I remember the good old days of domain squatting

At least you had to pony up a few bucks per domain name back then.  Now there's Twitter squatting.  It's fairly predictable, really...  Every single letter TwitID is taken.  Common surnames...  taken.  Common words...  taken.  Apparently, you don't even need to use a legitimate or at least legitimately unique e-mail address to do it.

Classic Blogger and PHP?

A question via e-mail:

I stumbled upon your blog: http://developernotes.thomaspowell.com
What I noticed - and it's something that I wanted also - is that your blogpages are all ending in .php, even your individual blogpost pages (http://developernotes.thomaspowell.com/2008/10/remember-milk-is-on-twitter.php)

How do you do that in settings? I can only get the index page to end as PHP. The individual posts remain in HTML.

Could you share this nugget of wisdom with me?

(Note:  I've only done this publishing to another host via FTP)

In Blogger dashboard, click the [Settings] link for your blog.

Under the [Settings] Tab -> [Publishing] Tab, edit the Blog Filename field. (index.html -> index.php)

There is also a setting for the archive file:
Under the [Settings] Tab -> [Archive] Tab, edit the Archive filename field. (archive.html -> archive.php)

One more thing to note...  all the old *.html files will still be left on the server, so if you want them removed, you'll have to clean them yourself.

(You may also want to redirect old links to the new extension).

Is a Yahoo developer platform worth the time investment to learn?

Yahoo Introduces Social Developer Platform

"3 elements":

Yahoo Social Platform, a set of REST-based social application programming interfaces (APIs) for utilizing social data related to Profiles, Connections, Updates, Contacts, and Status.

Yahoo Query Language, a new Web service API for accessing other Web services using a SQL-style query language, rather than a lower-level programming code. Yahoo describes it as "a command-line version of Pipes," Yahoo's visual programming system for mashing up and remixing Web data, like RSS feeds.

Yahoo Application Platform, a set of software and services to build applications that run on Yahoo. It includes a browser-based development environment, various APIs and Web services, a distribution and discovery infrastructure, and a runtime and rendering environment.

Yahoo Open Strategy (Y!OS) 1.0 Developer Release announcement and List of Y!OS Documentation.

Is this new hope for Yahoo, or another potential dead-end for an industry laggard?  I remember  Yahoo killing its Facebook wannabe, which, with TechCrunch keeping score, makes Yahoo 0-4 On Social Networking. Yahoo does not equal AOL, but I can't help but think of AOL's shutting down of AOL Journals, Pictures, Hometown, Bluestring, and XDrive.  Is it worth investing the time to figure out something that will potentially be on the chopping block in the future?

Remember the Milk is on Twitter!

This may be old news to many RTM/Twitter users, but it was a pleasant surprise to me today.

As I was perusing the Remember the Milk keyboard shortcuts, I noticed that at the bottom, under "Services", Twitter was listed. So I clicked on the link, and the "Services / Remember the Milk for Twitter page" came up, where I could enter my Twitter id. I was presented with a verification code for the next step.

From there, I typed "follow rtm" and then "d rtm [verification code]".

Now that all that is set up, I can interact with Twitter through direct msg:

"d rtm pick up the milk"

"d rtm call jimmy at 5pm tomorrow"

"d rtm !complete call jimmy"

All the instructions and some command examples are at: http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/twitter/

Of course, I'm still learning how to even use the RTM Date Formats.

Added:
Of course, since I can txt updates to Twitter (40404), I can add tasks for today by texting
"d rtm pick up the milk today"

I don't need a laptop or notepad to record my "action items" anymore. This is awesome.

Added 8/23:
Thanks to @louisvilllesoup, I looked into sending tasks from e-mail to RTM inbox as well... this is a pretty robust feature set.

A much simpler setup is importing a list via e-mail, which enables adding a list in bulk to a specific list (e.g., personal) by specifying the list in the subject line and list items on individual lines in the message body. A downside to this method is that signature lines and legal disclaimers get added (per line) to your to do list. I'll need to research if there is a way around this.

Trying to dig up IT relevant podcasts

Any suggestions?

InfoWorld Podcasts: These look promising...

• Infoworld Daily - includes a general tech news segment which is repeated in the NetworkWorld 360 podcast as well.
  
• The Virtualization Report
  
• Storage Sprawl
  
• The SOA Report
  
• ...a few discontinued ones are out there, too.

Enterprise 2.0 podcasts - looks like recordings from a conference? I'll have to download and check them out tonight. Not as promising as the Infoworld ones. I see that a lone spammer has managed to post spam comments in "response" to a few of the links.

NetworkWorld podcasts: Again, some promise here.

• NetworkWorld's Twisted Pair (this sounds more like entertainment, but possibly relevant news)
• NetworkWorld Panorama
• NetworkWorld 360 - includes a general tech news segment.
  
• Voices from the IT Roadmap
• NetworkWorld's Newsmaker of the Week
• Forrester Fundamentals
• Network Downtime (entertainment)
• Converging on Microsoft
• Cisco News and Reviews
• JavaWorld's Java Technology Insider
• LinuxCast

Same old grind / a new day / gotta work / for the pay / Burma-shave

Today's xkcd comic has Twitter all Twitterpated.

On comments and blogs

A tweet by @JasonFalls reminded of this topic.

Have you ever been in a large meeting where someone asks a question that is uncomfortably inappropriate? The perceived anonymity of the internet only seems to only embolden such tendencies.

Copywrite, Ink.: Allowing Anonymous: Communicators Divided - The business and communications justifications for allowing anonymous, allowing moderated comments, or allowing no comments at all. I would tend to agree that considering "[allowing] no comments at all" myopic is a bit harsh, for two reasons:

1. While the average lone miscreant is relatively harmless, many organizations might (justifiably) consider themselves potential targets of coordinated attacks.
2. The more popular the blog, the faster the comments degrade into flame wars. I avoid the comments on digg.com and several news sites because I've seen mildly provacative devolve into vitriolic hatred and ignorance--sometimes over something as benign as a story about a local basketball game.

I do, however, like this final point:

However, and I cannot stress this enough, I do advise communicators and public relations professionals to never make anonymous comments or, if they do, they need to be prepared to answer for such posts in a world where no communication is really private. Not anymore.

Of course, my feelings might be partially influenced by the Unedited Voice of a Person:

Do comments make it a blog? Do the lack of comments make it not a blog? Well actually, my opinion is different from many, but it still is my opinion that it does not follow that a blog must have comments, in fact, to the extent that comments interfere with the natural expression of the unedited voice of an individual, comments may act to make something not a blog.

Joel Spolsky draws from this to make the point that you get a few insights, followed by a spew of noise/filth that no one would say out loud if they had to take ownership of their words.

Finally, xkcd illustrates:



Especially on YouTube:

In a time when I'm aggravated at Insight, Verizon cheers me so...

...of course, only in a schadenfreude kind of way.

Part of my reluctance to change carriers for phone and internet service is the whole "devil you know" dilemma. I've never really considered Verizon a viable option for my needs, and I know very few people in the area that are on Verizon.

Verizon plays fast and loose with the wrong 1,200 e-mail addresses is an almost juvenile example of Verizon's customer service failings... just a mere mass e-mail with a cc: version bcc: used for the mailing list, plus some exchange server glitches. There's also the equally juvenile Run-amok Verizon robo-caller torments 1,400 customers incident.

When I think Verizon, I think of: Verizon CEO thinks it's unreasonable to expect your cellphone to work at home or Verizon doesn't know dollars from cents... Oh yeah, and 792 Octillion Dollars.

See? I'm not insane...

Less than an hour later, no changes to my setup or running programs.

Firefox 3


Then things fall apart again:
IE 7


40 minutes later:

My current Insight cable speed tests.

(No, I'm not just trying to squeeze maximum throughput here--I just want basic pages to load properly--the slow speeds are yet another indicator that there is a problem.)

Under IE 7:


Under Firefox 3:


These are actually excellent results for me right now... I've been dropping to 88 Kps down/22 Kps up. Aggravating thing is, at certain times of the day, I get over 3000 Kbs up and over 300 Kbs down (sometimes 7000 up, 700 down). Supposedly, since my line is "good" (according to the tech at the call center) and behavior just as bad without router plugged in, it hasto be the modem. I don't really have time to drive to Insight office to get replacement and then hook up. Besides, I told the tech that connection has been inconsistent since the storm. I guess it's cheaper for me to come have the modem replaced than to have someone check the line these days.

At least when I used to have bad internet service before, I'd at least get decent/on-site service. I guess I need to "power down/power up" 30 times, try turning the cable modem upside down, and letting the water run before getting a tech out here.

Added:
Dear Insight Broadband, Please Treat Your Customers with Respect
Insight want to save? you money



Update:
So far so good with the new modem:

This should tide me over until my cell phone contract runs out, at least.

Follow Cost on Twitter

My follow cost for Twitter

All these silly little Top 10 lists.

Okay, so I just love punditry sometimes...

10 Things That Won't Make Windows 7 A Success (and 1 That Will)

8. Death By A Thousand Versions Of The Same Product. How many versions of Vista are there again? Okay, if you say so. We only need 3 versions of Windows 7: a home version, a business version, and a mobile version. Three products, and three SKUs. That's it. Give us any more and we'll send you back into timeout, Microsoft.

10. Annoying The User. UAC was the direct approach. Ask the end user at every turn possible a question they don't care about, don't know the answer to, for something they are going to do any way. Or there's the indirect approach, the sum of a lot annoying little problems: slower file copy, a slower computer using experience, a lack of drivers, stability issues, confusing product editions, etc. Either approach works great at annoying the end user. Doing both guarantees it will happen. 

Also, some really cool graphic design going on here on a couple of these slideshows:

• Top 25 iPhonies: The Nano edition
• Top 25 iPhonies
• Top 12 Gooogle GPhonies

Random Articles found through NetworkWorld

Sending a message to TSA will cost you time - the lesson here? Don't try to be clever in what you take through security. Evan Roth has designed personalized plates that allow the bags screeners for TSA to see a "message" that you've had etched into a steel plate. Of course, these plates obstruct the view of your baggage, pretty much guaranteeing that you'll be searched.

2008 I.T. Industry Graveyard - Slide 3... The IT department. I don't know about this. This prediction is along the same lines as the prediction of the death of the desktop computer 10 years ago and the "this time it's different" about the dot-com boom, the housing market, or [insert your future prediction here]. Until the barriers to replacing the legacy systems are met, someone will always be making the connections to the old data through SOA, or worse yet, changing the old applications for minor changes in the business environment.

A contrasting (if not differing) opinion from ComputerWorld.com blogs: Vista R.I.P.

Problem 1 from Project Euler . net ("set"-based solution)

This time, I fill a hash map for step values of 3 and of 5.  No noticeable difference from my first try, until you start trying to find results for much larger than stopping at 999, at which point amount of memory consumed/allocated makes this method way more inefficient.

x=0

h = {}
3.step(999, 3) {
 |i|
 h[i] = 1
}
5.step(999, 5) {
 |i|
 h[i] = 1
}

h.each { |k,v|
 x=x+k
}
print x,"\n"

A fledgling blog on the progress of technology

I think I'm generally more interested in the small-time blogs than the well-established blog.  Well-established blogs with a solid following can succumb to group-think in the guise of introspection.

Sometimes, a newer blogging voice can present a different perspective on existing topics:

Found from a @implu tweet Retire your desktop: The Future:
- Greenspan's perception of the Information Technology bonus (in terms of productivity)
- Wall Street's irrational exuberance leading to the DotCom Bubble.
- Gen Y's unintentional leadership of humanity into freedom.

Problem 1 from Project Euler . net

Trying to reinforce the syntax in ruby, I did Problem 1 from Project Euler . net:

If we list all the natural numbers below 10 that are multiples of 3 or 5, we get 3, 5, 6 and 9. The sum of these multiples is 23.

Find the sum of all the multiples of 3 or 5 below 1000.

x=0
1.upto(999) {
|i|
x=x+i if (i % 5 == 0 || i % 3 == 0)
}
print x

I'd like to do this by merging two sets of numbers next.

My first powershell

A foreach loop that calls ping with a specific buffer size, and sends output to a ping*.txt file corresponding to the buffer size:

foreach ($number in 32, 256, 1024) { ping -n100 -l$number yahoo.com > ping$number.txt }

For when I really can't get my brain fired up on a given day

Project Euler for programming problems.:  "Project Euler is a series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve. Although mathematics will help you arrive at elegant and efficient methods, the use of a computer and programming skills will be required to solve most problems."

I was looking up V=IR, P=IV, etc...  and found this site:  Equation Sheet site.  It has algebra, calculus, statistics, and physics, etc... equations.

A simple AJAX TODO List and links to the code

PC World's opinions on products and websites.

100 Incredibly Useful and Interesting Web Sites

• Complete List by Category
• Complete List in Alphabetical Order
  

The Bottom 10: The Web's Most Useless Sites - Digg made it!  Wow.  Some pretty ugly sites otherwise as well.

The 10 Most Overrated Products  -- a little too much credit to Microsoft, especially with the underrated Zune vs. the overrated iPod.  Part of the greatness of the iPod and iTunes is the market saturation of the product.  My ripped CDs, my iTunes-purchased AAC files, and my podcasts co-exist seemlessly.  The wifi sharing feature of the Zune is made relatively useless by the lack of adoption.

Cleaning up a brand new PC

I've found a new blog to scour:  DigitalInspiration.

Bought a New Computer? Now Remove all the Pre-Installed Trial Software - this article points to the program PC Decrapifier and the full list of programs that the program can remove. 

A related post of theirs, Spring Cleaning Utilities for your PC : Reclaim Hard Disk Space, provides more clean-up tips and utilities.

Send Tweets to Twitter via e-mail

Send Twitter Updates via e-mail

Interesting concept:

• Create a dummy blog
• Set-up a private mail-to-blogger address.
• Use twitterfeed.com and your OpenID to associate the rss.xml feed for the blog to your Twitter account

To post to Twitter, all you have to do is e-mail your Twitter updates to the mail-to-blogger address.