Ad Blocking via Host file

Software February 19th, 2003

Heh, this is probably old news to some, but I just read about this clever hack in PC Mag to block ads by modifying your local host file

URL-based Magnetic Poetry Generator

Software February 18th, 2003

Ha! This is very cool. Mark has created a Magnetic Poetry Generator that will create a word list based on the content found within a page you reference at the end of the path.

For example:
http://diveintomark.org/magnetic/http://news.google.com

BTW, Mark also has a hilarious 404 page as well.

SharePoint as a Weblogging tool?

Microsoft February 17th, 2003

Matt Williams of Micosoft says, “DUDE! Sharepoint is not a weblogging tool!” (via Scripting News)

However, as I mentioned back in November that SharePoint Team Services could be used as a Weblogging tool and that many Office users didn’t even realize that have it.

Google buys Blogger

Search February 16th, 2003

Dan Gillmor: “Google … has purchased Pyra Labs, a San Francisco company that created some of the earliest technology for writing weblogs, the increasingly popular personal and opinion journals.”

I’m sure this is going to be interesting.

Matisse Picasso

General February 15th, 2003

For Cat’s birthday, I got her tickets to the Matisse Picasso exhibit at the MoMa in Queens and I definitely recommend checking it out if you’re in the NYC area before May of this year.

Business Programming

Knowledge Management February 14th, 2003

Quotes from Jon Udell’s interview with Ward Cunningham:

“Most of business programming is about getting a wrong program to do the right thing by being even smarter. People resent these systems because that’s what they have to do. The program is a boat anchor dragging down the pace of business, and it’s almost set up so that it can’t be anything but.”

Spammers Cannibalistic Pyramid Scheme

Technology February 14th, 2003

Wired News: “The human gene pool should be incapable of producing enough idiots to financially support the vast number of spammers whose scat litters so many inboxes. ”

“…most spammers make money selling e-mail addresses to other spammers, who then sell those same addresses to others. It’s like the legendary snake eating its own tail. “

Wireless HiFi over WiFi

WiFi February 13th, 2003

According to this article, Linksys will be releasing in 2Q03, a wireless LAN (WiFi) device that attaches to any 802.11b network, and searches the network for MP3 files, or even images, which can then be played or displayed on a home audio or video device (TV).

Apparently it cannot stream video yet, but that is supposedly planned for future releases. (via BoingBoing)

Downloading dreams

Technology February 12th, 2003

According to this Cnet article, I may someday soon be able to download my dreams and review them later (TiVo style) <grin /> (via Slashdot)

PostNuke Template Rendering Engine

Open Source February 11th, 2003

An overview was posted on the PostNuke site about the Smarty-based Template Rendering Engine for PostNuke Phoenix.

I can’t wait to see this in at least a beta. I’d love to rid theme templates of those nasty nested tables and exploit CSS.