Terpstravaganza

Kick Start Your Forum With ICo-Content!

2007-01-25T17:07:00.000Z

When was the last time you posted in a dead forum?

That's right. Never! So how do you expect to get the ball rolling on your own forum?

Have you tried...

Chatting to yourself under multiple usernames?

Hiring forum posters who don't have any interest in your forum's topic?

Scraping content or fetching it from RSS?

Running expensive contests only to find the #1 forum troll winning it again?

All those so-called solutions cost a lot of time and potentially a lot of cash without any significant result. That's why I coded...

ICo-Content

Instant Community Content for your Forum!

Get the ball rolling...

As an easy to install plugin to either phpBB2 or vBulletin >= 3.5 this is the solution for all those who need to start a forum from scratch or face the daunting task of reviving an inactive bulletin board.

ICo-Content queries Yahoo! Answers via the offical Yahoo! Developer API and retrieves questions as well as anwers matching the topics you set in the admin panel.

I used ICo-Content to kick start my vB 3.6.4 forum and within a week the forum was full of high quality threads and good discussion. After trying paid posting and having problems with low quality posts, threads illegaly copied from other forums and other issues ICo-Content is the easiest and most efficient way to start a forum.
Patrick

Curious?

Demo: See ICo-Content in action!

More Information...

Multi-Tagged - Multi-Lingual

2006-12-31T15:07:00.000Z

I got back from end-of-year Holidays and found out I had not escaped the Blog Tag Craze of late. It was fun reading the deep secrets of my forum buddies, like Shawn, Summer and Jeremy, who all got tagged weeks back. It was Jeremy a.k.a. GuyFromChicago who tagged me. EDIT: Only just noticed that Bulbboy also tagged me! Sorry for not paying attention to my comments!

Almost at the same time, my dear aunt Marleen tagged me via her Dutch blog.

So today I'll fulfill my blogger duties and spill the beans both in English for the entertainment of my fellow computer nerds as well as in Dutch for my family. The English version requires just 5 facts that others don't know about me, the Dutch version tells me to share 6 things about myself that are likely to be considered strange, odd and unconventional. I'll now loosely translate the above for my Dutch readers...

Na de Kerst periode in Nederland doorgebracht te hebben kwam ik er terug in Engeland achter dat ik 'ge-blog-tagged' was door een van m'n online vrienden, Jeremy. Een tijdje terug is iemand begonnen met 5 dingen te bloggen over zichzelf die waarschijnlijk nog niemand wist en aan het einde commandeerden ze 5 andere bloggers om hetzelfde te doen. In dezelfde week bleek Marleen ook prooi te zijn gevallen aan eenzelfde blog ketting achtig idee via Mirjam en ook zij koos mij als volgende slachtoffer of speler, hoe je het ook maar wilt noemen. Dus ik combineer deze twee gelegenheden en blog vandaag in het Engels en Nederlands. Gelukkig dat geen Fries me dit geflikt heeft :)

OK here we go... Jeremy's tag request first, 5 things not many will know about me, aimed at the webmaster world.

1. I'm a fully qualified lifeguard. My First Aid certificate has since expired (requires regular re-examination) but I'm probably still the best guy to be with you in the car when you find yourself plunging off a bridge or when you disappear in a whole in the ice whilst taking up the challenge of the almighty Elfstedentocht a.k.a. Eleven City Tour.

2. My webmaster career started off with a massive failure. Whilst being bored at uni I taught myself PHP and MySQL and coded a fantasy league for wakeboarding - similar to the very popular football (soccer) versions here in the UK. It being my first PHP effort and not expecting 80 thousand pageviews and hundreds of sign-ups on launch day, the whole thing crumbled a few fixtures into the season. Working on it 17 hours a day couldn't even put it back on the rails - it had too many fundamental flaws. In very poor defeatist fashion I completely chickened out and abandoned the whole project without explanation to my many hundreds of contestants. If only I knew PHP and MySQL as well as I do now or how to monetize a website. Such a n00b I was back then... Many lessons learned though, personally, business-wise and technically!

3. More than once I was regional champion gymnastics in the county of Friesland in Holland and (this always gets many laughs) I was once 10th in the Dutch finals of Draughts (UK-en) / Checkers (US-en) as part of a team of 4 in the school championships. Kids nowadays play WoW, I played draughts. Eat that.

4. A nice guy I only ever met online has sent me a 32" Sony Bravia LCD TV for free last month. No, I did not perform live on webcams doing dodgy stuff in exchange :D

5. Early 2002 I couldn't afford food more expensive than Sainsbury's 19p white loaf of bread and I paid the bus fare to my first UK based job that same month in 1 and 2p coins, literally the last money I had. 4 years later at age 24 I bought a house. I am determined to own 3 in 2008.

Next, Marleen's tag/stokje request, 6 things that the average Joe probably finds out of the ordinary about me. I'll do this one in Dutch first, then English.

1. Dutch - Anderhalf jaar geleden heb ik 5 dagen gevast, alleen op water geteerd. Dit komend jaar wil ik er 8 doen. English - a year and a half ago I did a 5 day water-only fast. In 2007 I will do at least 8 days in a row.

2. Dutch - Ik kan het alfabet in het Nederlands achterstevoren opzeggen, net zo snel als in normale volgorde. English - I can say the Latin Alphabet backwards as fast as forwards. In Dutch, not (yet) in English.

3. Dutch - Ik ben er heilig van overtuigd dat Apollo 11 niet was wat NASA ons doet willen geloven. English - I'm convinced the Apollo 11 mission didn't accomplish what the world was led to believe.

4. Dutch - Ik moest een traantje of twee wegpinken toen ik de opening van Tiësto live in het Gelredome hoorde, ik heb er nog steeds veel spijt van dat ik dat heb gemist! English - I got emotional to the tune of crying a little when hearing the opening of Tiësto's live concert in Arnhem. Being one of his biggest fans I regret to this day not having flown out to Holland to come and be part of history that night.

5. Dutch - Meer dan 10 keer heb ik in de London Eye gezeten. English - I've been in the London Eye more than 10 times.

6. Dutch - 3 Dagen wintersport heb ik liever dan een week op het strand! Tenzij er gegolfsurfd kan worden misschien. English - I prefer 3 days snowboarding over a week on the beach (unless there's killer surf).

If this game is still running, I'll have to pass it on. For the English version I would like to tag Disgust a.k.a. Revenue Girl a.k.a. Sarah(?), Cristian Mezei TM, Old Welsh Guy a.k.a. James, McFox (EDIT: I now see Bulbboy already tagged him) and last but most certainly not least the very talented Lukas Niklasson - but I'm not sure he actually has a blog.

The Dutch version I'd like to pass on to Joost de Valk. Joost is een zeer getalenteerde collega SEO/SEM (ZoekMachineMarketeer) wie zich elke keer met wijze woorden boven de rest uit doet steken. Ook iemand met wie ik nog eens een biertje of twee wil gaan drinken!

I won't be contacting any of the above directly so I hope they read my blog! Or their referrer logs, I'll referrer-spam each now...

Then finally, happy new year every body!

Microsoft's New LinkFromDomain: Search

2006-10-17T23:44:00.000+01:00

Just stumbled on a neat bit of news on Threadwatch. Microsoft has introduced a reverse LinkDomain search called, how clever, LinkFromDomain. So where linkdomain:this_blog gives me all the domains that link TO this blog, linkfromdomain:this_blog gives me all the ~~domains~~ pages this blog is linking to. Or so it should...

It doesn't work for a subdomain!

LinkDomain DP Forums (note my blog 2nd result!), LinkFromDomain DP Forums not working. Drop the subdomain and it works (note the Britney link ha!).

I guess Microsoft treats subdomains as part of the domain then.

LinkFromDomain can be used to quickly check whether a site is linking to dodgy stuff like Britney Spears or blatant spam/warez etc. When you are buying ads/links, this can be especially handy. Tools to utilize this have already surfaced:

This tool takes the top 100 results and checks whether they have been banned in Google. This tool checks whether those links found with the new Microsoft LinkFromDomain search have been reciprocated. Handy to tell who's buddies with who.

Interesting: Shoemoney comments at Threadwatch Microsoft opted to show nofollow links in the results.

A quick check on the DMOZ LinkFromDomain results show no pr0n links - many will be disappointed with that I'd imagine!

Looking through my own domains I found one or two questionable entries I'll have to check out. It's a good spam/hacker detection tool in that sense, though it would be nice to see where exactly the link is!

EDIT: An MSN developer has made a tool which nearly does that. It actually let's you see which exact pages on a specific top level domain your site links to. It combines LinkFromDomain with Site like in this search showing all the Blogspot blog entries linked from DigitalPoint.com.

Enjoy playing with this!

Multiple Speakers with Airport Express

2006-10-14T14:36:00.000+01:00

Ever since updating iTunes to 6.0.2. I've had the option to play my tunes over more than just one set of speakers. Problem was, one of my Airport Express base stations had an old firmware. Firmware 6.3 is required to support this. I've not been in a hurry to upgrade because I was expecting delays between the two sets of speakers...

Today the 'old' Airport Express disappeared from my iTunes and I couldn't retrieve it with the admin utility. So I had an excuse to reset it to factory default and re-install it with the setup utility, upgrading the firmware to 6.3 whilst at it. All went smooth and to my very pleasant surprise, despite there being 12 meters and two (false) walls between the two stations, there's absolutely no delays/lag in playback. To celebrate I cranked up Arctic Monkeys' 'When the sun goes down' and airguitarred back and forth between kitchen and lounge.

This really is a neat feature! Can't wait for video streaming.

BTW there is one GUI problem with this multi speaker playback. You can't adjust the volume individually, there's only one volume slider in the iTunes interface which affects both Airport Expresses. My Keyspan remote control which is hooked up to the AE in the kitchen still works but also controls the volume of the speakers in the lounge... Apple, please fix it will you?!

And Then It Hits Home

2006-10-09T00:55:00.000+01:00

I went to bed half an hour ago and just had to grab my laptop to capture these thoughts.

A member on DP died, I was alerted to it on Saturday. I never heard of Chris, his username didn't ring any bells either but all of a sudden I couldn't stop thinking about that thread. Chris left 3 children and a wife after passing away on Thursday and his wife had taken the effort of logging in on DP to share this awful news. But what struck me, and only hit home just now, was the fact she specifically mentioned how he appreciated being on the forums.

I've been on DP pretty much from the start and I have to admit, I get spells where it all bores me to death, almost to the tune where I get annoyed with it all. Having been there from the start means I've witnessed the endless cycle of new people coming on board, asking the same questions, doing the same things etc. etc. It's quite fascinating in a way. But the vast scale of it nowadays causes me to just take a few months off every now and then. Since leaving uni (where I wasted a lot of time doing student things) I've gotten to realize that life's too short to mess around too much, too short to hang out with losers. And inevitably, in a community of such a scale, there's bound to be hundreds of, or thousands even, losers. Subsequently, as a moderator, you get involved with them, banning them, answering their questions, moving their threads because they couldn't be bothered to stick it where it should have gone etc. Because of that I lost the joy of being part of it and doing all that.

First I got there to learn, then I enjoyed helping others out a lot, returning the favour. But since then there hasn't been much incentive for me to keep doing all those things. It seemed rather pointless to me, cleaning up this never ending stream of garbage and answering what appeared to be the same questions over and over again.

And then someone unknown to me dies and his wife goes out of her way, despite probably having lots of things on her mind, to log on and more or less thank us for creating a place where he enjoyed to hang out. And in that I just realized what a nice place we actually make, in a massive combined effort. 'Outsiders' often laugh when we talk about our forum buddies or about our obsession to keep up to date with what's happening, but most members can probably relate to this Chris guy's enjoyment of our little world.

Unbeknown to me, he had helped build DP with a contribution of 500+ posts. Probably unbeknown to him, I had helped keeping the forums a pleasant place to be by doing the mod stuff I had being doing on and off, though mostly 'on'. So there you go, I all of a sudden realized I helped someone, somewhere enjoy their life better. Now I have a concrete example of an incentive to keep slaving away at it and pay less attention to the bad stuff.

People's lives are being transformed on that forum in many ways, mostly by helping them achieve their goal of quitting the 9 to 5 hell hole and make their living from the comfort of their own nice home. I'm certainly not claiming I'm solely responsible for achieving that for the thousands of members, far from it. But I now realize that taking that time to do the moderating stuff, taking the time to answer that question, explain that situation; all of that matters in a little way. Sometimes in a big way. To someone. And that's a pretty cool realization.

Shame it had to come to mind only when a fellow member passed away...

To Chris and his family! Rock on!

WTB: Slick TextPattern SEF Template - Will Pay Good Money!

2006-10-01T19:16:00.000+01:00

As you may have noticed, this blog looks like a pile of shite. I'm moving it away from Blogger to a self-hosted TextPattern installation and I need a template designed.

Rather then the usual route of me finding someone on GAF or other places, I'm waiting for a talent to drop me a line and reveal their interest in this job.

Requirements:

- Needs to look the proverbial bollocks.
- Needs to be extremely well SEOed.
- Needs to be able to withstand Digg attacks etc.
- Needs a couple TP plug-ins installed.

If 2.0 is the current hype, this needs to be 3.0!

Leave a comment here or PM me on Digital Point if you're the woman/man who can deliver.

Microsoft AdCenter Employee Admits to Chaos

2006-09-07T22:37:00.000+01:00

Microsoft launched its AdWords alternative here in the UK last month and I started adding some campaigns a week ago. First impressions were dreadful. It took ab-so-lu-tely ages and ages to do anything. I even went as far as digging out the Internet Explorer link in good faith of it working smoother in their native browser but no such luck. Adding two ads took me 40 minutes. I emailed them my thoughts...

It wasn't until 4 days later I gave it another shot. The AdCenter system was a lot faster by now. No more 'error number 1' or unknown errors anymore so I finally got to get on with business.

The system looks quite nice but it's rather JavaScript heavy, something I'm not a fan of. You're left wondering whether that submit will actually do anything since everything is framed up and it all interacts without many page re-loads. After getting used to their way of wording things, like 'orders' etc., it wasn't all that bad. It lacks a couple of things though, such as remembering my geotargeting settings etc. Now I have to change my language settings to UK English every single time I place an 'order'.

After a day of adding loads of ads came the editorial notices by e-mail. Pretty much everything was declined. I was a bit miffed considering the time it took me to enter them and even more so because the exact same ads had been running on AdWords and Overture successfully for ages. Even worse was the fact the e-mails only said 'keyword declined' without any hint about what was wrong about the keyword. So I e-mailed them again...

A day later they actually rung me! And the conversation was rather strange. The guy sounded bored, tired and annoyed. Not so much with me but more with his job. He explained a few things which helped clear it all up a bit. Turned out it wasn't the keywords that were declined, but the ads themselves. Nice way of putting it in that email then! He also enlightened me to the obscure link that actually tells you the reason for them being declined. Most of them were down to excessive capitalization (Google doesn't mind) and incorrect grammar like "Fast UK Delivery" - again, fine by Google but Microsoft seems a bit pedantic here. And those are not just my words! The Microsoft guy, whilst explaining the decline reasons, mentioned a couple of them being pedantic. And then he got on a roll, talking about how shit the system was and that they meant to launch it next year but someone pushed it through too early. It was amusing in a way but as an advertiser who spends a lot of money on it, not so nice to hear!

Anyway, besides the guy whinging about the system and all the complaints they had to deal with, he did help me out and got most ads up and running. But their rules are so tight it's well annoying. Some of my ads for natural remedies were declined because I needed scientific evidence. Too bad the pharmaceutical companies haven't sponsored any research for these products so there is no so called proof. Their reviewers seemed to have been trained in order to make sure as many get declined as possible, making absolutely sure Microsoft makes the least amount of money possible.

Upholding certain standards is a good thing but getting ads up and running should be in their financial interest as well so why be so anal about it? If they really want to compete with Google they'd better adjust their rules accordingly IMO. At this rate I'll never get all my ads copied over.

On the upside of it all, because here in the UK hardly any advertisers have jumped ship, you can get almost any phrase at the top spot for 5p a click. And with this attitude towards editorial quality, it will probably stay quiet for quite a while.

That's What You Get...

2006-09-01T23:50:00.000+01:00

...when at the very first minute of your birthday you beg for attention!

You get suckers actually giving it to you!

Here's my entry, courtesy of my arty farty skills and a tube of Hellmann's finest.

And yes, it stinks of Mayonnaise here now. At least the birthday boy is a massive fan of Mayo! :)

Me And My Sour Apple - Multi Billion Silliness

2006-08-26T15:19:00.000+01:00

So I have been laughing at my colleague and his Dell, the one that runs Windows with all the system crashes you get with that. And also the Dell that is at risk of sudden explosion due to Sony's battery cock-up.

Then came the news my pretty Mac workhorse also has a dodgy battery. Great!

So I dutifully go to the Apple website to request my battery swap. Turns out within hours the site is so busy it can't even process a simple form. Try again later...

Later on Firday I have success, the form processes my request and indeed my Powerbook is eligible for the Battery Exchange Program. But my battery isn't! Even though according to the visual guides on how to determine which batteries are affected, my battery falls well within the criteria.

As you can see my battery Serial Number is 6n5482kdthuc. Now look at the instructions:

15-inch PowerBook G4 Model: A1078 and A1148 Series: 3K425 - 3K601 6N530 - 6N551

I rang them and after waiting a fair bit (without indication of any queue being present) I was told the website indeed was broken as far as the form was concerned so I was told to go to my (not so) nearest authorized service centre. No thanks!

So I keep trying and trying and it doesn't work... For all the billions they make, they can't even get a simple regular expression right in their form handler...

Edit: The sneaky devils have updated the descriptions and now my battery seems safe! They have extended the description of the matching battery serial numbers with ending characters and mine JUST falls out of the range... Saga over, I hope! So they had the form correct after all, they only had the panic letter wrong. Sigh...

Gumtree... And the lower end of the food chain!

2006-07-17T19:59:00.000+01:00

A Mac Mini has been high on my 'to snap up' list for some time. The G4 versions are excellent value for little money in my opnion. I've monitored eBay for months and the price seems stable, just above what I fancy spending on one. So every now and then I venture out of the auction and classifieds comfort zone...

Selling on eBay, with it's spaghetti junction of GUI unintuitiveness (if that word exists), isn't always the easiest. Gumtree however, must be a no-brainer. The following uncensored (sorry) e-mail correspondence between myself and a seller of a Mac Mini is testimony to the fact that brains are not required on Gumtree!

The ad goes:

mac mini for sale (£225)

brand new mac mini for sale, 40gb hard disk, dvd combo drive,bonus( microsoft office come free with it).please mail for details

Pretty cheap so I'm hooked...

Me:

Hi,

Which version is it? G4 or Intel?

Johan

He:

its the g4 with microsoft office in it.thx

Me:

Thanks.

Which CPU speed?

He:

check any mac mini in google, u will have an idea. thx

Me:

Yeah right, that's like 'Google vauxhall, you'll get an idea' but it could be a shitty shopping trolly or a 250BHP monster.

Good luck selling it, if you don't know what it is.

He:

u bastard the mac office cost100 only or more together wiz the mouse and keyboard is 60, so if u dont want it fuck off and piss off, u fucking indian bastard

That's how I left it :D (as effin' Indian bastards wisely do)

PS Excuse me French...

Tricky Trixbox - Free PBX

2006-07-14T23:16:00.000+01:00

Long time no blog! I know... Moving house, business and subsequently ISP = no time for blogging!

So I'm back with a lame post which is basically a 'Note to Self'.

I've bought a Compaq 1.3 Ghz old banger to install Asterisk on, the free PBX. The full newbie program nowadays is called Trixbox. See trixbox.org for more info. They 'advertise' a 1 hour setup so I was rather disappointed it wasn't working at 1.30am after the 3d iso download, the 3d cd-r was burnt and the 4th installation. So I decided to brush up on my Telephony technology knowledge by means of this blog post. Just to define some jargon really.

PBX

Stands for Private Branch Exchange. It's basically a device that switches telephone lines using various protocols. The system consists of incoming and outgoing 'trunks', a switchboard and extensions, the end-users. Traditionally they cost thousands of pounds but then a 17 year old wrote a free program called Asterisk which does the same and more. Trixbox is Asterisk + CentOS Linux + FreePBX (GUI) in one and makes up a great, free software PBX that runs on basic hardware from roughly 600Mhz up (PIII, Athlon, Duron & Celeron).

FXO

Stands for Foreign Exchange Office. Basically the device that connects the telephony infrastructure with us humans. A simple telephone is an FXO. As far as PBXes are concerned, the FXO is the PCI card that goes into the box, in where one plugs the phone line.

FXS

Stands for Foreign Exchange Subscriber. Not entirely sure on this one yet but it seems to be what connects the PBX with a standard phone or other communication device like a Fax. If the FXO is the 'in' then I guess the FXS is the 'out' on a PBX.

POTS

This had me guessing for a while but turns out to stand for a "Plain Old Telephone Service". Your bog-standard analogue phone system, nothing fancy, no Voip etc.

DID

Abbreviation for Destination ID. With this ID a call coming into the PBX can be routed directly to an extension bypassing any other interception systems like an IVR. Calls get routed directly to the chosen extension. Like a 301, or portforwarding I guess.

IVR

Do we love IVR's or what?! An Interactive Voice Response System is what you get to enjoy when you ring your bank, ISP, insurer etc. "Press 1 for sales, 2 for that..." and then they cut you off :) And I'll be having one of my own at home, just to trick the telemarketers and 'independent' researchers. Asterisk allows a whole maze of a menu, you can upload your own recordings, forward to extensions, start custom programs and more.

SIP

Session Initiation Protocol. The preferred protocol for handling sessions during textual communications like Voip, IM etc.

X100P

This is the PCI FXO card that goes inside my Trixbox. It has a Motorola chip, is Asterisk compatible and using the Zaptel driver.

Zaptel

The driver that lets Linux talk with the FXO.

PSTN

Similar to POTS, PSTN stands for Public Switched Telephone Network - that old analogue system Graham Bell was involved with decennia back.

Line Impedance

Analogue phone lines in different parts of the world have different levels of line impedance. Meaning, one FXO with a particular chip might work well in Australia but could be crap (echo etc.) in the United Kingdom.

Softphone

Pretty self-explanatory, a softphone is a software based phone. A program that emulates a regular phone. Press buttons on the screen to make it dial.

CID

Caller ID. The telephone number of the person ringing. Could be withheld.

ZAP

An Open Source SID Client by Mozilla.

HMP

Stand for Host Media Processing. A HMP Server is typically a server handling telephony, voice, fax etc. services.

So... Now I should know how to get this working...

Photo Phun

2006-04-08T21:10:00.000+01:00

I've been impressed with the Kodak EasyShare DX7440 ever since I bought it in December 2004. It wasn't particularly cutting edge at the time but its 4 megapixel, 4x optical zoom capabilities have served me well and still offer me great pictures. The DX7440's advanced settings are way out of my not-even-a-hobby-photographer's comfort zone but they offered me some impressive pictures nontheless. Here a couple of cool shots I wanted to show off.

First of all, inspired by a Makezine feature, my transparent background:

Lounging with a Powerbook is fantastic! If I had the patience to play a bit more with the lighting etc. I could make it virtually see-through.

[Edit] Played a bit more, inspired by this great shot. Got my transparent desktop aligned pretty well eventually though my arm to hand transition gives it away (see shadow and lighting of the two).

Then some air-hockey fun. The blacklight illuminates the little white disc. Keep the shutter open and follow its trajectory...

Next a shot with that same camera but taken by my friend Sander, this is the famous London landmark the Tower Bridge. It took a few snaps before we got the lighting settings correct but the results are pretty impressive I thought.

Even under water it did its job very well... Disclaimer: No photographers were harmed during the making of this blog post.

Only joking :) Shot safely from behind 10cm thick plexiglass.

I've got three 15" LCD screens lined up on my desk at the office, that should make for an interesting 'transparent desktop' project. I'll try to do so sneakily and wait till someone notices...

What do you think of my photography skills?

Bad Google! Silly Browsers!

2006-04-06T20:53:00.000+01:00

A pet peeve is a minor annoyance that can instill extreme frustration in an individual. Typically each person has several pet peeves that aggravate them more than the average person. Another person may not react as negatively or at all to the same circumstance.

Wikipedia:Pet Peeve

Here is one of mine... Google Accounts

What a mess! Adwords, yes. Analytics, yes. Froogle, yes. AdSense, no. And because browsers remember login and password by root domain only, you can't save your AdSense username & password together with the AdWords credentials, unless they happen to be the same (bad idea). So I end up having to re-type my AdSense username and password when I load the bookmark, every single friggin' time. :( !!!

So, bad Google for using sub-folders, rather than subdomains.

Silly browsers for not recognizing that google.com/adsense isn't necessarily the same as google.com/adwords.

And why keep me signed in when I'm done with Analytics and start Googling stuff? I don't want you to know what I search! Certainly not when I log in to AdWords with my Pro Client account...

On the Browsers' plus side, this post was made from Camino and despite the fact it also features the abovementioned annoyance, it is blazin' fast and really looks the proverbial bollocks. That'll be the end of FireFox on my Powerbook then...

Bluetooth to Linux to Mac with Wake on LAN

2006-03-29T21:35:00.000+01:00

I got bored with the usual routine of coming home, grabbing my Powerbook and then having to boot it up, waiting for everything to come to live. The same counts for at the office where when I open up I normally boot up all machines individually.

Here's the neat solution I will implement when I move into my new place.

My current Win XP box will become my 24/7 on home server, running stand alone, no keyboard, monitor etc. But instead of Windows, it will run some flavour of Linux. I want to run Asterisk@Home on it and maybe a simple webserver for my Phidgets web services or a firewall. It will also run an app that looks out for my phone via bluetooth.

And that's where the solution is. When I come home it will detect I come in range. That's when the Linux box will send it's magic packets to the Powerbook and Mac Mini to wake them up from their sleep. From what I've read, Apple for some reason decided to not enable the WOL technology fully, Macs can only be woken up from sleep, not from full power down (in contrast to PCs). But luckily, a sleeping Mac Mini draws only 3W anyway.

It can even then tell the Roomba Robo-vac to stop vacuuming and crawl back to its homebase. Fully automatically and wireless!

Enter the premises, everything boots / wakes up, and by the time I take off my coat everything is ready to rock. From there Applescripts can launch whatever I normally would do first. Viola! Embrace technology!

I'll report back when it's up and running in a few weeks...

I Brought Down DP Forums :)

2006-03-06T16:06:00.000Z

I thought Shawn's kit would have survived the Digg Effect from this post.

But no! I last saw 900 guests reading the post I linked to and then it went ass over tits. Sorry Shawn! :D I'll make up with some great modding...

Any cool stats to share that shows us how it choked?

We set a solid new 'Users Online' record that will probably stand for some time. I was hoping to beat that old one.

Control Your Mac/PC From Your Bluetooth Phone

2006-03-05T20:53:00.000Z

I wanted to use my mobile phone as a remote to control my Powerbook, mainly for iTunes etc. A quick Google session found me Salling Clicker, a cool bit of kit that turns your phone into a clever remote control for all sorts of software packages. But it doesn't support my Siemens SK65. Using the S65 installer didn't work unfortunately.

Luckily, it didn't take long to find alternatives to the popular Salling Clicker. Romeo is one such application. Similar idea yet again, my phone not supported. Romeo actually only supports a handful of phones.

If you want to control iTunes on your PC, there's this software which also uses a bluetooth connection to interface between your phone and your computer. But I want a Mac solution!

Hopefully Salling will add the SK65 soon. Being a German company, they might add more Siemens models sooner rather than later.

Installing Open Office 2.0 on Mac OS X 10.4.4

2006-01-29T16:03:00.000Z

Just sharing how to install Open Office 2.0 on Mac OS X (X11) since the install guides out there don't seem entirely correct and other guides assume you already have installed it.

Ingredients: The 124 MB-ish .dmg can be downloaded from your nearest mirror via the Open office website. It took me about 2 minutes on a 1.5 Meg cable connection.

Whilst that is downloading you will need to install the X11 Unix windowing system but don't download it from Apple's website since that's actually an older version than your Mac shipped with (if you also have a recent Mac). Some tutorials will tell you to find x11.app in the applications folder but it wasn't there on my machine.

Get your Mac OS X Install Disc 1 and insert it. Then find the 'Optional Installs' package which has the box icon with the yellow stuff inside it. Open it to start the installation wizard. After selecting the destination drive you can choose which packages to install. Click the little grey arrow next to "Applications" to expand and tick X11 from that list. Proceed and install X11.

After installing X11, run the OOo_2.0.0_MacosxPPC_install.dmg (version my have changed by the time you read this) and drag the Open Office icon to your Applications folder or wherever you want it.

That's it!

Launching Open Office on your Mac first time will default to Writer but you can use the drop-down next to the 'new' icon to start a spreadsheet or presentation.

Now tell your friends and family to stick it to MS Office too. Open Office 2.0 really is a great alternative.

E-Commerce Methodology Shifts & Brain Storming

2006-01-28T16:42:00.000Z

It's been just over a year since I started tailoring osCommerce to our specific needs. It has been quite a journey and it's nearly finished; for as far as code can be finished, that is. One thing is for sure, having in-house control over your software has major advantages over relying on 3d party applications.

The version of osCommcerce I started modifying dated from around November 2003. E-commerce has developed a lot as an industry since then and recently, during a big code update, I've come across more and more assumptions or ways to do certain things in the code that is far from how reality is. I doubt this is unique to osCommerce - recent developments and hypercompetition have caused quite a few shifts in the way online retailers go about thier business.

One problem I faced is UK specific. Delivery companies like ParcelForce (Royal Mail), CityLink, Parcelline etc. don't offer Web Service based delivery tracking. I couldn't find the exact date when US based colleagues of theirs like UPS introduced their XML based parcel tracking but it was as early as 2001 as indicated by this press release. That's 5 years ago. 5 Internet years is like a 100 years in analogue terms. Whenever I asked key people from their IT departments they either didn't know what I was on about or they had a negative answer to whether it was coming or not. Disgraceful in my opinion. With US couriers you can even Google their tracking numbers! What's wrong with the British couriers? So for the time being I'm scraping the tracking details with advanced HTTP crawler classes but it's FAR from ideal.

Recently I had the joy of rethinking the way Order Statusses work. It was one of the foremost reasons for me to ask my friends in the DP Forums how they visualize complex ideas. It seems easy enough. An order is created when it is placed, then it's fulfilled by the merchant. But I came to the conclusion it's more complex than entry level or even high end e-commerce systems and software would have you believe. I came to the conclusion you can't slap one label on an order and just call it "Sent" or whatever.

"Order Status", the status of an order. What is the answer to the question "Can you give me an update on the status of my order?". One label doesn't work. An order consists of too many elements to use just one catchy phrase to identify an order's status. Has it been paid? Are all the products in stock? Will a product be sent from stock or from a drop-shipper? Was a product cancelled? Was the chosen delivery option changed? Did all products go in the same consignment or were they split up?

So many questions and even more possible answers here.

One label doesn't suffice. A typical answer to the status question would consist of a description of a couple of things. Product A is in stock but we're waiting on product B. Your billing address failed the fraud checks. Product X has been sent from warehouse 1, product Y is being prepared for despatch from warehouse 2. The consignment containing product 1 and 2 was delivered this morning but you weren't in. And so on...

Different labels are needed for different parts of that what makes up an order.

There's another angle we can take to look at what an order is and how we can label them. This requires identifying the parties involved in an order. It all starts off with the customer who creates the order by adding stuff to their basket, choosing payment and delivery options and confirming the order. It's only at that stage that some e-commerce systems slap a status label on it. "Order Received". I disagree. An order is already an order before it was received. There's too many things that can go wrong with either your website, a customer's browser or perhaps your 3d party payment processor to only record and label an order when it's in the bag.

Why not record it at the stage where it seems like they are really going for it. When they start filling out details like delivery or billing details. This is the stage where the customer controls the order's status. It's 'awaiting payment', it becomes 'awaiting card transaction' it could go to 'payment declined' from where they might try again and it becomes 'payment authorised'. Those labels are fairly simple; they describe simple events that happened to the order in its entirety.

But this is where things get complicated. To now speak about the order as a whole doesn't allow for enough granularity, for a small enough scale to see what happens inside the order. This is where in my opinion it's all about the products chosen and the services selected to get those products. And all of those could have different status labels at different times.

From here an order is passed from the customer to the merchant. Now it's the people who process an order who can change the order and push it on down the virtual conveyor belt. (Some systems allow customers to still amend their order up to the point where it was processed in terms of debiting money and preparing it for despatch.) First off, the merchant would typically check everything is in order. Are the details complete and was the transaction trouble-free? Should the status become 'Pending Fraud Review' perhaps or is more information required hence a status "Require Billing/Shipping Info"? Those still apply to the order in general. But from here on we can inspect the status at product and service level. Maybe one product out of the 4 they ordered was discontinued. Do you now apply one label to the entire order to reflect this or do you amend the status at product level so you, your staff and the customer via their account can see what's the matter?

Now we're ready to despatch part or all of the goods ordered. Depending on whether we indeed ship one, a subset or all of the goods, one label really becomes impossible to use for an 'order'.

Delivery tracking... Like I said at the start, UK couriers are rather incompetent at this but I didn't give up that easily. An order is made up out of one or more products. They on their turn can be split into one or more consignments. Consignments can then be split up in parcels, potentially. You can see the limitations of a single order status label here. A parcel gets prepared for despatch, collected by the courier and then via a variety of trucks, vans, hubs, depots and individuals to the customers. But parcels can be separated from other parcels from the same consignment so when we scrape the status off their website they could show individual tracking statusses.

That's why a status changes from a label on the order as a whole to an individual label on each product ordered.

Here's another outdated principle. Using just one set form to capture a customer's address is wrong. We validate postcode to ensure delivery goes well and to prevent fraud but what if the customer is from the Republic or Ireland where postcodes are not used? In the UK we'd put the postcode after the county usually, in Holland we do it the other way around. in Germany, an address is formatted differenlty again. That's why the site should first ask for the country and then apply a set of validation and formatting rules. And we could be nice and detect their country by IP in a bid to try and guess their preferred option for them. It's all about cutting hassle between finding the products they want and paying for them. After all, it's their money we want so we as a merchant should pave the way to a successful transaction smoothly.

Which brings me to another flawed principle. Why capture billing details if you are not going to use them? If we only e-mail an invoice then what good is knowing their billing address and getting them to type it out in its entirety when they chose to pay by Bank Transfer or PayPal? Do we need that in order for us to take their money? I don't think so. One catch is that I base the available payment methods in my code on their billing address. That way only people from the UK and some trusted Western European countries can pay by Card. If we were to swap this around and ask for their preferred payment method first, we'd have to allow all or use IP detection, which could prevent someone on holiday to order something he or she needs when coming back home.

One thing that hasn't changed at all is the fact that people don't read instructions. They skim text or look at pictures and make assumption based on that. I had all instructions scrutinized by a colleague who spent years in sales and is an expert at no-waffle communication. All instructions were cut down to the bare minimum and in as plain and straight-forward English as one could wish. Also placed strategically and formatted in an eye catching way. Still people don't read it. So we have to code things assuming the worst kind of customer from hell who is completely new to buying online and almost soiling their pants about keying their credit card (whilst you and I know it's actually safer than to pass it over the phone, fax or e-mail). But whilst catering for the stupid we also appreciate those who can in fact make a fast decision on a purchase; they need a fast track route to the end of the check-out.

Requiring people to sign up an account when they want stuff delivered to an address other than the delivery address is one of those things they don't get. They happily skip simple instructions and then type their preferred delivery address in the order comments section so nothing is validated and automated consignment job insertion functionality doesn't work either. Thanks for not reading that bolded red line.

The solution is to accept 'defeat' as far as doing it the way we want to do it and to find a way that suits them. In the end, it's their money we want - we're not that fussed how they hand it over. I have had some thorough looks at check-out procedures of big online merchants like Amazon etc. If I remember correctly it takes about 14 screens to complete a new order on Amazon. "Do you want gift wrapping?" takes up a whole page/stage. They have the branding to keep their customers but smaller merchants can't afford such 'mistakes' in my opinion.

So, should we ditch the requirement of an account altogether? After sales support is a lot easier if someone is logged in; order status reporting is a lot easier when you can pinpoint a visitor to an account number and hence an order number. The use of accounts and supplemental customer data also allows for interesting marketing campaigns, customer loyalty efforts etc. So ditching the need for an account is not the way forward.

What we can do here is to lift the account creation to after the buying process. Just force an account on them but after the money part was done. That way they get a quick sales route, they get an account to re-order easily, get support etc. and we get their data and an easy way of communicating. What this idea leaves me wondering though is whether they will actually sign in when they order again.

After jotting down those ideas I'd like to finish saying how cool the AdWords API is and what a nightmare it is to get similar functionality from Yahoo Overture. It requires signing an NDA to participate! Google just e-mails you a token, offers the API classes and functions code and off you go, up and running in minutes. Thanks Brin & Page!

Phidgets & Mac - Part 2 - Hacking The LED Example

2006-01-21T21:26:00.000Z

Last week I wrote how to connect a Phidgets LED interface to your Mac. In the second part of the Mac Phidgets programming series we will take the supplied "Phidgets LED" sample program and hack its code so we get a feel for programming in Mac OS.

Xcode is the IDE we will be using, Cocoa the programming language. I know nothing about programming outside PHP/MySQL and some JavaScript and XML so we'll have an interesting Saturday night for sure...

From phidgets.com we downloaded the Phidgets.dmg package wit all the necessary files. Besides the Phidgets framework installer, this also contains a folder called "Examples". I copied its contents to my hard drive under Developer > Examples > Phidgets so they can be edited.

In that folder you will find examples for all Phidget interfaces. They come both compiled, as you find them in the root of this folder, and as source code. Last week I showed you how to get the compiled version running - the one with all the tick boxes to switch your LEDs on and off.

Today I'd like to find my way around in Xcode and get a feel for Objective-C programming with Cocoa. I set the simple task to modify the GUI (Graphical User Interface) of the application and some simple code modifications.

This Tutorial's Objective

At the end of today's Tony Robinson's mini-challenge I hope to have a 'Tick All' button to turn on all the LEDs in one go. If all goes well, maybe even convert all tick boxes to radio buttons; 3 for each LED with the options 'On', 'Off' and 'Flash'. Imagine that, automatically flashing LEDs! Wow! :)

First Steps in Xcode

Go to the folder where you saved the examples. Open the Source Code folder and then the CocoaLED folder. This is where all the project files are stored. The one with the xcodeproj extension is the one we need.

This opens the Xcode main or project view. From the Apple Developer site:

The Groups & Files list is comprised of all the source files, images, and other resources that make up a project. These files are grouped in the project group, the first item in the Groups & Files list; this group is named after the project. The project’s files are grouped into subgroups, such as Classes, Other Sources, Resources, and so on. These groups are very flexible in that they do not necessarily reflect either the on-disk layout of the project or the way the build system handles it. They are purely for organizing your project. The groups created by Xcode should be suitable for most developers, but you can rearrange them however you like.

Below the project group are other groups, including smart groups. Smart groups—identified by the purple folders on the left side of the list—allow you to sort the project’s files using custom rules in a way similar to using smart playlists in iTunes.

That text was from a Currency Converter tutorial I used for guidance. You can read it here.

In line with that tutorial we will first amend the user interface. Under 'Groups & Files' you see the project's name, "CocoaLED" and 5 folders below it containing the classes, frameworks and other code and sources needed to make up the application. Click the Resources folder.

From Apple's Tutorial: This group contains the nib files and other resources that specify the application’s user interface. "What Is a Nib File?" describes nib files.

Do read that Nib File link - it has some great info on it and almost all of it is used here to modify our Phidgets LED application.

MainMenu.nib (English) is the file we need. Double click it to open what is called the "Interface Builder". You'll get three windows; the main window, the Cocoa controls and the preview. The preview obviously looks just like the compiled version we used last week to get up and running with our LEDs.

My idea was to move down the tick boxes and create some space between the '0' box and the word 'Version:'. In that gap I want a button which I can click to tick all the boxes in one go, saving me 63 clicks to get all of them going.

In the preview window you can click any object to move it, change its values or delete it with the backspace button. If you want to change text values, you can double click the word or click it once and then on the menu bar go Tools > Show Inspector to open the window that lets you see and modify all the object's attributes. You'll see the text, colours, size etc. there.

You can select multiple objects by just dragging a box around those you whish to modify. I selected all the tick boxes and the brightness slider and moved them down. But first I made the window bigger to allow for the extra space needed for the tick all button.

Once you created enough space drag a button from the little Cocoa controls window to where you want it. Notice how lines automatically appear to properly position the selected object. I ligned it up neatly with the letters S, N and V from the three lines above where I placed the button.

Select the button and open the Inspector again to modify its text to something like "Tick All" or "Switch On All LEDs". I also gave it a keyboard short-cut. You can select yours right there in the same Inspector window. Next to the controls view where you found the button you find the Cocoa-Text items. I dragged the small text next to the button and changed it to "Hacked by Johan Terpstra" - just to give myself a little bit of credit for this mammoth task.

When you're done, just click File > Save to save off your work. If you want you can test the interface under File > Test Interface. That's the looks done, now let's do our magic under the hood (which is not going to be that easy) and actually get it to tick all boxes.

Sunday update...

I got it to tick all boxes but the LEDs don't come on! It seems like the tick boxes are triggered by actual mouse clicks only rather than a setState:NSOnState event. What an anti-climax after hours of effort! I'll post the code when it's working though...

Rather than letting the new code tick all boxes I'll make it so the button controls the LEDs directly. That way we remove one step and communicate with the applicable methods directly. Will do that next week...

Phidgets & Mac - Part 1 - Introduction & Installation

2006-01-14T20:03:00.000Z

I bought myself a Phidgets LED Kit from Active Robots for Christmas. Phidgest are physical widgets; they allow electro newbies like myself to develop cool stuff ranging from a simple website controlled dog feeder to full blown cockpit simulators. I have an idea or two as well but before revealing those I have a host of problems to tackle.

I'm planning to write a series of 'notes to myself' here on my blog to document my Phidgets programming experience. I'll try and write in such a way that it may work as a tutorial on phidgets coding for other Mac users as well. This first part is a total newbie's, idiot's slash dummy's introduction.

When I bought the LED board I didn't own this Powerbook yet. I was planning to develop in VB on Win XP first since it seemed the easiest language with lots of working examples ready to be hacked to bits. I'm not a code guru and have no plans becoming one but for a hobby I don't mind learning another language. OK maybe I am close to a PHP expert but that doesn't translate easily into all the other languages out there like Ruby, C and Xcode. My back-up plan was to just develop in Java or Python on Linux; back then my OS of choice.

All of those plans went out of the window when I was given a Powerbook as a Christmas bonus. Luckily Phidgets do support Mac OS Tiger! And judging by the installation readme it's all quite simple as well:

Usage:
The framework is basically just a dynamic shared library. The easiest way to use it is to create an xcode project and add the Phidget20 framework, then in your sourcecode you just have to define top level header:

#include
#include

CoreFoundation has to be included before Phidget20.

Yeah... But I had never heard of a 'dynamic shared library' or 'xcode'.

Xcode

Xcode seems Apple's programming language of choice. They've dedicated a whole section of their website to it here. Appdevadvisor puts it in these words:

You can think of Xcode as being the Apple equivalent of VS.NET. It’s probably fair to say that the ‘preferred’ mainstream PC programming language is now C# (preferred by Microsoft, that is, but not necessarily what the majority of third-party developers are currently using). On the Mac, the hot dev language on the block is a deeply strange animal called Objective-C.

So I guess Xcode is just the tool or framework to write Objective-C? No idea. What is Cocoa then? Also Objective-C language according to Jason's comparison with VB.net. So I'm a bit confused but that doesn't stop me from diving in at the deep dark end. Comprehension of this OS language geekspeak will probably come later. Before I say that, according to Wikipedia, Xcode is nothing but a coding environment, just an IDE. So if Zend studio is my IDE for PHP, I guess Xcode will be my developing environment for Objective C. This quote confirms that idea:

Xcode includes GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), and can compile C, C++, Objective C++, Java, AppleScript, and Objective C source code with a variety of programming models, including but not limited to Cocoa, Carbon, and Java. Third parties have added support for GNU Pascal, Free Pascal and Ada.

So... Let's get cracking!

I've hooked up the Phidgets LED board via USB to my Powerbook and via a Skytronic 12 Vdc switch mode power supply to the wall for juice. That's about the max recommended voltage for this Phidget; the included leaflet talks about just 6 Vdc at 1.5 Amps. The guys at Active Robots said this would be perfect so fingers crossed...

After the hardware, we'll need the software components. Go get the Mac OS Phidgets Framework wich includes the phidget20 (C API) library, the MAX/MSP extension, and the PhidgetWebService. As far as I'm aware, the Phidget20 API library contains all the pre-built API's to see and use your connected widgets. They should help speed up the development process. I have no clue what the MAX/MSP extension is; maybe we'll get to that later. The PhidgetWebService is an interesting one; this allows use to remote control our phidgets. I've seen someone who built a tablet PC with servo phidgets on a remote control car chassis so you could control it from anywhere in the world via the internet. Something I'll be using as well but not so much to control it externally but more to pull in data from across the web and let the LEDs change according to that data.

We'll also have to install the Xcode Tools package that ships with your Mac. It's located under Applications > Installers > Xcode Tools. Just double click the mpkg file to launch the install wizard. I could find where it went with the help of a spotlight search. Browse to it via Macintosh HD > Developer > Applications. Once you open it and run the assistant wicard, there's another little suprise. No windows open! (Remember, I'm new to Mac, OS programming and phidgets; I'm like a kid in Harrod's Toy Kingdom...)

First real stumbling block...

Xcode 2.1 is the version I have and the Phidgets documentation says:

The included examples are in XCode 2.1 format. If you can't open the project files, you probably need to upgrade, or you can create your own project and just add the sources. There are four Cocoa examples and one command line example. The cocoa built tools are included in the base examples folder.

I browsed to the Example folder which was still mounted under Volumes. There's a Phidget LED file there, a .app. Double clicking doesn't do anything and choosing it from File > Open in Xcode doesn't open anything either. Not even an error about supported formats. WTF?! Looking a bit further in the Examples folder we see CocoaLED.xcodeproj - I guess we will be using the mysterious Cocoa as well then! This does open in Xcode.

I went through the Phidget setup instructions once again to check I hadn't forgotten anything and I couldn't find the files that were meant to be in the systems folder. A search brought up an entry in the system crash log:

Library not loaded: /System/Library/Frameworks/Phidget20.framework/Versions/A/Phidget20
Referenced from: /Volumes/Phidgets/Examples/Phidget LED.app/Contents/MacOS/Phidget LED
Reason: image not found

That must have come from when I clicked that .app example. Back to installing the framework again.

Victory! One reboot and a cup of green tea with lemon later and I can actually run the example .app which shows a switchboard with tick boxes for the LED board. Ticking no. 14, the one I put a 3mm red LED in, actually makes it goes bright red! It doesn't look as if the brightness slider is working but that may well be due to my LED. What do I know?! It works so well, I can even flick it on and off in tune with the music now :)

All in all, that wasn't too hard. Just make sure the Phidgets framework installation was completed. Just use spotlight and search for 'phidget' and see if any matching files are in the System folder. Turns out Xcode wasn't even needed just yet. We'll leave that for the next episode. Now let me try my UV LEDs I got from LED1.de in Germany. Never thought I'd get so excited over such a little bit of light!

Now I've hooked up my 10x 3mm red LEDs, 10 x 3mm blue LEDs and 10x 3mm UV LEDs I realzie the Phidget LED only ships with extension cables for 32 LEDs whilst its capacity is 64. I also found one connection not working - not sure yet whether it's the cable or the board - it isn't the LED.

Here's a picture of the result:

It works, let's get coding!

Wireless Skype Calls with Motorola HS810 Bluetooth Headset

2006-01-14T14:55:00.000Z

After writing about using the Motorola HT820 Stereo Bluetooth headset with Skype I decided to give the concept a trial first before investing the 50 pounds in that innovative BT headset.

Buy The HS810 here (UK)

My colleague had a spare HS810 regular mono headset, also by Motorola. I got a charger off eBay for just £3.49 and today I had the chance to test the set-up. Pairing my Powerbook with the headset was quite tricky considering the headset only has one function button. After consulting a manual from the net I got the two matched up. The HS810 BT headset can remember up to 8 devices and will store the pairing settings.

All it took to listen to what normally would come out of my Powerbook's speakers through the HS810 was to switch the Sound output to the HS810 in System Preferences. This mono headset however, was never designed for music so you can imagine it's not really the wireless solution you would want to listen to your music collection. Podcasts are alright but it definitely lacks the wave range you would need to listen to music properly.

Now a test with Skype. Under its preference settings, Skype recognizes the HS810 Bluetooth Headset right away. Both for input as well as output. But actually using the Motorola HS810 with Skype wasn't that straight-forward. And to be honest, I still don't know exactly how!

The headset seems to drop into stand-by if it doesn't find any data coming in. It does that after just a second or two even. So getting to use it during a Skype call was hit and miss. I probably just haven't sussed out how to use that one button yet. Only on the 3d call did it stay on and work. Once it worked it worked very well. Reception was crystal clear and even though being just mono it was enough to hear perfectly well what the other end would say. My friend only heard the slightest hint of an echo but I get that even on my USB handset; that seems to be normal with Skype.

The range of the Motorola HS810 Bluetooth Headset in combination with my Powerbook G4 whilst calling with Skype was far better than expected. Granted, my apartment doesn't have thick brick walls but being able to use this without crackling noises in every corner of my flat exceeded my expectations. I don't have that much experience with bluetooth headsets but from other people's findings I wasn't expecting crystal clear reception through two hard board walls.

To use a Bluetooth headset with Skype permanently, I have to find out how to properly establish a connection that stays. All I did now was to press the HS810's main button, see the connection open up in my Mac's task bar and then hit the Skype call button. Worked 3d time lucky. But there must be a trick to get this going the way it should. Though all in all it seems a primising relationship. Being able to call handsfree and wireless with Skype is very convenient indeed.

For music and podcasts I'd recommend the HS820 though!

Off to read the manual again...

Motorola HT820 Stereo Bluetooth Headset For Skype & iTunes

2006-01-08T23:22:00.000Z

My girlfriend may not like me doing other things simultaneously whilst chatting with her via Skype, but I've been wanting a wireless headset for quite some time now. I could be cooking as well you know.

I finally found something that seems promising. The Motorola HT820 Stereo Bluetooth Headset.

http://motorola.digitalriver.com/servlet/ControllerServlet?Action=DisplayPage&Locale=en_US&id=ProductDetailsPage&SiteID=motostor&productID=38602800&Env=BASE

You can use it as a normal headset to listen to your music and podcasts via iTunes etc. or use it to answer incoming calls from your mobile phone or Skype. Outgoing as well of course.

The Motorola HT820 weighs just 100 grams, features buttons to control the music and to handle calls, has an embedded microphone, offers up to 17 hours talk time, 12 hours music listening time whilst being able to remain on stand-by for 500 hours.

You can wire the HR820 up with a stereo cable as well if you want.

Recent versions of Skype have had no problems with Bluetooth connections and other bloggers reported successfull use of Motorola BT Headsets on Skype so I guess this will work ever so well. And of course, my new Powerbook has Bluetooth built in so I should be up and running in no time.

Froogle finds the Motorola HT820 Bluetooth Stereo Headset from £49.89 so I'll go get one soon and report back te results. If you want to Skype me for a test, my handle there is johan.terpstra.

Froogle link: http://froogle.google.co.uk/froogle?q=motorola+ht820&btnG=Search+Froogle

The Internet As You Know It Could Be Gone Soon!

2005-11-15T22:35:00.000Z

We all know ICANN, the people who administer the distribution of domain names and IP addresses. What a lot of people don't know is that ICANN is a private-public partnership, led by people from around the world including many African countries. ICANN is not a US government organisation.

ICANN has been doing its job very well considering the magnitude of its task and the interests involved. The fact that the internet is such a relatively new thing and the pace it's grown with don't make it any easier. They owe a lot to internet pioneer Jon Postel's vision and hard work.

Here's the problem that threatens the relatively free internet as we know it:

The charter for the ICANN expires next year and those people who tried to manage the oil for food program want to take over...

CFIF.org, the US focussed Center for Individual Freedom puts it like this:

Let's play pretend for a moment...

You're an international organization. You've spent the last few years perfecting corruption by managing the largest financial scandal in the history of the world. Your peacekeepers are routinely committing repulsive acts of sexual abuse and pedophilia. You have raised irrelevance to an art form except in those instances where your bureaucrats have raised incompetence and failure to an art form. Many of your most influential members are anti-democratic, totalitarian states more interested in controlling their populations than ensuring the free flow of ideas.

You are the United Nations.

And now you want to control the Internet.

UN member countries including China, Iran and Saudi Arabia - countries known for their tough censorship and oppression of freedom of speech - want more control over the fundamental building blocks that make up the world wide web.

They are trying to gain control by emphasizing the fact ICANN is a US run organisation, a statement which doesn't do just to ICANN's international representation. The UN is advertising noble visions like increasing internet access and receiving global input but people who have been monitoring the UN's efforts towards this government-dominated online environment have found questionable hidden agenda's.

Kristina Rasmussen from the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) reports on the less noble motives and outcomes from the proposed deal:

Censorship. Despite having made a declaration of support for freedom of speech, many WGIG members come from nations that severely curtail this right; China, for example, has one of the most restrictive and sophisticated Internet control mechanisms in the world. Just as other UN bodies have been "co-opted" by non- democratic governments, "an 'International Internet Commission' chaired by China might not be far off," Rasmussen observed.
Taxes. Since the Internet's infancy the UN has crafted detailed proposals to tax online traffic. Rasmussen calculates that one 1999 plan for a "bit tax," adjusted for today's number of Internet users, would raise 12 trillion dollars this year - roughly equal to America's Gross Domestic Product. Even less ambitious money-raising models such as the independent, Switzerland-based "Digital Solidarity Fund" could feasibly be transformed into future collectors of compulsory Internet taxes and fees.
Bureaucratic Corruption. Given recent oil-for-food scandals, UN-style Internet agencies would present the inherent risk of "giving ruling members of regimes in the developing world shiny new computers rather than furnishing the poor with Internet access," Rasmussen said.

Just imagine having to pay tax for every bit you pull down from the net! Outrageous! We now pay a mere few bucks to support ICANN's efforts, no way should we agree to funding the UN a whopping 12 trillion dollars a year!

An interview with the director of the ITU, the UN agency originally created to facilitate telegraph transmission and later also radio and telephone communications - those now set to expand their mandate to cover the internet as well, can be read here.

There's another negative we've seen happening a lot at World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) meetings. Countries with no intellectual property virtually paralyze WIPO discussions in an attempt to gain leverage for agricultural complaints. Therefore under "UNternet" control, we should expect the process and the organization to be highjacked by further power struggles between developing countries.

"If any necessary Internet policy changes fall within the UN agency's mandate, those needed changes will be immediately held hostage in an effort to gain leverage on some totally unrelated cause-of-the-day."

This comment was made by Giovanetti from the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), a non-governmental organization (NGO) accredited with the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), the group created by the UN to take over ICANN's job. The IPI is an independant public policy think tank advocating lower taxes, fewer regulations, and a smaller, less-intrusive government.

As David Usher points out on MensNewsDaily.com, the way the internet is built up means not one single country can destroy the entire web. But countries like Singapore and China, who do everything they can to prevent their citizen from possibly seeing the greener grass on the other side, could close their own borders for once and for all if they had control over DNS allocation. After explaining the technical issues involved, Usher goes on to give a prime example of what happens when you take away something people know they can get elsewhere:

History provides some insight: Compuserve was an early ISP who attempted to lock its users into being dependent on them for everything. Fees were changed every step of the way. It was inconvenient to access anything outside the Compuserve network. It did not take long for users to discover they were being held hostage. They changed ISP’s in record numbers, and Compuserve faded into history.

Usher also claims that many parts of the web's underlying technology are intellectual property of the United States - something other countries can not take away without a figt.

Judging by the UN's track record and the true reaons why they were founded in the first place, giving them control over the internet seems like a very bad idea to me. However, letting the US keep their sole veto rights seems unfair indeed as well. The Bush administration recently prevented the planned addition of the .xxx TLD, an effort putting the ICANN in an awkward position considering its supposedly independant status. News.com reports:

A government report from a few years ago hints that the Bush administration could choose unilaterally to block .xxx from being added to the Internet's master database of domains. The report notes that the Commerce Department has "reserved final policy control over the authoritative root server."

So they're not all that independent when the going gets tough.

Rasmussen from the NTU concludes:

"Manipulating Internet content through an internationalized, tax-funded structure may be an attractive outcome for politicians seeking to suppress dissent and prop up financially ailing bureaucracies, but not for friends of economic and information freedom. The concept of international Internet governance should be rejected, and the proposals of the WGIG report moved to where they belong - the 'trash' bin of every policymaker's computer."

This week, in Tunisia at a UN sponsored world summit on the Information Society the UN will try to further improve its stance, knowing the ICANN charter is coming to an end next year. Tunisia seems an ironic host for such a summit considering though freedom of speech is guaranteed by the Tunisian constitution, press and broadcasting are closely controlled by the government there.

But the UN wouldn't be the corrupt organization as we know it if the Tunis summit would't have been biased already, as explained in this excellent read where someone speaking at one of the preliminary sessions reveals:

The chairman of my session said I was not allowed to talk about intellectual property. She said that’s a problem for the World Intellectual Property Organization. It was ridiculous. It revealed a way in which the deal was struck to establish the World Summit on the Information Society, which was as long as you don’t touch intellectual property you can talk about whatever you want. The insane thing about that position is that there’s no way to strike the right balance unless you consider intellectual property.

Discussing all issues involved is obviously impossible without address the intellectual property questions. Europe, led by France, has recently switched stance and now supports the UN instead of keeping things as they are with US based ICANN. This means the whole world is now pretty much "against the US" - or at least on political paper that is - so the ICANN could so with some support.

But if UN control nor ICANN control with US government influence is desirable, then what is? The Bush administration wants to privatise ICANN when its current term is up. ICANN becoming a global, non government influenced and not for profit entity would probably be most fair but how is that supposed to be organised?

CFIF reports:

The Internet has become the most powerful information tool in history precisely because its content in uncontrolled. And the result has been a tidal wave of information and ideas open and free to anyone in the world with a computer and phone line.

That's where countries like China and Iran have a problem. They don't want their citizens reading capitalist, freedom-toting propaganda like, well, cfif.org. And heaven knows what kind of breakdown they would have if the totalitarians ever discovered The Onion.
They can't exert any control over content as long as ICANN is in charge, so they would rather someone else do the job.

Who should that be and how?

9 out of the ICANN's 13 root servers are in the US now, perhaps they could move more abroad in order to ditch the US reputation for starters...

Make sure you visit http://www.icannwatch.org/, it has some saucy details on ICANN's 'independance'.

Google Talks! The Oracle Will Speak...

2005-11-15T00:29:00.000Z

Fellow Dutchman and Google Engineer Douwe Osinga posted this nifty tool on his blog (see link below). Type 3 or 4 words and the tool will finish your sentence based on Google's vast index of written information. It also works in languages other than English. You get some pretty funny sentences at times.

It manages to finish common riddles and songs almost perfectly, create grammatically sort of coherent sentences and it even completes the famous Lorem Ipsum string of content filler.

Typing "Google buys Yahoo and Microsoft" makes the Oracle return:

Google buys Yahoo and Microsoft did not have a Pilot s license. and has been a member of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of Congregations in North America. and Europe for the treatment of Prisoners. of war, shall be subject to the Terms and Conditions, of Use. the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use applicable to This site. and is not responsible for the content of any such communications, nor for any error, defamation, LIBEL, slander, omission, FALSEHOOD, OBSCENITY, PORNOGRAPHY, profanity, danger or inaccuracy contained in any information within such locations on THE site.

Why not try it yourself...

Google talk a
Google Hack by
Douwe Osinga

Calling this "Google Talks" seems an odd choice, considering one of Google's other tools is called Google Talk already!

Installing Skype on Ubuntu Linux

2005-11-07T12:55:00.000Z

Having worked a lot with Red Hat Enterprise Linux at work lately, I fancied a new attempt at installing a Linux desktop distro at home.

After reading up on the currently available distro's on Distro Watch, I settled on Ubuntu. Brainchild of Mark Shuttleworth, the South African entrpeneur who sold SSL certificate comapny Thawte to Verisign for US$ 575m, Ubuntu has become immensely popular in a short timespan. Non of the others seemed particularly appealing so I settled for Ubuntu. The ISO download fits on a single CD and installation, preserving my Win XP Pro boot, was flawless.

Finding my way around initially proved to be difficult since the 'taskbar' is at the top but fell off screen due to the OS not supportig refresh rates higher than 60hz out of the box. This caused a distorted screen actually moving the key buttons out of sight. Took me a while to figure it out!

My first goal was to install Skype. Main reason for my renewed interest was a failing Skype on XP - the otherwise great program crashed regularly. Google Talk did the same so it appears my XP installation is screwed. Not looking forward to cleaning up my box I opted for a fresh Linux install on my spare disks.

Skype doesn't come with Ubuntu Linux. You can't go to Add Applications and simply tick a few boxes for it to magically appear. Skype's own documentation on their Linux version is close to being useless for people like me who aren't Linux geeks. I tried their download, managed to untar it without the use of a terminal (command line) but couldn't open the damn executable. Not from a prompt either (not even sure how it's supposed to go!).

Had to consult our best friend and worst enemy; Google. Quickly stumbled upon this link which proved being the key. Michele Neylon jotted down the low-down on how to install Skype on 'Breezy' - Ubuntu's latest release...

But it wasn't that easy. The blog post simply said:

I’ve made the .deb available for download from here

I know my .mp3's form my .sql's and can identify my .php's from my .css-es but I never heard of a .deb yet the blog post made it seem all too simple.

Help was at hand by means of someone commenting. For people familiar 'commandlining' every day the suggestion is more than blatanlty obvious:

mkdir skype.tmp
mv skype_1.2.0.17-1_i386.deb skype_1.2.0.17-1_i386.deb.orig
dpkg-deb –extract skype_1.2.0.17-1_i386.deb.orig skype.tmp
dpkg-deb –control skype_1.2.0.17-1_i386.deb.orig skype.tmp/DEBIAN
vi skype.tmp/DEBIAN/control
Change to:
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.2.ds1-4), libgcc1 (>= 1:3.4.1-3), libqt3c102-mt (>= 3:3.3.3.2) | libqt3c102-mt, libstdc++5 (>= 1:3.3.4-1), libx11-6 | xlibs (>> 4.1.0), libxext6 | xlibs (>> 4.1.0)

dpkg –build skype.tmp
mv skype.tmp.deb skype_1.2.0.17-1_i386.deb
dpkg -i skype_1.2.0.17-1_i386.deb

One would almost feel like a n00b seeing that, no?

I struggled with that for about an hour. Makes you wonder how many more people would move to Linux, if installing stuff was as easy as double-clicking an executable and following the wizard like in good'ol Windows...

Finally I nailed it and decided to share the wealth with my fellow Linux Doofusses.

Download Michele's file.
Move it to your home folder for instance (might be a dumb idea, I'm not sure where program files usually go on Linux :S).
Go to Applications > Add Applications, which will prompt you for your linux user password.
After loading some dependencies (which package relies on which package) it comes with the standard window which you don't want. Go File > Advanced.
Locate a package called libqt3-mt and mark it for installation (tick the box) if it isn;t green already.
Find in the same list a package called libstdc++5 and mark it similarly. It will probably prompt you this requires yet another package, go ahead and accept the suggestion.
Click the 'Apply' tick at the top to start downloading and installing these new packages you require for Skype to work.
You're half-way now. That's only a couple of minutes for you whilst I was well on my way to have spent an hour already! You can leave the Application Management Tool now.
Go to Applications > Accessories > Terminal.
Ubuntu is one of few distro's not installing a root user login by default so for ease of progress we'll recreate that functionality by following these instructions. Again, I haven't considered the possible (security?!) impacts of this so don't blame me if your system gets compromised because of this. Just type sudo passwd root at the command prompt , type your own password and then the new root password to set up the root account.
Now you can type su - and log in as root with appropriate priviliges.
Now we'll get installing... Navigate to where your Skype download .deb is, probably in /home/yourusername if you followed my instructions.
cd /home/yourusername should get you there.
Type the following commands, hitting enter after each of them:

mkdir skype.tmp
mv skype_1.2.0.11_i386.deb skype_1.2.0.11_i386.deb.orig
dpkg-deb --extract skype_1.2.0.11_i386.deb.orig skype.tmp
dpkg-deb --control skype_1.2.0.17-1_i386.deb.orig skype.tmp/DEBIAN
vi skype.tmp/DEBIAN/control

After this fifth one it starts to get confusing. 1 Simply makes a temp directory. 2 copies and renames the downloaded file. 3 Extracts the file and dumps it in the temp directory and 4's function is beyond me but seems pretty cool nontheless. Step 5 I had to Google myself. 'Vi' turns out to be a text editor in its own right. This link on Vi did the job for me. Rather than simply typing and stopping with typing when you're done, it turns out you need to toggle between different 'modes'. Needless to say, I spent 15 minutes here typing all sorts of commands like 'q', 'return', 'exit' and what not in desperate attempt to get out the poxy program. Only after consulting the manual (stubborn? adventurous?) did I see the light. Command #5 opens the Skype file version info including it's listed dependencies in Vi. You need ot navigate to the line starting with "Depends:" and hit the 'insert' key on your keyboard. Repeatedly pressing this should toggle between Insert mode and Replace mode. Either will do but just be carefull not to delete anything else but the current dependencies. Replace them with:
libc6 (>= 2.3.2.ds1-4), libgcc1 (>= 1:3.4.1-3), libqt3c102-mt (>= 3:3.3.3.2) | libqt3-mt, libstdc++5 (>= 1:3.3.4-1), libx11-6 | xlibs (>> 4.1.0), libxext6 | xlibs (>> 4.1.0) Now simply press 'Escape' on your keyboard to jump out of Replace/Insert mode. The magic command of ZZ (press and hold 'shift' and type z twice) will save the changes and exit Vi. You;ll be back in the terminal. Easy hey?!
Couple more commands to enter at the prompt:

dpkg --build skype.tmp

mv skype.tmp.deb skype_1.2.0.11_i386.deb

dpkg -i skype_1.2.0.11_i386.deb

That last one requires root priviliges so if you hadn't changed user to root yet, you'll be notified you have to redo that last one.

Please note that by the time you get to do this exercise, the filename might have moved on to something more up-to-date so please understand that where I type 'skype_1.2.0.11_i386.deb' you should make sure it corresponds with what you downloaded form Michele's blog.

And Skype? You can exit the terminal now (type exit once to return to your own user prompt, and again to exit altogether). Just aim your mouse top left to Applications > Internet and you will magically see Skype there. And no, I don't have a clue how it got there after simply compiling the package or however you want to call what we just did.

By the time I had this up and running, it was well past mid-night so I didn't actually get to try my USB handset with Skype on Ubuntu Linux; everybody was sound asleep. But I could now open the program and log in.

Just one final hint: You can copy your contacts list from your Windows box and re-use it on your Linux build! Just look out for a file called something like "C:\Documents and Settings\yourname\Application Data\Skype\yourskypename". In Linux, it can be found in "$HOME/.Skype/yourskypename" if you installed it directly in your $HOME. You can copy the files from Windows to Linux and vice versa.

After all that, I hope this will be of help to at least one of the many of you out there. Feel free to Skype me if it did!

Maybe tomorrow there's time for another little 6 meg program to be installed in just a couple of hours :)

MSN AdCenter Beta Pilot - An Invite For You!

2005-10-09T15:26:00.000+01:00

Quick! Run off to Jenstar's blog to find this link to a post where he provides another link to the MSN AdCenter Beta Pilot program for US advertisers.

If you can't be asked to read jenstar's post, here's the direct link.

GoogleTestAd Mystery Plot Thickens - New Revelations

2005-08-23T22:49:00.000+01:00

Mysterious AdWords ads now accompany the growing search results.

Is it all a big prank? If it is, it's costing someone a fair bit of money, running bogus AdWords ads.

This is what I get in the UK when searching 'google monitor query or googletestad':

It reads:

Congratulations!
This is a family safe ad.
All systems are go!
www.google.com

Click through to any of the next result pages and the ad will stay. Why this is significant follows next. The ad actually lands on the Google search results page for 'family safe'.

9 out of 10 times roughly, I get the same ad in the UK when searching 'google monitor query or googletestadaj'. But sometimes, and especially when clicking through to page 2 and further I see:

It reads:

Congratulations!
This is the AJ monitoring ad.
All systems are go!
www.ask.com

That ad lands straight at AskJeeves' homepage.

What is all that good for?

I don't know. Maybe an expensive prank to further confuse all those frantically digging to find out more about googletestad.

I tried a couple of obvious variations like 'google monitor query or googletestadmsn', 'google monitor query or googletestady' etc. but no luck on finding more.

Now try the 'google monitor query or googletestadaj' search on AJ itself. It throws up this ad:

It reads:

Congratulations!
This is the AJ monitoring ad. All systems are go!
www.bogus.com

But it links to a page that doesn't even load. www.bogus.com does not exist. It seems supposed to be hosted on servers of the University of Oregon:

   Domain Name: BOGUS.COM
Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
Referral URL: http://domainhelp.tucows.com
Name Server: PHLOEM.UOREGON.EDU
Name Server: RIP.PSG.COM
Status: ACTIVE
Updated Date: 24-nov-2003
Creation Date: 20-feb-1992
Expiration Date: 21-feb-2007

But: It doesn't go directly to Bogus.com. It's via a Google Redirect. http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.yourdomain.com/ is the format of redirecting via Google. The AJ ad actually goes here (broken up for formatting, see full url here):

http://www.google.com/url?
sa=l&q=http://www.bogus.com/&ai=BPCgtUJ8LQ6TbAYGe-QH_
mMCwBL4BvvaBjwGWlZQzoI0GEAEYASCp3pwDMABAihZIkjlQ_Onx0fn
_____AYgBAaoBBHd3d1_IAQE&num=1

Another observation: View the source of the Google Ad about 'family safe' and you'll also find the variable in the landing URL that's called 'ai'. It's value is a seemingly meaningless string. This is the landing page when pasted in the browser. It only shows one result due to the num=1 variable. Num=1 seems more related to the AW position though. Probably for the redirect script to store back into AW what the advertiser's ad position was and monitoring CTR's per position etc.

So what do we learn from this? Ab-so-lutely nothing. Someone went through the trouble of writing, and paying for, Google and AJ sponsored listings whilst probably not expecting any ROI. The Google AJ ad links via the url? redirect to AJ, yet the AJ ad links back to a non-existing website and also via a Google redirect.

My guess is that Google are monitoring and comparing the performance of their AdWords system to AJ's own new sponsored listings programme. Hence the redirect tracking url. Something as simple as that.

Anyone have their own guesses on what it's all about?

Google "Dissatified?" / Revisions Inline Results + Error

2005-08-15T23:52:00.000+01:00

Google just started offering alternative search results, just after displaying the top 5 for your initial result. I 'Google' every day and had never seen this before.

Try this search for 'piggy bank'. I get 5 results related to my search phrase and then the following apparently new feature:

Dissatisfied? See results for: piggy bank lyrics

50 Cent - Piggy Bank Lyrics
50 Cent Lyrics, Piggy Bank Lyrics. ... Piggy Bank Lyrics (50 Cent). 50 Cent -
Piggy Bank Lyrics [Chorus x2- 50 Cent] Clickity clank clickity clank The money ...
www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/50-Cent/Piggy-Bank.html

(Also see screenshot.)
They seem to realize they get it wrong every now and then and this is an attampt at increasing the cances of getting it right for the individual doing the search. Their alternative suggestion had nothing to do with what I was searching for so it's actually wasting space for me and it's distracting as well. The feature is called 'Revisions Inline' by Google as you can see from hovering over the suggested links.

My guess is that Google aims this feature at those who search in way too general terms whilst really looking for something current. I'd imagine they tie this in with their Zeit Geist data to try and guess what the searcher really meant to search for. I'm no 50 Cent fan but assuming the above scenario is what Google has in mind, my guess is that 'Piggy Bank' is a recent hit of 50 Cent and Google was guessing I was after that instead of a pig to put money in. Wrong!

Has anyone else seen this feature on other keyword phrases yet?

The error I'm referring to in this Blog post's title has to do with this feature in a way. To make sure I wasn't posting old news I did this search. It brings up just one result. Clicking on it will actually put the mamamusings.net domain in my address bar but the page displayed is a Google results set for the search phrase 'jay is'. I have no idea where that came from. Let me know if you can replicate this.

Google Store on osCommerce

2005-08-15T19:55:00.000+01:00

OK this may not be anything new but I stumbled upon the Google Store today and noticed the European version runs on the osCommerce platform. It's not actually Google themselves who built the shop however, in the footer it says:

Produced for Google Inc. by Merchandise Mania Limited.

Apart from getting rid of most stock installation info boxes, it's pretty similar to a standard osCommerce installation.

Merchant Mania Limited introduces themselves as follows:

Merchandise Mania offers a professional and reliable service for the provision of all your business gifts and promotional products, from artwork generation through to sourcing, production and distribution.

Simon Patnick is Merchandise Mania's MD and former Chaptor Director of Business Network International (BNI) , a business referral organisation. I wonder whether he picked up this deal at BNI. Growth Business said in October '04:

Patnick’s business is now turning over in excess of £1 million, and is expanding in the UK and abroad.

This Google Store only accepts payment via WorldPay which is a bit disappointing considering they are more or less representing a big company like Google. Turning over a million through WorldPay is wasting a lot of money in my opinion (assuming that's the only platform they use - if it wasn't then why use WorldPay for this only?).

Good to see Google is OK with havnig their name and fame on osCommerce though.

Sign Up For The Yahoo! Publisher Network Beta Program

2005-08-03T11:19:00.000+01:00

It's the end of a virtual monopoly. Finally an alternative to Google's AdSense program.

You can register for the Beta program if you're a resident of the U.S., with valid U.S. Social Security number or Tax ID. Not sure what their criteria for entry are but they do ask for metrics like monthly pageviews, theme and whether you currently are running 3d party ads.

Try to get in now!

Let us know if you get in.

When A Big Company Cocks Up BIG Time

2005-07-22T20:15:00.000+01:00

Someone over at Digital Point Forums found an unknown referal crawling their site. Upon further investigation it turned out to be Commission Junction. Which is only a bit strange since they aren't known for their crawling and this member didn't even run affiliate links from CJ on his site.

When I had a look at the refering host and with the knowledgable eye of another member it turned out any man and his dog has public access to CJ's template repository management system.

For instance if you log in as a Publisher into your account, you will see text snippets like "Review new transactions." You and I, should you wish (not recommended!) can change that by finding its key which is something like adv.act.index.rvw_new_action. (I went as far as checking out the edit facility but didn't actually try and modify anything so it might be the case that there is some last minute authentication or approval process before such changes go live. It was suggested it might be a non-production server we're looking at as well but still, you wouldn't want to give away clues to your up and coming features would you?) The templates of the site, the e-mail and other sections of their published network of affiliate sections can all be accessed with links to modify it.

I won't post any live links since I don't want anyone with potentially malicious intent to hack CJ but I have to say, I'm pretty shocked this is possible.

CJ have been informed and I expect this hole to be closed in no time. The hole was first reported today, July 22nd around 10am GMT and at the time of writing (8:50pm) it's still wide open.

A DP member summed it up as a 3 fold cock-up. 1. this server is publicly accessible. 2. they advertised its existence by crawling the web and leaving their post cards signed in full and 3. no authentication is necessary at all to do anything.

It would have been interesting to see how long alterations would have gone unnoticed but we decided the best thing to do was to let them know their booboo. Could have been real ugly for them if we happened to be hackers!

RE: Dvorak; Why Do You Use QWERTY?

2005-06-18T17:37:00.000+01:00

Why do you use a QWERTY keyboard?

Why?

Would you be surprised to hear that the QWERTY design was patented in1868? Nope, that's not a typo, the design you're typing with now is well over 137 years old.

So think about it. The actual computers have evolved from slow mega stations to fast, slim and smart units. Over just a couple of decades. But all that time we used a keyboard standard developed by some guy who's never lived to see a real advanced computer! Surely, he didn't develop a design that will stand the time of eternity?

No!

Christopher Sholes was thinking of a way to lay out the typewriter keyboard but he was facing one major problem. The typewriter's typebars kept jamming when two common letter combinations were hit close after each other. Even in the early days, when people were hitting the keys with just two index fingers only, they went too fast and the damn thing kept jamming.

Solution?

Slow the process down and spread the letters out. Common character duo's were moved away from eachother so the typebars had more space. So your fingers are actually forced to travel further than necessary just because some dude back 137 years ago was thinking of typewriters.

Even Christopher Sholes himself thought of major improvements decades later but it was too late. QWERTY was adopted en-mass and people were reluctant to swap, even knowing it could yield increased speeds, reduced errors and way better ergonomics preventing RSI and related injuries.

So is there a viable alternative?

The only one that got a small percentage of the market's slice is Dvorak's solution. It was August Dvorak and William Dealey in 1936 who patented the Dvorak lay-out of keyboards. According to Wikipedia it was "designed to increase a typist's speed and comfort, largely by moving the most common letters to the home row and maximizing hand alternation. The effectiveness of these layouts is disputed, but it is often claimed that world records for typing speed are usually set on Dvorak layout keyboards." Comfort, though, is the most commonly mentioned advantage of this lay-out.

Amazing Fact

In this article by Kleanthes Koniaris about QWERTY vs. Dvorak you can read about a test of which I'll post a synopsis. They got two people to type the Unabomber Manifesto (a hefty piece), one on a QWERTY keyboard and the other on a Dvorak keyboard. The finger movement and in particular the covered distance was recorded. And guess what? The Dvorak lay-out allows for a 42% distance reduction!

Typing the Unabomber Manifesto in QWERTY costs about 5.7km (XY).
Typing the Unabomber Manifesto in Dvorak costs about 3.3km (XY).

Now consider how many kilometers text you have already typed in your life. You're probably still young and are bound to double that at least, right? How do you fancy moving your fingers/hands 42% less, reducing strain, injury, effort, RSI etc.

Also, because the most used keys are on the home row, your hands and fingers are in a less awkard position allowing for better blood circulation.

Someone reasoned that since even Dvorak's design is from the pre-computer age, it might not be the best option. So he did a test. But couldn't come up with something significantly better than Dvorak's lay-out. The story got Slashdotted even before it was finished.

You can swap to Dvorak by changing the characters on the keys of your keyboard and adjusting the operating software accordingly. But you can also buy a fancy Dvorak keyboard which also places the most commonly used non-character keys (enter, space) in a better position. Check this site for such a model. They also sell one which you can swap between QWERTY and Dvorak with the press of a button.

If you want to make the switch, aslo see this article for info on how to go about doing that.

If you are truly proficient in touch-typing, this keyboard might be something for you. It's said to be for Uber-Geeks only so beware...

"Das Keyboard" has no print on the face of its keys, great for either QWERTY or Dvorak touch-typists. Also a good way to keep people away from your desk and using your computer.

So... Go Dvorak?

People who made the switch love it. They reported it takes a good 100 hours of typing to become used to it at the same level as they were typing QWERTY. That takes determination from an open-minded person. It could keep you free from injury though. But it's usefulness to you depends on how often you type on someone else's computers. If you're always on your own laptop or home computer and type a lot, it's definitely worth cosidering. If you're a system admin who has to access dozens of machines daily without actually typing much, the benefits probably don't outweigh the effort of the switch.

I had never heard of a QWERTY alternative until I came across Dvorak last week. I'm interested to hear whether you did know about this.

The Ultimate Home Computer System

2005-06-05T19:14:00.000+01:00

Top Of My Computer Shopping List:

PowerBook G4 15" 1.67GHz with:

ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 128MB dual
AirPort Extreme Card
Backlit Keyboard & Mac OS
80GB Ultra ATA drive (5400rpm)
8x SuperDrive (DVDR/CD-RW)
1GB DDR333 SDRAM - 2 SO-DIMM

AirPort Extreme Base Station (with modem and antenna port) and/or
AirPort Express Base Station with AirTunes
Apple Cinema HD Display (23" flat panel)
Elgato EyeHome Wireless Edition

PowerBook G4 15"

I fist saw the Apple PowerBook 15" in the Apple store in London. It only took one glance to fall in love with it. It's thin as you could wish at just 1.1 inch, the screen is just fenomenal and it's packed with features and yet fully customizable to address your individual needs. I'm opting for the dual screen video card because I want one of them extra 23" Cinema Displays to make this a mouth-watering home theatre system. (Would have gone for the 30" if it didn't cost disproportionally extra.) Since I'm not into gaming anymore, the Ati Radeon 9700 is likely to be overkill in most aspects but apparently, to get that crisp display I want, the PowerBook G4 needs this card.

The built-in AirPort Extreme Wi-fi card provides blazing connectivity speeds of up to 54 megabits per second via the 802.11g wireless standard. It also complies with the b standard though so it will be able to hook me up online almost anywhere. The G4 also has 10/100/1000 (Gigabit!) old school networking connections.

The backlit keyboard enables you to work under the warming comfort of your duvet, a feature welcomed by us 24/7 business people. In the US the G4 PowerBook is advertised as shipping with Mac OS 10.3 codename 'Panther'. Though the Apple Store UK lists it as shipping with the latest version called 'Tiger'.

AirPort

I doubt I'll actually need the modem back-up so the AirPort express will probably do me just fine. This piece of kit takes an incoming network cable connected to your cable/adsl modem and converts it to wireless internet/network. In addition you can plug your stereo in it and you can play your music via iTunes from your computer on your hi-fi set. So I'll need one that will give me wireless internet and hooks on to my bedroom sound system and one that supplies the living room stereo with tunes to play.

Cinema HD Display

The 23" provides a resolution of 1920 x 1200 which gives the eye well over 2.3 million pixels too look at. This is the exact resolution to display widescreen High Defenition multimedia. These screens are also reported to take up 33% less energy compared to their CTR equivalents in size. Working on both the HD Display as well as the laptop's own screen enables displaying multiple program windows over the combined resolution.

Elgato EyeHome Wireless Edition

The EyeHome package allows you to wirelessly connect your digital content to your TV. Whether it's watching your pictures, movies, listening to your music or browsing the internet, with EyeHome you can do it from your sofa with the supplied remote. Sony manufactures HD cameras and also distributes increasing numbers of HD shot movies. Sony uncovered their plans for an iTunes style movie download service last March. Joint development with Apple has also been rumoured. Watching films truly 'on-demand' is one step closer...

Couple Of Questions Though...

I'll have to consult some MacManiacs for this.

Unlike Linux vs Windows, can I see Windows file systems from my Mac?
Does Mac play MP3s or are iTunes based on some proprietary file extension?
Same for movies/AVI/MPEG?
Can its 'Office' Suite read and/or write common MS file types (doc, ppt, xls) like OpenOffice can?
A lot of reusable media comes 'PC or MAC' formatted. If I burn a CD with jpegs from my camera for instance, can my family/friends/associates see them on their PC's?
When I develop PHP programs on my Mac, can I expect a lot of incompatibilities with Linux based Apache servers?

Watch TV On Your Mobile Phone

2005-05-19T20:59:00.000+01:00

UK Nokia 6680 owners on the Orange or 3 network can soon be watching their favourite time-wasting TV programs (Big Brother and Celebrity Love Island) on their handset wherever they are.

Pay GBP 10 a month and you can receive live TV on your Nokia 6680 3G mobile phone. The full list of channels available includes: ITN News, CNN, Big Brother, Celebrity Love Island, Comedy Time, Cartoon Network, Toon World, Fashion TV and extreme sports. BB and CLI fans will be able to tune in whenever they want on the dedicated mobile phone TV channels.

The French and Romanians have been enjoying this mobile phone TV functionality since last year but now UK based Nokia 6680 3G users on Orange and 3 can do the same. They can download additional software for free to enable their Nokia 6680 for TV reception in 3G coverage areas.

It would be nice to be able to watch TV on your mobile phone but I don't like the Nokia 6680.

A Personal Business Coach

2005-05-09T21:59:00.000+01:00

Business Mentor Programme For High Performance People

Having a close working relationship with a personal business coach or mentor is priceless. Finding things out yourself can be great but getting a quick and concise anwer from a person who has 'been there and done that' and accumulated many years of business experience is invaluable in many cases. Being able to build businesses as the right wing of seniors who have been coaching and training other mentees for many years makes ones hourly wage almost irrelevant.

Business coaching is an interesting concept though. Business success is mostly down to personal development with just the right bit of business tactics. As long as you clearly define your dreams and can communicate your intentions, the business part of it isn't that complicated at all. What's funny though is the many personal development mentors and individual business coaching gurus that can't actually show any achievements of themselves.

Over the last 18 months I have been working closely with Martin Heller. He is a principal associate of the Guthrie Group, an Investment Consortium focused on arranging appropriate financing for management groups wanting to achieve growth and add value, based at Guthrie Castle, Scotland. What I've learned in those months exceeds the value of academic education by miles. Enjoying the company of a personal development and business mentor like him makes life so much more interesting. And via Martin I get to learn Quantum Leap Advantage (QLA) methodoly which focusses on quantum growth. Aim high and think big. Dan Peña is is Founder and Chairman of The Guthrie Group and king of the Guthrie Castle. He has built business worth over $400 million dollar from scratch and at times completely against the conventional odds. Via Martin and his connections with Dan and the rest of the Group I'm in a great position of developing necessary skills and gaining priceless experience in order to quantum grow myself.

I 'd like to encourage all of you who read this and have dreams still unfulfilled to find a quality personal business coach or mentor who can help you achieve what you want in life as well as in business. But don't just listen to anyone who wrote a book about making a million. Find someone who really made it. Who is where you want to be and not just selling an e-book about their 'success'. Dan Peña offers a 150% money back guarantee on his Castle seminars just in case your not blown away by QLA methodology. I doubt anyone will ever take him up on that offer. A bold statement like that sets apart a true business coach from a 'Mickey Mouse' ebook salesman.

Access to a personal business coach should be for life; not just when things are rough within your organisation.

Consultation from The Quantum Organization or one of Dan's products could be a good first step for you. If you want advice and guidance from a "real live, honest-to-God, super successful high-performance, street-smart entrepreneur"; be sure to check out Dan Peña's Mentor Programme.

Siemens SK65 Std vs. Blackberry Built-in

2005-04-22T22:30:00.000+01:00

Previewing the SK65 Siemens Blackberry Phone.

In May it's been 12 months since signing up with O2 so I'm due a phone upgrade and payment plan review. I now own a Siemens SX1.

Last month I:

made 18 UK phone calls totalling 22 minutes (out of 200 minutes pre paid included monthly)
made 7 International calls totalling 25 minutes (@ 3 pound 73 surcharge)
sent 35 text messages (30 intl @ 10p each - only 5 out of the 50 inclusive)

Conclusion: Paying 40 pounds a month wasn't a good idea. Turns out I'm only using 10% of that... Skype has made a big difference by the way.

I love Siemens phones so I'd like to stay with the Germans. My eye is on the Siemens SK65. The swivel full qwerty keyboard is very cool indeed and allows simple e-mailing (and blogging etc.) on the go. It doesn't have a camera, apparently to avoid intellectual property and data security issues. The phone is aimed at the business market, providing an easy way of photocopying sensitive data isn't what Siemens had in mind for this audience. I'm not too fussed, the novelty of my SX1 camera wore off pretty quickly. Murphy's law might strike and I might bump into a million dollar Sun story potential, not being able to capture the moment but I can live with that.

The only thing I came accross I don't like is the fact that it doesn't play MP3's. I've come to like my current phone as my music device of choice (am old-fashioned, don't own an iPod yet) so I'll miss that. There must be some Java apps available though that can make up for the lack of media playback.

The Siemens SK65 is one of the few phones available with Blackberry built in it. I wasn't too familiar with what Blackberry or Blackberry built-in exactly is to be honest. Turns out that Research In Motion (RIM) is the company behind Blackberry and they offer state of the art PIM Synchronization solutions and wireless communication technology. They offer enterprise server solutions to give roaming employees mobile access over-the-air to their e-mail and other time-sensitive data like their calendar, scheduling and contacts.

What Blackberry does in short is 'push' an e-mail to your wireless communication device (Siemens SK65 Blackberry Mobile Phone) the moment it comes in. There's no need to log on to the net and download them first manually. Siemens calls it 'seamless push-through of e-mails'. It can also synchronize your replies and deleted e-mails real-time with the base server. It's basically a fully automatic version of what SyncML has to offer.

For a single individual like myself who's not out and about all the time all of this isn't entirely necessary. Add to that the fact that an SK65 with Blackberry Built-In on Vodafone for example starts at 45 pounds per month line-rental. Not what I was looking for!

Luckily you don't have to opt in for Blackberry with this phone. Siemens notes:

Various variants of the phone are available to perfectly suit your mobile office needs. You can choose from a basic version, where you have to download emails manually, a version that incorporates BlackBerry Built-In™ for seamless push-through of emails, and a corporate version that lets you connect fully secured right to the server architecture of your enterprise and access corporate data and applications beyond email (e.g., intranet sites or the company adressbook).

So we're back to plain old GPRS 53.6 kbps WAP 2.0 data transfer in combination with SyncML for PIM synchronization between the Siemens Blackberry Phone and the PC. Still nice to have the full keyboard though. Instead of Blackberry I can keep my own e-mail accounts and download them via POP3. Another nice feature is the walky-talky like functionality 'push to talk'.

I wish WIFI+GSM enabled phones were available yet...

PS It's not a Black Berry Phone though it's a very common misspelling.
PPS You can read about Blackberry Security and issues here.

Are You Afraid Of Success?

2005-04-20T19:37:00.000+01:00

I'm not! I completed Charles S. Carver's Life Orientation Test on Dan Pena's site and scored high on the Success Test. My score was -1 which indicates a healthy dose of faith in my ability to succeed in life.

My Depression Test score leaves room for improvement (understatement) but analysis of the questions and my answers after the test shows I misunderstood an important question from the list, skewing the end result.

I scored 17 on the Optimism Test which is above average based on research by Carver.

So what's the use of this?

If you don't know the current state you are in, it's almost impossible to improve. And especially when you 'live' on the internet it's easy to slip in a habit of low interaction with the real world, loosing sight of role models and good examples of highly developed personalities along the way.

On the online forum circuit I regularly bump into individuals who claim to be successful in what they do but still underperform in the most basic areas of communication and social interaction. They seem to have been shut off from real life examples for too long, building their online world/business. They think they're 'it' and think low of anybody with lesser achievements. And in most cases, their 'achievement' doesn't even sort them from the boys yet in real terms.

But instead of continuing the progression they stagnate and loose focus. Exponential growth becomes linear and flattens out eventually. They settle in their comfort zone surrounded by high walls coloured with perceived success.

A test like this one can be repeated on set intervals as a reality check. If there is no improvement in the scores and/or poor results on the bank statements, help should be sought. Surrounding yourself physically with the right people, especially people better than you, people smarter than you, people older than you and people richer than you can quickly make you realize you're far from 'it' and put your arse back into gear and regain that exponential line of personal and business growth.

As industrialist Thomas J. Watson put it: "If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate." Staying anaesthetised in your comfort zone will result in a bitter ending far from the pictures you were dreaming about... Are you afraid to step out if it?

Messenger Service Spam Solution

2005-04-09T19:50:00.000+01:00

Been getting these annoying pop-ups all day. I'm not even signed in to Messenger but these 'Messenger Service' notifications keep coming every 15 minutes or so. The messages are:

Warning!

Windows has detected errors with your registry. Due to these errors, your PC will be unstable and crash. You might even experience that your PC is running slower than normal.

Visit www.Registry-Do[broken to defeat their purpose]ctor.com to fix your PC.

And...

Warning!

There are invalid entries in your System Registry. Your System Registry contains a numerous amount of information about your System. if this is corrupt in anyway, you will have error messages, experience poor system performance, and an array of other problems.

Please visit www.Win-Cl[broken to defeat their purpose]ean.com for more information.

Note the poor spelling and grammar!

Or...

Message from SECURITY MONITOR to WINDOWS USER on [date]

Important Windows Security Bulletin
==========================
Buffer Overrun in Messenger Service Allows Remote Code Execution,
Virus Infection and Unexpected Computer Shutdowns

Affected Software:

[more crap]

They only have an 'OK' button so they seem a bit scary but don't actually launch anything fortunately. I only found one result in Google when searching part of this message in double quotation marks so thought I'd better post them so others can find the solution I found.

Profdlp from Short-Media Forums advises to disable the "Messenger" service in Control Panel (under Administrative Tools>>Computer Management>>Services and Applications>>Services).

SyncML & Connectivity Solutions

2005-04-09T18:32:00.000+01:00

I've been looking at ways to better spend my time when not at the office. At work we have excellent super-efficient systems in place that get all tasks done promptly. Whether it's because of IT systems or simple company policies, we get the job done in no time.

Not so at home! Inefficiency at home is a pain in my existence at the moment and will be eradicated soon. I recently bought a great desk with pigeon holes and filing systems so now my pile of stuff is neatly tucked away. But still not dealt with entirely! My PC resembles the same situation. I haven't done a fresh install in 18 months now and everybody experienced with Windows knows that means trouble day in day out. Since IT is the cornerstone of any system nowadays I have identified my PC is a major part of the cultprit.

I used to have my Cassiopeia EM-500 Pocket PC PDA with me all the time when going to uni. Synchronized with Outlook it provides a nice mobile platform to keep your PIM (contacts, calendar, tasks and notes) solution with you all the time. I haven't really used my PDA for a while and my recent switch to Thunderbird as my preferred e-mail and news/syndicated content client meant that synchronisation has become impossible. This is why many think of Thunderbird as a quality substitution for Outlook Express but not for Outlook.

However, today when googling again for a synchronization solution I stumbled across the Java based Sync4j software. Sync4j is a SyncML mobile application platform. SyncML (now consolidated into OMA (the Open Mobile Alliance) DS (data synchronization) specifies a standard way to synchronize data between a mobile device and a server. SyncML DM (device management) specifies a way to remotely manage a mobile device from a server. Sync4j supports both standards and is a server solution to connect all your users and devices via 'Principals' determining which user can synchronize which device with which other device.

In laymen's terms, this cross platform software enables you to synchronize your mobile phone with your e-mail client, PDA, laptop etc. When you're out and about you can enter a new calendar entry on your SyncML enabled mobile phone and synchronize this with the server. At home your Outlook, PDA or other devices can tap into the database and synchronize the newly entered data.

A group of Open Source synchronization enthusiasts have launched ScheduleWorld. Running on Sync4j this is a web based front-end where you can manage all sorts of data. Not only can you view your calendar and contacts anywhere in the world via ScheduleWorld, you can also tap into many other sources of syndicated data. You can browse TV listings, weather forecasts anywhere in the world, read your favourite blogs or other RSS/Atom based sources and more. ScheduleWorld also enables you to look in your colleague or friends' diaries to see when they are available for a meeting.

ScheduleWorld also connects to their LDAP server. Thunderbird can be configured to tap into its address book this way. So you can export your contacts list from your phone for instance to ScheduleWorld's Sync4j server and pull it in to Thunderbird via the LDAP directory. Thunderbird even supports auto complete based on LDAP directory entries.

I got my phone, a Siemens SX1 with SyncML support built-in, to connect to ScheduleWorld quite easily via WAP/GPRS. However, the documentation wasn't too clear and contacs synchronization turned out to not yet be fully supported via ScheduleWorld. When I locally installed a Sync4j server it worked a lot better. Too bad I don't have a fixed IP available. The latest Sync4j also supports synchronization of Tasks, Notes, Files, iCalendar and vCards next to standard XML based Calendar and Contact entries. My phone's SyncML application only features configuration entries for the remote contacts and calendar database though. But I guess there will be up to date Java apps available for download and installation on the phone to enable this new functionality as well.

I couldn't figure out just yet how to export my current Thunderbird address book into the LDAP directory or Sync4j database yet either. And all of this seamingly great stuff didn't solve my PDA issue yet. But then I found more projects based on Sync4j via links on their website. MultiSync is one of them.

MultiSync is a free modular program to synchronize calendars, addressbooks and other PIM data between programs on your computer and other computers, mobile devices, PDAs or cell phones. MultiSync works on any Gnome platform, such as Linux.

They on their turn mention the SynCE project, which attempt to provide a means of communication with a Windows CE device from a computer running Linux, FreeBSD or a similar operating system.

All these efforts focus on Linux based systems. Sync4j is also available for Linux and ScheduleWorld is Java based so works on Linux as well. Thunderbird (and FireFox) can be downloaded in the form of a Linux distribution too so all of this tells me to give ditching Microsoft's prducts altogether another go. Skype is available for Linux as well and all that together with Star Office should leave me with no reason to not make the switch for definite now.

I have successfully installed Linux Red Hat 9 before and worked for it a bit, mainly for educational/entertainment reasons. The only reason I didn't stick with it was my inability to figure out the filesystem and how to actually install stuff. Sounds pretty dumb especially since installing software on Windows is such a breeze (double click and follow the wizard's instructions) but I truly couldn't work out at the time how to decompile software and install it. Might have to get a book on it this time.

So... The plan is to format the current Linux partition (forgot the admin password) and re-install one of the available distro's. Then I'll turn it into a killer workstation with FireFox, Thunderbird, Skype, the Gimp, Apache & PHP + MySQL and Zend Studio for development and all other necessary stuff like Media Players etc. Finally I'll turn it into an efficient PIM server able to sync PC, Laptop, Phone & PDA with Web based access as well. And all of it for free!

Detailed Co-op Ad Network FAQ Now Live!

2005-03-09T02:24:00.000Z

In support of Digital Point's great free Advertising Network I have contributed a detailed FAQ blog here.

Another Creative eBay Business Idea

2005-02-25T22:03:00.000Z

We know eBay is doing well for themselves and they're not quite finished yet. The worlds largest online auction service provider is still busy acquiring their way even further to the top.

Not only is the company making loads of money for itself, eBay is making its merchants a fair bit of money too. That's why we keep seeing interesting auctions popping up like the guy who sold adspace on his forehead.

This is the latest innovation I came accross:

Your personal shopping slave.

This guy will take your personal shopping list with him on a shopping spree and ship the goods off to your lazy ass at home.

Ocado only just posted their first quarterly profit after 4 years of home delivery; I wonder how our friend WES over at eBay is going to pull it off!

Blog Power!

2005-02-22T22:52:00.000Z

If you don't quite get it yet; this is what blogging can do for you:

Get you sacked, fired and made redundant. (Full List)
Get you laid. Or at least a date.
Get you tortured.
Get you an FBI visit.
Get you a monthly stack of dollars.
Get you your computer messed up.
Get you your english skills down the drain.
Get you arrested.
Get you inundated with spam.
Get you new friends.
Get you your PayPal account suspended.
Get you your AdSense account disabled.
Get you fired and then a new job.
Get you abused and harrassed.
Get you money to rebuild your burnt down house.
Get you married.

Sounds like fun doesn't it?

Beating Spam: Gmail + Thunderbird

2005-02-19T15:54:00.000Z

Don't you love free stuff? I do! I love it even more so when it is so much better than its paid for alternatives.

I've had a Gmail account for a while now and ditched all my Hotmail accounts in favour of it. I just need to sus out how to get MSN Messenger to work without a hotmail account and I can abandon my last Hotmail account as well. I've got plenty of Gmail invitations so drop me a line if you want one.

Google claims to have 'sophisticated spam filtration technology' in place. Some people disagree but others can confirm its usefulness.

No matter how careful you are, not exposing your address unnecessarily to potential internet evil, spam is unavoidable. It only takes a virus on one person's machine; if they have your e-mail address in their address book it will be spread and abused. Nothing you can do about. So you will always need spam filters and that's why Gmail in combination with Thunderbird seems like a perfect combination to me.

Thunderbird is Mozilla's e-mail client and RSS reader. It is said to be better than Microsoft Outlook, just like their FireFox browser is better than Internet Explorer.

So I'm about to install Thunderbird, set up Gmail for POP downloading and enjoy a spam free inbox. I hope. Google isn't the only one making efforts to prevent us from crap though. This is Mozilla's comment on Thunderbird's spam features:

Smartest Way to Stop Junk Mail: Thunderbird provides the most effective tools for detecting junk mail. Our tools analyze your e-mail and identify those that are most likely to be junk. You can automatically have your junk mail deleted or you can put it in a folder you specify, just in case you like reading junk mail.

So Thunderbird has its own Spam prevention functionality built in already so it can catch those e-mails that slipped Gmail's nets. But if you want to take it to the next level in spam busting you can tie in Thunderbird with AntiVirus software and/or spam classifiers like SpamBayes. William Bartholomew has written an article on 'Configuring Thunderbird with Avast! and SpamBayes'.

The AntiVirus part of that should be easy to understand but the SourceForge project SpamBayes is the smart part of it. From http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/:

SpamBayes will attempt to classify incoming email messages as 'spam', 'ham' (good, non-spam email) or 'unsure'. This means you can have spam or unsure messages automatically filed away in a different mail folder, where it won't interrupt your email reading. First SpamBayes must be trained by each user to identify spam and ham. Essentially, you show SpamBayes a pile of email that you like (ham) and a pile you don't like (spam). SpamBayes will then analyze the piles for clues as to what makes the spam and ham different. For example; different words, differences in the mailer headers and content style. The system then uses these clues to examine new messages.

These 4 killers applications should be able to turn a vulnerable Buckingham Palace into an impenetrable Fort Knox Gold Vault as far as e-mail client software is concerned. Let's get started...

Advanced Crash Course in Google Proficiency

2005-02-10T20:57:00.000Z

You use Google, right?

You use Google almost daily, right?

I bet you didn't know these Google 'tricks':

Google Alerts - Too busy to keep up with what's going on in the world or in any area of your interest? Sign up for Google Alerts and get automatic e-mails sent to you whenever a search of your choice yields new news results or new search results. Very handy to keep up with industry news, keeping an eye on competition or keeping track of your own websites' progress. Only limited by your knowledge of clever searching.
Google Answers - Crap at searching or simply don't have the time? On Google Answers you can ask a question, decide how much the answer is worth to you and someone will find you the answer, backed up with 'proof' (links) from the web. Only once you are satisfied you pay the pre-set fee. For example, someone just paid $100 for the answer for Find roots of the polynomial: a*x^6+b*x^5+c*x^4+d*x^3+e*x^2+f . Another person wondered whether Google headquarters was on fire and offered $2 for the answer.
Google Catalogs - Did your dog choose the latest Dell catalogue to dump his waste on? Not to worry! The Dell catalogue and others can be retrieved from Google.
Google Directory - Bssed on the Open Directory Project database of catagorized links, Google's own version of this attempt to label all quality websites out there features a graphical display of the site's base PageRank. In short, a good indication of what other websites think of that particular site. The Directory can come in handy researching online competition or finding manufacturers / providers of a certain item or service.
Google Local - Only useful for those interested in US based locations of 'stuff' but it's a nice service with great potential. It was only launched last week but can already help you out with problems like the following... You've been eating out for weeks on end and had enough of it. Now what you really desire is a Crap Restaurant in Manhattan, New York. Google is your best friend and will pinpoint the exact location faster than a cat can scratch his ass. Also useful for, well, useful searches.
Google Scholar - If only this was live when I went to Uni! A Must-Use tool for all students. This search tool retrieves info from thousands of whitepapers and academic resources. It sorts the boys from the men when it comes to search results. No more digging through tens of pages to find a few credible sources.
Google Wireless - I've used it many times when bored on the train or in need of an answer without computer access. You can access Google's fast database plus more (through their WML proxy) from your mobile phone or other wireless device such as your PDA. I found film reviews, cocktail recipes and stuff to do in London whilst on the train to Waterloo.
General Google Search Tricks - There's loads you can do to make your life easier, straight from the normal search bar. Need a definition on a word you never heard of? Not sure about the spelling either? Use 'define + KeyWord' (without the ') and it will fetch the definition of the word, abbreviation or acronym. See what a 'Blog' really is. You can also use our friend Google as our desktop calculator. Find out how many inch in 2 cm, how many gallons to the litre or my weight in stone. 1+1 etc. works as well. It can even work out the amount of kilo calories used to move 160 pounds for 4000 feet! See the answer here. More tailored to the American users but also useful if you are expecting a parcel from the US or need someone's phonenumber over there is Google's number search. It will show you tracking details, phone numbers, patent information and more. All you have to do is typing it in the search bar. Another reason why you should have Google open in FireFox as standard.

If all that isn't quite enough yet for your demanding fingers, then why not have a look at the following Google hacks:

Toogle - Fancy Image Browsing
Speegle - Especially useful for lonely people.
Elgoog - Elgoog is a Google mirror. Literally.

And the last Google tip... Want free wireless internet access, where ever you are? Have a look in the Google Store for the Wireless Hotspot Finder. Find Wi-Fi hotspots up to 300 feet away from you.

If you can't find it with Google, it doesn't exist.

Open Source - You CAN Do That!

2005-01-26T23:40:00.000Z

Even after spending 13.5 hours at the office today coding my way through chunks of PHP I am still well exited about today's Open Source software. You might have to tweak things more to get it to do exactly what you want it to do but the end result beats just about anything else on the market.

Take the Mozilla FireFox web browser for instance. Fantastic out of the box but adding a handful of extensions really makes a differenc eto your online life. Tabbed browsing saves on all the clutter, the solid code base saves on all the trojans and other shite, about:config gives you direct access to the core and nifty extensions like Weather Forecast, GoogleBar, WebDeveloper and FoxyTunes to control your favourite media player just make browsing wunderbar. No reason to ever go back that other browser. Did I mention it's free (and legal) to download?

Another Open Source joint development software package I've started working with recently is osCommerce. It's possibilities are just endless. The core installation can run any type of online shop but it's only when you start installing Contributions or hacking your own path through the code that you really start enjoying it. Makes you wonder why you've been paying so much money for that very restrictive 3d party e-commerce solution. Apache, Zend (PHP), MySQL, Linux and the osCommerce Open Source community have created a mighyt fast, ever expandable super car and put me in the driving seat. Fantastic! 200 Mph on Innovation Boulevard.

It's all very exciting stuff but I do feel like my days as a die-hard coder geek are numbered. Bill Gates doesn't code himself anymore either. And when I see myself post things like "Coop IBLs without rel=nofollow marginally improve PR but really boost SERPs in the SEs" in the Digital Point Forums I sometimes scratch my head and wonder what my girlfriend would think of me writing such seemingly meaningless crap. Building my own ventures has begun. ..

A few great quotes from the osCommerce website:

tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand

logic will get you from A to B - imagination will take you anywhere

With Open Source software, you CAN do that!

So this is what everybody is on about...

2005-01-23T23:29:00.000Z

A well-known but often forgotten business principle is to "Be first or be different".
This blog is probably the five millionth-ish blog out there in the World Wide Wild so I'm most defintely not first. Will this particular blog be different though?

Yes and no.

Functionality wise I will be singing from the exact same hymn sheet. I chose Blogger as my blogging solution simply because it's the only one I knew the URL of off the top of my head. Once I get the hang of it and know whether I like this medium of expressing myself or not, I will probably look out for an Open Source solution like easymoblog.org .

The principle will also be pretty much the same as my millions of predecessors; I'll post whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like.

It will be different though in the way that no two individuals are the same. So based on that precept, I should have something original to say to you all.

To give some direction to my future posts I decided on a title and subtitle for my blog.

Terpstravaganza

The title should be fairly self-explanatory. Terpstra is my surname, extravaganza means:

1) An elaborate, spectacular entertainment or display.
2) A composition marked by freedom and diversity of form, often with burlesque elements and satirical or parodic intent.

I had to look up 'burlesque' myself and its meaning might indeed be an indicator of what to expect here at times:

1) A literary or dramatic work that ridicules a subject either by presenting a solemn subject in an undignified style or an inconsequential subject in a dignified style.
2) A ludicrous or mocking imitation; a travesty.
3) A variety show characterized by broad ribald comedy, dancing, and striptease.

Not sure on the striptease part though ;) (I can think of at least one under-aged potential reader of my blog so I shall endeavour to keep this a descent place for all.)

A Periodic (P)review Of Leaping Forward

Without limiting myself to time frames or post counts, I shall be reflecting upon whatever crosses my path. That path is being carved out in a progressive manner; geometrically instead of arithmetically, leaps instead of steps - certainly no half measures. One day you might find a review of what has already happened before, but I predict most will be about what happens now or is about to happen in the not-so-distant future. I was taught not to spend time on things you can't change; hence the focus on the way forward. The internet is now and that's exactly what I like about it.

Readers Are Leaders so be my guest and read my blog as often as you like. Readers wouldn't be leaders if it wasn't for the stimulating and interesting work they read so I'll make sure there is a lesson to be learned in every blog post starting today, even if it's just a wise quote or enlightening rhetorical question.