Filed under: Utilities, Blogging, Web services, Freeware, Social Software, web 2.0

If you’ve had a blog for any length of time, you’ve probably been assaulted with blog comment spam. Users of WordPress have the fantastic Akismet spam filtering tool freely available to them by Automattic, the makers of WordPress. But while Akismet is good (really good), it’s not perfect.

If you’ve been using Akismet, but are still seeing too many spam messages slipping through, think about installing Easy Spam Filter by TanTanNoodles. Easy Spam Filter has existed for a little while now as a basic spam filter, but was recently updated to make use of captcha security via reCAPTCHA. The implementation is beautiful.

Let’s be honest, nobody likes having to fill out captcha forms. And you wouldn’t want all of your site visitors to be facing a captcha form every time they submit a comment. Luckily, they won’t. Easy Spam Filter will only offer up a captcha field to commenters whose comments are flagged as spam by the plugin itself, or by Akismet.

While it’s never going to be possible to have 100% protection from comment spam, the combination of Akismet and Simple Spam Filter sure comes close, at least for now. If you’ve got this problem, maybe the solution is as easy as installing and enabling this WordPress plugin.

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Filed under: Utilities, Blogging, Web services, Freeware, Social Software, web 2.0

If you’ve had a blog for any length of time, you’ve probably been assaulted with blog comment spam. Users of WordPress have the fantastic Akismet spam filtering tool freely available to them by Automattic, the makers of WordPress. But while Akismet is good (really good), it’s not perfect.

If you’ve been using Akismet, but are still seeing too many spam messages slipping through, think about installing Easy Spam Filter by TanTanNoodles. Simple Spam Filter has existed for a little while now as a basic spam filter, but was recently updated to make use of captcha security via reCAPTCHA. The implementation is beautiful.

Let’s be honest, nobody likes having to fill out captcha forms. And you wouldn’t want all of your site visitors to be facing a captcha form every time they submit a comment. Luckily, they won’t. Easy Spam Filter will only offer up a captcha field to commenters whose comments are flagged as spam by the plugin itself, or by Akismet.

While it’s never going to be possible to have 100% protection from comment spam, the combination of Akismet and Simple Spam Filter sure comes close, at least for now. If you’ve got this problem, maybe the solution is as easy as installing and enabling this WordPress plugin.

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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Twitter’s alright if you like to keep hitting refresh on a static web page. But we like our social software to be a bit more interactive. Desktop Twitter clients like Snitter do a great job of making Twitter feel more like an instant messaging platform and less like a web service. You receive a notification whenever someone you’re following posts a new tweet, and you can swiftly post new messages or replies.

The only drawback is that Snitter doesn’t let you login to more than one account at a time. So if you maintain separate accounts for work and personal tweets, you can only use one at a time. Fortunately, there’s Twhirl.

Twhirl has pretty much all the same features as Snitter, and like Snitter, it’s built on Adobe AIR which means you can use the Twitter client on a Mac or Computer. Plus it lets you login to multiple accounts. For example, we were able to monitor and update the Download Squad Twitter account at the same time as a personal account.

Twhirl also offers some nice customization options. For example, you can change the font of tweets, schedule how often the program will check for new messages, and determine how notifications will be displayerd.

[via Digital Inspiration]

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I Don’t Believe in Imaginary Property writes “It sounds like a dotcom-era business plan: 1) give it away, 2) ???, 3) make pots of money. Author Paulo ‘Pirate’ Coelho leapt out of obscurity and onto the best-seller list by giving away his books on the Net. The best-selling author of ‘The Alchemist’ will even help you pirate his books via his blog. His publishers were not pleased, but then his books went from selling 1,000 copies to 100,000 and then over a million. He gives special credit to pirate translators who are making his work accessible to a wider audience and convincing more people to read his book.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Filed under: Newspapers, Internet, Competitive strategy, News Corp’B’ (NWS), Dow Jones and Co (DJ)

After saying publicly that he planned to make The Wall Street Journal’s website free and rely on advertising revenue to make up for lost subscriptions, Rupert Murdoch has changed his mind.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Murdoch stated that the articles and sections “giving the greatest insights, that will still be a subscription service.”

I guess we can assume that the paper’s editorial page will be free now. Perhaps we’ll even be paid to read it.

News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) appears to have gone back and forth on this matter, and I doubt we’ve heard the last of it. Long-term, I still think that the WSJ website will end up being free. The increasing quality of online business coverage will make a WSJ subscription less of a necessity for many readers. But a free WSJ-website would instantly become the top business news site in America.

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As_I_Please alerts us to the fact that a 20-year-old Estonian student has been fined for participating in DoS attacks against various Estonian political and governmental websites last Might. The situation was notable because it escalated tensions between Estonia and Russia when the latter was accused of initiating the ‘cyber-attack’. Quoting: “The fact that a single student was able to trigger such events is particularly ominous when you consider just how many potential flashpoints exist between various countries all over the world. The DoS attack against Estonia is an excellent example of how a cyberattack carried out by a 20-year-old student in response to real-life events further exacerbated an existing problem between two nations.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Banking - MSN Encarta
Banking, the business of providing financial services to consumers and businesses. The basic services a bank provides are checking accounts, which can.

Banking
Industry Banking. This Focus Area has been revised into a new Banking and Investment Services area. Please click here to be forwarded to the page.

Banking: Online Tools and Services - MSN Money
Banking: Manage your banking needs with our on the web tools and banking services. Get current interest rates for mortgages, loans and savings accounts. Find the latest banking news

Pennsylvania Department of Banking
Ensure the safety and soundness of state-chartered deposit-taking institutions.

Bank - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A banker or bank is a financial institution that acts as a payment agent for customers, and borrows and lends money. In some countries such as Germany and Japan banks are the

Adobe - Financial services: Segments: Banking
With banks on each corner, in supermarkets, and now online, what keeps a customer committed to your company? Service. Value. Trust. With Adobe solutions, you can achieve

BankingMyWay.com - Banking Forum
BankingMyWay.com allows you to find the best CD and money market rates in the nation. Our database has over 350,000 rates from over 20,000 banks, credit unions and other

Welcome to Robertson Banking Company
Robertson Banking Company strives to earn the respect, confidence, and loyalty of OUR CUSTOMERS by serving them so well that they want to continue banking with us and that they

On the internet banking, Pittsburgh, Indiana…First Commonwealth.
Personal and business banking services including banking, trust, insurance and financial planning.

Old Fort Banking Company
Includes news and list of services and locations.

Johnson Bank: We’ll Treat You Like Family
With locations in Wisconsin and Arizona, Johnson Bank provides on the internet banking, checking, savings, loans, investment services, mortgages, estate planning, stocks, bonds, mutual

ING DIRECT - Save Your Money!
FDIC-insured national bank offering on the web banking services.

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Filed under: World wide web, Productivity, Web services, Google, web 2.0

Earlier this month, Google Docs added a bundle of new features to kick off 2008. Apparently the feedback the team got was good, and they’ve been busy adding even more features that people have been requesting to the mix.

And today, some very in-demand features have gone live on Google Docs. Most of the new goodies are for presentations - much like the last update.

You now have the option of saving your Google presentations as PDF files, as well as being able to do PDF-style printing - allowing you to select up to 12 slides to appear per page. And, if you like peppering your presentations with visual flair, some basic drawing tools and vector shapes have been added to give them that extra impact.

Unfortunately, the option to save as a PPT file is still not an option, but hopefully we’ll see something of the sort in the near future.

[via Google Blogoscoped]

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Filed under: World wide web, Productivity, Web services, Google, web 2.0

Earlier this month, Google Docs added a bundle of new features to kick off 2008. Apparently the feedback the team got was good, and they’ve been busy adding even more features that people have been requesting to the mix.

And this day, some very in-demand features have gone live on Google Docs. Most of the new goodies are for presentations - much like the last update.

You now have the option of saving your Google presentations as PDF files, as well as being able to do PDF-style printing - allowing you to choose up to 12 slides to appear per page. And, if you like peppering your presentations with visual flair, some basic drawing tools and vector shapes have been added to give them that extra impact.

Unfortunately, the option to save as a PPT file is still not an option, but hopefully we’ll see something of the sort in the near future.

[via Google Blogoscoped]

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Filed under: Internet, Video, Web services

Sure, Apple may have launched digital motion picture rentals from the iTunes Store, but Netflix lets you watch videos for free. Well, free if you happen to already have a monthly subscription for their DVD-by-mail service. But while iTunes videos play on a Mac, Personal computer, or Apple Television set top box, right now you can only watch Netflix videos on a Personal computer. That’s because the company uses Windows Media DRM to keep you from saving a copy of the streaming videos.

But Netflix is working on a Mac compatible version of its online video service. Silicon Alley Insider reports that during the company’s current earnings call, Netflix announced that Mac support could be coming sometime in 2008. Of course, there’s a good 11 months and a few days left in 2008. And since Netflix didn’t offer specifics, we’re going to go out on a limb and say you might not see Mac support until leaves have grown on the trees and then started to change color. But we’d love to be proven wrong.

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