Techie :: Techno ::: May 2006 Archives

Google have started beta tests of an API for Adsense - they've had one for adwords for quite some time. Although the beta is limited to sites with more than 100k pageviews per day with some other criteria:

To be eligible, your site must register users who then maintain their web content through your site. The types of sites we're looking for include web hosts, blog hosts, Wiki hosts, forum hosts, and web publishers.

The API site includes documentation and a signup form (via)

Over the past year or so most of the blog engines have defaulted to using the nofollow tag in comments. This tag basically tells search engine spiders not to follow the links. While this can be handy if you want to mention a competitor it's not so useful when you have genuine contributors to your blog's comments. While I can understand the reasoning behind the introduction of the tag's usage I still feel that blog authors should be able to choose whether or not to turn it on or off. Movable Type allows you to turn it on or off easily, but Wordpress doesn't. Up until recently I was using a plugin to turn the damned thing off, but I've now had to turn it off the hard way - by hand. If people take the time to comment on my ramblings then the least they should get is a small bit of "link love"!

Just posted this on the company blog

O'Reilly publish some really good technical books, but that does not give them any divine rights. Their latest "clarification" on the it@cork debacle that I mentioned earlier is really not helping matters:

We're not claiming exclusive use of "Web 2.0" in all contexts. Our service mark applies only to "Web 2.0" when used in the *title* of "live events" such as conferences and tradeshows.

So if I organised a get together of some Irish IT professionals and called it say "Web 2.0 Meetup" or anything with "web 2.0" in the title they could come after me as well? My understanding of trademark is not comprehensive, however, from what I do know a trademark holder would have to prove several things including the basic "possible confusion" bit. How the hell could anyone in their right minds confuse a small Irish IT organisation's conference with that of an American publisher? Even if they did confuse it how the hell can they send threatening letters when they don't seem to have an actual trademark in Europe? (application for a trademark is not a trademark) From a PR perspective I really would not like to be in O'Reilly's shoes.. They've handled this really badly. On the plus side I'm sure that IT@Cork's membership will receive a boost and that the event will be sold out

I am rather amused and mildly shocked by O'Reilly's threats against IT @ Cork (of which we are members). Of course they are now back peddling madly, but I still think it's incredibly heavy handed and ill advised. Unless the trademark was registered in the EU it would have no bearing on Ireland anyway, so I would love to know what they had applied for.

From time to time I come across website that simply do not work properly in Firefox. In most cases this can cause some degree of irritation, but other times it is extremely frustrating. At present I am researching cars, so I've been working my way through as many of the Irish car sites as possible in order to gauge pricing etc., Unfortunately at least one of the sites that ranks high on Google plus runs adwords does not work properly in Firefox. It's not merely an aesthetic display issue - its core functionality simply breaks when you attempt to use it. What really amazed me, however, was that the web development company that are responsible for this atrocity have such a nice client list. Does this mean that the large corporates don't apply any standards to their web developers?

Yet another high profile Irish company website is not setup correctly. Browsing a particular vendor's website you can access personal information on clients, deliveries and more as nobody thought of putting even rudimentary security in place. Fortunately they don't sell online!

We've given the Irish Isp Test site a minor facelift while fixing some of the bugs, removing the login requirement and added a couple of new features. You can now check your connection speed without logging in or signing up. The login session has been fixed, so regardless of where you login you will stay logged in ie. login to forum or test page - it won't matter Added a simple IP display with whois output.. More features on the way..

Back in December of last year I mentioned the IEDR's planned rebranding. They have finally unveiled the new site design this afternoon. Although I'm not a designer I like the new look and feel: Unfortunately not all elements of the new site will work perfectly in all browsers, but it is a definite improvement on the previous design and layout.

Why are there no non-US hosts listed on the Wordpress website? Is it that the "powers that be" have something against non-US providers?

I'm scheduled to give a talk at the ICT Expo this Friday afternoon on "Linux and some of its friends in the enterprise " So what should I be talking about? Of course I have some ideas already formulated, but what kind of images / ideas spring to mind when someone mentions OSS and business? Are we talking about desktops? Servers? Mail? Web? Replacements for proprietary software? Any thoughts welcome