October 2005 Archives
Geoff has a nice post about wine over on his blog:
A Wine Peasant will proudly proclaim the virtues of their €6.99 bottle of South African Chardonnay. “…really easy to drink, and 14% alcohol…” as if drinking alcohol is a challenge and not something to enjoy and that extra few percent alcohol is just what we need to further remove us from our mundane reality. In fact the alcohol percentage is a legal requirement and only indicates the maximum, the actual content can be lower.In some ways that would seem to sum up a lot of Irish people's attitude to alcoholic beverages. It doesn't seem to matter if the drink is good or bad as long as it has enough alcohol to get you drunk! I like wine. I think I always have done. I wouldn't spend large amounts of money on wine, but that's usually a matter of economic priorities more than anything else. When I lived in Italy I could afford to drink quite nice wine on a regular basis, whereas here wine is considered to be a luxury and is taxed to the hilt. The end result of the tax is that wines of very different values will end up costing almost the same price. Geoff does bring up some rather valid points about people's relationship with vinoculture. How many people actually know the difference between one cepage and another? At least the days of Blue Nun, Black Tower and those other excuses for wine are more or less gone. My local corner shop may not have the best selection of wine in the world, but there is enough to choose from regardless of your budget.
IrishBlogs.info has now got over 100 blogs listed.
Thanks to Evo for such a nice bit of software.
Several months ago I mentioned an experiment that I was attempting to conduct using Typo3.
Continue reading Typo3 Enterprise Content Management.
Being able to track how successful your search engine optimisation from directly within your browser is not a new idea. We've all been using the Google toolbar, or a derivative of it, for a long time. However, being able to track backlinks and a whole lot more is something new.
Continue reading Firefox Search Engine Optimisation Extensions.
Some blogs look fantastic and you don't have to be a designer to get an attractive one either.
Continue reading Eye Candy for your blog - New Wordpress Theme Browser.
Over the last couple of days there has been an increase in the number of submissions to Irish web directories that I edit.
As each site has to be approved prior to listing I get to read about and view quite a few sites.
Continue reading Search Engine Optimisation and Submission - Back to basics.
Age of Empires III is due for release the first week of November.
I've never been much of a gamer, but I've always enjoyed wasting hours (sometimes days!) with the Age of Empires games and other conquest type games.
Continue reading Age of Empires 3 - Back to the Basics.
Over a year ago I posted some reflections on email filtering based on our experience as an ISP
Justin Mason's latest post reflects on some of the issues that I had hinted at:
False Positive ‘Reports’ != FP Measurement
As he underlines in one of the comments:
The problem is, if you don’t receive the message text, it can be damn hard to figure out if the message you just blocked was spam or not — therefore they seem to just assume it was spam!
I spent a couple of hours this evening fixing some of the issues people had communicated to me after launching the new help / faq site for IrishBlogs.info
- Site descriptions on all blogs are now visible
- Random site of the moment is enabled
- Multiple blogs re-enabled
When I originally launched IrishBlogs over the summer I wasn't expecting so much interest. To date it has just under 100 bloggers and hopefully will surpass the 100 mark very soon.
As a result of this I've setup a separate FAQ / Help Site to replace the current FAQ
If anybody has questions or answers then the new FAQ is the place to address them
It's nice to see other people that I know starting their own blogs. I imagine that some of them could turn out to be very interesting over time.
Ross Cooney has just started his blog. I'm not sure what kind of content to expect over there, but I'm sure it will be interesting.
Geoff has also started blogging and I must say I found his first couple of posts to be very amusing :)
Other sites that have been launched include Hugh's latest "baby" Sports.ie. I'm not a sports fan, but Hugh's energy is infectious
The Irish Internet Association has announced the appointment of their new CEO, Fergal O'Byrne:
The Irish Internet Association is pleased to announce the appointment of Fergal O'Byrne as its new CEO. Fergal will be starting in the role with immediate effect. Commenting on the appointment Colm Lyon, Chairman of the IIA said, “We are delighted to have Fergal on board. The Internet Industry in Ireland is currently in a very positive cycle - the momentum of the last two years has continued and it has transformed now into sustainable growth. Against this background the IIA has become more relevant than ever and during the last year this has translated into more events and more members. The IIA expects this growth to continue and it looks forward to working with Fergal in devising the plans and strategies to make the IIA the catalyst by which its members meet, learn and trade. Fergal is well familiar with the Internet Industry in Ireland and he has demonstrated a clear ambition to make the IIA an integral part of this industry." Fergal O'Byrne has been involved in the internet industry since 1995. He sits on a number of boards and was awarded the IIA/MSN Internet Marketer of the Year Award in 2004.
Some of the stories surrounding blogs and bloggers over the last few months have attracted a lot of media attention (possibly hype). Just because a blog is a blog does not mean that it should not be usable or professional.
Continue reading Usability and Blogs - Common Sense Goes a long way.
Since we launched our blog hosting package I've been asked by a number of people about ways of getting the most out of their Wordpress blog.
Continue reading Essential Wordpress Plugins.
Flock is the latest "toy" in the geek world it seems. I'm not sure whether it will take off or not, but I grabbed a copy of the "developer preview" to try it anyway.
Continue reading Flock on Ubuntu.
The Open Office development team released the stable version of Open Office 2 earlier this week.
If you need a functional office package, with word processing, spreadsheets, presentations etc., then it makes an attractive alternative to MS Office.
The Irish mirror is hosted by heanet and is probably a safer bet than the main download servers at the moment
Pierre gave me links to a couple of the films he'd subtitled earlier, as they're in French here's the place to do your own :)
I've mentioned the Golden Spiders and the distinct lack of a website more than once over the last couple of months.
Continue reading Spiders Find their Web - in the USA.
Wayne gave me a really useful link this evening to a script that not only calculates your site's Google PR, but also examines all the subpages and outbound links:
Super PR Tool
The same company also offers a bunch of other scripts for google advertisers, publishers and seo people. Well worth a visit
The shortlist for the IIA Netvisonary Awards 2005 has been announced. Much to my surprise I'm on the list!! Wow!
Thanks to all who voted
The full shortlist is as follows:
Continue reading Netvisionary Awards Shortlist Announced.
WARNING: This is a commercial post. If you do not want to read it please do not click. You have been warned.
Continue reading Blacknight Goes Blog Mad.
I got postgrey (greylisting for postfix) working without too much difficulty a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately I managed to screw up smtp-auth in the process.
Continue reading Postgrey + smtp auth.
Advertising and marketing techniques can be a source of bemusement at times. It's nice to see a brewery that doesn't take itself too seriously :)
Carlton Draught
Found via Paul - his site's down, so I won't bother linking to it
The old adage "you pay for what you get" is one often cited in the business world and in particular in that of IT and hosting.
Continue reading You pay for what you get, or do you?.
It's amusing to see some people's fixation on the number of domains they hold, number of clients, number of supposedly happy clients etc., etc
Continue reading Putting it in perspective - Irish Market vs the World.
Ubuntu's installer for desktops is simplicity itself. Not only is it easy to use it also comes with a wide range of powerful features.
The development team have now announced the release of a server specific version ie. one without all the "junk" that you need on a desktop machine
Continue reading Ubuntu Releases Server Version.
I grabbed a screenshot of the latest AIB phishing attack earlier this morning
In most instances phishing sites are taken down by the hosting provider, however in this instance the domain has actually been revoked from the root nameservers. The domain's status has been changed by the ICANN registrar to:
status: hold,infringe-3rd-partieswhich is interesting. Does this mean that registrars are going to be more proactive in fighting phishing?
Adsense and other contextual advertising systems offer small webmasters a chance to get a "slice" of the advertising revenue pie. You don't need to have a gigantic web portal or millions of page impressions a month to get enough cash to cover some of your basic costs, such as domain registration or hosting.
Those of us who run larger websites are able to make more money - obviously.
We are also interested in seeing how we can maximise our revenue without falling foul of the Adsense TOS.
However not all webmasters are ethical and have resorted to using techniques that could be described as extreme, borderline or creative depending on your own stance.
Darren has an interesting summary of some of the techniques being employed and you can see why some of them would attract attention. You can also see how they may help increase revenue.
The question remains though - is it worth it?
How far will you go?
Phishing fraud is not going away. As the fraudsters expand so do their list of targets. The latest one that was reported by Alex French, CEO of Bitbuzz, targets AIB:
Continue reading AIB Targetted by Phishing Attack.
Hugh is currently working on a new site, so he obviously wants to get it right from the beginning.
Like so many other "net savvy" entrepeneurs Hugh knows that the search engines are crucial to his venture's marketing strategy. If the spiders don't like his site it may not be as succesful as he would like.
Continue reading What makes a search engine friendly site?.
I'm really happy with the speed of delivery from CDWOW.ie. As each season of Scrubs is released on DVD I intend to get a copy.
Season 1 was fantastic, even though I had seen a number of the episodes on TV. Being able to have a Scrubs session was great :)
Season 2 arrived today, so I know what I'll be doing for the next couple of evenings
You too could be the proud owner of a dodgy domain
Yes, that's right. These domains are guaranteed to be high quality barely used domains.
Their previous owners were caught in the act of committing credit card fraud and possible email fraud so, of nothing else, they may have a coloured past
Any takers??
Jokes aside I do wonder what the hell hosting providers and domain name vendors do with the fraud domains ie. domains paid for using stolen credit cards which are subsequently voided
We're amassing a collection of them (it's not that big, but it does grow over time) and I presume other operators have comparable collections. Anybody interested in swapping theirs for some of ours ? :)
According to a report on this morning's Morning Ireland, mobile phones have been in Ireland for 20 years today. Of course 20 years ago the word "mobile" was not as correct as it is now.
I got my first mobile in 1996 when I was living in Spain. It actually belonged to one of my girlfriend's friends.. but that's not really important.
So when did you get your first mobile?
One of the more common complaints that I see is about irrelevant ads on pages. When the pages are not on a blog the issue tends to right itself quickly enough, but blogs are more problematic.
Continue reading Adsense + blog = headache?.
Privacy advocates like to "get vocal" whenever they are aware of possible infringements on their perceived privacy.
But what is privacy in the 21st century?
Continue reading Privacy - Is it just a myth?.
I upgraded the scripts that power the Irish blog site to Evo TopSites Professional yesterday afternoon / last night.
I would love to say that the upgrade went smoothly and was completely uneventful, but that would be a lie :)
From the end user point of view the new version of the software should be faster, as it supports more advanced caching.
Other features include RSS feeds and "static" pages for comments and site details (mod_rewrite)
I'll provide more details on these later this week.
Before anyone contacts me to break the news I am aware that there are some issues with the Irish Blogs site.
The "site details" link is not working and is giving a very unhelpful error.
I've contacted the software developers and will implement a fix as soon as I get a response from them
The software powering the site was upgraded earlier this afternoon, so if you see any other issues apart from the one I mentioned please let me know.
EDIT: The site details link is now working. There are still a number of other minor problems to be resolved, but they guys in Evo are being really helpful, so hopefully it will ALL be working better than before :)
Edit2: The site should be working (more or less).
Software patents have been a hot topic in tech circles for the last couple of years.
Continue reading Software Patents - more madness?.
I upgraded this server to breezy this morning. It seems to have gone quite smoothly, but I'll probably find I've broken something in the process :)
My copy of the latest AfroCelt CD arrived this morning
I have been listening to it on and off all morning and am really happy with it. They definitely haven't lost their touch to thrill and haunt you.
I have been listening to it on and off all morning and am really happy with it. They definitely haven't lost their touch to thrill and haunt you.
The Golden Spider "page" has been subject of much mockery here over the last few months. They've now "upgraded" it again and are now using a static Flash graphic (why would you use Flash for a static graphic????) promising that you can enter online from October 10th. Today is 13th and you still can't enter .....
I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I am still amused
The latest version of Ubuntu has officially been released.
The release comes shortly after the news that ie.archive.ubuntu.com is now mirrored in Dublin by Heanet
Continue reading Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Released.
I've always been more than a little sceptical about industry statistics and the methodology employed to gauge companies. I'm also very aware that the current methods are about the only ones available to us, so I have to take the information as being at least indicative of trends and patterns.
Continue reading More Hosting Stats + A gauntlet is thrown down.
Well, only if you really want to:
IIA NetVisionary Awards 2005
It should be interesting to see who is shortlisted as some categories had some very interesting names
I'll be at the ceremony in either case :)
I keep an eye on several blogs from people involved in the domain and hosting industry. Sometimes their reflections on trends can give an interesting insight, but other times this can backfire badly.
A case in point would be that of Godaddy's CEO, Bob Parsons, who made a number of comments regarding "gitmo" that upset quite a few people.
Whether I agree or disagree with Parsons I have to admit that I am impressed by his attitude. He isn't afraid to speak his mind. Then again he can afford to.
Not everyone is that lucky.
Christopher Ambler's post today highlights this:
I've not posted here in a while simply because I've had lots to say, but really shouldn't say any of it. Yeah, the lawyers have taught me well to just STFU.A glance at Ambler's CV will give you an idea of what he might want to talk about if he had free rein. Corporate reality, however, precludes him from speaking as freely as he might like. I can certainly empathise with him.
Metro is now available in Dublin, according to an article on Adworld
The launch of the free paper has attracted a lot of controversy and speculation in recent weeks.
Am I the only person who finds reciprocal link requests generated by automated mailers and nasty little spam robots annoying?
Continue reading More spammy link requests.
Yet another Flash game involving animals. This time kittens. Enjoy playing
Bash autocompletion is very handy especially if you are using ssh to login to the same hosts over and over again.
Unfortunately breezy includes a minor change to the ssh client configuration that will cause this to break.
If you look in a standard known_hosts file in your ssh directory you should see a human readable part including the hostname and IP followed by the usual mumbo jumbo.
In the breezy standard setup the contents are all hashed, so you can't make out any of the contents.
The breezy ssh client config located in:
/etc/ssh/ssh_config
Includes the following line at the bottom of the file:
HashKnownHosts yes
which means that by default autocompletion will fail miserably as the hostname / IP will not be readable, as it is stored in a hash.
Simple solution. Change the line to read:
HashKnownHosts no
Remove the existing ssh history:
cd .ssh
rm known_hosts
Make sure that autocomplete is on in your profile by checking that the following section in your .bashrc file is uncommented:
if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
. /etc/bash_completion
fi
And your autocompletion should start working again.
There's probably a very good reason why the package maintainers changed the default, but it took me some time to work out why my autocompletion wasn't working
*sigh*
Ebay is famous for selling the weird and wonderful, but when you have somebody offering to sell you his spam you really have to wonder. The listing may be taken down by the time you read this, but it's basically an offer to send you spam in case you don't have enough of your own :)
The recent billboard from Paddy Power upset some people. Whether the advertising authority were justified in their banning of the advert or not is no longer important.
Their advertising agency(beware of the site's overuse of Flash etc) and Paddy Power themselves couldn't have asked for this much media attention.
According to an article in today's Sunday Business Post the online betting company decided to replace the "controversial" adverts with a simple overlay stating:
"There's a place for fun and games. Apparently this isn't it"
Controversy can sell.
EDIT: If you try to browse the paddypowerplc site don't be surprised if it doesn't work. Whoever "developed" it never bothered testing it on browsers other than IE
For the last couple of years Luc Besson's official site has been stagnant. The content was informative, but it gave the impression of having been abandoned to the web.
That's all changed with a new and improved version which uses some of the better multimedia technologies to immerse the viewer in the Luc Besson experience.
On the plus side there is plenty of new content, including posters, desktops, flash video which streams nice and fast, music video and a whole lot more.
On the negative side the site is using Flash for all of the navigation with the content elements loading into a section of the site's main body. Although this works well from a visual point of view it is not very good from an SEO point of view.
Other goodies include:
- soundtrack extracts - they're all by Eric Serra of course
- television ads that Luc directed
Of course if you don't know who Luc Besson is this is all probably quite meaningless :)
I've mentioned my obsession with DVDs in the past. It's one of those things I have to live with :)
Today I popped over to Amazon.fr to pick up a DVD by related to one of my favourite directors, Luc Besson.
Besson's cinema is fantastic in my opinion, but I am aware that purists consider it to be overly commercial. I don't care.
In either case I was amazed at how cheap The Dancer was - only €4, so I simply had to pick up another film - Cyrano De Bergerac
If you are one of those few people who has not seen Cyrano I would urge you to rectify that situation immediately.
I'm not convinced that ads on forums work.
If you are a regular user of a bulletin board or forum you tend to focus on the content and not the adverts. However if the ads are truly eyecatching then you maybe attracted to them.
Forums by their nature produce thousands if not millions of pages with plenty of text to provide context. If you can get relevant ads displaying on the pages and your audience to see them, then you should, in theory at least, be able to garner some revenue from them
Most forums, regardless of the software being used, are very conservative with their placement of media. Standard 468 x 60 ads in the header and footer would seem to be the norm.
If you stick to the norm then maybe you shouldn't complain about banner blindness.
So where should you be putting the ads?
According to the Adsense blog:"Problogger":http://www.problogger.net/ a skyscraper on the left of the page is the ~"hottest" spot
They've provided another one of those "hot spot" maps to make it easier:
Needless to say the same would apply to non-adsense advertising
One of the tricks I've noticed is to place ads in the middle of the forum posts ie. between one post and another. Whether this leads to higher click rates or not is a different story, but it definitely caught my attention
Needless to say the same would apply to non-adsense advertising
One of the tricks I've noticed is to place ads in the middle of the forum posts ie. between one post and another. Whether this leads to higher click rates or not is a different story, but it definitely caught my attention
I first browsed the web in '94
Back then browsers were very different. The web was a much smaller place. Google didn't exist.
Eleven years later the web is an important part of people's lives. You bank online, buy your books online, read the news online and maybe even find love online.
The technologies behind it all have moved on. Content has become more complex and our interactions with it have reached new levels.
AJAX is one of the more recent web buzzwords. You see it a lot in the tech world. It's easy to think of it as yet another fad.
But what if it isn't?
And what exactly is it anyway?
Jordan Frank's article on xml.com tries to address both questions and makes the whole thing a lot clearer ( a picture can speak so much stronger than mere words)
A lot of mail server admins have been forced to implement some form of spam checks at the SMTP level.
Some of the implementations are quite demented and probably do more harm than good, whereas others are extremely sane.
Continue reading Postgrey - Greylisting In Postfix on Ubuntu (Debian).
Alan was wondering about adsense in RSS feeds.
I knew it was possible as I had looked into it previously, but I wanted to refresh my memory.
The official Google line at the moment is:
We're currently beta testing AdSense for feeds, a program that allows you to monetize your feeds through contextually targeted advertising.There isn't much information on their site, but the application form suggests that only bloggers with 100+ sub