-
Amazing spam filter
These days, any site that has comments or lets users send email, must have some type of anti-spam system. The most common type is a captcha challenge. For me, it usually takes 2 or 3 tries (if not more) for me to get a challenge correct. I stumbled upon a WordPress plugin called WP Hashcash that uses a Javascript "challenge" to fight spam. The really cool part is that people that use standard browsers that have Javascript turned on (if you have Javascript turned off, you pretty much can't see many cool sites), don't see a challenge and can just comment normally. Automated systems haven't been trained to actually run the Javascript on the comment pages therefore the plugin marks the comments as spam. The plugin is catching a ton of spam.
-
Review: i-Got-U GT-120
Several weeks ago, Mobile Action Techonology contacted me about reviewing their i-Got-U GPS logging product. I was given the choice of the Bluetooth one or just the USB one; I chose the USB one, the GT-120 because it was smaller and Bluetooth is kind of pointless as you have to plug it in to charge it and I didn't have a use for it as a GPS hooked to my computer. (The Bluetooth one has a much larger battery, however.)
-
Is Apple evil?
Awhile back, I wrote that developers that wanted to write iPhone apps should just deal with Apple and the AppStore approval process as the upside of getting an app in the AppStore could be huge. Well, I've read lots of stories about the AppStore approval process and my views have changed a bit. Apple rejecting Google's Google Voice app and pulling other Google Voice apps really would have ticked me off as it could easily have happened to me. When I created GrandDialer last summer (GrandCentral turned into Google Voice and GrandDialer was basically the first Google Voice app), my only problem getting it in the AppStore was that I had to change the color of the dialpad so it didn't look like the iPhone's dialpad. Then the stories about dictionary apps having to get a 17+ rating because you can find bad words in it is just baffling.
-
The honeymoon is over
Yesterday I wrote about using Passenger (mod_rails) for deploying Ruby on Rails applications. Well, this morning, I ran into my first problems with it. I had reports that WebDAV wasn't working. After trying a bunch of ideas that I read about, I finally decided to try changing the load order of the Apache modules. I set Passenger to load first and then WebDAV load later. That amazingly fixed the issue; if it hadn't, I would probably have had to scrap Passenger which would have been a huge disappointment.