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Plaxo as .Mac replacement

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Plaxo looks like it might be a good alternative to .Mac sync. The new “3.0” version includes a sync client for Mac OS X that can synchronize OS X address books and iCal calendars from one or Macs with Google, Yahoo, and other web-based addressbooks and calendars.

I’m thinking of dropping my .Mac service when it’s due for renewal in a few months, since the only thing I use it for is syncing and that’s been broken since I started using Leopard. I don’t use my mac.com email since they don’t have any spam filtering and I don’t use my mac.com web page since it lacks PHP or CGI support. With a decent replacement for .Mac sync, I have no further need for .Mac.

My contact info at Plaxo

New and Improved

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I’ve completed most of my enhancements to WorldBeatPlanet. The emphasis is on community and user’s content. I’m now allowing all registered users to have a blog and a member page and upload audio or video. The video module allows YouTube videos to be embedded as well as uploaded video files. Instead of stories, the primary content type is now blog entries, which are promoted to the front page and included in the feed. I’ve converted the old lyrics, discography, and reviews, which were based on taxonomy terms, to unique content types. I also changed the podcast to use audio nodes rather than file attachments and I added a new FeedBurner feed for the podcast.

Domain squatters must die

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I’ve been thinking of reviving my old domain name ShareYourMusic.com (which used to redirect to WorldBeatPlanet) in connection with the new changes I’m making to WorldBeatPlanet. When I checked it today I discovered that it’s now parked at a ‘domain for sale’ page by a domain squatter, and they want at least $2500 to buy that domain. I plan to see if I have any legal grounds to regain that domain. The following posts confirm that I originally registered that domain:

Drowning in comment spam

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I just deleted 1192 comment spams from the Akismet queue on this blog. All of these spams arrived since I emptied the queue yesterday. I no longer bother checking the queue before I empty it due to the huge volume of spam since I’ve only seen one or two false positives. I’ve also had Akismet miss two spams in the last few weeks, but I was required to moderate them, so they never appeared on the site.

New Theme

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As you probably notice, I made a slight change to the theme for this site. I’ve been using the Barthelme theme, which I also use at XpressLinux.com, because I like the clean design. However I didn’t want this site to look exactly like XpressLinux.com so I made a slight change to the CSS.

Note the narrow band of colors at the top of the header. Those particular colors have a special significance; read about it here.

How not to run a blog

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wiisee.net is one of the news feeds I subscribe to for Wii news. It usually has interesting items, but they only post excerpts with no link to the original article and no information about where the articles came from. If I want to read the full article, there’s no way to find it from their site.

IntelliTXT Decision

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I’ve decided on a compromise for IntelliTXT at MacMegasite. I’m keeping it, but using the Userpoints module to disable it for users with more than 50 points, which means users who have submitted 5 or more articles.

Considering dropping IntelliTXT

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I’m thinking of dropping IntelliTXT from MacMegasite, since I find it really annoying and I’m sure most of my readers do as well. However it pays very well – about $30-$50/month, which pays for my web hosting.

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SEOs one step above spammers

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Coding Horror shares my dislike of SEOs. There’s something just plain sleazy about them. I’ve been contacted by SEOs and I refuse to deal with them. I don’t care about web ranking and I refuse to resort to tricks to raise mine. Since my websites aren’t my source of income, I won’t lower myself to that level. Websites that offer good content will raise their ranking on their own without the benefit of a SEO.

Death threats against bloggers are NOT "protected speech"

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This is just plain disgusting.

Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users has been receiving death threat comments on her blog. As a result she cancelled her presentation at ETech in San Diego. It began as the usual trolls but quickly got out of hand where threatening comments were posted on several blogs threatening her and several other people including Robert & Maryam Scoble. It got to the point where the people involved don’t feel safe.

That’s what happens when some people think they can hide behind their anonymity.