July 26, 2003
New SPAM blocking service : mailami.com
Betanews.com reports on it here. No Bayesian filters, no blacklist/whilelist server, no training the service, (right now) it's just a simple list of block and allow rules that YOU add. Still, if someone on your block list tries to send email, it never leaves their server -- they're informed that they've been blocked (or something like that ... I'll have to test it and see). If that's the case, I kinda like that approach. Rule maintenance could be a pain, though. It's a new service and there are quite a few rough edges (I've sent them 4 comments in the first 5 minutes of my having an account). Try sending me email : ts-test -- at -- mailami --dot-- com.
Service is free for individuals even though it appears that you have to pay something after a 7 day evaluation period.
July 25, 2003
Xenarc CP-1000 in-dash car-puter
I kid you not, Xenarc makes a computer that fits in your dashboard. 266MHz Pentium with 128M RAM, 15G disk, USB, PCMCIA slots and more. Although, if you look at the bottom of the page it says
"This product has been temporarily discontinued. We are currently working on a version with faster processor speed, possibly Pentium 3 based platform so that it would support Windows XP. Please check back with us in a couple of months for more information. Mean while, please take a look at our new Pentium 3 based MP-SC1 12V DC Carputer."
Internet Safety for the non-geek
GetNetWise.org discusses how to keep you, your computer, your kids, your identity safe, omitting the jargon and the hype/crap and is backed/supported by the likes of AOL, Microsoft, AT&T, Comcast, Earthlink and a host of others. To some that may sound like damning evidence but the stuff I've seen there is generally worthwhile.
Agile Development
MSDN TV has a good media file of a discussion among team leaders of agile (lighweight) development methods. It's called "Agile Development in the Enterprise". I've seen this discussed in the ASP.NET Weblogs and it's pretty intriguing. I'll provide more details as I get them.
The World Blogger
Don't know if this is an exclusive or not but you see that little map of the world up there next to the blogmatrix and blogrss logos? Well, blogmatrix hasn't announced it yet but they're getting ready to do so and I was just given a link to the page. Pretty cool! All the sites that provide location information to them is/will be mapped.
My RSS feed should give full text now
The BlogMatrix.com folks have figured out how to give the users of the free Blogger service (not Blogger Pro) a full-text RSS feed. And it's free, too! So, that little 
up there will now give you a full-text RSS feed of this weblog complete with the correct title for each entry.
I've got Moveable Type V2.64 installed but the Blogger service is very easy and convenient to use. Coupled with the speed of the free hosting service provided by BlogSpot, it's a nearly unbeatable combination in my opinion. No, Blogger isn't as fancy as the MT system, nor is it as flexible and I've gotta find services that will provide an RSS feed and a comment capability but these are (hopefully) one-time investments in time on my part.
PCWorld.com : RSS FAQ for End Users
A barely passable article (here) for the uninitiated. It's, like 4 paragraphs and glosses over the majority of the details, concentrating on the "news" aspect. Still, if you know nothing about RSS, it's a start. It directs you to the information areas from the largest providers (Yahoo's and Google's) and makes no mention of my favorite reader, bloglines.com
July 24, 2003
"Legal" music sharing
Seen Cringely's article on legal music sharing (here)? Doubt it would stand hold up in court but it'd be fun. Got a few million you're not using?
oNew TweakUI PowerToy V2.10.00.00
This has been written about in a number of places but the best write-up I've seen is in Woody's WINDOWS Watch #6.10 where he discusses system requirements, the new features in V2.10.00.00 and what features've been removed.
OpenOffice 1.1 RC is available
Forgot to put this in here, what, almost two weeks ago when it came up but here's a link to the download page. They fixed a problem in the spreadsheet which prevented it from correctly displaying frozen window splits.
July 23, 2003
Another security site
Rootsecure.net is another security site with good information about holes, exposures and tricks. RSS feed, too.
Mailinator - any email address for anyone
Another kinda interesting concept: send email to anything@mailinator.com and the mail will be waiting there for you to pick up. The mail only stays around for a couple of hours and there's no password or anything. Truly "disposable" email addresses.
Worthless Words?
The Worthless Word for today is peirastically
in the way of attempt or experiment, tentatively
[Gr. peirastikos, tentative]
Last few hours with this PowerBook
The guy that loaned it to me needs it back so I've gotta let it go. Sure has been nice, though: 15" screen (beeyootiful!), 768M RAM, 667MHz PowerPC G4, OS X 10.2.6, AirPort, Office X. And I was just starting to learn the inner secrets of the underlying Un*x implementation, too. Oh well, maybe someday I'll have one I can call my own.
myRSS.com - build your own RSS feed
Came across this site while browsing bloglines.com top feeds. Looks like you can have it create an RSS feed from a site that doesn't already provide one. It's been in operation since sometime last year and it's still in beta but it looks good to me. So far I haven't created an RSS feed. Maybe one of you would be interested?
WinSCP is up to V3.1
and has been moved to SourceForge. Find more information about it, including download links, here.
TheScreenSavers: WinXP partitioning recommendations
From the July 22 show:
"Leo and Patrick recommend the following partitions.
200MB to 2GB partition for your swap file. This should be your first partition.
C: drive. This is for Windows XP and your applications. Make it 20GB to 40GB.
Partition to hold all your temporary directories. 10GB.
Partition the rest to hold your documents and other personal data."
I'd never considered creating a partition just for TEMP. Hmmmm ... dunno if it'd optimize any head access but it'd sure reduce fragmentation on the other drives. Ditto for a dedicated swap partition.
kbAlertz: Add 802.1x Group Policy Support to XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q821978
Says it was added in SP1 but I can't find it anywhere in gpedit.msc.
July 22, 2003
Buymusic.com launched
Supposedly buymusic.com has more tunes that Apple's store and single cuts are only 79 cents.
(Why is it the EBCDIC character set used on IBM mainframes has a cent-sign but the 7-bit ASCII character set we all use on out machines still doesn't?).
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 self-paced training
See http://members.microsoft.com/partner/training/updateWS03skills.aspx. This is for Partners only. If you have a current subscription to the Microsoft Action Pack, you're a partner and can sign up. After October 24, 2003 the course will cost $199.
Bloki.com weblog import
Was contacted by someone at bloki.com asking for an export of my weblog here on blogger (along with instructions as to how to effect the export) so they could verify their import processes. Can't wait!
OS X SystemStarter
sudo SystemStarter stop SSH
sudo SystemStarter start SSH
sudo SystemStarter start 'Web Server'
sudo SystemStarter restart Cron
MSKB 821968 IE File Download Dialog Box Display More Info
[821968]
"The File Download dialog box in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 Service Pack 1 and later has been updated. When you download a file, the File Download dialog box displays additional information about the file."
July 21, 2003
Bloki.com updates
I've had an account at bloki.com for a little while. They provide free web pages and weblogs with a pretty full-featured editor. The service is nice, but it really hasn't been anything to get excited about.
Well, recently they added RSS feeds to each weblog and just within the last day or so each account also has been given the ability to create free forums. And, on top of it all, it looks like they're going to add weblog import so you'll be able to pick up your weblog from another account and transfer it to your bloki.com account.
So, free web pages, free weblog, free RSS feed, free forums ... hmmmm ...
No, I'm not affiliated with bloki.com other than having one of their free accounts.
Blog import/export
There's a really well documented procedure at http://neologasm.org/b2mt/ for exporting a blogger.com weblog and importing it into Movable Type. This is nothing more than the directions you can get from MT but with screen shots for each step.
.NET Framework 1.1 -- what goes where?
MSKB 820892 lists what's installed with .NET Framework V1.1.
Synchronization
SynchronEX is an interesting looking tool. Can do N-way syncs of files and folders between a laptop, a server and a desktop (for instance) at the click of a (mouse) button.
Firewall update
Still not too crazy about it (Kerio V4 beta 5) and this morning, after the laptop going into and out of hibernation about 8 times over the past few days, the Kerio firewall driver failed ... think it ran out of memory. Unfortunately, I was right in the middle of something pretty important so I didn't record anything, just rebooted and took off again. One other problem I had yesterday, it seemed to freeze me out of the network twice after coming back from hibernation. I just disabled and reenabled the firewall and everything got back to normal. It's a beta -- things aren't supposed to work 100% yet.
Aside from those little hiccups, I'm still not comfortable with the interaction mechanism. The color scheme of the pop-ups or something makes me wanna hurry up and permit or deny access as opposed to thoughtfully selecting the right options for the more-or-less permanent rules. And the "simple" rules are recorded in a different place from the "advanced" rules and the two don't mix -- you can't take a simple rule and make it in to an advanced one. I'm gonna stick with it a while longer, though.
Next up is the new Zone Alarm Pro V4. A friend works at ZoneLabs and he's recommending it highly (hi, Alex!) and he's not the kind of guy that would steer me wrong.
Tried WebWasher -- I'll stick with AdSubtract PRO
There's nothing wrong with it, just that I prefer the interaction methods of AdSubtract PRO. Course, WebWasher Classic is free and AdSubtract PRO costs money but I don't think that necessarily has anything to do with it -- the WebWasher folks have plenty of other products that cost money so they probably know how to do a UI fairly cheaply. One thing I do wish, though: that updates for AdSubtract PRO were forthcoming. It seems almost like they've stopped developing it and maintaining the ad database. That said, there's nothing wrong with it. Oh, sure, one thing I'd change: I'd like to be able to request that AdSubtract PRO ask me if I want to allow a pop-up window to appear instead of just always silently killing it -- that's what CookieCop 2 from ZDNet does.
PCWorld has RSS feeds
Check out http://www.pcworld.com/resource/rss/0,00.asp. News as well as top downloads.
July 20, 2003
Fred Langa's 10 Ways to Make XP Run Better
I've been running XP for, what, almost 2 years now and, while I've considered some of his suggestions before, seeing them in print finally motivated me to make some of those changes on my laptop. See his article in Information Week.
Epson C82 : $30 after rebates at Best Buy
See this link at TechBargains -- look for the Epson C82 item. There are 2 rebates: a $50 and a $20. In-store price is $99.99. Printer has both USB and Parallel interfaces. Note this is not a Photo Stylus.