Just in case you were wondering, I do moderate the comments on this blog. You wonder why maybe? Well I would have to say that at very least 90% of all comments posted here are complete spam. I guess this might be because I display the “You Comment I Follow” logo and have the Do Follow Word Press plugin installed.

As long as your comment pertains to the post there won’t be a problem with me approving it even if you post a link to your site. But, if you’ve commented here and it never showed up it could be that I thought it was spam and deleted it. If you think I have wronged you feel free to drop me a line and let me know.

Cheers!
~TheNerd

If you often chat on forums you probably know that most people use their signatures to promote their own websites or mailing lists. I know that I’ve certainly noticed it and I even use my signature already for this. There are many ways to use these forums to your advantage to drive visitors to your site (you can even use your signature on my site to help) but you may not know them all or there might be things that you didn’t think we acceptable to do.

During my quest to figure out how to maximize my forum posts I ran into a lady named Cindy Battye and her program called Forum Traffic Gold. This is a great eBook that teaches you how to make the most of the time you spend posting on other people’s forums. You can use these methods to promote almost any type of site, mailing list or affiliate programs.

You can sign up for this ebook on Cindy’s site at ForumTrafficGold.com. You will also get access to a great, member’s only, forum where you can get help for the program or just chat about just about anything with the great people there. Cindy and David are great moderators and will help you with any problems or issues you may have with your account or the forums.

Cheers!
~TheNerd

Most of us are familiar with the more popular media players (Creative Zen V 1GB Portable Media Player White/Orange-)
out there, like Winamp, iTunes and Windows Media Player, but recently I have been recommended two that I have never heard of before. One of these is called foobar2000 and the other is GOM Player. I decided to install both of these on my test machine (actually Windows XP Pro installed in VMware) and see how they worked.

First off I must say that I was much more impressed with foobar2000 than GOM player. Please bear in mind that foobar2000 is strictly an audio player but GOM does both audio and video.

The first thing I tested with both was how easy it would be to add many items to the playlist/library. foobar2000 let me add all my songs by selecting the music folder (has all my music in it). When I tried to do the same with GOM it did not work, I had to drill down to the actual album folder (music > artist name > album name is the format I use) before it would let me add anything to the playlist. This would be an extreme nuisance for me so that would pretty much write off GOM as a player that I would use.

Another thing I don’t like about GOM is how it always looks like it’s ready to play a video. I don’t like it when a media player stays in that format (I didn’t play with it much so maybe it can be changed). I guess since foobar2000 only plays audio this point is moot but I felt like I had to at least mention it. I’ve included some screenshots below so you can take a look for yourself.

foobar2000

GOM Player

Cheers!
~TheNerd

Sikosis has published the latest episode of the Haiku Podcast. This time around we, once again, talk Haiku and Haikuware news. With the Google Summer of Code coming up and lots of bounty news this should be an interesting episode for everyone This episode is 12 minutes and 11 seconds long.

Haiku Podcast Website

Cheers!
~TheNerd

This week I launched my latest project. It’s called Tech Alpha and it’s a tech/computer forum site with the goal of becoming a place for newbies as well as the experienced.

I need all the new members I can get so feel free to go to http://www.techalpha.net and sign up.

Cheers!
~TheNerd

I’ve decided it’s time to move on so I’ve decided to put saveload.org up for sale.

Why am I selling it? I don’t really have time to update it each and every day like it needs to be and I’ve got a couple other ventures in the making that will be better for the pocket book :).

I’ve started a thread on digitalpoint for the sale. If you have any questions or comments feel free to post them here or contact me via a digitalpoint PM.

Cheers!
~TheNerd

I’ve never really thought of it but I use a lot of bandwidth. I guess it’s mainly because I run a program called Majestic 12. MJ12 is a distributed computing project with the aim to build a top notch search engine.

What I am getting at is that it uses tons of bandwidth and I’ve recently noticed that my internet connection hasn’t been up to it’s normal capacity and I’m starting to wonder if I’m being throttled by my ISP.  As a result, I decided to find a program to tell me exactly how much bandwidth I am using.

I stumbled on an open source project called FreeMeter. It’s super easy to install (actually you just unzip it) and run the program. It first brings up a graph that shows you your current usage but there are tons of options, ranging from selecting any of the network interfaces on your PC to what traffic you want to see (upload/download) to the update interval.

I haven’t been using it very long but it appears to be a decent program and hasn’t caused any noticeable problems as of yet. I don’t really know if it’s going to help me figure out if my ISP is throttling me, I guess I would have to call them and ask.

~TheNerd

My brother-in-law and friend Mike (from DropTheMike.com) has published a short article I wrote for his blog. It’s a post about upgrading to Windows Vista from Windows XP.

I have yet to see the reasoning one would want to upgrade to Vista. I’m not even sure it should be called an upgrade. Just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s better. Anyway if you want to see what I wrote click here.

Cheers!
~TheNerd

For those of you living under a rock, TWiT is a Netcast (aka Podcast) network created and maintained by the infamous Leo Laporte (formerly of The Screen Savers on TechTV). Some shows on the network include Security Now, Jumping Monkey, this WEEK in TECH, FLOSS Weekly, and more.

If I had the choice to be like any one of these guys it would definitely have to be Steve Gibson. Why would I be like Steve? Well first of he’s pretty darn smart (no offense to the rest of you awesome folks). He is an expert on security, which happens to be an interest of mine and is a great entrepreneur. It’s always been my passion to have my own business that can sustain me and my family.

I’m sure some people would have other things to say about it but whatever. I’m a nerd, I listen to nerds, and I want to be even nerdier :).  Hence the nick.

~TheNerd

You know how the original song goes… “99 bottle of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer, take one down pass it around, 98 bottles of beer on the wall…”.

That’s the feeling I get now when I’m trying to decide which browser to use. But Just image how fun it is for a webmaster who needs to cater his sites to everyone. It’s a complete nightmare all over again.

Do you remember back in the day when Netscape was big? You almost had to write two versions of your site, one for IE and one for Netscape. Well guess what? It’s even worse now.

With IE8 now in public beta that makes three versions of IE that need to be accounted for, never mind Firefox 1, 2 and 3 (in beta now as well), Apple’s Safari (also in beta), Opera, the iPhone browser, the gazillions of other mobile phone browsers, and lord know what else. It’s got to be a horrible experience.

So what is a webmaster to do? I guess that is really a matter of preference, audience and business requirements. For me the business requirements and null because I’m not the webmaster at my place of work so I could care less but it’s a reality for some. I have a tendency to stick with the current versions of Firefox (Firefox Secrets) and IE for testing compatibility. These two will get you the bulk of your users and, honestly, the rest make up so little most of the time it’s not worth even worrying about. If you are a stickler for web standards you will have to be prepared for more headaches because Firefox doesn’t even follow them all the time.

~TheNerd