January 28, 2005

Search Engines Against Spammers

Some of the largest search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN Search) are getting together to combat spammers. The aim is to combat spammers who use forum and blog commenting features by allowing site owners to add “rel=”nofollow“” to your links. This additional HTML attribute will identify to the search engines not to follow the link hopefully meaning that the spammers can not automatically find site's comment forms via the search engine reducing the amount of spam.

If you want to enable this on your own blog, forum or online form then just add “rel=”nofollow“” to your <a> tags. For example, change this:

<a href=“the link to comment page”>link text</a>

to:

<a rel=“nofollow” href=“the link to comment page”>link text</a>

As you can see it is very simple.

Links
New Scientist Article

Posted by Egon Kuster at 09:17 PM

January 27, 2005

Remote Growl

I have already created a small article that showed off a little application called Growl that allowed for a managed notification system for all Mac applications. Andreas Åkre Solberg has extended the Growl application to allow users and developers to send Growl notifications between machines rather than just on the same machine the growl is running on. Andreas' application is called Remote Growl and can be found here. To allow Remote Growl to work you will require the GrowlNotify application and Bindings for Growl, both can be downloaded from the Growl Home page here.

Links

Growl Homepage
Remote Growl Homepage
Previous Growl Article

Posted by Egon Kuster at 11:03 PM

The Mac Lounge

 Images Index 04Are you one of those either using a laptop on a lounge or wishing to be more comfortable while using your computer? Welcome to Bluebroc, the iMac inspired lounge setup that integrates an Apple iMac so that you can use the computer in comfort on your specially designed lounge.

Links
Bluebroc Site

Posted by Egon Kuster at 07:49 PM

January 26, 2005

Backing up your Mac using RSync

Matthew Phillips has given me a small HOW TO article on using rsync to backup you mac. I have hosted this article and you can find it here or download it from here.

Links
Goto Backup Your Mac With rsync article
Download Backup Your Mac With rsync article
Rsync Home Page

Posted by Egon Kuster at 01:37 PM

January 20, 2005

Counter Strike and KFC

 Pics CsboxAre you a Counter Strike (Half-life game mod)? If you are then you will love this movie.

Links
Counter Strike and KFC
Counter Strike Home Page

Posted by Egon Kuster at 11:10 PM

January 19, 2005

4 Stage Button - Geekness All the Way Through

 B Archives Images DestructHere is a 4 stage button for the ultimate geek in you.

Link

Source Article

Posted by Egon Kuster at 07:57 PM

January 16, 2005

iPod Mini Time Zone for Eastern Australian States

IpodminiShort Version: For Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra use the Magadan time zone.

Long Version: I recently have acquired a new iPod Mini. I have already have an ageing iPod 1st generation and I have really noticed how apple have updated the software from the 1st generation to the current 4th generation. There are lots of little things that make the latest iPods really work, items like not having to reboot when disconnecting from the computer or even the ability to show the current time in the title area. It is these little upgrades that have really impressed me with the iPod Mini. The only thing that I do not like about the iPod Mini is its support for Time Zones. Apple has made the iPods contain time zone settings so that when calendar information is transferred to the iPod from iCal all the time zone information is understood and enforced. However, to set the Time Zone you need to know all the other cities in your time zone as it does not use the time difference from UTC but rather the name of cities in the time zone. This works well if you know all the cities but for me, who lives on the east coast of Australia (+10 UTC), none of the Australian cities are listed. After searching on the Internet I finally could confirm that the russian city Magadan has the same time zone as Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. So if you live in an eastern Australian City (except Brisbane that uses different time zone information and is contained in the iPod time zone list) use Magadan as your time zone.

Posted by Egon Kuster at 10:49 PM

TouchGraph: Mapping the Internet

 Tiny HpEver since I entered my own site into Googles search field to see what it came up with and noticing the related sites link I have been interested in what you could do. I have always thought that you could easily use this google feature to create a network map of sites that are linked to each other. Then along comes TouchGraph Google Browser, which as suggested creates and network map of sites related to each other using the Google search engine. Have a play for yourself, it even animates the network map creation.

Links
TouchGraph Google Browser

Posted by Egon Kuster at 09:19 PM

No Aqua Version of OpenOffice

 Branding Images LogonewOpenOffice has posted an update about their Mac port of the open source office suite OpenOffice. According to the update no new development has happened since the middle of 2003 so instead of working on an Aqua version (native mac application) they will only continue work on supporting X11. This is a bit of a blow to the mac community as this will most likely mean that OpenOffice will never produce a native mac version of their software.

Links

OpenOffice Mac Port Timeline

Posted by Egon Kuster at 01:30 PM

January 15, 2005

Semantic Web Search Engine

 Images Logo-1Looking for RDF, OWL or other semantic web documents that are used to describe the semantic meaning of content rather than the pure data itself? The staff at University of Maryland, Baltimore County have created Swoogle, the semantic web search engine, semantic web google-like engine hence the name.

Links
Swoogle
eBiquity Research Group Blog Article on Swoogle

Posted by Egon Kuster at 04:42 PM

January 13, 2005

Mac Frenzy

Ok there has been a complete frenzy to release new macs and mac-related items. Here is a quick roundup.

 Ipodshuffle Gallery Images Withheadphones20050111iPod Shuffle - Flash based MP3 Player

 Macmini Images Indextop20050111Mac Mini - Very small Mac with no monitor

 Ilife Images Indexilifebox20050111iLife'05 - iPhoto 5, iMovie HD, iDVD 5, Garageband 2, iTunes 4.7

 Iwork Images Indexiworkbox20050111iWork'05 - Pages, Keynote 2

And then from Griffin Technology ...

 Images Products Prod Image FirewaveFirewave - Surround Sound for the Mac

 Images Products Prod Image BlueBlueTrip - Bluetooth audio for iPod

 Images Products Prod Image AirremoteAirClick - Remote Control for Mac, PC, iPod and iPod Mini

 Images Products Prod Image XpressXpressStand - Desktop stand for Apple Airport Express

 Images Products Prod Image DeckSmartDeck - Intelligent Cassette Adapter for iPod

UPDATE - More Mac Goodness from Griffin Technology

 Images Products Prod Tiny LapelmicLabel Mic - Multipurpose Microphone

 Images Products Prod Tiny Dock800Dock800 - Firewire 800 Cable for iPod

 Images Products Prod Tiny TunejuiceTuneJuice - Battery Backup for iPod and iPod mini

 Images Products Prod Tiny RocketfmRocketFM - USB TFM Transmitted for Mac and PC

Posted by Egon Kuster at 07:49 PM

January 11, 2005

Stuffit Expander Takes a Long Time to Start

I have noticed that over the last couple of days Stuffit Expander takes a VERY long time to start. After a bit of searching on the Internet I found this article on the MacFixIt site. The error occurs because the developer Aladdin has been taken over by Allume and the domain name of the servers has changed. On start up all their applications check for updates but timeout because of the server name change. To fix this you can run the following command from the Terminal application, which will stop version checking:

defaults write com.stuffit.Expander allowVersionChecking -bool NO

Links
MacFixIt Article

Posted by Egon Kuster at 11:17 AM

January 10, 2005

SD and USB Memory Card In One

USB-SD CardSanDisk is showing off a new SD/USB memory card at the CES 2005 electronics and gadgets show. The Register has an article about the card.

Links
The Register Article

Posted by Egon Kuster at 10:41 PM