These may display very funny for some people because of the use of the pre html tag. (more…)

I am a big fan of NoteTab, a text editor on steroids. I use the pro version of this software, but there is also a free, no nags or advertisements, light version available. One of my favorite features of Notetab is the clips (and I will save a bunch I wrote/write here) (more…)

The ESP Game claims to be labeling the web. It is a “game” where you see images and with a partner have to guess words in common. They disallow certain words for most images, including often the obvious words. The tricks seem to be to guess the word in the top left if it isn’t taboo, color if it isn’t taboo, shape if all else fails. Think of similiar words that aren’t taboo. Kinda fun I guess … but not productive … so I better finish this so I can get back to it.

Due to the recent iframe flaw found in Internet Explorer, FICORA (Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority) have warned users to avoid using Internet Explorer, at least until such time as the flaw is patched. The flaw is currently being used to create huge armies of compromised machines, and you can become one of them just by visiting a web page on a compromised web host using Internet Explorer.

In related news, Tech sites are showing massively higher Firefox usage then the general population. According to c’t, a German tech site, IE usage is down to 43% and Mozilla/Firefox up to 38.1%. Even more telling is TheInquirer (an extremely popular tech website) is showing Internet Explorer with 56.7%, Firefox with 23.5%, Mozilla with 6.6%. These stats show that the overall rankings of Websidestory and Onestat may well be inaccurate if they don’t cover tech sites.

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The Inquirer has a story here, detailing that the Epox website has found that a massive 16 percent of it’s visitors are now using Mozilla Firefox. You can see the Epox stats here. They are not the only ones noticing a dramatic shift to Mozilla and Firefox, W3schools stats show that Mozilla usage has jumped by over 11% (to 18.6%) since this time last year, and HTMLfixit’s stats show that Firefox users make up nearly 25% of our visitors (which might be because I’ve converted many of the regular visitors by constantly going on about it. 🙂

So there you have it, most of the tech knowledgeable people are swapping to Firefox, that should tell you something folks.

Franki

This article from InternetNews.com points out an attempt by an advertiser to get regular references to their product/site from regular high traffic bloggers. Unless it is a clearly disclosed situation, I would be offended to find a post I am reading turns out to be a paid ad. The company says that the blogger can post a disclaimer if they like. Absent that, it has the elements of whoring your site. If you want sex for money at least yo u can say so! I hope the recipients do. They claim they will disclose who they are paying to post on the site FAQ.

The other interesting thing is that the advertiser says you don’t even have to say (more…)

It’s been along time coming, but European countries are starting to really think hard about the implications of the proposed software patent directive that is being discussed by the EU at present. Poland has just withdrawn their support for the directive in it’s current form.

This is good because it stops companies like this one who’s entire business is to sit around and come up with or buy ideas that they can patent. They then wait around for someone else to do the hard work, and then they go and hit them up for easy cash. It’s similar to domain cyber squatting, but legal and with allot more money involved. (Patent cyber squatting?)

Europeans have another reason to ditch the idea of software patents. Microsoft is an American company, and right now the Europeans seem to want to distance themselves from the US in any way possible. Being tied to MS software is not something they want forced on them. Microsoft has recently indicated that at some stage it or someone similar will come after Linux users for patent infringement, (thinly veiled threat?) Having a system like that of the US where people can patent ideas like computer to-do lists is going to cause massive problems to Linux uptake in the future, even if they patent threat is non-factual. Read more about Poland dropping out here.

Franki