/dev/random

I’ve been playing with the FriendFeed API in Objective C, although I don’t have anything ready for public consumption yet.
Since the fetch methods basically work like RSS feeds, they can be handled easily using PubSub. Most of the code I had to write was to decode the entries returned into something more useful. The methods [...]

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Facebook has added a new life streaming feature which automatically adds your activities from other services to your mini feed. However, the only sites it currently supports are Picassa, Yelp, Flickr, and del.icio.us. I’m sure they’ll add other sites soon.
Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Facebook adds lifestreaming”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2008/04/15/facebook-adds-lifestreaming/” });

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I still have I have 2 one Evernote invitation available for any of my readers who want one. Just leave a comment here. All of my invites are gone.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Evernote Invitations”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2008/04/14/evernote-invitations/” });

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Checking my Akismet queue, I found several trackbacks from spam blogs scraping and reposting my content. They all seem to be using the same template, usually starting with “(some blog name) wrote an interesting post today…”, always giving it some random name linked to my blog.
Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!
I don’t mind my feed being included [...]

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As you probably know, Flickr introduced their video feature earlier this week. Unfortunately their effort is half-assed and only detracts from the site. They only allow videos of 90 seconds or less, which isn’t really useful. It’s obviously meant for the short videos you can take with many point-and-shoot cameras or cell phones, but there [...]

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I signed up for Google’s new App Engine beta and I’ve already started looking at the APIs. It looks very clean and well-designed. I’m not too familiar with Python, but it looks like it’s fairly simple to pick up. The language itself is easy and has some nice Lisp-like features that I really like. The [...]

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I joined net4mac a few days ago, but so far I don’t see much point to it. This is a new “social network for Mac users”, but it’s severely limited by requiring their proprietary software. You can view public pages from a web browser, but to write anything or contact anyone, you need to use [...]

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I’m now using both Socialthing and FriendFeed. Although both have some similarities, there are some big differences in their functionality. Socialthing is more attractive, although it supports fewer services than FriendFeed.
Socialthing automatically gets your friends and contacts from the supported services and doesn’t seem to let you add other contacts. It also doesn’t provide [...]

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Flickr has added a new feature, Find Friends, which can import a Yahoo Mail, GMail, or Windows Live address book and add anyone already a member of Flickr as a contact.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “New Flickr Feature: Find Friends”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2008/04/01/new-flickr-feature-find-friends/” });

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Muxtape is a new web service that lets you easily create your own mix tape online. Thanks to Laughing Squid for bringing it to my attention.
I created my Muxtape at http://mike3k.muxtape.com/.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Muxtape”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2008/03/25/muxtape/” });

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I’m starting to get pretty disgusted with Drupal 6. I took another look at it today and the module compatibility situation is still dismal. Common modules like CCK and Views still aren’t fully compatible with Drupal 6. For MacMegasite, I would lose the buddy lists, user points, and custom home pages. The situation is even [...]

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It looks like spammers are using Google Calendar now to send spam as invitations from their calendar. These people deserve to die.
Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Spam from Google Calendar”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2008/03/24/spam-from-google-calendar/” });

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A friend asked me to upgrade his blog to WordPress 2.5 RC1, which I had decided to avoid until it’s actually released, so I tried it out on a local copy of this site running on my MacBook Pro. Unlike Drupal 6, I found the update was completely painless and didn’t break any of my [...]

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Today I got 15 follow requests on Twitter from political campaigns, all seem to be unofficial. I’ve blocked all of them. If this continues, I may protect updates to prevent those unsolicited requests. I do NOT support ANY of those candidates who requested to follow me and I dislike most of them. The only candidate [...]

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It looks like all of my sites will be down Friday night until early Saturday morning. DreamHost sez:

Due to continued space and power constraints in our primary data center, we will be moving all central DreamHost functions as well as the “spunky� cluster to one of our newer data centers. This move will begin Friday, [...]

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I just checked my Akismet moderation queue and found that no less than 5 splogs republished an item I posted less than two hours ago. I bet this item will also be scraped and republished. If you’re reading this anyplace other than mcdevzone.com, this post was illegally republished.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Content Scrapers”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2008/03/08/content-scrapers/” });

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I don’t pay much attention to Windows shareware & freeware, so I haven’t heard of G-Archiver until I read this item at Coding Horror.

I was looking for a way to back up my gmail account to a local drive. I’ve accumulated a mass of important information that I would rather not lose. During my search [...]

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I’ve joined FriendFeed. You can read or subscribe to my feed here.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “FriendFeed”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2008/02/27/friendfeed/” });

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I’ve changed the tagline for MacMegasite to “Mac Community News”, which reflects the focus as a community driven site better than the old one, “News for mac geeks”.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “New tagline”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2008/02/26/new-tagline/” });

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Guy Kawasaki writes: Most people believe the top of the page is the best place for ads. This article, called “Demystifying ‘Above the Fold’” is important to read for its contrarian approach to this belief. It states that people are often so intent on reading content may not notice any ads above the fold. Better [...]

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