Yes, it’s been 27 years since I last used a Windows machine on a regular basis. For 27 years I have been ham-holded and tongue-fisted deep in the bowels of the Apple universe. Alas, that regimented siloing of intention, and desire, is no more and the reason for the switch is simple: You just can’t stream live as well on a Mac machine as you can on a Windows machine. Here’s why:
Continue reading → After 27 Years, a Wary Return to Windows 11
I am befuddled by all the faux outrage in the online media bout the National Security Agency spying on us via our internet behavior and telephone calls. Should we really be surprised by any of this? After all, this sort of panopticonic staring by self-anointed government elites is nothing new.
Let’s take a quick Boles Blogs trip back through time to examine our intrepid reporting on this matter of the NSA spying on us. We begin on June 30, 2006 — You are an Electronic Jigsaw Puzzle:
It’s horrifyingly fascinating how this government effort to connect all our dots appears to be orchestrated in pieces using separate private companies to deter detection of a non-severed surreptitious intent — banks for banking records; conservative ownership of personal web portals for access to MySpace data; internet providers who reply upon government regulation to stay in business are required to help monitor and analyze internet traffic patterns and process email keyword triggers — leads the cogent among us to question who we really are and if we actually own a right to any sort of privacy whatsoever.
Continue reading → Do You Fear the National Security Agency Surveilling You?
If you haven’t visited The Google Graveyard yet — you need to go there and leave a flower or 40 — before your read this Google Keep review. I admit I’m wary about investing even one second in Google Keep because of the company’s rotten history of starting neat products like Google Reader and Wave and then killing them while you’re in the middle of loving them.
Continue reading → The Google Graveyard and where a Keep is Kept
For economic reasons, I decided I was not going to ship my once state of the art gaming computer to Portugal when I moved. “The Beast,” as she was known, would have almost doubled my shipping costs by the time all the relevant insurances had been applied. It was simply not worth it.
She was sold to friend with whom I hear she is very happy.
This meant that when I got here I shared a computer with Mr P. As anyone knows, sharing a computer is a delicate affair at the best of times and although we did not come to blows or even utter a cross word it soon became apparent that we needed another computer.
Continue reading → The Curious Case of the Missing “C” and Why David Has to Edit My Punctuation
When Microsoft announced the redesign and re-branding of Hotmail and Live.com to Outlook.com, I raced over to the virtual land grab to get the usernames I wanted for the new Outlook.com domain. If I’d understood the process better, I likely would have just converted my pre-existing Live.com email address to an Outlook.com email address — but that process was not clear on Day One, and so I gambled on being safer than sorrier and just started all-new accounts on Outlook.com.
What I didn’t expect in the transition from Live.com — and in comparison with my Google Apps life — is just how great Outlook.com would be in function and aesthetic! Wowser! I like the new icons and fast interface. The overall look and feel are refreshing and new — I can’t wait for the Calendar to be updated to the new design.
The biggest surprise was firing up Outlook.com on my iPhone and finding how fast and easy it was to use. Pages load really fast. Google could learn a few things about beautiful iOS design from Microsoft. You can almost read the mail screen with your eyes closed! The fonts are big and beautiful.
Last week, I signed up for Microsoft Office 365 and, even though I’m on a Mac, I thought the online email and team and website services would be a good and solid backup for the life I have heretofore entirely and exclusively run on Google Apps.
I was right and I was wrong to try Office 365. This is the story of how it all played out.
I was surprised to read the news that the University of Nebraska are moving their email system from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Office 365 in the cloud. When I saw Microsoft paid $250,000.00USD to get Nebraska to choose Office 365 instead of Google Apps for Education, it all became clear. Nebraska took the money and followed the bribe.
If you have $22,000.00USD burning a hole in your pants, you too, can incredibly buy an MBA on Facebook from the London School of Business and Finance. You watch free videos on Facebook to tether you in, and then, when you’re ready, you get officially admitted into the program and take exams and pay up.
Continue reading → The End of the World is Nigh as the Facebook MBA Arrives
Yesterday, it was announced that 30 million Windows Live Spaces blogs were being moved over to WordPress.com as Microsoft gives up the ghost of their free blogging space to Automattic.
Continue reading → Windows Live WordPress Spaces: Is Microsoft Buying Automattic?
UPDATE #2: September 6, 2010
At noontime Eastern, I heard from Naoko again and she confirmed robots.txt has been upgraded site-wide on WordPress.com!
I had to change the privacy settings on all my blogs — and then back again to “public” — to force the new robots.txt file to update. The plan worked.
All 13 public blogs are now set and updated and ready for Google and the rest of the indexed search world to remove our proprietary Movable Type search results.
Here’s a screenshot of the new robots.txt file disallowing the “/cgi-bin/” directory. I highlighted the new addition:
Yay, WordPress.com!
THANK YOU from prying us from the rock!
UPDATE:
The moment I published this article today at 12:24pm Easter time, I followed up with WordPress.com support and gave them the link to this article in an attempt to better explain — with screenshots — the problem I was trying to solve.
At 2:12pm — less than two hours after I wrote to WordPress.com — Naoko replied:
Hi there,
I was waiting for this to actually go live, but a change has been made in our code.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/Will be added to robots.txt (not visible yet, I need to check back with the developer).
Fantastic news! That solves my proprietary Movable type search results problem across all 13 of my public WordPress.com blogs! Here is my reply:
Hi Naoko!
Oh, that’s great news! Is this change on a per-blog basis, or is it site wide?
If it’s side wide, are there plans to include robots.txt proprietary search disallows for the other blogging services?
I will update my article to reflect the information you provide.
Thanks!
Best,
db
I will keep you updated!
I don’t see the “/cgi-bin/” disallow yet on any of my blogs in robots.txt, but the moment it goes live, I will go back to Webmaster Tools and specifically ask that the “/cgi-bin/” directory be removed now and forever from all my blogs.
As well, because of this robots.txt disallow addition, I will now be able to effectively venture into Yahoo! and Bing to see if I can get the same directory deleted in those services for all my blogs.
Thank you WordPress.com Gods!
ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
I recently discovered a terrible Movable Type artifact that still remains festering and alive within me — via Google Search Returns — six months after I became a Six Apart refugee and gave up my expensive, self-hosted, standalone, blog hosting and returned to my first blogging home: WordPress.com. You can see an example of the problem below in the third search return in the screenshot. That “Memeingful: Search Results” link takes you to a proprietary Movable Type search return that has been dead for six months. Click on that link, and you’ll be taken to a “Not Found” error page on WordPress.com.
Continue reading → Dead Search Returns: Caught Between a WordPress.com Rock and a Google Hard Place
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