journals

SpyMac spamming for members?

By Nick, March 18, 2007

Word of a possible spam plague is spreading! Yesterday, Reid over at Phtotodude.com posted about how registering on SpyMac.com can result in the spamming of your Gmail contacts list. According to Reid:

As part of the sign up, Step OneӔ asks you if youd like to check and see if any of your Gmail contacts are already members. In my case, it found none. So I click on ғStep Two (note, I did not click ԓInvite or ԓSpam Everyone, I clicked ԓStep Two).

It then, without obvious warning or explicit permission, spams your contact list with invites. IԒm guessing thats exactly how I got my original invite ҅ via unplanned sign-up spam.

The result? SpyMac spammed everyone in his contact list, all 600+ of them.

I have yet to register, so I don’t know what, exactly, the signup process is like. From the sounds of it, though, SpyMac just made one big PR mess for themselves.

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Hosting Dilema

By Pilky, March 16, 2007

Editors note: Pilky originally published this on his personal blog on February 26th. He agreed to republish it here at our request. We have edited it to a minimal degree for formatting and minor changes like capitalization and punctuation.

If you pay any attention to the web hosting world you will have noticed there has been a bit of a stir over DreamHost this past week. One of the data centres they use had to completely power down, resulting in a few hours of downtime. Unfortunately, this meant M Cubed and this blog were both down for several hours Sunday morning. This has prompted me look at other hosts. I moved to DreamHost enticed by their amazing package for an amazingly low price. After years of preaching to PC users that you get what you pay for when it comes to quality on the Mac, I seem to have fallen into the trap of buying the “just good enough” of web hosting.

All credit to DreamHost though. They do offer a great package; it gives me everything I need: multiple websites, PHP, MySQL, Subversion, Ruby on Rails and near infinite bandwidth and storage space. And you can’t fault the price: $9.95 a month with no set up fee if you pay for the full year. Unfortunately this doesn’t give you speed or reliability, hence my looking for other hosting. So what are my options?

Web Hosting Buzz

Reason: Until last September I’d been on Web Hosting Buzz for nearly 3 years.…
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The AOL CDs that time forgot!

By Nick, March 12, 2007

This article is dedicated to the memory of all those CDs that gave their life in the valiant struggle to bring the computer users of the world free hours of AOL service. May all those fallen CD souls rest in peace.

Here’s a quickie…

For the past nine years or so, I have built a collection of various online service signup CDs. It’s not a huge collection, but it’s amusing to take a stroll down memory lane. I will share with all of you a few of my favorite online service signup CDs (AOL is by far the most common).

Anyway, on with this freak show!

A rare specimen

I would like to start by sharing this beautiful rare specimen: a CompuServe 4.0 signup CD, complete with the amazingly clever tagline, “For those serious about internet online.” As opposed to...what? Usenet online?

Fresh lemon scent!

This is one of many AOL 3.0 CDs circa 1998 I have laying around. I like this one because it evokes the visual style of a box of laundry detergent. “Faster web browsing action! Cleans deep stains without fading colors!”

The Gold Collection

What do you do when you want to make some of your customers feel special? Why, you give them a gold version of your product! If you’re Visa, it’s the Gold Card. If you’re AOL, it’s the Gold signup CD. I have a few of these from the AOL 3.0/4.0 era.

AOL CD or sour apple candy?

I don’t know why AOL decided…
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WTF? Printer Lies

By SogniX, March 2, 2007

After replacing the “Empty” ink cartridges from my printer, I decided to take one apart to see just how much ink was really left after my printer said it was out and forced me to replace it.
What I found was enough to really piss me off!

It seems the electronics in the ink cartridge has nothing to do with how much ink is really in the cartridge - other than how many times it has printed, being wasteful of the valuable ink inside by deciding when to change the ink. Maybe the chip is really a communications device from the printer/ink manufacturer, to force you to buy new ink when they are running low on money. :p

Why has the decision of when to replace the ink been taken out of our hands?
If I want funky colors on my map & driving directions - so be it, it’s only lines and text! I really don’t need it to be in perfect life-like color!

How about replacing the forced “Ink out, replace ink now” message with a “Ink may be running low, if you continue to print your printouts might be faded. To prevent fading, replace the ink ASAP” and allow me to forge on and print with whatever is left?

Considering the cost of ink, seeing how much is actually left is very infuriating!

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iTunes: What I Want Changed For Vista

By Liam, February 24, 2007

Where to begin? Even Apple admits that iTunes needs some changes for Vista, but they only admitted to wanting to fix the issues with iTunes Store purchases. Despite saying it would be ready a few weeks after the announcement, there is no fix in sight. Now that I’m using Windows Vista final (haven’t you heard?), I want to compile a list of everything I think needs to be added or changed so iTunes is a better Vista application.

Fix the lack of responsiveness. Right now, iTunes on Vista is about as responsive as what Mac OS X used to be (and may still be, depending on the hardware). The responsiveness is truly pitiful, especially considering that every other application on this PC is instantly responsive unless the system is swamped with processing something.
Support the Desktop Window Manger in full. This means that all iTunes windows should animate when opened, closed, minimized, and restored, and that all iTunes windows should have a drop shadows just like any other window in the system. (That screenshot is just inactive iTunes over this Word document resized to be the same size.)
Integrate with built in applications. iTunes should be able to use Window Calendar and Windows Photo Gallery to choose what to sync to an iPod for those types of media. Currently, only Outlook is supported for the calendar sync, while it uses Photoshop Album or your Pictures folder for Photos.
Include a 256x256 icon. As much as Apple may not want to accept…
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