// Internet Duct Tape

Every two months I publish a digest post collecting the best of Internet Duct Tape. You can also see the Digest for November 2007.

One Year Ago

Here are some articles that are still timeless.

• On Wikipedia, Blogging and the Anti-blog Bias
  Wikipedia is out to get us
• Cory Doctorow on Building an Audience
  Getting them to buy the cow even though the milk is free.
• How to fix the Firefox memory leak (Firefox hack)
  Memory problems in Firefox? Change these settings.
• You Can Be a Good Example or a Horrible Warning - How NOT to be a Successful Blogger
  featured on problogger.net
• Switching back to real full feeds
  Because partial feels make you feel icky (like walking home in a prom dress at noon).
• 107 t-shirts for geeks that do not suck
  hit front page of digg and del.icio.us
• 81 movies for geeks that do not suck (GGG7)
  hit front page of digg and del.icio.us
• Tech and Blogging Predictions for 2007
  This is my long list of everything that I predict will happen in 2007.
• Top 10 Resolutions That I Will Not Feel Bad About Not Keeping (2007 Edition)
  Why make resolutions in the New Year that you’re going to feel bad about not keeping?
• Wikipedia Loses the Google Juice
  Wikipedia makes a change that will keep their results from influencing search engines — why it won’t work and what they should have done instead.
• Why Posting Your Email Address in Plain Text is Never a Good Idea
  TechCrunch readers (unsurprisingly) get spammed — what TC should have done differently.

Monthly Digest

Tips and Tricks

• How to Play Downloaded Videos on Your iPod, Xbox 360, or DVD Player
  Everything you need to know about the big scary world of video codecs.
• CoinStar — Is It Worth It To Convert Your Spare Change?
  You’ve seen the machines. Is the time saving worth the service charge?
• Fat Blogging 101 - Weight Loss Tips
  engtech’s guide to not being a fat bastard.
• 7 Tips to Optimize Windows XP for Gaming — Playing The Witcher on Minimum System Requirements
  Have an old machine you want to play new games on? Here’s how.
• Windows XP - Disable dumpprep when programs crash
  The only thing worse than having an application crash is waiting five minutes for it to FINISH crashing.

Software and Programming

• The Canary in the Coal Mine of Open Source Code Re-use
  What’s the quickest and easiest way to see if an open source project is worth checking out?
• How to Install the Exception Notifier Plugin with Ruby on Rails
  This is the one Rails plugin *everyone* needs. Get emails when your app breaks.
• Yahoo Pipe: Sub-Reddit Feed Filter
  How to subscribe to the best of ruby.reddit.com (or any sub-reddit)
• Free Idea: Outlook Calendar Screensaver
  I want: a screensaver that shows when I’m in a meeting.
• 9 Ways to Know When to Jump Ship at a Startup
  When is it time to hit the open seas? When is it time to stick to your guns?
• Why Open Source Software Sucks - Software Simplicity Isn’t Simple
  The number one thing I hate about not-for-profit coding.
• Getting Started with Ruby on Rails - Week 3 - Testing
  He said unit. Hee hee.

Music

• Stupid iTunes Tricks - How to Burn a MP3 CD with Folders
  Because trying to fast forward 11 songs while driving is a pain in the ass.
• My Favorite Albums of 2007
  This is what I’ve been listening to.

Blogging and Writing

• Online Survival Guide: 9 Tips for Dealing with Idiots on the Internet
  Things I’ve learned from spending too much time in front of computers.
• Rules of Thumb for Writing
  Quick writing advice.

Book Reviews

• Book Review: Halting State by Charles Stross
  My favorite programmer/gamer/geek book. Highly recommend.
• Book Review: Everyware by Adam Greenfield
  If your interested in the future of ubiquitous computing, when your floor will be smarter than you.
• Book Review: Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson
  Is pop-culture making us smarter?

Navel Gazing

• Year in Review - Most Popular Posts of 2007
• Digest for November 2007

Delicious links

My weekly link posts. Lots of gems in here.

• Delicious Links - 20 links - programming, community, development, twitter, lisp
• Delicious Links - 20 links - blogging, programming, ruby, photography, copyright
• Delicious Links - 20 links - writing, programming, javascript, jquery, testing
• Best of Feeds - 19 links - blogging, inspiration, writing, design, apple
• Best of Feeds - 23 links - programming, music, photography, psychology, rails
• Best of Feeds - 20 links - geek, movies, blogging, programming, xbox360
• Best of Feeds - 14 links - security, gmail, google, testing, dns
• Best of Feeds - 13 links - photography, business, photo, copyright, comics
• Best of Feeds - 7 links - geek, humor, funny, games, windows
• Best of Feeds - 11 links - facebook, blogging, google, reader, stupidity

Popular Posts

What’s hot.

1. 7 Tips to Optimize Windows XP for Gaming
2. Fat Blogging 101 - Weight Loss Tips
3. Why Open Source Software Sucks
4. Online Survival Guide: 9 Tips for Dealing with Idiots on the Internet
5. Stupid iTunes Tricks - How to Burn a MP3 CD with Folders
6. 9 Ways to Know When to Jump Ship at a Startup
7. Rules of Thumb for Writing
8. My Favorite Albums of 2007
9. How to Play Downloaded Videos on Your iPod
10. The Canary in the Coal Mine of Open Source Software

Most popular of all time

Software

Free software I’ve been working on.

• [GREASEMONKEY] The Pirate Bay + Rotten Tomatoes = Crazy Delicious
  This script will create links to Rotten Tomatoes while browsing the Pirate Bay.
• [PIPES] Filtered Technorati Recent Mentions
  My Filtered Technorati Recent Mentions pipe works again. It can give you an RSS feed of the latest blogs that links to your blog.
• [GREASEMONKEY] Userscripts.org Popular Scripts v0.2
  Updated my script for identifying the most popular Greasemonkey scripts on userscripts.org
• [WORDPRESS] Category Resizer v1.0
  WordPress Category Resizer 2008/01/02 - v1.0
  - BUGFIX: newer versions of WordPress.com broke this script
  - BUGFIX: will run on any WordPress install, not just WordPress.com
  - BUGFIX: now works when you have less than three categories
  - added automatic update check
• [WORDPRESS] Comment Ninja v0.5
  Comment Ninja v0.5 2008/01/02 - 0.5
  don’t display comment ninja in mass-edit mode, since it doesn’t work on that mode
  wordpress.com added avatars to the comment display and they were being sent in emails
  on multi-author blogs it grays out the comments you can’t edit

Every month I publish a digest post collecting the best of Internet Duct Tape. You can also see the Digest for September 2007. This month marked a big milestone for IDT — hitting the 2 million page view mark.

One Year Ago

Here are some articles that are still timeless.

• How to access Gmail when it is blocked at work or school
• Life in the Trenches - Getting Out Alive (by guest blogger AJ Valliant)
• Web Anonymity 101 - Digital Breadcrumbs
• Web Anonymity 103 - Online Privacy
• WordPress.com Domain Registration - From the User’s Point of View
• Is he a programmer or a terrorist?

Monthly Digest

Blogging Tips

• How I Use Google Reader
• Blog Action Day: Save Paper when Readers Print Your Blog
• Blog Tip: Create a Link Post in 3 Seconds
• Distraction Free GTD: 32 Todo List Web Applications
  (mentioned on LifeHacker)
• Password Recovery — The Achilles Heel of Your Online Security

Working for the Man

• Overtime Considered Harmful
• Coworkers Considered Harmful

Geeking Out

• The Attention Age: Accelerando, Software Agents, Filters and Gatekeepers
• What I’m Playing: PC, Nintendo DS, Xbox 360
• Magazine Review: October 2007 Issue of Inc. Magazine

Best of Feeds

My weekly best of the net link round-up.

• Best of Feeds - 9 links - humor, microsoft, productivity, visualization, comics
• Best of Feeds - 30 links - programming, google, tips, agile, facebook
• Best of Feeds - 26 links - programming, webdesign, javascript, design, tips
• Best of Feeds - 34 links - programming, google, lifehacks, ruby, funny

Popular Posts

What’s hot this month.

• 7 Tips for Learning the Declutter Habit
• Distraction Free GTD: 32 Todo List Web Apps
• Coworkers Considered Harmful
• Overtime Considered Harmful
• How I Use Google Reader

IDT Labs Software Updates

IDT Labs is where I track free software I create.

• [WORDPRESS] Extract Comments or Trackbacks
  • I’ve created two Yahoo Pipes for building filters of the comments feed on your WordPress blog so that you can see comments only or trackbacks only.
• [RSS] Tagosphere
  • Tagosphere is an example of Yahoo Pipes I created for Jon Udell that builds an RSS feed around a specific tag using delicious, flickr, technorati, and wordpress.com.
• [DELICIOUS] Delicious Link Builder
  • Build a list of links using your delicious account to bookmark them. Works great with my Yahoo Pipe Cleaner script.
• [RSS PIPE] Stupid Credit Builder
  • This is a clone of Stupid Feed Rewriter that backdates the entry to January 1st, 1970. Useful for adding a credit link at the end of a list in an RSS feed.

Digest for September 2007

Every month I publish a digest post collecting the best of Internet Duct Tape. Here you go! You can also see the digest for August 2007.

One Year Ago

Here are some articles that are still timeless.

• Making a mountain out of a molehill (of bugs)
• Windows Genuine (Dis) Advantage — Why buy when a crack works better? (WGA sucks)
• Internet Address Book - Web anonymity down the drain
• Startup Lessons - Viral and Scaling
• Web Too.Many: The Internet has no clothes
• The Dirge of iPod
• My First Greasemonkey Script: WordPress.com Category Resizer
• Guide on How to Setup Two or More Gmail Accounts to Use One Account (Create, Forward, Link)
• Using Perl on Windows: Installing ActiveState Perl
• Book Review: Microserfs by Douglas Coupland

Monthly Digest

Lifehacks

• 7 Tips for Learning the Declutter Habit
• How Procrastination Dashes Made Me a Better Worker
• Adopting Getting to Done
• Do Anything: 3 Steps for Success

Blogging and RSS

• Blog Tip: Creating a Blog Maintenance Start Page with Netvibes
• Managing Spam Maintenance with Akismet Auntie Spam Version 2
• WordPress.com Command Diagrams

Social Web Applications

• Delicious Stumbles - Post to Delicious and StumbleUpon at the same time
• Do You Make These Mistakes with Wikis? 9 Ways To Build a Wiki That Doesn’t Suck
• Using Mind Maps to Explore User Interaction
• The Problem With Social Web Applications
• 9 Techniques to Promoting Your Social Web Application

Books

• Quotations from The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder (1978)

Best of Feeds

My weekly best of the net link round-up.

• Best of Feeds - 30 links - programming, productivity, code, socialsoftware, socialnetworking
• Best of Feeds - 22 links - programming, blogging, tips, javascript, rails
• Best of Feeds - 55 links - programming, firefox, blogging, tips, lifehacks
• Best of Feeds - 22 links - lifehacks, blogging, facebook, firefox, productivity
• Best of Feeds - 35 links - design, programming, blogging, socialsoftware, javascript

Popular Posts

What’s hot this month.

• How Procrastination Dashes Made Me a Better Worker
• Blog Tip: Creating a Blog Maintenance Start Page with Netvibes
• 7 Tips for Learning the Declutter Habit
• Using Mind Maps to Explore User Interaction
• Delicious Stumbles - Post to Delicious and StumbleUpon at the same time
• Managing Spam Maintenance with Akismet Auntie Spam Version 2

IDT Labs Software Updates

IDT Labs is where I track free software I create.

• [DELICIOUS/STUMBLEUPON] Delicious Stumbles crossposting tool

  Last Greasemonkey script this week :) With Delicious Stumbles I get all of the super-useful features I like about delicious (speed, recommended tags) but I also teach StumbleUpon more about what I like without having to spend all that time cutting-and-pasting between two accounts. Submit a page…

• [WORDPRESS] Comment Ninja

  My WordPress Comment Ninja extension is available for beta test. Try it out and let me know what you think! Respond directly from the comment administration panel on your dashboard Respond by comment, email or both (without having to cut-and-paste your response!) Respond using your email…

• [AKISMET] Akismet Auntie Spam Helper for Akismet v2

  Version 2 is out, but you probably already know that. Read more about it. Akismet Auntie Spam is a maintenance script for WordPress administrators. One of the problems with the Akismet spam protection service is that sometimes it misidentifies a real comment as spam. WordPress has a spam recovery…

• [FLICKR] Cut-and-paste to blog with CSS classes and credit link

  Makes it easy to do an OLE cut-and-paste Flickr photos to your blog (ie: WordPress using TinyMCE) and give the proper attribution This script makes it easy to cut-and-paste photos from Flickr into your blog while still including a credit link to the photographer. creates CSS classes around images…

• [PHOTOBUCKET] Log Me In Already!

  Takes you directly to your album if you visit http://photobucket.com while already logged in. Because it’s too annoying to have to click “My Album” every time. IDT Labs is a blog for news announcements about software, tools or blog themes created by InternetDuctTape.com . Subscribe…

• [GMAIL] Quickly Open Compose Mode

  Turns off clutter when directly composing gmail messages (IE: clicking on a mailto link) One thing that annoys me about Gmail is how slow it can be to load. This becomes a real problem when you force all mailto: links to open in Gmail. Gmail Quick Compose redirects all “compose mode” links…

• [WORDPRESS.COM] Stats for Pages

  This is a Greasemonkey script that adds stats to the Edit Pages panel on WordPress.com. IDT Labs is a blog for news announcements about software, tools or blog themes created by InternetDuctTape.com . Subscribe to InternetDuctTape by RSS or subscribe by email .

Digest for August 2007

Every month I publish a digest post collecting the best of Internet Duct Tape. Here you go! You can also see the digest for July 2007.

One Year Ago

Here are some articles that are still timeless.

• 5 Habits for Writing for the Web
  Technical tips you need to know when writing online
• Stupid Windows Features: Disabling Filter Keys
  Filter keys is useful if you have a disability, not so useful if you don’t
• Stupid Windows Features: Monitor Turns Sideways
• 9 Tips for Buying Glasses
  I had a bad experience buying glasses, here’s how you can avoid the same thing happening to you.
• Web 2.0 Time Tracking in a Nutshell
  Quick list of websites you can use for time tracking
• Holy Grail of Synchronization
  This is my first post that “won the Internet”
• Why Can’t I use Last.FM on my cellphone?
  … and someone sends me a solution on how to do it
• How to read web pages offline on your cellphone
  My cell provider charges too much, but I found a quick way to convert/sync web pages on to my cellphone.
• Signs of the Blogamageddon
  Humorous post about how blogs are going to die and what we can do to prevent it.

Monthly Digest

LifeHacks

• Do Anything: 3 Steps for Success
  I’ve been all touchy-feeling and self-discovery lately. I ponder what are the key qualities to be successful at anything.
  
• What is Your Opportunity Cost?
  We’re taught to stay productive and keep busy, but busyness for busyness’ own sake will make you miss out on what could be great opportunities.

Web Browsers

• Revolutionizing the Web with Firefox and Greasemonkey (with screenshots)
  Using Greasemonkey to enhance web sites and make them easier to use.
  
• How to Install a Firefox Extension (with screenshots)
  Beginners’ guide on how to install your first Firefox extension and why you’d want to.
  
• How Do People Use Google Reader with Internet Explorer?
  Ranting about an incredibly frustrating time try to subscribe to feeds in Google Reader.

Online Identity and Anonymity

• Universal identity and single sign on using openID? No thanks
  OpenID and single sign on is an interesting idea, but it means having a single point of failure.
• Tip: Send Amazon or iTunes Gift Certificates Anonymously
  Use a proxy to hide your identity when sending gift cerficates online.
  
• The Solution to Social Network Site Fatigue
  The social graph problem — how do we bring out friends list with use anywhere?

Blogging and RSS

• Canadian Marketing, Media, and Digital Blogs Tournament
  Help me choose some of my best posts for a Canadian blog tournament.
• Greasemonkey Script: Yahoo Pipe Cleaner
  Make it easier to cut-and-paste from Yahoo Pipes output.
  
• Facebook Tip: Broadcast your Facebook status as RSS
  Import your Facebook status into other websites using RSS.

Best of Feeds

• Best of Feeds - 37 links - lifehacks, tips, productivity, programming, blogging
• Best of Feeds - 30 links - blogging, humor, geek, problogger, design
• Best of Feeds - 26 links - video, blogging, web2.0, google, css
• Best of Feeds - 34 links - blogging, greasemonkey, facebook, programming, wordpress

Popular Posts

What’s hot this month.

• Revolutionizing the Web with Firefox and Greasemonkey (with screenshots)
  Very popular on StumbleUpon! Why don’t you give it a Stumble?
• Facebook Applications and Privacy
• How to Install a Firefox Extension (with screenshots)
• Do Anything: 3 Steps for Success
• Community Starts with Communication

IDT Labs Software Updates

IDT Labs is where I track free software I create.

• [WORDPRESS.COM] Open 5 Blogs at Random
  I’ve created a short little script that will open five WordPress.com blogs at random when you press ALT+SHIFT+W .
• [RSS PIPE] Stupid Feed Rewriter
  • Here’s another weird one that I might be the only person interested in. It republishes a title/description/link whenever there is a new post in the original feed. I have two twitter accounts at http://twitter.com/engtech and http://twitter.com/et By using Stupid Feed Rewriter I can advertise that I have two accounts.
• [WORDPRESS] Akismet Auntie Spam v2
  • This is a complete re-write of my Firefox add-on that makes the Akismet Admin Panel about 1 million times more useful. Expect a full post on Internet Duct Tape with all the features some time next week. Rewrote from scratch using IP filtering idea from Donncha.
• [WORDPRESS.COM] Find Blogs to Comment On
  • This is a dumb little Greasemonkey script that displays a banner message when a WordPress.com blog has the Recent Comments widget installed. The idea is to spend a few minutes a day commenting on lesser known blogs and meeting new bloggers.
• [GREASEMONKEY] Show popular scripts on Userscripts.org
  • Userscripts.org is a website for hosting Greasemonkey scripts. This script makes it easier to see how popular scripts are when looking at search results.
• [RSS] Yahoo Pipe Cleaner
  • I’ve create a Greasemonkey script to make cutting-and-pasting from Yahoo Pipes into a WordPress blog look nicer.
• [RSS] Recent Blog Mentions
  • I’ve created a new Yahoo Pipe that filters your Technorati recent mentions. It removes all the ones with low authority (most likely spam) changes the title and link to go to the root of the domain name IE: if I linked to you from http://internetducttape.com/2007/08/12/hello-world it would show internetducttape.com
• [RSS] Facebook Status Feed Filter
  • I’ve created a new Yahoo Pipe that that will take the RSS feed URL for your Facebook status, filter out your name, and add (from Facebook status) to the end. This makes it easy to repost your status in Twitter, Pownce, Tumblr, whatever.
• [WORDPRESS] Search the WordPress.com Blog
  I’ve created a small script for Firefox that adds a search form to the WordPress.com Official blog.

Digest for July 2007

Every month I publish a digest post collecting the best of Internet Duct Tape. Here you go!

One Year Ago

Here are some articles that are still timeless.

• Programming
  • Getting to Deadline - programmer productivity
  • Book Review: Joel on Software
  • Document your code in the source — in any programming language
  • Time tracking for Programmers
  • Should corporations standardize on programming languages?
  • Google code hosting  - better than SourceForge?
• Blogging
  • Tagging folksonomy… wtf?
  • Building an Audience
• Software
  • Tweaking Windows Update not to interrupt you
  • How to remove Windows Genuine Advantage

IDT Labs Software Updates

IDT Labs is where I track software projects I’m working on.

• [WORDPRESS] Akismet Auntie Spam update
  Ever have one of those weeks? Akismet has decided that all comments from me are spam and there’s nothing I can do about it, other than politely emailing the blogs I regularly post to and asking them to go dumpster diving for me. I’ve updated my Akismet Auntie Spam script for Firefox to deal with some of the issues I’ve had.
• [THEME] Preview of themes for the Sandbox Design Competition
  The Sandbox Design Competition as come to a close. I only managed to get two designs in under the wire. You can see previews here .
• [FLICKR] Always search for CC licenses photos
  I’ve updated my script that forces the Flickr search box to remember that you’re searching for Creative Commons licensed photos. It fixes a problem with the advanced search box.
• List of Software
  I’ve put together a list of all the software I’ve created. I’ve oh-so-intelligently organized it by the websites they interface with. Check it out if you haven’t already.

Monthly Digest

It’s All Geek To Me

• Book Review: Overclocked by Cory Doctorow (and Fair Use Day)
  Short stories from the guy who does Boing Boing
• TV: When Good Heroes Go Bad
  Finished watching Season 1 of Heroes

Web 2.0

• How to synchronize your iPod (or iTunes) to Facebook using Last.fm
  Show off your playlists on your Facebook profile… automagically.
• Facebook Applications and Privacy - How to Configure Facebook Applications
  All my peeps are on Facebook now. This is a guide explaining the privacy settings for all those newfangled applications.
• Be My Friend (on social network sites)
  Friend me up on Facebook, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, etc.

Blogging Advice

• Community Starts with Communication: 5 Tips to Building Your Readership
• 3 Surefire Ways to Advertise Your Blog on a Shoe String
• Climbing Out of Category Hell
  I did a major reorganization finally.

Quick Blog Tips

• Tim Ferriss’ Four Minute Blog Training - The 9 Rules You Need to Know
• FeedBurner Tip: Create a private area for your RSS subscribers only
• WordPress Tip: Create a Digest Post in 3 Seconds

Web Design

• CSS Tip: Building 3D Buttons with CSS for the Sandbox Theme
• WordPress CSS Tip: Design for Sandbox Theme in a sandbox
• Win Cash Prizes for your CSS Design for Sandbox

Best of Feeds — Link Posts

• Best of Feeds - 58 links - programming, tips, business, code, design
• Best of Feeds - 41 links - blogging, humor, geek, lifehacks, facebook
• Best of Feeds - 37 links - google, blogging, facebook, wordpress, tips
• Best of Feeds - 24 links - design, tips, facebook, blogging, games
• Best of Feeds - 34 links - readerlinks, blogging, facebook, startup, iphone
• Best of Feeds - 26 links - blogging, tips, writing, comics, comments
• Best of Feeds - 21 links - programming, code, development, geek, lolcats

Most Popular Posts for June and July 2007

• 3 Surefire Ways to Advertise Your Blog
• How to synchronize your iPod (or iTunes) to Facebook
• I was on vacation :)

Digest for May 2007

Every month I publish a digest for subscribers who are would rather take their //engtech in infrequent chugs rather than frequent sips.

Subscribe to this digest using RSS.

I finally got my own domain name! http://internetducttape.com

Opinion and Reviews

• Electronic Civil Disobedience
  Cutting and pasting a number isn’t going to change the world.
• Create Buzz by Doing the Unexpected and Being Remarkable (Puzzle Quest Case Study)
  I haven’t been blogging because I’m spending too much time playing this game.
• Book Review: Programmers at Work by Susan Lammers
  What you can learn about programming from reading a book that’s 20 years old.
• Favorite Quotations from Programmers at Work by Susan Lammers

Harold Is a Robot

• comic: The Spider-man Alien Symbiote Costume
  Harold goes to see Spiderman 3

Memes

• Friday Fun: Catptions of my LOL Cat
• Meme: Blogs that Make Me Think

Blogging

• The Programmable Web - Yahoo Pipes
  Making the most out of RSS
• Opting Out of Technorati - The Break-up
  It wasn’t you, it was me… no wait, totally was you.
• Using Comment Spam to Measure Blog Rank
  WordPress.com needs better spam protection so I’m turning off comments on older posts.
• 5 Reasons Blogging Leads to the Unemployment Line (You’re Fired!)
  A look at all the people who have been fired because of the blog.
• What I learned in my first year of blogging
  It’s been a year! What did I get out of it?
  

Aggregated Links

• Best of Feeds - 29 links - code, humor, google, books, geek
• Best of Feeds - 45 links - blogging, business, startup, career, tips
• Best of Feeds - 34 links - programming, productivity, lifehacks, firefox, google
• Best of Feeds - 30 links - blog, design, productivity, lifehacks, geek, psychology

Last time: Digest for April 2007

Every month I publish a digest for subscribers who are would rather take their //engtech in infrequent chugs rather than frequent sips.

Subscribe to this digest using RSS.

April started off with a bang with WordPress.com using my April Fool’s idea :) My own attempt to head in a different direction with my April Fool’s LOLcats went well, with a surprising 6000-some hits. I am seriously wondering if my April Fool’s intersection between lolcats and wordpress indirectly led to ICANHASCHEESEBURGER being hosted on WordPress.com VIP? I get a warm fuzzy seeing them as the Top Blog every day.

(more…)

Every month I publish a digest for subscribers who are would rather take their //engtech in infrequent chugs rather than frequent sips. This one is kind of large because it’s been six weeks since my last Digest.

Subscribe to this digest using RSS.

(more…)

Every two to three weeks I publish a digest for subscribers who are would rather take their //engtech in infrequent chugs rather than frequent sips.

Subscribe to this digest using RSS.

If you’re a blogger you can get win a prize by participating in my group writing project.

(more…)

Every two to three weeks I publish a digest for subscribers who are would rather take their //engtech in infrequent chugs rather than frequent sips.

Subscribe to this digest using RSS.

If you’re a WordPress.com blogger you can get free upgrade credits by participating in my contest.

//engtech site news

• Win WordPress.com Credits — //engtech Contest #1
  I’ve decided to start hosting monthly contests as a way to promote the blog.
• It’s All About You — Reader Survey Results
  I asked you guys some questions, here are the results.
• //engtech now has asides
  I’ve started posting my “links ‘o the day” daily at 7 PM EST. Collected as “Best of Feeds” on Saturdays.

Harold is a Robot web comic

Inspired by xkcd and Passive Depressive, but not as good.

• comic: Harold Is a Robot #1
• comic: Harold Is a Robot #2

Opinion

• Does Technorati Matter? (Searching for Violent Acres)
  Does anyone use a “blog search engine” except to search for their own blog?
• Wikipedia Loses the Google Juice
  Wikipedia makes a change that will keep their results from influencing search engines — why it won’t work and what they should have done instead.
• Why Posting Your Email Address in Plain Text is Never a Good Idea
  TechCrunch readers (unsurprisingly) get spammed — what TC should have done differently.

News

• ScheduleWorld now has AJAX offline contact editing
  The popular free calendar synchronizer has a major update.
• Ottawa employees fired because of Facebook
  Reminder that what you post on the Internet can and will affect your real life.

Best of Feeds

• My favorite posts
  Pointing new readers to what I consider to be some of my best posts.
  
• Best of Feeds - 29 links - blogging, seo, programming, search, google, humor
• Best of Feeds - 45 links - programming, blogging, humor, blogs, geek, tips

Blogging

• Getting Started With Splashcast on WordPress.com
  There’s a new multimedia widget called Splashcast — how to use it.
• Why Do You Blog?
  Announcement of blogging contest for iPod Shuffle
• It’s All About Me — Or Is It?
  Follow up to a question on “How Not to be a Successful Blogger“

Most Popular Posts for the month of January 2007

• I Hate Internet Explorer 7 (Uninstall Guide)
• 107 t-shirts for geeks that do not suck
• Reasons to Take Security Upgrades Seriously
• Top 10 Resolutions That I Will Not Feel Bad About Not Keeping
  
• Ottawa employees fired because of Facebook
• comic: Harold Is a Robot #1

Every two to three weeks I publish a digest for subscribers who are would rather take their //engtech in infrequent chugs rather than frequent sips.

Subscribe to this digest using RSS.

If you read //engtech more than once a month, I’d appreciate your feedback in my first reader poll.

Articles and News

• Tech and Blogging Predictions for 2007
  This is my long list of everything that I predict will happen in 2007.
• Top 10 Resolutions That I Will Not Feel Bad About Not Keeping (2007 Edition)
  Why make resolutions in the New Year that you’re going to feel bad about not keeping?
• CES - Microsoft Home Server
  Microsoft is releasing a standalone media file server for home use.

Gadgets, Robots, del.icio.us, oh my!

• Settlers of Catan board game is coming to Xbox Live Arcade
  I join the 21st century and play Settlers for the first time.
• Harold Is a Robot - Attempt #1
  My lame first attempt at a web comic.
• Greasemonkey script: increase size of del.icio.us save bookmark extension
  If you bookmark with del.icio.us and Firefox then you need this script.
• Programming Advice for Newbs
  If you’re a programmer, here’s some advice that could change your life.

Aggregated Links

This is a new section where I post links I think are worth sharing / found interesting.

• Year in Review - Most Popular Posts of 2006
• Best of Feeds - 31 links - blogging, howto, design, firefox, google, webdesign
• Best of Feeds - 17 links - humor, programming, blogs, blogging, photography
• Best of Feeds - 36 links - programming, humor, career, rss, windows, google
• Best of Feeds

Blogging, WordPress and WordPress.com info

• Blog Marketing Explained
  Want to find out how to become a popular blogger and get more web traffic?
• Reasons to Take Security Upgrades Seriously — Hacked WordPress Sites
  If you’re running your own WordPress install (not wordpress.com) then you need to upgrade NOW.
• MyBlogLog widget for WordPress.com blogs — One of the best web widgets available
  MyBlogLog lets readers who have blogs show up in your sidebar blogroll whenever they visit your site.
• Greasemonkey Script: Find images that are too wide and break your blog template
  Useful utility for Firefox users to test that their blog doesn’t break under Internet Explorer 6.
• Too much Spam - Akismet Auntie Spam for WordPress.com (Greasemonkey Script)
  If you check the Akismet spam page on your WordPress blog, this will make it easier to navigate.

My Superpower is Fighting Spam

• Too Much Spam - Blacklisting .info because it gets through Akismet
  Helpful tip for bloggers — you can just blacklist the .info and .biz domains because no one runs a legitimate site on them.
• The Stupidest Comment Spammer I Ever Did See (Dirk Wagner, team4success.biz and PR Backlinks Generator)
  A comment spammer spams blogs trying to sell comment spamming software. *shakes head*

Every two to three weeks I publish a digest for subscribers who are would rather take their //engtech in infrequent chugs rather than frequent sips.

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From the I’m a Grumpy Old Man department

• The Internet is for Trolls
  Why commenters can be your worst nightmare.
• On Wikipedia, Blogging and the Anti-blog Bias
  Wikipedia is out to get us
• Cory Doctorow on Building an Audience
  Getting them to buy the cow even though the milk is free.

From the Tech News deptartment

• How to fix the Firefox memory leak (Firefox hack)
  Memory problems in Firefox? Change these settings.
• It’s official: StumbleUpon Video rocks
  Try it at video.stumbleupon.com
• How Google does web-based code reviews with Mondrian
  Nice use of Python to build a web-based code review architecture.

From the It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Blogging department

• You Can Be a Good Example or a Horrible Warning - How NOT to be a Successful Blogger
  featured on problogger.net
• Hey Bloggers, PayPerPost is Illegal
  You have to disclose paid advertisements.
• Switching back to real full feeds
  Because partial feels make you feel icky (like walking home in a prom dress at noon).

From the I am a Big Geek department

• Hacking for Hollywood - Programming in the movies
  Object oriented programming doesn’t look like playing with Legos?
• Bill Gates for President
  He’s the best man for the job.
• Bringing Xbox Back music video spoof
  Mildly amusing.

From the It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas department

• The Small White Envelope by Nancy Gavin
  Christmas email forward reprint.
• Is Santa Claus Real? - A Look at the Physics
  Christmas email forward reprint.

From the I am a Consumer Whore department

• Shopping Online - How to Shop Online in Canada
• Gift Guide for Geeks concludes
• 107 t-shirts for geeks that do not suck
  hit front page of digg and del.icio.us
• 81 movies for geeks that do not suck (GGG7)
  hit front page of digg and del.icio.us
• Boxing Day is coming - some recommended deals in Canada

From the Meme department

• Five Things You Don’t Know About Me meme
• Ottawa’s Sexiest Blogger
• The Sticky Meme
• The Work Manifesto
• New tech meme: How to become a Venture Capitalist

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It’s been almost a month since the last digest, so apologies for the size. I finally got my hands dirty with CSS and //engtech is sporting a new custom look by yours truly.

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Those That Can’t, Teach

I tackled some web browser problems with a short guide on how to remove text from the autocomplete box and how to uninstall Internet Explorer 7 (which is the #1 result on Google for “I hate Internet Explorer 7″) . You may also like this Boss Key extension for Firefox (like alt-tab for your web browser only) .

I found another great site with simple tech how to guides at simplehelp.net.

Canadian Site Blacklist

Did you know that Canadian ISPs have teamed together to block access to child pornography? Read more about the Great Firewall of Canada and Project Cleanfeed Canada. It was on the front page of Digg and Slashdot.

Literacy Rates Are Dropping

Apparently, I know how to read. Check out my review of JPod by Douglas Coupland (favorite quotes) and
Flow.

On Gadgets, Gifts and Gaming

I’ve been getting ready for the Christmas season with a lot of posts on gadgets and gaming.

• Gift Guide for Geeks Part 1 - Tis the Season for Receiving
• Gift Guide for Geeks Part 2 - Christmas Gift Suggestions from gifts.com</