Lifes a Bench

This has to be the extension that some people might have been waiting for to make that 100% switch to FireFox.

I absolutely could not switch back from FireFox to IE at the moment but there are still sites that do not work in FF and so you have to switch occasionally. Up until now, I used the IEView extension which would launch IE for the current page in a new window, this worked but it was not ideal.

IETab is just great, click an icon in the status bar and switch instantly from viewing the page in FF to IE, within the same tab.

Yes you read it right, If you put certain Sony copy protected audio CD’s into your PC’s CD/DVD drive they will automatically patch your operating system.

This article on how Sony are putting RootKits on systems to force on DRM software that prevents the CD being copied is shocking, I would expect this of the worst Spyware or Malware but not when I put a plain old Audio CD in my PC. It’s not even really about what this is today (although I dont agree with it) but think about where this could lead, thats the scary one.

There is a simple way to avoid this, just turn AutoPlay off for your CD/DVD drive. You can also read more about what a RootKit is and find a tool to help detect and remove them from the ever wonderful SysInternals.

Technorati Tags: RootKit, Sony, DRM, SysInternals, AutoPlay

So after my previous post about VistaDB and their dubious blogging PR offer, I thought I would submit my blog URL to their system in the hope that they would read the post and find out what I thought about what they were doing.

A strange thing happened, I got a license code for their software… I didnt expect that!

I guess one of two things could have happened here:

• If I was cynical
  I would assume that this means that noone is checking the content of the blogs that are posted for this offer and it is just some automated service handing out license keys to anyone who submits a URL.
• If I was not so cynical
  I would think that they read my blog and figured that if I tried the software that I would change my view of their company and maybe blog positively about them when I have used it.

Now, I read a post from esdaniel that made me think that the CEO of Vista software, Anthony Carrabino might actually care about what people think because he is definately answering e-mail from people about his software, so I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and go with a non-cynical view for now, however a comment by Anthony or someone VistaDB here would prove this.

Technorati Tags: VistaDB, Meme, Blog Marketing

Blog about VistaDB and get a free copy! Sounds like a good idea? right? Well maybe, but if you read on in their page its not so great. To get this free copy, you have to quote verbatim their ‘glossy’ marketing spiel, they don’t encourage you to try the product before you do this (there is a trial version available but it is not mentioned or linked), and while I have no doubt that people will blog this and get their free copy and your PageRank might even go up a notch, I really don’t think this is the right way to use bloggers to gain publicity.

Take a leaf out of the book of a company that is doing this properly and offer people that free copy of your software for just proving they have an active blog and leave it up to them if and what they post about it. You have obviously decided that you can take the revenue hit by giving free versions of your software away to bloggers but this way you will get better publicity out of it because you will get real publicity out of it. You might even learn something about your users, what they like and more importantly what they dislike and as a company will gain credibility too, if I read your press release copied and pasted onto 100 blogs, I will know that is exactly what it is and think, well… I will think (and blog) exactly what I have written here. However, if I see 20 or even 2 people blog about it with real experiences (good or bad, as long as its not really bad, but you do believe in your product, don’t you?) I will be 10x more likely to try it and talk about it.

You had a good idea by using bloggers to get publicity to your new product, however it is not too late to save it from being badly executed. Don’t be afraid to change it now.

Technorati Tags: VistaDB, Meme, Blog Marketing

Thanks to everyone who attended my session on Saturday at the Developer Developer Developer Day event, I hope you all got something out of it and if you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed presenting it then we are all happy

As promised, I am putting the session slides up here for you to grab if you want to review what was covered or if you missed the session:

• Managing Your Development Process with Groove Forms - (ppt) (pdf)
• Screenshots from the Demo - (ppt) (pdf)

If you would like access to the sample Groove workspace that has a copy of the User Story and Test Case custom forms in it, leave me a comment below (enter your e-mail address, I can see it but the spam bots can’t) or just mail me at dave@dvhome.co.uk and I will add you (Note: You will need a license for Groove, or the trial versionto do this).

Thanks also to Sarah who organised drinks and the dinner after the event, I was amazed how many turned up for that and it was nice to meet the guys who were sitting near me (apart from Phil of course )

I guess that’s it for now, don’t forget to fill in the feedback form and see you all at the next one!

I just got an invite to join the beta of Flock, a new browser that integrates with del.icio.us, flickr and has blogging tools built right in. It is a pretty early beta by the look of things but given that the browser itself is based on Gecko (the Mozilla/Firefox engine) it should at least be able to view sites well.

Oh and this was posted from its blogging tool

Technorati Tags: Flock, Del.icio.us, Blogging

Amen!

http://www.bythom.com/apple.htm

These are the reasons I got rid of my original iPod and will never buy a new one.

iPod iPod iPod iPod iPod iPod

Would everyone shut up about the iPod already, please.

Yes it will be huge through market and brand dominance. But is it new, or does it push any barriers back? Hell no, its old news and uses proprietary formats again.

iPod schmiPod

Technorati Tags: iPod

shhh

powered by wp-flickr and www.flickr.com

If you read this blog regularly, you know that the stats software that I have uses JavaScript to log hits to ensure that every hit it logs is a real living person rather than a spam bot or search crawler.

Anyway tonight I noticed a new line in the user-agents logged by Mint - Kinja.

Looks like a new blog search engine but obviously its crawler can read and execute JavaScript, it was bound to happen one day but I dont really see the point as JavaScript is rarely used to affect the core content of a page without user interaction (which it obviously cant simulate) so what do they get from building this into their crawler?

Lets just hope its a while until the spamers bots get wise to this.

spam

powered by wp-flickr and www.flickr.com

Technorati Tags: Kinja, Blog Search, Blogs, JavaScript

Invite systems (like you did with GMail) are appropriate when you launch a new web based app.

After 15 minutes trying to upload my OPML and then 10 minutes trying to view any of my feeds I am giving up and leaving the site dissapointed by the experience. Yes, I will probably try back tomorrow but this is not a first time experience you should be proud of.

So… learn from… err, well, learn from yourself and do launches like this that are going to get destroyed as the blog buzz spreads and make use of an invite system. It does more than just prevent your servers from falling over, it builds an incredible anticipation and buzz (if the product is good). Remember how crazy things were with the GMail launch?

So if you are reading this, do yourself a favour and don’t visit Google Reader until tomorrow.

via Scoble