ThinkLemon

Category: Utilities

Utils

  • Get your free copy of Opera

    It seems you can get a free, registered copy of Opera 8.02 today. They’re probably giving away free copies because the browser is celebrating its 10th anniversary.

    Opera logoNote: For one day only, you can get an ad-free version of Opera. Simply e-mail registerme@opera.com to obtain a click here to get a free registration code. This offer is valid from 12 a.m. Tuesday, August 30 to 12 a.m. Wednesday, August 31 2005 (PDT).

    As stated at Download.com.

    Update: Never mind sending an email. Their inbox probably exploded. Instead the nice people of Opera put up an online registration form over here. I’m now surfing without the ad-banners, thanks Opera.

  • Free GMail Accounts per Textmessage/SMS

    Google’s handing out free GMail accounts per textmessage/SMS. But only if you have an American phonenumber!

    Funny thing though… if you go to the localised version of the page like let’s say the French, German, Spanish or Dutch version most of the text is already translated. But you still need an American phonenumber though. 🙁
    So what does this mean? A. Googles automatic translation is pretty awsome or B. you can get GMail accounts using your local operator pretty soon.

    If you can’t wait and still don’t have a GMail account. Drop a mail to gmail(at)thinklemon.com.

  • The Joys of Shared Hosting

    … are of course the low price tag and not having to maintain the server yourself.

    Crash The downside however, is that you are at the mercy of your mostly unknown neighbours. Who happen to reside on the same server. So what happened? ThinkLemon.com was out of service for quite a while. 14 hours straight to be exact.
    All because one neighbour (un)willingly decided to play not so nice. Cascading in a total server melt-down. Apparently the wrong-doer has been kicked and all should be well for now.

    Lesson learned? Don’t go experimenting in a live-server environment!!! Thank you. If you must, please experiment locally and test your stuff before release. How? See XAMPP from apachefriends.org. They have ready-to-go Apache+MySQL+PHP+Perl packages for Windows, Mac OSX, Linux and Solaris.
    So if you decide to create infinite loops from hell. It’ll be only your system that crashes.

  • MediaWiki and Google Sitemaps, the script

    I have put the Sitemap script I put together for my MediaWiki installation online. You’ve asked for it so here it is. 🙂

    MediaWiki:Google Sitemaps

    Please follow the instructions and please take note of the Disclaimer. Feedback is welcome.

  • Atom 1.0 specs official

    The Internet Engineering Taskforce has decided: It’s official, Atom 1.0 is here.

    http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-atompub-format-11.txt

  • MyGuestmap, powered by Google Maps

    What do you get when you cross an ordinary guestbook (who still uses them these days?) with Google Maps? You’ve guessed it, a guestmap!

    See my guestmap in a popup. See it quick before the service crumbles under its own success. Or build your own guestmap. (Export to Google Earth included)

    If inspired you may want to take a look at the Google Maps API Documentation. There you’ll find all the information on building your own Google Maps service like MyGuestmap, Tagzania, …

    Via ComputerZen

  • Google Earth: Impact Structures

    I’ve spent the better part of my sunday examining the network link feature of Google Earth. For those who don’t know. You can share your placemarks. And you can do it in a way, in case of an update, that everyone ‘subscribed’ will be automatically updated.

    Google Earth Beta

    Network links give you the power to serve content from a remote location. Network Links are commonly used to distribute data to large numbers of users. In this way, if the data needs to be amended, it has to be changed only at the source location, and all users receive the updated data automatically.

    (more…)

  • Macromedia Studio 8

    If you were camping out in Siberia for the past year you may have missed the Adobe & Macromedia merger. Well, it boils down to a 3.5 BILLION dollar transaction in which Adobe takes over Macromedia. That is, IF the stockholders agree on August 24 and the DOJ does not intervene.

    Macromedia Studio 8 Anyway, it did not keep both companies from releasing their new updated application suites this year. CS2 was released somewhere around the news of the merger. And this week Macromedia happily announced its long due update to Studio MX 2004, dubbed Studio 8 (!!!!!! What the f@#$ happened to their much louded MX extension: “It sounds so fresh compared to a number-bump.”??? Right!)

    So as a daily user of Dreamweaver, ever since version 1, I’m pretty keen on seeing what improvements have been made. But let’s take a look what we get with the new studio:

    (more…)

  • RSS Statistical facts

    While we’re on the subject of RSS. It appears that “only 2% of online adults and 5% of online teens in North America use RSS, according to Forrester.” They are also mainly male, spend more time online than non-RSS readers, technically interested, surf broadband and/or wireless, mainly read news, research products and publish/maintain blogs. (In summary… don’t you love aggregation? ;-))

    The Pew Internet & American Life Project has some more interesting data (July 2005). When asked: “Please tell me if you have a good idea what the term means, or if you aren’t really sure what it means.“, and supplying the terms: “Spam, Internet cookies, Adware, Internet Phishing, Podcasting, Spyware, RSS feeds and Firewall”, the result was that RSS Feeds came in last with only 9% having a good idea, 65% not really sure and 26% never heard of it. What strikes me is that podcasting (13% has a good idea) is so much more familiar. See the report (PDF).

    More info: Feeding on RSS at eMarketer, via Marketingfacts (Dutch)

  • RSS Ping

    Here’s something interesting:

    RSS Ping logoRSS Ping combines RSS item metadata with site update information. It enhances the current ping specification, adding information about exactly what has been updated or published, with the notification that something has been updated. RSS Ping reduces the need to revisit or work done by aggregators and search engines when revisiting the publisher site after being pinged, to provide truly real-time updates for information on the Web.

    For what I can make of it, it’s meant to extend the current ping standard by letting the ping server collect a so-called ‘payload’. The payload is nothing more than a feed with a single item. Therefore eliminating the need to collect the originating page or complete feed.

    Read more: