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September 22, 2006
Why I Use Bloglines
There are many solutions to reading RSS feeds. From browser-based to Outlook add-ins to stand-alone applications. There are merits to all of the different approaches. For the past few years, I have been using Bloglines.com. Bloglines happens to be one of the web-based solutions that renders all of the feeds in your browser with a navigation outline on the left of the window. It is not a bad way to go and really works well if you switch around between multiple computers.
I have been tempted to switch from time to time, especially when Bloglines was having some technical issues a while back, but the primary reason I have not moved on is their Bloglines Mobile feature. Bloglines Mobile is an amazing, light weight version that strips the html to work really well on small screens and mobile devices. I have access to all the feeds (or a subset if I choose) and can start reading exactly where I left off on my desktop.
Bloglines just added an additional new feature to the mobile reader. They have integrated Skweezer technology to optimize web pages for your personal handheld mobile device. So the key development here is pages from links on Bloglines are now also optimized for small screens.
When you click on a link while reading a blog post in Bloglines Mobile, Skweezer will compress and reformat the content so you get it faster and better looking on your small screen. As you surf, the content will continue to be skweezed.
Posted by mahern at 7:15 AM | TrackBack
Business Week Story on Click Fraud
The cover story in Business Week is about Click Fraud.
The article states that the amount of fraud this year is over one billion dollars. They do a good job explaining the issues.
"Paid to read" rings with hundreds or thousands of members each, all of them pressing PC mice over and over in living rooms and dens around the world. In some cases, "clickbot" software generates page hits automatically and anonymously. Participants from Kentucky to China speak of making from $25 to several thousand dollars a month apiece, cash they wouldn't receive if Google and Yahoo were as successful at blocking fraud as they claim.
Posted by mahern at 6:51 AM | TrackBack
September 7, 2006
Trick Still Works on Vista
There was a trick during the Windows XP install, where if you got bored (and wanted to play pinball) or needed to minipulate or find files on your disk, you could press
Well this works also on the Vista RC1 install.
To play pinball on the Windows XP install, the commands would be:
SHIFT-F10 for command promptcd \
cd "Program Files"
cd "Windows NT"
cd Pinball
pinball.exe
I did not see pinball copied over during the Vista install, so not sure if you can play it, but you can play anything you can launch from the command line.