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Steve Hooker's Radio: kids, war, blogs, gadgets: A Welsh man in the wrong country, going home
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 Independent web developer. Graphic designer, web designer, Frontier developer, Manila hoster, latest project: intranet build for Government Office of West Midlands (UK), committed blogger since 1999.
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13 December 2004   

 

APOTD: Announcing Comet Machholz

Explanation: A comet discovered only this summer is brightening quickly and already visible to the unaided eye. Comet C/2004 Q2 (Machholz) is currently best visible in Earth's Southern Hemisphere where some observers report it brighter than magnitude 5. The comet is moving rapidly to northern skies and should continue to brighten until early January. By coincidence, Comet Machholz will be easy to view as it will be nearly opposite the Sun when appearing its brightest. How bright Comet Machholz will become then remains uncertain, but it will surely stay in northern skies for much of 2005, even approaching Polaris in early March. Pictured above, Comet Machholz was captured in early December already sporting a bright surrounding coma, a white oblong dust tail fading off toward the left, and a long wispy ion tail toward the top with a kink near the end.
machholz_noao_big

This is going to look good next year.
 


2028 Also posted to: Space . At: 9:12:28 PM  . .
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Yahoo! halves! domain! prices!

Loss leader. Yahoo! has halved its domain name charges from $9.95 to $4.98 a year up until the end of the 2004. The offer is limited to one domain per customer.

Bought mine, well worth $24.90 for 5 years, good DNS service, also do wild cards.

Wait a minute, an email from Yahoo says I've just been charged $49.75! Not only that but I can't see where I can check this, I'm positive I paid $24.90. Nearly thirteen quid for 5 years. Bargain!
24Dollarsasis
49Dollarsasis
Which is right? Which is to show up on my credit card?
 

 Source: The Register; 13/12/2004; 14:45:09.
2026 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 5:46:08 PM  . .
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PubSub LinkRanks

bloggingMadnessasis Part of their explanation of how they rank sites.
myPubsubGraphasis
My graph which I've bookmarked. I see that as I've not blogged for the past few days, my ranking has slid. And over the past few postings about Microsoft's Spaces and my subsequent links from Dare Obasanjo my ranking rose to above 18,000 from, I guess an average of +42,000. Even 42,000th ain't too bad considering my post frequency and the 5 million other blogs out there. Today I'm down to 55,013, down 1.5k from yesterday.

Abby in Memphis, Tennessee, is at 1,054,002. One of the long tail.

I'm giving more time to PubSub lately. Their vanity searches (where one searches the blogosphere for you name or, in my case client names) is invaluable. Now, they've added a way of defining how well linked to your blog is, by using some crazy maths. It's not a way of finding A-list bloggers but you could use it to define your site thusly.

I do like the top (and bottom) gainers, though with links only to domains and not actual pages, perhaps it loses some of its real use. For this, I like the old dayPop, which I've been subscribed to for years. DayPop helps you find the up and coming memes. Also, useful for upcoming memes, blogDex.

As they say in their explanatory page "LinkRanks are our way of measuring the strength, persistence, and vitality of links appearing in weblogs."

 


2025 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 2:52:16 PM  . .
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Mobile cash points coming soon

Bank customers may soon be able to check their balances on mobile phone screens in an initiative from the Link cash machine network and Morse.

Took them a long time to get around to this. Wonder when I'll be able to get an RSS feed for my credit card?

 Source: BBC News | Business | E-Commerce | World Edition; 13/12/2004; 11:45:00.
2024 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 1:54:11 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Mobile cash points coming soon

 

 

Google Suggest beta

As you type, Google will suggest words for you. Javascripts and cookies. Though it's not that new. One blogger (called Steve ;-) has had a similar, well, better implementation for months. And AOL's Pinpoint Shopping, also uses something similar. So, Google Labs aren't doing anything that good here. Move along please.

However, there maybe some link into Google's Zeitgeist, as suggested by another blogger, one Gordon Mohr.
logo_google_suggestasis
 


2023 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 1:45:55 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Google Suggest beta

 

 

Firefox surpasses 10 million download mark

"It doesn't jibe with what WebSideStory shows, and what neither of these count is corporate intranets where users aren't actually hitting the Web," Gary Schare, Microsoft's director of product management for Windows said of OneStat's statistics.

Remembering that many intranets (and I help with one in the UK governement, so I know) are not allowed to switch to anything. They have to stay with IE. Much, much, to their chagrin!

I'm very glad of this news. IE was wonderful when it came out, like, a milllion years ago. Don't forget why you should dump IE, if you're able.
Firefox box
 


2022 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 1:20:21 PM  . .
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Italian blogs

Perhaps the Guardian's looking into blogs for their readers too, following on from Le Monde's?

Harry of UK political blog Harry's Place has answered my call for details of other newspapers hosting blogs:

The excellent little Italian centre-left newspaper Il Riformista, has been offering blogs to its readers and from its journalists for about two years now.
They also, believe it or not, print a blog supplement in the paper once a month with the best material they have found on the sites.
 

 Source: News; 13/12/2004; 11:45:45.
2021 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 12:53:26 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Italian blogs