Monthly Archives: April 2006
Be careful when zapping those spam comments.
Saw a little post on Zoli’s blog where he relates an interesting story in which he zapped some ‘innocent’ spam seemingly originating from the main sites of certain large search engines like Yahoo, MSN, Google etc, unfortunately this had the nasty effect of marking those search sites as illegal referrers. Nasty..
Anyone else experienced this before? I must tell you that I find comment spam really strange sometimes, its weird how people go through a lot of effort to post something so meaningless sometimes, yet it happens, A LOT! Look I realise that the 1% chance of success most relate to a lot of bucks for some spam marketer at some stage, but what about these ones that have no other reason to exist other than being stupid, annoying or malicious. *Sigh*
Yahoo! Go on your TV
Remember Meedio? Meedio is that nice application you could install on most any windows PC to provide handy media centre type functionality to your TV out enabled PC in the livingroom, for a couple dollars.
Well, that company has now sold its IP on to Yahoo and a beta is already available for download, currently free!
I gave it a download and it looks like it still has all the good ol’ features that made Meedio so much loved, i.e. easy to use UI with clear fonts and layouts even on the TV, easy TV capture integration etc.
Unfortunately this version will only function on US based IP addresses, disable your net connection to bypass, hopefully this will be addressed soon to allow the rest of the world to play along as well..
Read more on Engadget.
Documentary: Stroller
http://www.capetownstroller.org/home.html
Stroller is a feature length documentary shot
in Cape Town, South Africa about two street children’s journeys to make sense of their pasts, survive the present and search for the strength to get off the street. In doing so, Stroller provides a fresh and provocative perspective on the social, cultural and economic elements that push children onto the streets, and the elements that hold them captive.
New Flash based social networking site may pack a "Wallop"
Just as I thought Flash will be taking a backseat in the Web Two Oh space, I see this mention on TechCrunch of a new social networking endeavour (actually a spin off of an older project), to be launched soon called Wallop.
Not much is being disclosed about Wallop yet, except that it is significantly different than the existing Wallop project. I’ve seen a bit of what they plan to offer, and I’ll say that this is not another “me too” social network offering. For one thing, this is an all Flash application. And there are a number of unique business model twists that they aren’t announcing yet. The launch is scheduled for this summer.
Somewhat more amazing is the fact that the project seems to be backed by Microsoft (at least they did the old mywallop.com), and it is run by ex Microsoft man Karl Jacob (used to be an exec over there), is Microsoft showing some guts here?
Anyhow, this will good news for all you Flash addicts out there, keep an eye on it.
Technorati Tags: Flash, Social-Networking, Microsoft
Back from holidays
Hi, all
Back from J-Bay, it was a ripper. Regular posting to resume as soon as I catch up with the tons of emails in my inbox. Even though I had good 3G reception (yay), I decided to keep things switched off for a while.. only firing up to notebook in times of desperation. Hopefully with batteries somewhat recharged we can make a go of it again for a little while…
Poor local 3G available ..
While at my mother’s place over the weekend in a developed area of Kuilsriver, I was upset not to have ANY 3g reception there. At home (Parklands) my receptions is “flaky”. And to compound to the problem, I am going away on Friday for a bit of R&R in J-Bay and with it being a premier SA holiday destination I thought I would a look at the 3G reception on the Vodacom site, turns out that it is VERY limited. The place we are planning on staying looks like it is right on the edge, oh well lets see, otherwise it will be back to slow GSM speeds. Vodacom ran an ad last night where they said: “3G reception nearly everywhere.” (or something to that effect) More like: “3g reception almost nowhere.”
Shozu adds killer new features
Thanks to Anthony Dalton for the heads up,
Shozu have recently announced that they are to ad the following features later this month:
- Post images to your personal blog hosted on services like blogger, wordpress or typepad
- Post to photo-journalism services like the BBC, CNN and scoopt
- Two way commenting on your photos (previously one-way)
- Upload bandwidth saving blog-quality images
Be sure to check it out. Read more here.
Also congrats to them for winning the “Consumer Application – Mobile Entertainment Application” category at CTIA.
Macs do Windows, too
Yup that is the little strapline for the big bomb apple dropped on us all today, they now officially support Windows XP utilising a little partition manager called Bootcamp. Read about it on engadget here.
I must tell you that I was/am super sceptical about it, I actually though it was a belated April fools, I even tried the download and it is downloading some or other 83Mb file. Fact? Or fiction?
This guy claims he got it sort of running.
Interesting move by Apple, but I don’t think its going to give Steve B. and sleepless nights just yet, even though this will allow give XP users a chance to “ease” into OS X.
MyToday.com
MyToday.com is a smart “”public” aggregator (vs. “private” aggragator which is your own feed list, these ones are pre-prepared by experts for ease-of-use) hailing from india, it has various location or topic based areas called “daily’s” and using the friendly interface one can “browse” the very up-to-date content right on the site, or export the dailies as OPML. One thing I love about the site is that it gives you a very nice “at-a-glance” overview of the newest news and post in the categories or “panels” that you can switch on and off at will.
Another very handy feature that I use quite often is the mobile portal available via http://m.mytoday.com, nice for a quick news update.
The guys there have approached me to put together an OPML list for them and I have obliged, its viewable at http://www.mytoday.com/southafrica/, have a look, and send in feedback and suggestions.
A Group Of Web AddiCT(s);
Mean to mention this a while ago, but congrats to Rafiq and the rest over at A Group Of Web AddiCT(s);, for there mention in ITWeb for their achievement in winning some cold hard cash money in the National Innovation Fund competition (for tertiary institutions).
They are a top bunch of guys that ask all the right questions.
All the best for the future Rafiq!