Paul's Time Sink

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Blogger and splogs

Paul Westbrook | 10 December, 2005 12:39

When I run a search on Google Blog Search, for blogs that link to this blog, 6 of the 8 results are splogs. It appears that these pages has a snippets of the text from this blog and links directly here. They all are using Adsense ads, to make money.

The interesting thing is that 4 of the 6 are hosted with Google's Blogger service. I would think that Google wouldn't want to host these sites. But then again, they do get money if people click on those ads.

Technorati Tags: Blogger, Google, splog

Sharing Address books

Paul Westbrook | 09 December, 2005 19:49

I finally got the sharing of our Address Books working. I was assuming that once you accessed a shared address book, you could drag a card from the shared address book, into one of the local groups. Then when it is updated remotely, the updates would automatically appear.

This is not the case. When you drag a card from a remote address book, it makes a copy of it locally. This means that updates don't happen automatically.
(More)

Responsibility of broadcasters

Paul Westbrook | 09 December, 2005 19:29

Do television broadcasters have any responsibility to keep a quality of service for their viewing public? And when there is something that would affect this quality, do they have to notify the viewers?

Ever since we have gotten our HDTV, we have noticed when the broadcasters do something to their towers. For example, our NBC station is having a problem with their transmitter. Interference with digital signals is more noticeable than analog signals.
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movabletype API

Paul Westbrook | 09 December, 2005 18:59

I have been thinking about implementing the MovableType xmlrpc API for LifeType. I have been getting a little annoyed with the metaWeblog api, since it doesn't have seperate fields for the main text and the "more" text. LifeType works arounds this limitation currently by using a special string to indicate the different text fields.

It is pretty easy to implement the newPost API, as the client just has to set the additional fields. On the server, if the fields are set, it knows that it is a MovableType client, and not a metaWeblog client.
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XCode and documentation

Paul Westbrook | 09 December, 2005 11:27

A couple of days ago, I was writing some java code. I wanted to be a "good" developer, and document my code. I decided to use javadoc format comments, as this is the standard for java code.

Since I was doing this on my Mac, I decided to use Xcode to do the development. Once I got the code written and compiling, I figured I could add a new target to the project that would create the javadoc.
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WinShortcutter

Paul Westbrook | 08 December, 2005 18:40

Winshortcutter At work people send out links to files on windows shares. When I receive those on my mac, I need to convert this to a smb url, so the server can be mounted in the Finder.

WinShortcutter is an application and a service that automatically converts these urls and mounts the servers. In addition, it optionally will create an alias for that server.

Technorati Tags: Mac OS X, smb, WinShortcutter

Installed new springs

Paul Westbrook | 06 December, 2005 22:16

Last week, I had new springs installed into our Nissan Sentra. I decided to go with the Eibach Pro Kit Lowering Springs, which only lowered the front and rear by 1.2".

I like the way the car drives now. The only problem that I had was to train my expectation of where the location of the seats are. I will take a picture when I get a chance.

Technorati Tags: Eibach Springs, Nissan Sentra

iTunes Signature

Paul Westbrook | 06 December, 2005 22:02

iTunes Signature Maker is an interesting java applet. It creates a "signature" music file from your iTunes library. It takes snippets of your favorite tracks, and puts them together in a single track.

Here is my signature file.

[via TUAW]

Technorati Tags: iTunes

Another benefit for Google Analytics

Paul Westbrook | 05 December, 2005 20:17

I was looking at my Google Analytics stats, and I just though of another benefit for Google to do this. Since Google Analytics will get information about referrer for any site that has the Analytics script embedded in the pages, Google could increase the number of sites that get crawled.

For example, site X is not being crawled by Google, because it has not been submitted to Google, or it there are no links (that Google crawls) to it. Site X links to site Y, which has the Google Analytics script embedded. When a user clicks on the link from site X to Site Y, now Google will know to crawl site X.

Technorati Tags: Google

Google to replace Technorati?

Paul Westbrook | 05 December, 2005 20:08

I can envision that Google could replace Technorati as authority for blog referrals. I haven't found a good way to get the results that I expect.

For example, in the main Google page, you can do a search "link:www.paulstimesink.com -site:www.paulstimesink.com". This will return a list of all pages that link to pages in this blog, but not including any pages in the blog itself.

The problem with using the main Google search is that results are not limited to blogs. And Google doesn't itself provide rss feeds for the results.
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Google Maps in Address Book

Paul Westbrook | 03 December, 2005 20:53

I guess I have had a pretty old version of this plugin installed. The latest version of the Google Maps Address Book plugin will, in addition to showing a map of an address, will also show driving directions between two address. The plugin lets you select a address, if a given card has multiple addresses.

[via Hawk Wings]

Technorati Tags: Address Book, Google, Mac OS X

GoogleFill

Paul Westbrook | 03 December, 2005 20:07

GoogeFill is a plugin for Address Book that will automatically retreive an address from a phone number, and put it into the Address Book card.

[via Hawk Wings]

Technorati Tags: Address Book, Google, Mac OS X

iwconfig for Mac OS X

Paul Westbrook | 03 December, 2005 19:43

This post mentions the airport command line tool. This lets you see the signal strength of the currently connected 802.11 network.

Technorati Tags: Mac OS X, wireless networking

Wireless network access

Paul Westbrook | 03 December, 2005 19:22

As we have been traveling to the Palm Springs are about once a month as my wife's grandfather goes through cancer treatment, we have been staying in condos in the area. The condos allow us to have a "regular" schedule for the kids bed time.

One thing about condos compared to hotel room, is that they don't tend to offer "high speed" internet access. Since I want to be able to continue to work while there, I was looking into ways that I could high speed access.
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Still problems with Vonage

Paul Westbrook | 02 December, 2005 18:09

I thought that I had fixed the problems with my Vonage phone line. The same problems happened again today.

I moved the Vonage ATA to the outside of my firewall. I gave the ATA it's own public static ip address. When I did this, everything works fine. I think that there is some other port that needs to be opened for incoming connections, that is not specified in this document.
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Paul's Time Sink

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Blogger and splogs

Sharing Address books

Responsibility of broadcasters

movabletype API

XCode and documentation

WinShortcutter

Installed new springs

iTunes Signature

Another benefit for Google Analytics

Google to replace Technorati?

Google Maps in Address Book

GoogleFill

iwconfig for Mac OS X

Wireless network access

Still problems with Vonage

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