Fun with Flickr

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Stupid SPAM bots

Wonderful. These new intelligent SPAM bots that only SPAM sites that can be found when searching for certain keywords. For instance. Take this Mercedes-related site. I just got this e-mail:

Hi, I took a look at your site a couple of hours ago... and I want to tell you that I'd really love to trade links with you. I think your site has some really good stuff related to my site's topic of Mercedes Benz and would be a great resource for my visitors as it deals with some great aspects of Mercedes Bbenz that I'd like to give my visitors more information about. In fact, I went ahead and added your site to my Mercedes Benz HQ Resource Directory at [SPAMmed URL] Is that OK with you? Can I ask a favor? Will you give me a link back on your site? I'd really appreciate you returning the favor. Thanks and feel free to drop me an email if you'd like to chat more about this. Best wishes, Mark

gmail

Oh, and a little reminder: I still have tons of Gmail invites left. If you want a Gmail account, just let me know on which e-mailaddress to invite you.

Zend Studio 4

Last year, I won a license for Zend Studio at the PHP Conference in Amsterdam. I was quite happy, I never really used an IDE before and thought it was all bloat. Zend Studio definately did proof the opposite. Today I found out that version 4 of Zend Studio was released recently. It has quite an extensive list of new features. Interesting. So I checked if I could also download this new version with the license I had, expecting I'd have to buy some kind of upgrade package. But no, I could just generate a license key for Zend Studio 4. They've decided to split Zend Studio up into two different versions. The $99 Standard version and the $299 Professional version. And the license I had gave me access to the Professional version! So yeah, I must say I'm really charmed, once again, by Zend and their Zend Studio IDE. I've yet to start using the new features, but I'm sure they're just as good as the IDE that I used with version 3.5.

Update your phpBB!

Every once in a while, I am shocked by the lack of responsibility of some hosting providers. A lot of hosting providers offer their clients free phpBB installations, either through a control panel or as an added service of their support. However, a lot of these hosting providers do not tell their clients that installation is not all. That phpBB should be regularly updated when new versions are released. Of course, this does not limit itself to phpBB, but really to any web application. We're currently at phpBB 2.0.13. And today, someone comes to the phpBB support forum because his forum, phpBB 2.0.4, was hacked. I quote:

My hosting service provided that version of phpBB and I never really saw it necessary to upgrade (until today!!)

new Google

A new Google internationalization: Google Hax0r The funniest new thing since Google Klingon.

Software patents

This can not be happening. Unbelievable. Even though there was massive resistance, the European council has accepted the Softwarepatents proposal. By accepting this proposal, they have signed the death penalty for many small software companies, who may need to start paying high amounts of license money for using certain techniques or even work methods that are patented by big corporations. I just made up my mind on what to vote when the elections are held here in the Netherlands on whether to accept or reject the European constitution...

Snow!

Building websites with Plone

Well, I finally did it. I ordered this book. Plone really looks interesting, and I should finally widen my focus. PHP is great, of course, but having more choice than just PHP is even better.

Snow