It’s been about six months, maybe more, since I purchased my 2005 Infiniti G35x. I love the car, which means my 1998 Audi A6 2.8 Quattro Sedan AWD has been taking up room in my driveway. After taking it to the shop for a good tuneup, I’m finally ready to let her go. She’s now officially on the market.
The car is with me in Indianapolis, IN 46254.
I received a text message today from Yahoo’s Mixd service saying their “pilot study will end on Feb 25th and that the service will no longer be available.”
Bummer, for Mixd proved to be very useful last month when 20 Lambda Chi Alpha staff members were stranded in various airports in a effort to get to San Antonio for a conference. Texas was experiencing heavy flight delays due to an ice storm. Mixd helped us easily notify everyone with updated information on our estimated arrival times.
Mixd operated much like an email listserv, but was designed for cell phones. Users would simply SMS (text message) a number, and all members who subscribed to that number received your text message. That way, a single text message would reach all 20 staff members.
Here’s what Mixd says about its closing:
Mixd is taking a break
Thanks for being a part of the Mixd pilot study. On February 25th, we’ll end the pilot and the service will no longer be available. Please be sure to download any pictures you want to save before February 25th.
I imagine that some of Mixd’s services will be rolled into Yahoo! Mobile. In the meantime, similar cell phone SMS services such as Dodgeball, Socialight, and Twitter will have to fill Mixd’s absence.
I enjoyed this video, which nicely illustrates the advancements of user-generated content (Web 2.0) technologies.
I run several community blogs that maintain an open registration process, meaning a new user can create a new account and begin adding content to the website. Two examples include www.thirdgoal.com and voices.crossandcrescent.com.
User-generated content is nothing new, for many sites permit strangers to comment. But in the WordPress world, there are many plugins and tools to protect the site from comment spam. There are no tools, however, to prevent a spammer from creating hundreds of new accounts and then submitting multiple blog entries.
To keep this from happening on the sites I maintain, I simply delete the bogus new user accounts hours after they are created. I know they are bogus because they have usernames like “alasdflwhw” or use temporary email addresses (for the required email confirmation).
Today, I submitted a feature request to the WordPress community to address this growing problem:
Idea: Block Lists for Register Confirmation Emails
Problem: When “Membership: Anyone can register” is enabled (for multi-user community blogs), spammers are creating hundreds of new accounts using temporary email address services. So they’ll receive the “Your username and password” email confirmation; giving them access to post full entries on the community-blog website.
Proposed Solution: Provide an easy way for admins to maintain a block list of domains that WordPress cannot send emails to, pre-populating the list with the most common temporary email address services.
My Experience: While I do receive an email notification when a user creates a new account, I have to manually delete those users who are obviously using temporary account names and email addresses. While the free @hotmail.com and @gmail.com accounts are less obvious, I have a list of 20 temporary email domains that are frequently used.
When the Cross & Crescent magazine switched to an online-only format 15 months ago, I also decided to release its content monthly instead of quarterly. Doing so has given my editorial team the ability to publish more timely content.
This month, we included a feature story on Jim O’Brien (Cincinnati 1970). O’Brien was the Colt’s game-winning kicker for Super Bowl V in 1971. The story was published just two days before today’s Super Bowl game, which also features the (now Indianapolis) Colts.
What I like about the ability to produce timely content, is that we receive reader feedback like this:
Interesting to find out that man who broke my heart as an eight year old Dallas Cowboy fan is a Fraternity Brother. More interesting to find this out 36 years later on Super Bowl Sunday!(Feb 5,2007). As a piece of trivia I have never forgotten Jim O’Briens name as the kicker who defeated the Cowboys in the closing seconds of the game. Some things you just can’t forget! Thanks Jim!
The other feature story for the February issue was also about an early 1970s football story, best told in the recently released movie “We are Marshall.” A personal friend of mine, David “Muddy” Waters (Elon 1993) worked on this film, which made it more exciting to write about his success.