How To Avoid Chat Room Booting...

I consider chat rooms to be an important networking tool. They enable me to get real time feedback in areas that I am interested in. I have chat room identities that are business like and others that are more social in nature. One of my chat room identities is WiredPages on the Yahoo! network. It is more of a social identity. What do I mean by social? I may go into the Darkroom or Books and Literature chat rooms to discuss books, cameras, or other hobbies I enjoy. I am never looking for a date in a chat room. Over the last two months I have had problems trying to keep this account active. The first time the account was rendered inactive -- I had no idea why. This time I know it was because I did not respond to an IM issued by a fellow chat room participate (in this case it was not a bot).

In the past I have used an illegal chat room client on the Macintosh platform. The client -- "Chit Chat" uses a term that Yahoo programmers have keyed on to show likely users of this illegal client. The key word -- "Smilie". I was booted several times for this infraction. The other problem is the number of IM's I receive, which I never respond to. Most of these IM's are from females with CAMs (bots in most cases). Every once in a while a male has a CAM. Yahoo! has a policy that you must be careful when promoting your businesses in their chat rooms. I never promote business, which in my case is computer software. I find it a bit ironic that I was booted because females with CAMs have prevented me from responding to most IMs, although their are also quite a few men who seem to want dates, yet it is me who is booted. My chat clients are the Yahoo! supplied Java chat clients which show the IMs as part of the chat room chatter. I do respond inline but never to the personal invite. I normally, say "I only respond in the room".

My latest email (lower) to Yahoo! and their response (upper) on this subject:


I know that I am not the only person booted. There are two ways that Yahoo! isolates potential "booties..." (1) key words that programs pick up and (2) mystery chatters. A mystery chatter with an IM was my latest disabler. Good luck if you also use chat rooms...

Wired Pages Not Available?

I was up early this morning. I had to be in Washington by 7:00 AM so I wanted to see what the weather was going to be like. My news service Wired Pages has a tool that provides weather information. The site is maintained on one of my AOL accounts. I tried several times to retrieve the page/site, but initially could not retrieve the home page. Was the server busy? I don't think so, I was able to access the site via FTP -- which normally, I am unable to do, if the site is busy. The hometown error page was provided to me, AOL's way of indicating that the page is not on the server.

I don't know how often this has happened in the past but it is the first time I have noticed anything like this. If you have had a similar problem please contact me on wiredpages@qisoftware.com or wiredpages@aol.com.

One of those legal notes...

JBuilder Open Source?

I have been using Borland products for a while, first with the C/C++ integrated development environment (IDE) and then Java and JBuilder. Lately, I have been reading articles about Borland's move to provide some of the JBuilder IDE features to the open source community both in an attempt to offset development costs and to hopefully drive product adaption by paying developers and enterprise users.

Here is the latest news --> Borland Open Sources JBuilder.

I am a big fan of Borland.

Search Requests -- April 2005

For the month of April, these are the top 20 of 181 total search requests submitted to the blog.qisoftware.com sub-domain:

I have had one email concerning the Blogger Calendar for the same time period. The sender was looking for the downloadable script. Issues concerning the "Blogger/Blog Calendar" should use this email address blog@qisoftware.com or for more information see the "Blogger Calendar Info" link on the sidebar.

Affiliate Programs - Q's Wire...

Today I provided an affiliate report on Q's Wire... I refer you there.

Kopy Kats...

I received an email from me today... well not exactly... someone that looks like me. I seldom use my Yahoo email accounts -- outside of the Yahoo! groups that I belong to.



Interesting that they sent me this email, don't you think? There was no message...

ICANN -- Adds .jobs & .travel

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) recently added two new top level domains (TLDs) .jobs and .travel. Read the announcement here -- New TLDs.

For a complete list of the current TLDs see this link: List of Top Level Domains. note the new TLDs -- .jobs and .travel are not yet listed

See this link --> Standards Bodies & Consortia for other oversight organizations.

Serious Infraction...

I left the last post up for awhile because I consider the problem of unauthorized access of my accounts a serious infraction. I cannot stress enough, how far I will go to see that the person or persons responsible for such acts, is/are prosecuted to the fullest extent possible.

I put in a great many hours working as a software consultant. My line of work is very time consuming. In addition to software development, I maintain two blogs (business & Q's Wire...), a demo blog (which is not updated as often), a forum (News, Software, & Java) a news service (Wired Pages) and I must stay current with both the software side of things as well as business and other technology related issues. I sometimes do not have the time to edit my posts as much as I would like, but consider it a serious matter if my work is defaced. I am the only person with authorized access to my accounts and domain (exceptions include: comments on blogs and forum posts), and I can show through IP mapping unauthorized access.

DO NOT ACCESS MY ACCOUNTS OR DOMAIN (EXCEPTIONS INCLUDE: COMMENTS ON BLOGS AND FORUM POSTS). I CONSIDER THIS A SERIOUS INFRACTION AND WILL ACT TO SEE THAT A CEASE AND DESIST ORDER IS ISSUED AS WELL AS ANY OTHER REMEDIES THAT MAYBE NECESSARY.

R. D. Thomas (R. as in Radar, D. as in diameter, repeated twice)
QiSoftware
qisoftware.com

Legal Reminder -- No Authorization

Because of several recent incidents I believe person(s) as yet unknown to me, have been able to gain unauthorized access to my private/business accounts. I am a sole proprietor. I have not contracted, employed, nor in any other manner authorized anyone to access my accounts or domain in any way shape or fashion, with the exception of my web hosting company who must perform necessary maintenance on the server the domain resides upon to ensure proper operation. My web hosting company would not be participating in the type of unauthorized access that I have been a witness to and to which I refer here.

Further, I have not authorized anyone to act on my behave or on the behave of my business - QiSoftware, a legal entity in the state of Maryland.

If I am able to determine who has gained unauthorized access to my accounts, I will do my level best to have them prosecuted to the fullest extent permissible under the law.

R. D. Thomas alias -- Q...
QiSoftware
qisoftware.com

Why Is My Script Messy?

As most of you know I often participate in forums. I recently read a thread from a user who was having a problem with a script. He wanted to know how to fix the script. I initially thought the user had created a sophisticated function and cut and paste the script incorrectly to the forum post. I would later realize that he probably copied the script from elsewhere and had no clue as to how to make it work for his situation.

In the past, "Open Environment" meant writing code that could be adapted for use in most environments including, any flavor of Unix, Macintosh, VMS, or Windows. What does this mean? I could write an ANSI C program, compile and link it - in any of these environments and have the program behave in the same manner across all platforms.

Today open environment means source code is available for inspection by all. I am not trying to be funny. I spend a lot of time, trying to make the Internet's "new" tools¹ (browsers) work in the same manner across all operating systems (OS). And of course there are several choices of browser for each operating system, which also must be tested. The Internet's "new" tools or browsers do not often follow strict adherence to the standards, e.g., HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. That's why script may work for one browser and not function in another browser or OS environment. Things are getting better.

Back to why my script is messy and why I will not debug your script. I started my career writing programs. It's a closed environment. I spend a lot of time debugging and testing on as many platforms as possible. I think JavaScript is very powerful. I could do a lot with this scripting language and have developed one or two "tricks". That said, I prefer Java... it is closed. I purposely leave my (sites') JavaScript a little haphazard and will never debug someone else's script. I do provide feedback in terms of whether the script works on a given platform that you may not have at your disposal. If being paid, I can write "Pretty Script". And with regard to debugging, there are just to many platforms to check, for me to offer to debug your script for free.

HotScripts.com is a good resource for free scripts.
______________________________
¹I refer to Internet Tools as "new". The Internet is a relatively modern development and the tools used in this environment are still being tweaked in an attempt to adopt standards that are often interrupted differently by the organizations developing the "new" tools.

Affiliate Programs... March 2005

Almost forgot about this. No sales, 9888 impressions, and 49 click throughs. Most of the click throughs were those I issued to ensure the links were working.

Sticky Sites & Blogs...

How to create sticky sites and blogs? What is a sticky site or blog? One that keeps your reader or audience returning for more. I don't claim expertise in this area, so I searched the Internet for those that do. Here's what I found:

• eFuse - Sticky Sites
  
• Blog Herald Series - Sticky Blogs
  
• Washington Post - Start A Winning Blog
  
• 456 Berea Street - The Writing Process

Some of the information is redundant but nevertheless, useful -- if for no other reason than to reinforce the similar themes that appear in each article.

Java Applets v. Flash

I develop a lot of tools using Java Servlet/Applet combinations. These tools allow users to interact with the server without constantly refreshing the webpage. [sometimes I am sure I make editorial changes that somehow reappear]

Flash is another tool that can provide users with user interfaces that work seamlessly with server side applications. I like servlets on the server because they are programs (as opposed to script) that are able to pull information without much notice to the user.

I have not done a lot of work in Flash (ActionScript). I have done extensive research in this area. I have looked for alternative ways to provide front end interfaces that interact with server side tools. The only viable candidate in my opinion, is Flash.

Here is a link that shows how ActionScript would call a Servlet or JSP module: Flash --> Servlet Communication.

I will continue to use Java Applets because I feel that portability is handled better with applets than with Flash. That said, I am considering one or two development projects using a Flash front end. If you have done any work in this area I would love to hear from you.