Comments, TrackBacks, & Moderation

As you may know, I had turned on comment/trackback moderation for a while because I was sick of all the spam comments and trackbacks. However, once moderation was on, there were fewer and fewer comments left on posts. My goal was not to stifle feedback or discourage people from leaving their thoughts, links to sites, or opinions. I was just sick of spam. I don’t want to force everyone to have to authenticate with TypeKey or fill out CAPTCHAs, either. There needs to be a better system…but what? Are there spam filters for comments and trackbacks on SixApart’s TypePad servers scanning things for me before getting posted to my blog? If not, maybe their should be. Spam email may be decreasing, but spamming in the blogosphere is on the rise, and the trackback spam leaves us scratching our heads with its bizarre nature as of late. It’s time to take action before it becomes an epidemic.

So, let’s see if I can get some comments again: Who’s your blog host? How do YOU deal with spam?

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I saw this on digg: Firefox for Dummies…in case you have figured out how to use a web browser yet!  ;)  Actually, the book has some useful tips on using the more "advanced" features of Firefox liked tabbed browsing, extensions, bookmarks, etc. Maybe it’s not a book for a geek like you, but perhaps it’s a good gift for your family and friends who are still clicking on the blue "e" as if that’s the only thing that gets you to the internet.

All of the iTunes deals with record companies are set to expire over the next two months, and the negotions are starting to lean in Steve Jobs’ favor. The record companies had originally wanted to go the route of variable pricing — as in jacking up the rates of popular songs, of course. Less popular tracks and back catalog would have been offered at a rate lower than 99 cents. iTunes customers were not happy about this possible new deal, and that could have spelled disaster for the booming music download service. These negotiations had gotten dirty, with execs saying that one price point
was unfair to their artists and threatening to pull their content; Jobs
responded by calling the labels "greedy." However, it seems talks between Jobs and the labels have reached a turning point as several record execs are now saying they are unlikely to convince Jobs to allow variable pricing. We can only hope.

Via TechCrunch – This looks interesting! FeedBurner has launched a new service called FeedBurner Email. The service is a feed-to-email-service that allows publishers the ability to offer plain text or HTML emails containing the latest posts to their subscribers. It’s a publisher-only service, where the emails are delivered as "from" the publisher, not from FeedBurner. There’s not a FeedBurner header and only a small "delivered by" footer. Publishers will be able to access to the email addresses that subscribe to their feed, so they could export these addresses in order to move from FeedBurner to another service, if they so desired.

If you’re a publisher who wants to use this new service, just log in to your FeedBurner account and click on the Publicize Tab. There is an Email Subscriptions option on your left. You click on the "Activate" button and FeedBurner will generate some code for you to copy & paste to your blog. However, TypePad users can just add the widget (thanks, TypePad!)

Google is working working with companies such as Oracle, Salesforce.com, and Cisco in order to offer a new feature which will be added to its search appliances. This new feature is called "Google OneBox For Enterprise," and will allow businesses to create company-specific searches for company data while still being aware of the employees’ security levels. It seems Google is inching its way into the enterprise world as they attempt to address the challenges facing the corporate world. Search Appliances, Gmail for your domain, Office Apps?, and now this. Very savvy, that Google.

source: Reuters

eMessenger is an AJAX web app that lets you chat with your MSN, AOL and Yahoo buddies online without having to download software to your PC. There is also an eMessenger  extension available for the Firefox web browser. However, the 3 users who bothered to review the extension gave it a 2 out of 5. Hopefully, that means the other 4577 people who downloaded it were happy campers. Still, it’s worth a look if you’re into IM, since Firefox IM plugins aren’t exactly a dime a dozen yet.

Via Inside Yahoo!: Meedio announced today on their homepage that they have sold most of their technology to Yahoo! Some of their offerings include a Home Automation program, Media Center software, and Meedio TV, which "lets you watch, pause, rewind, and record live analog, digital, and HDTV broadcasts using your existing PC." More info on Meedio can be found here.

If you do a lot of searching and research online, but don’t always have an internet connection available, then you could use this: Webaroo. Webaroo is free software program and service that lets you search and browse web pages without a connection. The software scours the web and download the content as topic-specific "Web Packs." These "Web Packs" are syncronized to your laptop or mobile devices. When you go back online, the content is re-syncronized. Oh, and it’s free!

If you ‘re a blogger that uses Typepad (like me), then you are going to love this site: Typepad Hacks. The site’s goals are to collect useful hacks for extending the capabilities of TypePad blogs, provide a forum for issues, news and user concerns about Six Apart products and services, and to organize users into a unified voice to lobby Six Apart for the features, fixes and changes to TypePad most important to us. This is certainly going to become a useful resource for the Typepad bloggers out there. As more people get involved, their "unified voice" will definitely have an influence on SixApart’s plans for features and fixes — how could it not? The site owner, John T. Unger, evens has plans on "How To Fund a Revolution So Noboby Gets Hurt," which explains how users can get together to collectively fund new features. What new features would you want in Typepad? Head over to that post, and let him know.

There are a few iPod commands you may need at some point to put the iPod in its various modes or do a hard reset.  Hard Reset: You use a hard reset when your iPod won’t turn on or is frozen. Diagnostic Mode: Use diagnostic mode when you’ve already done a hard reset, but still can’t determine what’s wrong with it (advanced users only!) Disk Mode: disk mode is for when you want to use your iPod as a hard disk to store non-music files such as photos, documents etc. This website has a very handy, interactive display of what buttons to push for these commands on all generations of the iPod.