BenCrowder.net » Internet

Google Reader

Ben — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 20:42:44 +0000

Posted about Google Reader on Top of the Mountains:

Ben’s Bylaws of Blogging

Ben — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 13:55:34 +0000

I felt like writing a list this morning. And I did. It’s on Top of the Mountains at Ben’s Bylaws of Blogging. Feel free to leave additions in the comments.

Textcasting

Ben — Sat, 27 May 2006 16:16:21 +0000

Came across a very interesting idea on LibrarianInBlack.net, namely textcasting. Apparently Slate.com has started doing it, and in all honesty I really like it. With podcasting and screencasting, textcasting fits right in with the rest of the family. And it’s a much cooler name than “RSS.” :) I’ll start using it on my blogs.

[tags]textcasting[/tags]

Life at Google

Ben — Fri, 19 May 2006 14:48:06 +0000

I stumbled across a Google Jobs page a few minutes ago, intrigued by the 20% time idea. And from there I found An Inside Look at Google, an interesting video about what it’s like to work at Google. Dang it, I’d like to work at Google. :) I don’t necessarily see myself going in that direction — I’m going to become a librarian, and I’m not very interested in working for commercial entities — but if I did, Google would be where I’d want to work. (And in my mind it doesn’t count as commercial, because the services it offers — Google, Gmail, Google Calendar, etc. — are free. That’s good.) Why? A great working environment, interesting people, fascinating problems, passion, quality, and so on. If only all places of employment were like that… ~wistful sigh~

[tags]Google[/tags]

Firebug

Ben — Tue, 16 May 2006 02:35:35 +0000

Wow. Firebug is cool. Like, oh my gosh cool. Why haven’t I heard about it? Why haven’t I been using it? The Web Developer extension is cool and I use it every day, but Firebug is more than I could’ve expected. Wow. It’s amazing. Being able to hit Command-C to switch to inspect mode and then Escape to get back out again is pretty darn nice. (I hear the Web Developer extension has keyboard shortcuts too, but I’ve never used them.) I like the Firebug UI a lot. Mmm. I’ll have to start playing around Greasemonkey, too…

In other Firefox news, I’ve switched to the GrApple (Brushed) theme, too, which is beautiful (in a minimalist sort of way, which is good).

[tags]Firefox, Firebug, Greasemonkey[/tags]

eHostPros is lame

Ben — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:35:43 +0000

Up until February when I switched to Bluehost, my sites were hosted with eHostPros. Things generally were okay, but then I tried to cancel my account (in February), before the billing cycle (which was March 9, so that it would end then). Got a confirmation that it had been cancelled.

And then I got a bill for $7.95. E-mailed them. Got an automated response worth nothing. April came around and I got billed again. This time I e-mailed them three times and each time got a stupid automated response that didn’t help at all. And there’s no phone number on their website! Very lame.

It gets worse. Today I got billed again. And I’ve been waiting for 15 minutes in their online chat room, because that’s the closest I can get to a real person. Still no one. I e-mailed them, and it’s a strong bet that I’ll only get an automated response telling me my account’s been cancelled.

This is pathetic. I can’t really stop them from sucking the money out of my account, either. In theory I guess I could notify the authorities, except I don’t really know who to talk to or what to do. Maybe the bank…

Anyway, whatever you do, don’t sign up with eHostPros! Their customer support is non-existent. Bluehost is infinitely better. I love Bluehost. And I wish an earthquake would crack open right under eHostPros and swallow them up in the bowels of the earth. ~sigh~

[tags]eHostPros, Bluehost, web hosting[/tags]

Googleness

Ben — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 18:35:40 +0000

Found a very interesting read today: Secret Out – How Google Ranks Websites. Now I’m wondering if all those language links on Blank Slate are such a good idea after all…

[tags]Google[/tags]

The next step

Ben — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:35:30 +0000

I’ll be spending more time learning Ruby on Rails now that I’ve sent the book to press, so I guess I’ll go back to reading Why’s Poignant Guide to Ruby. It doesn’t seem like it’ll be that hard to pick up, really. What I need is an idea for a Rails project that I’ll actually use. Hmm… Ah, I’ve got it: I send out a weekly newsletter to my ward and provide a list of date ideas in it. There are plenty of recurring events which I have to type in again and again, and so it’d be nice to store the events in a database and then just export the list each week when I need it. (I talked about an idea like this on Top of the Mountains last week.) You know, it may be good to expose the site to the ward members and give them access to add date ideas (and tag existing ones). It looks like I’ll need two tables: one for dates and one for users. Simple enough. Hmm, what other functionality will I need? From a user’s standpoint, I’d want to be able to search for dates and limit results by cost, time of day, category, etc. Would I need to bookmark dates? Probably not, since most people will be checking the site on a weekly basis and a week isn’t enough time to warrant more permanent links. It’d be nice to have an RSS feed for new date ideas… It’d also be nice to interface with Google Maps, either directly (like Frappr) or via normal links. Okay, I’d better get back to class, but I’ll write more about this later.

[tags]Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Google Maps, Frappr[/tags]

Spam in a can

Ben — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 18:46:49 +0000

I now get well over a hundred spam messages in my new account each and every day. What gives? It doesn’t seem like anyone out there would actually buy whatever it is they’re selling, but I guess there has to be some kind of return or else they would stop doing it. (Unless they are bent on making the rest of the world hate them, in which case I have to say they’re succeeding admirably.) Spam filters are okay but it would be nice if there was some way to stop it at the source. And alas, because of the internationality of the Internet, I fear there’s no way to do that. Well, there’d better be no spam in heaven. :)

[tags]spam[/tags]

E-mail angst

Ben — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 13:44:06 +0000

I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to do this for a long time, but today I’m changing my e-mail address. See, two days ago I opened a message in Hotmail that was addressed both to my Hotmail account and my BYU account. The odd thing was, I never got it in my BYU account. I then tried forwarding it over, but it never arrived. Yesterday I called the IT people and they found that Spamassassin was marking certain messages (those with subject lines in Thai, because they were in a foreign language and it thought they were uppercase — common spam markings) and dropping them. It’s really disturbing to think that I never got a large number of messages sent to me from my Thai friends over these past few months.

The other problem I’ve run into with BYU’s e-mail servers is that on occasion I would receive e-mails with long paragraphs clipped halfway through the paragraph. I ran some tests to see if it was the sender’s end (by sending messages to my Hotmail and Gmail accounts) and they came through fine, so it’s definitely a BYU issue.

So, instead of living with e-mail angst in the future, I’m switching to Gmail. My new address is ben dot crowder at gmail dot com. (I have another Gmail account but the new convention seems to be firstname.lastname@gmail.com, so I may as well go along with it.) Thank heavens for Gmail SMTP — that’s what makes it possible (since I’ll still mainly be using Apple Mail, just through the Gmail servers). And while I’m at it, I’ll switch my MSN account to Gmail too (apparently you can use a Gmail address for MSN Messenger). Then I can finally consolidate down to one e-mail address. :)

Now I just have to tackle the somewhat-dreaded task of notifying everyone of the new address… (Thank heavens BYU at least has e-mail forwarding!)

[tags]e-mail, Gmail[/tags]