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Update 5-September-2008:  I was contacted by the new owner of PetitionSpot.com today and was told that they have completely redesigned and refocused the site.  According to the e-mail, all spamming by the previous owner has been eliminated. I haven’t verified this but hopefully the situation over at PatitionSpot.com has improved since I originally posted. Original Post: I’ve started receiving 3 unsolicited SPAM e-mails a day from a company called “AmazingOffers”. Receiving SPAM is not really a big deal, but don’t you always wonder how they found your address? This time, it appears PetitionSpot.com gave them my address. Why do I suspect this? I gave PetitionSpot.comRead More →

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Say you have a brother-in-law (a.k.a. bother-in-law) and he is a web developer and he develops almost exclusively for Microsoft products. You know, the type that develops those web pages at work that are only viewable in Internet Explorer because they are not even close to being W3C compliant. What is the best way to get him to see the light and switch to Firefox? I’m not sure this is the best way to present the argument, but here are some thoughts: Advantages of the browser itself: Tabbed browsing – once you start using tabs that open with a center mouse button click, you can’tRead More →

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I've been working on a branding project that required consistent use of color throughout every aspect of the company.  The specified standard was a Pantone color.  I figured I'd search the web and find a color equivalency  converter.  I found several, and most all of them gave different results.  So I called Pantone and got the exact HEX (html) / RGB conversion values.  It turns out, only one of the color conversion sites was correct.  And the winner for best Pantone color conversion goes to: SEO Consultants http://www.seoconsultants.com/css/colors/conversion/Read More →

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I’ve been looking for easy-to-use software to convert DVDs to XVID files to play on my Treo 650 (using the excellent The Core Pocket Media Player). I was about to purchase Lathe from Omniquiti when I found out that it is based on Pocket Divx Encoder, which uses GLP (link to license). In the Lathe forums, those who have purchased Lathe report that also states in the help file that it is distributed under GPL. Unfortunately, according to the thread, they have basically refused to release the codes by ignoring all requests. This is similar to the tactic taken by Simple Devices, as I reportedRead More →

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Nothing like arriving home from visiting family to find 6404 e-mail messages in your inbox. All of these were returned / failed / out-of-office error messages because some spammer is using my domain name and random usernames to send spam messages. I’m still receiveing about one returned error message per minute. No telling how many actually are getting through to people. Out of all of these messages, there was one that was different. It was a response to one of my Blog entries. It was, you might have guessed, a spam blog comment.Read More →

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This list has been updated for FireFox 2 – Please see this updated list. I’m a long-time user of the Mozilla and Firefox browsers. The base feature set is amazing but the extensions are what really make this browser a requirement. Here are my favorite extensions: Required (I use constantly): Tab Mix Plus: If I had to choose only one extension, this would be it. It makes the tabs behave any way you want them to behave. I use it to make child tabs open beside their parent, for the title text to be blue when the tab is unread, to show page download statusRead More →

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I’m looking for wiki software for a project I’m resurrecting and I’m mystified by the overwhelming number of fragmented versions available, defunct or otherwise. My requirements are pretty simple: support my server (PHP4, mySQL, CGI), WYSIWYG editor, and free. Doesn’t sound too complicated does it? Well apparently it is. I’m still looking. Looking at this comparison, MediaWiki is the closest as it has alpha-level support. Twiki is another possibility, as is Wikka. MoinMoin 1.5 has WYSIWYG, but it requires PYTHON on the server, which won’t work for me. Basically, I’m overwhelmed and frustrated. I guess I’ll just have to try a few and see whichRead More →

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I’ve converted my blog from blogger.com format to WordPress. My initial thoughts are that WordPress is much more customizable and powerful. If you have have your own webhost and know how to ftp files to your server, floowing the installation instructions at wordpress.org will result in a much better blogging experience, especially if you like to tinker!Read More →

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I’ve setup a petition to get the GPL software for the Rockford Omnifi media players released. The petition is available here. It’s currently up to about 250 signatures. Hopefully slashdot will pick this up and it will get some more publicity. SimpleDevices, who is responsible for the software on the omnifi, appears to be the company with the unreleased GPL source code.Read More →

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I’ve written about Linksys WRT54G / WRT54GS firmware in the past so I feel obligated to post an update. I can’t believe how big of a deal James Ewing of Sveasoft has made of this. To give a brief summary, he appears to basically be following the GPL with his firmware development and using a loophole to charge people for early access to the latest version. Fine, whatever, I don’t care. I’m patient. What bothers me is how he seems to keep finding ways to keep people from distributing the firmware, which appears to me to be in clear violation of GPL. At first IRead More →