click this logo for homepage


This is the main blog for Mike McBride Online, where you can keep track of everything I'm in to in one place.

Saturday, April 10, 2004
 
Directory of IT bloggers

It's still in the infancy stages, but it's worth keeping an eye on as it grows. KC started a directoy of IT bloggers wiki. I'm betting that in no time it'll be full of really nice resources!

Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark|

Friday, April 09, 2004
 
Things of interest...

RealPlayer 10 has been released. Now, I have been successful in keeping RealOne off our network here at work, by using the language of our anti-spyware policy, since RealOne did a whole lot of tracking, advertising and other sneaky things. After reading this though, I might have to at least give version 10 and their TOS a look before deciding whether to lift the ban for the new version.

In other news:

You are your references

Block out the noise and listen to yourself

You wouldn't believe the numbers of Netsky emails that have been quarantined this week. For a small office to get hundreds of them in a week, it must be wreaking some serious havoc out there! Yes, apparently it is!

Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark|

Thursday, April 08, 2004
 
The spyware that loved me

The spyware that loved me, and excellent article about what happens when you let your guard down and allow spyware to be installed on your PC!

Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark|

 
The old switcheroo

Since I couldn't get past recreating that crash everytime I imported my OPML file into News Desk, I decided a change would do me good. So now I'm reading my news in Sharpreader, which has become a much nicer product in the time since I last tried, unsuccessfully, to use it! I was sort of looking for something that would handle both RSS and ATOM anyway, so the crashing just gave me another excuse to switch.

That's the nice thing about news aggregators, there are so many good ones out there now and being developed that it's not too difficult to pick and choose until you find one that makes you happy, and then when it stops making you happy, it's not too difficult to switch yet again!

Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark|

Wednesday, April 07, 2004
 
Don't you hate that..

It's one thing to have to help people around the office with their PC issues, it's quite another when it's your PC having the problems. My news aggregator of choice is having some technical difficulties. Something in one of the feeds I'm subscribed to is making it crash on opening and the only fix is to delete all the content, import back in my OPML file, and renew all the news items, which of course makes everything appear new and unread! As if that wasn't bad enough, it seems to then go back to crashing if I shut it down after I get all the feed items again.

This is no way to read tech news...

Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark|

Tuesday, April 06, 2004
 
Something to play with

Ahh finally someone has come up with a service that will let you:

"get an instant summary report on how likely it is that your marketing message or email newsletter will get stopped by the mail servers behind Sp@mAssassin and similar Bayesian-style filters."

I'm going to have to check out the ContentChecker and see if it might be helpful as we try and deal with emails to our members being blocked.

Via Marc, who got it from the Web Digest for Marketers

Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark|

Monday, April 05, 2004
 
This is why I'm not a lawyer..

I was asked to "consult" with our VP of Legislative Affairs this afternoon in reference to an anti-spam bill. She showed me the current state law, the proposed state law and the latest Federal CAN-Spam Act. All 3 have a different definition of what an "access provider" is. Being an access provider gives you the right to sue people who don't follow the rules. It's going to take an army of lawyers and lobbyists to agree on what the wording should be in the new state law, and make sure it complies with the framework set out by the federal statute. It makes my head ache to just think about those conversations!

Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark|

 
EDT, yippee

I hate the Monday after Daylight Savings Time starts. I especially hate having to attend a staff meeting (yawn!) first thing in the morning on the Monday after daylight savings time starts. There is not enough coffee in the world to get me going for that. :)

Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark|