Many Things

Today I shall endeavor to post a long update. I have been collecting a lot of good things to say here but haven’t had time to elaborate until now.

First, if you are one of the hundreds of people who leave comments on my posts each day, you will notice a new “captcha” that you must get by in order to submit a post. This I implemented using Gudlyf’s AuthImage plugin for WordPress. The spam bots finally got to be too much to handle, so this was necessary.

On to the world of Mozilla, the excellent email client Thunderbird was officially released this week. I have been using the Beta version for about a year, and am highly impressed with all the cool stuff version 1.0 offers. If you want to reduce spam and have a much safer email experience, download it now.

Since I know you are already using Firefox, I will throw out a handy link for the free MozBackup tool that will back up all of your Thunderbird mail and settings, as well as Firefox settings, and save them as a self-executable file for easy restoration. I use this tool weekly in case of a disastrous catastrophy. Additionally, I found the Firefox Deploy tool a great way to install Firefox on multiple machines with the exact same settings, extensions, and bookmarks.

Folks, free, reliable stuff like this is why Mozilla and the whole open source movement rule. Of course, this guy seems to have been in the bathroom when they passed out the brains.

I found an interesting article at 43 Folders called 5 Mistakes Band & Label Sites Make that lists some very common web design no-no’s. I couldn’t agree more. I learned a few things from the article that I will definitely resolve on the two band sites I have done so far, and will keep them in mind down the road.

Place The State is a fun game that tests your USA geography skills. Do you know where on the map to place the state of Delaware? I have to brag and say that the first try I got 90% with an average error of 53 miles.

For you iPod owners out there, you can now download the United States Constitution as an audio book for free. All it takes is an email address.

I was interested to read Jakob Nielsen’s recent post regarding Most Hated Advertising Techniques. I had a feeling about many of these, but now I can back up that feeling with facts when I try to convince a client that popup windows are just not cool.

While doing some research on Web Accessibility, I found HP’s site regarding the subject. I was laughing alound in my cubicle when I read their page about What to do if your screen reader says “horsepower”. Yes, it’s sad when one’s sense of humor slumps so low that jokes about screen readers are funny (but the higher geek factor is cool).

And lastly, but not leastly, Mackie, the maker of excellent sound equipment, is giving away a full-featured audio editing application called Tracktion. Again, all it takes is an email address. (link via my new favorite blog, Plastic Bugs).

whew!