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Martin

How to block spam comments being posted on your blog

MollomI installed Mollom on my hosted WordPress blog yesterday to take care of the endless amount of spam comments I receive daily.

So far it seems to be working quite well, the only drawback I’ve encountered is that you cannot verify Molloms disposing of valid or invalid spam comments since there’s no dashboard to view the trashed comments themselves. Therefore you must have complete faith in Molloms spam detection and that it’s not shooting down friendlies…

The install though carried off without a hitch right into my hosted wordpress – and so far it’s detected and trashed numerous spam comments.

iOS5 bricked my iPhone

It seems the upgrade/restore process for iOS5 is less then reliable with reports coming out of users having their phones deactivated when attempting the process

Symptoms include not being able to input your iPhone pass code

If this happens to you a remote wipe of your iPhone using MobileMe or iCloud should bring the phone back to an operable state.

BIOS VNC Server

In what looks like a boon for IT Admins everywhere news of a new BIOS based VNC Server solution comes from a partnership between Intel and RealVNC.

This motherboard based VNC Server will allow admins to VNC to a remote PC if the computer is off or doesn’t have a functioning OS.

Nice – Remote installs anyone? I’ve been waiting for a feature like this to come along for a long time.

You need a specific version of VNC (VNC Viewer Plus) along with a vPro Processor and AMT6.0 to support this. You also need a license for each installation of VNC Viewer Plus, but wow what a leap forward!

I had investigated AMT a few months ago but couldn’t figure out its benefits. The recent news makes it all clear…

This should make my job a lot easier – I’ll be able to connect PC’s directly up to the end-user network – no need to move them into the network room to build and have to move them a second time to users desks. I can build on the spot…

More information here

High iPhone bills

Two users at work were shocked to receive bills recently well over amounts normal users would incur.

Both were down to data usage even though those users had not used their iPhone data service in any significant way, preferring to use wifi to connect at home.

That can be a big problem if you’re a new iPhone user living in Ireland where we don’t have unlimited data plans like in the US.

If you’ve encountered this problem you need to look at the apps that are running in the background on your iPhone.

It’s not really advertised by Apple a lot but when starting another app on your iPhone the last one you were using will still run in the background unless you’ve closed it down. These location-based, e-mail, update or streaming media apps could all be running in the background eating through your data plan without you knowing it.

These apps may also be draining your battery unnecessarily.

To solve this double-click on the menu button twice in quick succession. You can now see the full list of apps that are running in the background toward the bottom of the screen. Now press and hold on one of those icons until they start to shake and you can see a minus symbol in the top right hand corner of those apps. Click on the minus symbol on each app to close.

iOS doesn’t give you a way to close apps from the applications themselves or close all background running apps at once without jail-breaking your phone so you’ll have to go through each one and close. That or restart your iPhone

Cool new WordPress Plugin – Header Image Slider

I came across a really cool WordPress Plugin “Header Image Slider” to randomize the header images visitors see on my blog when someone accesses my website. Hit the refresh button on your browser and try it out.

Previously I’d update the header image manually every couple of months, now when someone visits they get a new image.

I use it to serve a random image but you can also use it to allow visitors to choose one themselves. Like so:

Header Image Slider

If you’re into blogging you can find the plugin here

RT7 Lite – The Windows 7 successor to nLite

nLite was a great little tool to customize your Windows XP OS before actually installing it. I mainly used it to remove pesky addon’s like Games from the default installation source then integrate drivers and OS updates into ISO’s before burning these onto disc and using them to install the OS.

It was also possible to integrate silent software installs with nLite – but with software release updates coming out all the time what would be the point?

The need to integrate drivers has been eliminated from Win7 since it does such a good job of finding the correct drivers from the Windows Update site – however updates are still required.

Enter RT Se7en Lite to pick up where nLite left off.

I haven’t tested RT7 yet but if it’s half as useful as nLite – than its a keeper. You can find it here

The Blog of Martin Birrane