Category: Tech Stuff

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Kill Comment Spam Dead Use Akismet and WP-Hashcash

Do you use WordPress? If you do I find the best Comment spam defense is a good offense. Combine Akismet with a few other good Spam defenders and you could be free from that detestable comment spam!

I use WP-Hashcash

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-hashcash/

Try it! Best thing about it is it doesn’t bother real users and kills bots dead.

After all Akismet is good but some of those spammers just get by Akismet since it is still based on user feedback.

Of course that doesn’t last long usually.

Like I said best defense is a one two punch offense. . . .

Akismet + WP-Hash Cash = Dead Comment Spam

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Design Bliss and WPDesigner Win a Free Theme Club Membership!

Hello! Well some of you may have noticed but probably not, since I haven’t said anything about it, but I really digg WPdesigner.com and I have been following his new Theme Club and had decided I really would like to join the club.
In fact I have had fun reading his Critiques and fun musings on themes and the WordPress community as well as using his themes on several of my blogs at one time or another! Well he recently ran a promotion and has been allowing other sites to use promotional give aways to the new Theme Club which is already outrageously inexpensive at $5 annually. But I signed up for one of these contests at www.designbliss.com incidentally an excellent design blog with great icons, graphics and commentary by Brian Pate. I hadn’t subscribed to the site before, but after reading that they were an affiliate and were giving away Theme Club memberships, I had to check it out!
I am very happy to have won a membership in the contest and want to thank Small Potatoes and especially Brian Pate, for hosting and giving this one to me! I’ve already downloaded and applied one of the themes to this site and will be making some updates but was very thrilled to see that nearly all of my code and sidebar information was handled seamlessly in the new WordPress Customized Widgit bar feature!
That just about sums it up, but I’d encourage anyone to sign up for Small Potatoes Theme Club at wpdesigner.com and to check out Brian’s great site at www.designbliss.com!
Glenn

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Adsense and Earnings with a Niche 5 Steps to $100

Hi There! Well I haven’t written much or actually nothing about this but I’m an Google Adsense Publisher. I accept Google ads on this site mainly in the 404 but some refer els are around, and run Contextual Ads on my Niche site www.findwirelessinternet.info I began to accept Adsense as an experiment to see if I could re-coup the domain cost and a part of my hosting. And so I began tentatively and slowly in March 2007. I found it to be really rough going at first, a kinda black hole of expectation. Every day, sometimes multiple times a day browsing over to adsense.google.com and looking to see if I had any earnings. But for a time almost nothing. . . Ahh but patience, research and a good niche make up for a lack of well . . . anything. But I kept plugging away. Here are some of the steps I took to break the $100 barrier, it took a quite a while for me but there it is:

1. Signup for Adsense, if you don’t have an account Click At the Top of this Post!
2. Read the Adsense Blog http://adsense.blogspot.com/
3. Read the Program Policies https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=8423 (this is the don’t get banned warning FAQ)
4. Create great content that appeals to readers and provides something they want. Quick Primer http://www.improvetheweb.com/quality-content
5. Keep it up and wait . . . and Nine months later you too may have a $100 dollar check in the mail from Google! 🙂

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One Laptop Per Child Give the Gift of Connectivity and Learning

Hello to my friends and readers who may have stumbled upon my blog. I wanted to write about the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project. This project is headed by Nicholas Negroponte the author of ‘Being Digital’ Being Digital, which is one of the several sources for the project’s mission.
The Goal as related from http://www.laptop.org/en/vision/index.shtml


“Our goal: To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves. read more”
So why do I agree with this assessment and project, because I believe people matter. I believe people of every nation tongue and tribe deserve to be empowered and encouraged and have the opportunity to educate themselves. This project isn’t about the technology or the laptop, the laptop is a doorway to interconnectedness and amazing opportunities for these young children around the world to find a way to learn, grow and play that they probably have never experienced before.
Do I believe technology is a cure all? (Absolutely not!) Do I believe that these children will be completely immune to the dangers inherent in an interconnected life? (Unfortunately Not! Human nature lends to exploitation and evil far to often Rom 3:23) Do I believe the potential benefit outweighs the costs and potential dangers? Absolutely, there is something about connectedness and learning that opens the mind to possibilities unimaginable before. This technology isn’t about the computer, although it is amazing!
Did you know that each one of these laptops doesn’t even require an electrical outlet? ( A foot powered pedal provides power without the electric outlet) In addition their built in Mesh Networking device allows interconnected Laptops to piggy back off each other and connect to the Internet from any other connected laptop!
Well that’s about all for OLPC for now, why don’t you check it out and if you are ready to give or to get goto http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/index.php
🙂 Glenn

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Could You Survive a Digg Storm with WordPress and a Shared Host?

Photos from a Storm

Have you recently found yourself the center of attention? Did Stumbleupon, Technocratica and Delicious all tag your blog as a mecca of information for the masses. Did your traffic spike beyond levels that would make any reasonable server and host pull out their hair?

Here are 3 easy tips to help get you out of this mess!

1. De-activate ALL other plugins! (If you can get to the WordPress Plugin Control Panel choose the “Deactivate All Plugins” from the options at the bottom. If you can’t get to the control panel but can still access FTP, you can move your plugins to a new subdirectory, this will deactivate them in WordPress.

2. Re-enable or Install WP-Cache2 (Preferably before the Storm)

3. Call Your Host and Ask for Mercy! ( 🙂 ) All joking aside if you see you are spiking from an article and Digg and other Social Media are catching on, contact your host, and try to avoid the dreaded “THIS ACCOUNT IS SUSPENDED!” Message.

Hope this has been very useful information. This may help in your case or it may not, but it is definitely worth a shot, in any case! Don’t try to go it alone. If you find yourself in the middle of a storm and would like some advice feel free to email glenn@interfaithnetworking.com!

Thanks for the tags and keep blogging. . .

Glenn

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Top Seven Pieces of Free Software I Use in Everyday Life

We all have our favorites, well this is a quick list of seven free software applications that I use nearly every day. . . (not ZAR) 🙂 thankfully.
In no particular order:

Google Desktop Logo

We all need a great local search and honestly microsoft’s default search except in Vista stinks. . . 🙁 Give Google Desktop a try and disable remote searching if you are worried about security. I honestly find this indispensable!

Google Picasa

Okay I finally found a photo organizer that works and actually prints good with my Canon Printer. . . .! ! Except for the slightly different select for Red Eye I haven’t found anything yet I don’t like about this gold free application! Including the free Web Album Sharing. . . very nice.

Adobe Photoshop Starter

Next, I know this and Picasa compete! But hey what’s another photo down loader! 🙂 The thing that I liked about this is it also has a nice photo importer that will grab my pictures automatically on connect so it competes with the default one in Win XP, but I kinda like it and I think it’s easier than XP’s default importer, although my Canon camera came with an application that works slightly smoother but is kinda ugly to look at. . .. 🙂

Whoops I did it again! So you hit delete too soon on that flash memory card on your camera? No problem, try this software, it literally saved my hide when I deleted my son’s birth day pictures. . . ! ! ! whew, you don’t know how much I was sweating it till I came across this gem.

Paint.NET Photo Editor

Did you ever wish Paint had just one more little feature? Rotate, save as another format, (I know they added this in XP, but you get the idea. This free application really fits the bill, it easily replaces those annoying nag ware software apps that come pre-loaded on so many computers and can rotate, modify, and add layers! That is a nice feature. . . .
Windows Movie Maker

Have you ever needed an easy way to put together a slide show, home movies, or even your own DVD? Well now you can and the auto highlight feature in this is the BomB! Absolutely the best for taking a slideshow, home movie and outside music and seamlessly easily blending it to make a great home made DVD! wow. . .

Did you ever wish you didn’t have to ask that question? Do you have x piece of software? Where x= MS Word, Powerpoint, whatever. . . . Now you can make your own Adobe PDF files from anything you can print. . . This tool is literally the easiest free tool to use. Don’t let someone charge you for this jewel it’s GPL free. . .





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Wi-Fi in your area?

Lately, I noticed the little park near my house was undergoing a renovation. It looked like a big one! The old metal playground equipment was going out, buldozers and earth moving equipment were really getting to work. This past weekend they had the big unveiling. Wow! it definitely is much better than it used to be. They added multiple play scapes, padded mulch and a large play area with specialized sections for 2 to 5 year olds and then larger play scapes for kids from 6 to 12 or so, along with swings, monkey bars and a dome climbing scape!

To top it all off they landscaped and put in brand new walking trails and a nice fountain. As if this wasn’t enough, they are about to fence in the basketball courts they added so the balls don’t go out into the street.

I have to say they did a great job. And you know what else they added. Wi-Fi! That’s right all that beauty and fun and Internet Access too!

Welcome to Marshall, TX 25k people and Wi-Fi in the main City Park near Marshall Regional! What a place.

If you want to learn where you might find more Wi-Fi around your town you can read this helpful article at This Blog.