and keep the rules, that would probably be the end of it. Hasbro will be annoying a lot of Scrabble users by causing the site to be shut down. If the domain is handed over they would probably start a service that you have to pay for, the money aspect is taking over yet again.
It's fair enough that the name and such belongs to Hasbo but by shutting this site down they are giving a red light to players of Scrabble who may in turn decide to no longer purchase any games from Hasbo and with the amount of users that e-Scrabble has, if they all decided to stop buying Hasbo games, Hasbo would wish they had of provided support for it rather than issuing cease and desist orders.
Maybe Hasbo should take notice of other recent purchases of web based services and buy e-Scrabble, it's popular and Hasbo would get respect for doing so as well as financial gains, depending on how they moved things forward. Taking the approach they have, all parties will loose out.
Yahoo! is buying Flickr as being reported. The announcement contains quite a lot of information and answers a number of questions that people nay have. Primarily, Flickr will remain as it is, but will have the funding behind it to take the deveopment cycle to the next level.
Yahoo will gain features in other areas from Flickr and you'll be able to login to Flickr using an existing Yahoo account for example. Check out the announcement for further information.
Yahoo! has recently made some details available about the up and coming Yahoo! 360 service. I've signed up to get an account as soon as the public beta goes live, you can do the same if you wish. It's not so much going to be like Friendster or Orkut in the social networking aspect, but more about providing people you really know with information. Sharing pictures, music & spreading personal news are just some of the things which this service can be used for.
See what Yahoo! has to say about it here and register your interest.
Google has updated the AdSense program to allow for payments to publishers to now be made via electronic funds transfer and also on a monthly basis. I was wondering when this would be an option and now it is, I'm sure it will be welcomed!
You can of course choose to hold your payments until a later date but if you require a monthly payment that is now an option. You can still choose to receive a cheque and have it sent by secure courier delivery but istant transfer is much better for most people.
Google has started to offer Gmail accounts to users of Google. I've not seen the link appear myself yet, but others have already. I have got 50 invites to give out again at the moment, but I don't think these will be of use for that much longer unless Google decides to give out accounts via Google for a while.
Check out this blog post for more information and an image of what the page looks like.
It's being reported that Yahoo! is about to release its own version of the popular AdSense program from Google. Finally a little more competition it seems is about to appear on the market. There is already Overture, but AdSense is the only program which allows individual publishers to promote other sites via their own sites very easily.
Next I'm sure we will see MSN come up with something, as we all know these things always follow the "sheep" methodology. One does it so they all do, only this time round it has taken a little longer for the others to catch up, but it's not really a bag thing as it has happened eventually and soon people will have more choice.
Yahoo! has decided to open up access to its search infrastucture to more deveopers which will mean that more people and companies can start building applications that link with Yahoo! and services that it provides. It looks like this is another move aimed in the open source direction, not really open source in this case but in the same same kind of area, by allowing more people the chance to introduce more applications and services that people may want.
More eyes as it were, means more ideas. More ideas, means more problems get solutions & so it continues.
I'm not able to do a lot on the Internet at night at the moment as I am currently waiting for the ADSL to be activated down at the house I'm staying at. Having a proper connection is one of the things that I certainly miss about being back at my proper house.
At the moment I'm only really using that connection at the weekend when I go back up there. As soon as I get this other connection enabled it'll make my life a lot easier as at the moment I only have a decent connection when at work during the day. It proves the point you certainly miss things when they are not available.
I've been looking for something like these for quite a while. Well, not looking, but thinking I would like an easier way to manage my bookmarks that is web based and available from any location with Internet access. I use del.icio.us to manage my links on my blog which allows me to easily make the links available to others. I've not yet used Filangy as it is invite only so if anyone has a spare invite, please leave a comment and I'll get back to you.
I've had a little play with Furl and I like what that has to offer. I'll probably import all of my browser links over to Furl and Filangy and see which works the best for me. With Furl you can share links, keep them private and also search your links. Being able to access the links from any Internet connected computer is one of the major advantages over having only one copy of any saved links on a local computer.
It's looking like web based management of various types of data is becoming more and more popular as people want unrestricted access to their data. The question is, what will be the next big thing in online data managment and availability?
It's all about networking and having access to your information when you want it. Not so much about distributing the information itself, but more of a focus on providing a wider area of access to that information.
We'll be getting a nice 4Mbps ADSL connection activated at this house I'm currently staying at during the week, which is good news. It may take around a month to be activated though as Bulldog will have to install their equipment in the exchange, as part of the LLU project.
It will be worth waiting for, at double the amount of bandwidth of my ADSL connection at my family house and at a fraction of the cost it is a really great deal. Bulldog is by Cable & Wireless and as I've spoken to someone at work who has Bulldog broadband and they like it, there will hopefully be nothing bad for me to say about the service.
It's going to be a long wait though, I'll keep chasing them to see if things can be moved along a little quicker.
Smile is an Internet only bank. To be honest, they make me want to do anything but smile. I opened the account about 5 or 6 months ago, as at the time I was considering getting a loan. I've sorted all of that out now and I found better deals from my existing Internet based bank, Cahoot and also another online only one, Egg.
I didn't bother getting the loan from Smile, but I did open a current account. Now usually I don't bother reading the terms and conditions for current accounts as there is nothing that you really need to look out for. Or so I thought. I've just received a letter from them saying as agreed by accepting the terms and conditions, I need to be paying in over £1,000 a month.
At first I thought I had read it incorrectly so I read it again. I read it right the first time. I have never known this be a condition of opening an account and it seems very silly. It's basically to get people to use their Smile account and probably use it as their main account.
I'll be sending them a message saying I'll be closing the account, because I don't want to be paying in that much money a month when I have other accounts with other banks that have much better better online banking sites, quite frankly the Smile one is pretty rubbish.
Since when did any bank have such a childish condition as part of their current account terms?
So, if you're in the UK and get a new account, be sure to aviod Smile as they certainly won't be making you smile by sending you pointless letters. What about people that don't earn £1,000 a month after tax and national insurance has been paid? Those people won't be able to pay in that much and they would have to call Smile to make them aware of the fact.
The amount of accounts that are available these days, banks should be trying to keep customers not push them away with stupid conditions. It makes me wonder what else Smile have in their terms and conditions.
Maybe I should have read them, I usually would, but not when opening a current account. There is not normally anything this unreasonable in them. To say it for the last time - Smile is silly, avoid opening any sort of account with them, unless you want to and can afford to meet their demands.
I'll be shortly closing my account with them, but I've not got any reason to be sad about it.
It seems that the house that I'm staying in is covered by Telewest which means that digital cable, telephone line and cable Internet is available. The BT line has already been ordered, as has Sky so those will be kept as they are for a year at least, which is the length of the contract.
The Internet decision is still open, the BT line can only get a 2 megabit feed at the moment, which is shame since Bulldog are offering 4Mbps for a very good price but only for a limited time.
We can get 4Mbps via Telewest cable, for slightly more a month than the Bulldog offer but it's better than paying nearly the same price for 2Mbps ADSL from BT or another provider. I think cable will be the one we go for, maybe not the 4Mbps though, I'm not paying so I'll just advise that 4Mbps would be nice but not required.
I'd try out the 4Mbps cable back at home, but some of the things that I have with my ADSL are not available, so right now I would make savings on the price and also get a faster connection but since BT have announced the planned upgrades to allow for higher ADSL speeds and more bandwidth on the upstream, I'd be best to wait!
Normally, I'd choose ADSL but for the house I'm currently staying at down here, I'll suggest the cable Internet.
BT originally stated that it would take around four weeks to get the telephone line installed, which meant that we'd have to wait at least that long before being able to get an ADSL Internet pipe activated. The good news is that BT state they will be able to install the line next week, so we'll get the ADSL sorted out a lot sooner. At the moment I'm using my GPRS/3G connection to get online at the house, mostly GPRS though as the 3G signal is not very strong.
I'll be going home on Friday, so will be back to my usual 2Mbps ADSL. Not sure what connection will be installed at this house but anything will do, it may well be 4Mbps which would be nice. BT have announced the plans for faster ADSL speeds with the new technology, stating that 8Mbps will be national and 18Mbps possible which would mean more bandwidth would be available for upstream data too, although this might be limited due to the possibility of companies using it instead of SDSL.
Having the phone line put in will mean the Sky Digital can be activated, as a line is required initially to be able to use it, as part of the contract. I'm going to be cancelling my Sky Digital subscription at home since I am not there enough now and I don't watch much TV anyway so I've never really watched it. We've got digital cable there as well, so it makes no difference.
They never stop do they. I've noticed some trackback spam has been left recently, as currently this is not blocked by MT. As soon as fix MT-BL this problem will also be resolved but I'vde not got around to that yet, I will get to it shortly along with a number of other things that I have been meaning to sort out.
Time to head back down south!
This could be interesting for both projects, Bloglines has a number of good features but with the financial backing and more people from Ask Jeeves it can not be developed further and integrated with the Ask Jeeves search engine. It can only be a good thing for both parties, we'll see how it goes.
I did have 4 Gmail invites left yesterday, but today Gmail has changed and you can now invite people more easily. I've also now got a total of 50 Gmail invites. So, if you would like one, leave a comment. At the moment, you'll have to be registered with TypeKey to leave comments so if you don't have a TypeKey account then go and create one.
I'll be sorting out the problem I've been having with MT-Blacklist shortly so that comments can still be left without having to authenticate via TypeKey. Since the blacklist is not working, the spam problem needed to be addressed as I was having to clear out loads of spam from the moderation queue.
It is for me anyway or has been over the past few days. A number of problems with my ISP have meant that my connectivity has been up and down. Rather annoying but it does not happen very often, even so since my account is a business one, I may well claim some discount for the problems I have had.
In these cases when there are major problems, another connection always comes in handy. Looking at ADSL Guide there are a lot of people worse off than I am!
I've been after a few new games on Ebay but I keep missing out on the items because I keep forgetting about the auctions. I'll notice there is only an hour to go and keep thinking about it but then forget in the last 10 minutes or so and loose out.
I've done it a number of times in the past few days and it's really annoying. I only buy new items, things like sealed Xbox games as they can be obtained for a lot cheaper than in the shops, it's just annoying when I forget to put last minute bids in and loose the auction.
I'm sure you have heard, but Google are at it again. This time they are helping with the comment spam problem. By adding a new tag to links that users post on blog comments Google will know not to follow the links. Of course if you implement this then all links posted by users will be affected as far as the PR issue goes but the main reason for posting a link under normal circumstances would be to make the link available to other people, which isn't affected.
The updates are easily made to most web based applications that allow users to post comments or links. With this change being made, we'll have to see how it will affect the amounts of comment spam being posted and also what impact it will have on trackback based spam.
Will you be making this change on user comments / trackbacks?
Since my spam problem is resolved, in my case I believe if I made the change it would have an impact on spam PR that is never posted to the live pages and will also affect legitimate comment links. I'd see no loss towards the spam that doesn't make it through anyway and all other user links would loose out. It may well stop the amount of attempted comment spam messages, but they don't have any impact on resources that I notice. I'm undecided on making this change at the moment.
I've disabled the ability for comments to be posted without being registered and logged in via TypeKey for the moment. I've not managed to figure out the problem I'm having with MT-BL and I can't find anyone else that is having the same issue. The amount of comment spam that is being posted and sitting in the moderation queue is quite high and it's just a waste of time having to keep removing it. I'm getting around 100-200 per day at the moment, all of which would normally be blocked by MT-BL.
Once the blacklist is back up and running I will switch the ability to post without being registered back on, although comments from users not authenticated via TypeKey will still be moderated. Also, the issue where the comments boxes were not always visible without selecting the area with a mouse has also been fixed.
Google has just released the end of year report, Google Zeitgeist, which details information such as the most popular search terms for the year. Some of the results are quite interesting. You can get data relating to which entity of Google was used based on the Google domain, the United Kingdom for example. There is also a weekly report available.
LiveJournal is currently down due to a massive power failure at Internap. Power has been restored but at present data is being integrity checked. Updates on the situation can be found here.
It just goes to show that even when you have a number of redundant methods of power, UPS should still be used.
Here's a new take on the WordPress system, an Origami site is being powered by it. That's right, the shopping cart & indeed the entire site is powered by WordPress. Now that is something new, but it goes to show the kinds of things that are possible with WordPress if you really want them to be. The site is a side project of Jennifer who runs Scripty Goddess.
You sign up for something that requires email verification, which just about covers every online based service these days, but the email never arrives. I've got this problem at the moment with Gravatar. I've tried a number of times, I guess it'll have to wait. It's not anything to do with my email, so must be a problem their end. These problems can never happen at the right time because there isn't one, I'll have to report the issue so it can be addressed.
I also had a problem with TypeKey in that the account I registered when it was first launched appeared to have been taken by someone else after I signed up and I did have the email confirmation to confirm the account was setup for me and I followed the link in the email to confirm my email address.
That was quite strange and after sending support requests about it I never got a reply so ended up creating another account which wasn't a problem but the circumstances of what happened with my first one are currently unknown to me, maybe I'll find out at some point.
Ben asked me earlier if it was just him or had the PR of his blog gone down. I checked and it has, I'm not sure why. Mine is still at five. It might be due to the pool of sites that Google is indexing has increased a lot and as such the PR has been spread out more.
The funny thing is that even some of the Google country based domains such as google.co.uk are not reporting the maximum PR of 10 which is what they normally show as, which is interesting.
Ben has informed us ealier today about a post he saw which states that Six Apart are about to buy LiveJournal. Ben has a few interesting ideas as to the intentions of this takeover, due to the mostly free nature of the LiveJournal services and the more commercial side that Six Apart has been taking Movable Type and their other creations such as TypePad.
Of course there is a large potential gain with regard to the number of new users that will be acquired by Six Apart if the plan goes ahead. We'll have to wait and see, since another party might win the bid instead or it might all be made up. Let us wait for official confirmation.
It just goes to show how much spam really does get submitted when the blacklist plugin that is in place is not working. I've not yet fixed the issue that was introduced as part of the recent upgrade that I did and the amount of spam that has been coming though is quite high.
It'll all get wiped out once I get the plugin going again and of course, it can sit in the queue for ages as it'll never make it to the live pages, the only problem is that some real comments might not be approved for a while.
There is an easy way around that, use TypeKey to comment!
Ben has launched his new look blog, which is now also powered by WordPress instead of Movable Type.
There are a number of other changes and additions too. It has been a long time coming but he has finally sorted it although there are still some things he's working on. The spam problem will be under control now, due to the code verification he's put in place and also via the use of a MTBL port to WordPress.
Well done to Ben!
There seems to be a new work spreading about that is searching for sites still running vulnerable phpBB versions and then once found it attacks them via the highlight bug in viewtopic.php, it then patches the system to stop any of the other worms from compromising the system and and posts a message to a file called secure.php which contains the text:
"viewtopic.php secured by Anti-Santy-Worm V4 your site is a bit safer, but upgrade to >= 2.0.11"
I'm not sure if the patch that is applied actually works and if it can be trusted since I've not seen the changes made for myself and have not found anyone else that has confirmed it yet.
There has been reports of potential DOS caused by repeated requests made by this worm, so it's not all good.
Over the past few days, I along with a number of other people are seeing a lot of pointless spam being posted to our blogs. It's obviously an automated job, but the reasons behind it are not clear.
Since the URL that is included with each comment is random, along with the name and email address, there does not seem much point in the spam. Really, I'd class it as complete junk.
Apart from the name used always having two numbers at the end of it there appears to be no other pattern which is making it difficult to block, under my current setup. I'm sure there is a regular expression that can be used to resolve this issue though, taking advantage of the one pattern that does seem clear.