I was about to get myself a Sony Ericsson W200i, but I changed my mind after reading all the positive reviews of W810i. Even though it’s priced double my budget, I bought it today since it’s rich in features and more importantly Linux friendly.

Being a “Walkman” phone, the sound quality is superb, and so are the earbud headphones. The packages includes two tiny external speakers, which are of very good quality and can come handy if you want to listen to Radio or MP3s when a sound system is not available. This nifty device has a 2 megapixel camera, GRPS, HSCSD, and EGDE connectivity, infrared and Bluetooth for wireless transfers, and so on. For storage, a 512 megabyte card is included (Memory Stick Duo Pro) and supports upto 2 gigabyte.

Once cool feature of this phone is the ability to use the data cable to recharge it, which can be very useful for a tech person like me.

Now a days even the 14 year old kids are offering hosting services and actually making money from it without having much technical know-how. So I said to myself, why should I sit idle? With this thought in mind, I got my web server up to serve your needs. If you’re looking for high quality Linux based hosting with an affordable price tag, then look no further — contact me! You can get as low as 50 megabyte to 2 gigabyte of space with mySQL database, Cpanel access, Fantastico, 50 gigabyte of bandwidth with all the bells and whistles that you’d expect from a world class and expensive hosting provider. My server is located in US with super fast connectivity and 99.99% uptime is guaranteed.

I’d love to provide free hosting for non-profit organisations and open source projects, so feel free to get in touch with me if you’re looking for a hosting sponsor. Youngsters looking forward to put a presence on the cyberspace contact me to get a discount… you might also end up getting a free account!

The latest addition to my tech gadgetry is a night vision webcam. This A4Tech PK-7MAR “FlexiCam” captures 30 frames per second at 640X480 pixels both in daylight and absolute darkness.

For the night vision function, the cam uses 4 infrared LEDs which are placed around the lens. There’s a bright flash-like light panel on top of the cam that acts as a filler in low-light conditions. The cam is mounted on steel tube, which can be extended upto 16″ or 40 centimeters. The tube is flexible enough to be bended and stretched to bring to cam to eye level. A microphone is built-in as well which seemed to be of good quality. It has a “snapshot” button that can be used to take quick pictures (however, it’s a software dependent feature). The front-side sliding cover is a good attempt to protect the lens, and can come handy if you suddenly need to disappear from a chat session!

Uptime-Project is for you if you rarely if switch off your computer. If you’re proud of your system uptime, and want the world to know about it, then get yourself an account now. Once registered, all you have to is to run a small client application on your machine which will send your uptime data to the project’s server at a regular interval. This application is available for all platforms including Linux, BDS, Solaris, and of coarse Windows.

Once your first uptime data is sent to the server, you’ll be placed on the rank list with over 24,000 other users. Auto updating dynamic images will also be created for you which you can use on your website or blog or even as your forum signature. There’s a variety of design to choose from, among which I liked this one:

If you a have a great uptime, then go ahead and participate in this project. Compete with users with astonishing uptime like current winner with the uptime of 6 years 58 days 10 hours and 52 minutes!

Update on February 14, 2007:

Uptime-Project team sent an e-mail announcement today declaring closure of the project on March 1, 2007. It is to be noted that this successful German project has been running for 5 years now with 1.7 million data records.

The following guide is for a phpBB 2.x forums, which is an outdated version. This guide is not applicable for you if you’re using phpBB 3.x.

I have had the privilege of setting up and administer a lot of phpBB forums in the last five years. Spam has always been a major headache, but it went outrageous for my work and personal forums in recent times. Everyday a massive number of spam bot would register bypassing the phpBB visual confirmation, and would post illicit ads. Celebrity porn, erectile dysfunction medications, replica watches, hot jobs, Russian bride, what not?

I googled for anti-spam solutions, followed expert opinions found on various forums, but nothing seemed to work. The spammers seemed to be a step ahead on the game. However, after experimenting with a lot of MODs and hacks, I found the right ingredients (or combinations) to keep my forums clean. No more wasting time to enable new registrants manually, no more logging to the forums ten times a day to find and delete the spam posts.

If you’re tired of the spammers as well, then you might consider trying out my ingredients. It worked for me and should work for you too. Prior knowledge of MOD installation is needed for this purpose, for which you can refer to the official knowledge base guide. Also, remember to backup yours files before attempting the process.

Step 0: Registration restriction:
Install the Humanizer MOD. This will effectively keep the spam bots away from registering on your forum.

Step 1: No URLs for a week:
To stop the spam bots putting advertisement thread on your forum, install the Only Active Members Can Post URLs MOD. Once installed and enabled, the forum members won’t be able to post URLs before (a) certain number days after registering (b) making certain number of posts.

This will reduce the number of spam posts in an immense scale, since the spammers never come back to post using the same nick twice. Forums that has guest posting enabled would gain from this MOD as well, as it would restrict URL posting from strangers.

Step 2: Hiding the spammers:
Hiding the spammers from the member list is crucial. To do this, install the Hide Zero Posters MOD. This would prevent the spam bots with zero posts from showing up in the member list page, and as won’t be displayed as the newest user on the front page.

Step 3: Deleting the spammers:
SQL queries and other geeky hacks are possible to wipw off the spam bots, but a easier and safer way is to use the Admin Userlist MOD. This MOD not only lets you view all of the forum members and various information about them, but it also allows you to delete, ban, activate, and de-activate multiple users at once.

I deleted 700 users (read: spam bots) in about 20 minutes. Make it a habit to spend at least ten minutes a week to perform this maintenance step.

Words of Wisdom:
Remember that no automation is good enough to keep your forums out of reach of spammers.

Moderation is an important part of the job which you’ve to do on a regular basis. The steps above and the hacks beyond would only help you to make your life easier.

If you need any assistance on deploying this on your forums then please feel free to contact me.

Last updated on March 12, 2008