November 29, 2004

Copernic Desktop Search - The Search Engine for Your PC

Copernic Desktop Search - The Search Engine for Your PC

Having tried Google Desktop Search, which I tried to make the best of, but uninstalled when I realised it was merely a useless, RAM-hungry desktop ornament; I have now just installed Copernic Desktop Search v1.1 and it kicks Google's butt, hands down!

November 26, 2004

An Exceptionally "EEVL" Search Resource

An Exceptionally "EEVL" Search Resource

One of the most respected engineering gateways on the web has just released four new databases providing free access to hundreds of online scientific and technical journals.

Gary Price of SEW comments on, and gives a great listing of, non-commercial, searchable databases on the internet.

November 25, 2004

'Filter-Proofing' the Email You Send

Cost effective results based advertising to increase occupancy

Just as each of us wants to spam proof the e-mail we receive, so do the thousands of other people that we want to communicate our message to on a daily basis. So, how do you make sure that the e-mail you ‘send’ does not end up on the junk pile of your intended recipients?

Unfortunately some spam filters are so tough these days that perfectly legitimate emails can wind up in someone’s “spam” folder.

There are a variety of ways in which spam filters decide what is spam and what is not. Some use a “one strike” system where if the “bad content” occurs even once, then the email is spam. Others which are becoming more popular score emails based on certain features or elements and then the user can decide how high a level they are prepared to accept before the email is classed as spam.

While you cannot guarantee that the emails you send won't be filtered out
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Google Web Search Features

Google Web Search Features

In addition to providing easy access to more than 8 billion web pages, Google has many special features to help you to find exactly what you're looking for. Click the title of a specific feature to learn more about it.

November 24, 2004

TrackBack Explanation

movabletype.org : TrackBack Explanation

A Beginner's Guide to TrackBack
What Is TrackBack?

In a nutshell, TrackBack was designed to provide a method of notification between websites: it is a method of person A saying to person B, "This is something you may be interested in." To do that, person A sends a TrackBack ping to person B.

November 23, 2004

Three Must Have Firefox Extensions for Blog Readers and Writers

Three Must Have Firefox Extensions for Blog Readers and Writers

The Firefox browser is an amazing product in its own right that's packed with great features like tabbed browsing, but it's even more powerful when you install optional extensions. Here are three that are well worth the install for both busy blog readers and writers...

Most avid blog readers and writers fill out online forms - lots of them. This is especially true for avid commenters. But when you're writing in such a public forum and your name is attached to it, spelling counts...a lot! That's why I use SpellBound. It adds a customizable spell check function to Firefox. I run it everytime I am filling out an online form.

If you haven't discovered Bloglines, make it a point to do so. Bloglines is a powerful Web-based RSS news reader/aggregator. It's one of my favorite online tools. One of the site's great features is that it can alert you whenever one or more of your favorite blogs has been updated. The Bloglines Toolkit puts these alerts right in your Firefox status bar. It also enables you to check to see who's blogging about any Web page you're visiting. This feature alone comes in handy again and again. It lets me know if I am blogging about something before anyone else has!

Last but not least is ScrapBook. This incredible extension lets you save all or even just a tiny part of a Web page to your hard drive for offline viewing/searching...with all of the formatting intact.

I use this to cache all of my Bloglines feeds to my hard drive for offline-viewing when I am traveling and away from a live connection.

These three are just a sampling. Other productivity enhancers that are worthy of a look are the Google PageRank Status and SearchKeys.

by Steve Rubel, Micropersuasion Weblog

November 21, 2004

Copyright Website

Copyright Website

Welcome to the Copyright Website! The Internet's first and premiere Copyright Registration and Information Resource. Launched in 1995, the Copyright Website strives to lubricate the machinations of information delivery. As spice is to Dune, information is to the Web; the spice must flow. Or, if you prefer another metaphor, take the red pill and I'll show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes...

Customized 404 messages, especially on Apache

Customized 404 messages, especially on Apache

A Web author may wish to "customize" error messages that are sent to the browser (or other client) when a requested resource is not found. Normally the server in such cases just sends a general HTTP error code 404 (conventionally called and displayed as "Not Found"), and the browser then takes a general action that it applies in all such cases. So there is nothing site-specific. And there might be a reason why an author wishes to make something site-specific to happen.

Fablis : Free Online Encyclopedia

Fablis : Free Online Encyclopedia

Really cool, easy to use, resource

November 16, 2004

Robots.txt Generator - McAnerin Networks Inc.

Robots.txt Generator

Robots.txt Generator -- cool tool from Ian McAnerin

November 01, 2004

Learning Movable Type: Concerning Spam

Learning Movable Type: Concerning Spam

Spammers have discovered bloggers and sooner or later if you allow comments, trackback pings, or the Movable Type send-entry form on your weblog you will get spammed.

Weblog spam appears in many flavors:

1) Basic comment spam. The spammer leaves a short uneventful message in a comment field in one of your entries. The spam comes from the URL placed in the comments URL field. These URLs link back to every conceivable scam. The spammers leave URLs here to create a link from your site to theirs, thus increasing their Google ranking. Spammers are also now linking to legitimate sites that have not cleared their pages of comment spam, thus increasing the Google rank of those spam links. This all goes to show you that you really do need to check the links of anyone who leaves a comment on your site.

2) Trackback Spam. Spammers have discovered how to take advantage of Trackback. TrackBack spam is very similar to comment spam. The spammer sends TrackBack pings to your site that direct viewers to a totally unrelated URL.

3) Comment flooding. The spammer uses an automated computer bot to flood your blog with spam messages, up to hundreds in an hour. The spammer doesn't necessarily leave a URL, but leaves garbage messages, almost like a graffiti artist.

4) Referral spam. The spammer links to your site from their site, and then pings your site through their link, thus creating a reference and link to their site on the statistics referral log of your website. When you are reviewing your stats and see the reference to an odd site (ex. Paris Hilton), clicking on the link takes you to their site. Many people list "referrals" on their site publicly, so by spamming referral logs, not only does the spammer get a link on your referral log (which is picked up by Google) but may even get a link on your main page.

5) Send-mail spam. If you are using MT's "send entry" — a form to send an email of your entry to a friend — the spammer uses your mt_send_entry.cgi script to send spam or viruses to others using your email address in the return field. You can tell that this might be happening if you start getting rejected emails bounced back to you that you never sent in the first place. There was a vulnerability in earlier versions of MT that allowed this to happen.

How do you fight spam on your blog?

MT3 offers Typekey authentication that ...