2005 January

Yahoo! Search blog, Google blog, msnsearch’s Web Log, SixApart and a myriad of other search and blog sites are supporting a new effort; killing comment spam.
By adding rel=”nofollow” to comment and/or any other links you can effectively eliminate any benefit that comment spammers get from spamming you with their links.
Every major search engine is supporting [...]

Picasa 2 is out and Google is giving it away.
I have never used Picasa but I might look into eventually due to my gigs upon gigs of digital photos.
The Associated Press has a story about Picasa that might be worth checking out.

Associated Press
Subscribers to Verizon Communications Inc.’s high-speed Internet services will be able to access customized and premium content from Web giant Yahoo Inc. under a multiyear agreement that combines the companies’ offerings into a single brand.
The deal, whose terms were not disclosed, is the latest example of an Internet provider teaming up with a content [...]

I’ve had the opportunity to work on the Ethan Weitz Charters web site the past few days. A lot of the work was behind the scenes optimization and tweaking but there is one thing I can share with you.
Ethan Weitz Charters - Experiences is a page detailing the pro-bono fishing trips and the great [...]

Reuters
BUCHAREST (Reuters) - A Romanian couple named their son Yahoo as a sign of gratitude for meeting over the Internet, a Bucharest newspaper said Thursday.
Daily Libertatea said Cornelia and Nonu Dragoman, both from Transylvania, met and decided they were meant for each other following a three-month relationship over the net.
They married and had [...]

T-Mobile is my carrier and I find this very troubling. According to the Associated Press Nicolas Lee Jacobsen, 21, of Santa Ana, CA has been charged with hacking T-Mobile’s network and reading e-mails, glancing at files on people’s PCs (he did this to even the Secret Service agent investigating him), and even nabbed [...]

Secunia:
Some vulnerabilities have been discovered in Internet Explorer, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user’s system, conduct cross-site/zone scripting and bypass a security feature in Microsoft Windows XP SP2.
1) Insufficient validation of drag and drop events from the “Internet” zone to local resources for valid images or media files with embedded [...]

I just completed January’s update over at Slap Yo Face Off. Check it out when you get a chance.

Reuters
Sony Corp. will likely launch its new PlayStation Portable hand-held game console in North America and Europe in March, a top executive said on Wednesday.
Sony has previously only said it will start selling the PSP, which can also play movies and music, in Europe and North America between January and March.
The company launched the [...]

Associated Press:
Microsoft Corp., whose popular Windows software is a frequent target for Internet viruses, is offering a free security program to remove the most dangerous infections from computers.
The program, with monthly updates, is a step toward plans by Microsoft to sell full-blown antivirus software later this year.
Microsoft said Thursday that consumers can download the [...]