JDBaluch.com

Pownce.com

If you want a Pownce.com invite, send me a comment and I’ll share the wealth. Thanks Andy for the initial invite. Visit Andy’s site and give him some love.

Shaun Inman’s Mint

I’ve been using Shaun Inman’s Mint web-statistics application for about a year now and recently have upgraded the app as well as some of the plugins (known as pepper’s) that were installed on my server. It’s quite an impressive alternative to Google Analytic’s Urchin engine and is very easy to understand and monitor. I highly recommend you check it out. It’s extensible and elegant.

Scioto Valley Urology Website

In my spare time I have been working on a company website for my dad using ExpressionEngine. The goal is to keep it as clean and simple as possible since it is promoting a physician’s practice. Scioto Valley Urology is a urology practice based in Central Ohio with offices in both Columbus and Circleville. Hopefully my dad and his staff will start adding content to their site soon so that it’ll have more than the standard “lorem ipsum” placeholders — but for now that’s as good as it gets. I really need to get back to work on CragBeta. Come on Will and make me some Modules!!

Inundated with Spam

Lately I’ve been getting bombarded with spam on my website blog, JDBaluch.com. Normally Akismet, the Wordpress plugin for flagging and removing spam, seems to catch most of the offending comments and keeps them quarantined out of my site but as of late, Akismet hasn’t really been doing a very good job. This weekend alone I received nearly 60 emails from my wordpress server notifying me of new incoming comments that WERE NOT being quarantined by Akismet. It got so bad, in fact, that I had to disable all email notifications for new comment delivery. This morning when I finally sat down to add a post or two and look at the health of my server, I noticed nearly 1200 new comments flagged by Akismet as spam.

Does anyone even look at spam? How successful of a marketing strategy is it for a company to blast comments for penis enlargement and illegal prescription pharmaceuticals all over the net — and especially on my page?! I just don’t get how it pays off, other than potentially increasing PageRank on Google’s search engine.

I truly hate spam.

Mind Mapping

MindMeister.com went live this week after a three month private beta period and the site has been well-received. Functionality is excellent, with import/export to MindJet Mind Manager, as well as open-source product, Free Mind. Wolfgang Bartelme, a designer out of Austria, put his touches on the UI and it looks fantastic! I’m still not sure if I’d use this product over Omni Group’s OmniGraffle but it’s fast, its elegant, and collaboration is a breeze with the “share map” tool! Check it out!

MindMeister brings the concept of mind mapping to the web, using its facilities for real-time collaboration to allow truly global brainstorming sessions.

Users can create, manage and share mind maps online and access them anytime, from anywhere. In brainstorming mode, fellow MindMeisters from around the world (or just in different rooms) can simultaneously work on the same mind map - and see each other’s changes as they happen. Using integrated Skype calls, they can throw around new ideas and put them down on “paper” at the same time.