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My personal favorite RSS reader is now free: FeedDemon v2.6. Previously, I paid for FeedDemon. That is no longer required.

For those unfamiliar with FeedDemon, it is an extremely useful and powerful program that allows you to efficiently read your RSS feeds. Rather than me trying to highlight all the important features, I urge you to click on the link above, read more about FeedDemon, download it, and try it.

I have used FeedDemon for several years and am a very satisfied user of Nick Bradbury's software. He created FeedDemon and TopStyle Pro, CSS and HTML editor. Both products are extremely well designed and functional. Again, I urge you to try FeedDemon v2.6. It is now being offered to individuals for free.

While I still have more work to do on my weblog, it is now operational.

Although I liked the look of my old weblog, I prefer the look of my new weblog better.

Thank you for your patience while I made my changes.

For those interested in more discussion, particularly of a political nature, concerning the Alberta Royalty Review, I encourage you to read Ken Chapman over at his blog. I have not followed his blog closely; however, by reading several of his recent posts, I get the strong impression that he is a voracious reader with strong opinions. And, I note that he has some hecklers that participate in his comments, which is always a good thing. A few hecklers and doubters always spice up a blog.

I have largely ignored the political aspects of the Alberta Royalty Review. I have read and heard some media commentary on the Panel's work, but found the media coverage wanting. I do not think the media has a solid understanding of the issues, or how and the fiscal terms were created. Lacking a strong background, the media tends to parrot various sources.

Again, for those looking for more of a political interpretation and analysis of how the Royalty debate is progressing in Alberta, I urge to read Ken Chapman's blog.

I have written two prior articles about reducing spam on your Movable Type weblog: Movable Type: Reducing Spam and Movable Type: Another Spam Reducing Technique In this article, I will show you another powerful technique to reduce your spam.

There is a free and paid version of a program called Xlogan that is available here. The program provides useful statistics regarding your website. I often download a few days worth of weblog data, and then look at the visitors tab. I look to see which ip (internet protocol) addresses have been making the most requests and which have been consuming the most bandwidth. When I find an ip address that has hit my site 500 times in one day, I then go to the raw logs, again inside of Xlogan, and look at which webpages have been hit by this particular ip address. When I see that it is trying to hit my comments and trackbacks, I know it is a spam bot. In addition to seeing which pages it accesses, I often do a WHOIS lookup to see if I can learn more about the spam bot. So I can then decide if I want to block it or not by using my .htaccess file.

I should note that I often find a family of ip addresses that originate from the same internet service provider (isp). Usually this isp is located in Eastern Europe or some other country that does not usually legitimately visit my weblog. When that is the case, I simply determine that isp's complete range of allowable addresses and block all of them.

Checking to see which ip addresses consume the most bandwidth is also helpful. The same technique applies here: determine if the ip addresses that consume most of the bandwidth are desirable guests or not.

Sometimes I will organize the ip addresses by entry page. You can do this readily by simply clicking entry page row header. As I scan down the page, I will notice that several ip addresses will hit the same comment or trackback. Obviously, several computers from different locations are trying to insert a comment or trackback. It is hard to block these bots because they are coming from all over the world. In this situation, you can rename your comment and trackback scripts, which I highlighted in my first article. This technique tends to slow them down for a while.

I also moderate all my comments. So even if the spam bot gets through my initial defenses, I must examine the entry and approve it.

I hope my techniques outlined in my three articles help you to reduce your spam load.

I have been playing around with Movable Type's Beta of version 4. You can see the beta version of my blog. I am currently using version 3.34, the version you are using now. I have not performed the usual work of upgrading the CSS and other templates with the beta as yet. When working with the beta versions, I want to ensure that I am able to work with the new blog. That means, can I transfer my prior posts over and make everything work? So far, yes. Before the blog goes live, I will have to do some customization work, but I do like the look and feel of the new blog. The default templates are much, much better than those from prior versions. Overall, I am impressed with this new version and am looking forward to working with it.

Once Six Apart, the company that creates Movable Type weblogs, has completed its beta versions, I will notify you. Soon thereafter, I will begin my customization work. And then go live. But at least you will know that, when you arrive at a different looking blog, you have arrived at the right location. Once the weblog is live, I can provide a more detailed and meaningful comments.

For those interested in having their own Movable Type weblog, you can learn more information at http://www.movabletype.org/.

For those wanting to use Movable Type, but not use the beta version, please visit http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/. The beta version is still in flux, which means that there are changes, sometimes substantial, between versions. As mentioned in my regular post, I am waiting for Movable Type to complete its beta process before I do my customization work and go live with the newest version.

Kathy Sierra wrote a disturbing account of receiving death threats left on her blog Passionate: Creating Passionate Users.

As I type this, I am supposed to be in San Diego, delivering a workshop at the ETech conference. But I'm not. I'm at home, with the doors locked, terrified. For the last four weeks, I've been getting death threat comments on this blog. But that's not what pushed me over the edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and sex posted on two other blogs... blogs authored and/or owned by a group that includes prominent bloggers.

As I read Kathy's article, I felt sad for her, even though I have never met her. I do not like to see others bullied or harassed. I believe strongly in free speech. Though, I am not supportive of hateful speech, speech that makes others live their lives in fear.

From what Kathy has written on her blog, she appears to be targeted because she is a woman working in a male dominated technology sector. We here in Canada have witnessed a similar ugly act of aggression where a murderer gunned 14 innocent women studying engineering in Montreal. There is no humor in threats or acts of intimidation.

I am fully supportive of her right to blog and her right to work and participate in the technology sector. I wish Kathy and her family the best. And I hope she returns soon, stronger and more determined that ever before.

Please visit Kathy's blog and read her article.

Many blogs have recently mentioned the Great Firewall Of China website. I decided to see if Specious Argument was banned. Fortunately it is not banned.

I then had a look at how Specious Argument appears in China. It looks very similar except some elements in the sidebar. The Flickr badge is does not work. Google AdSense uses Chinese rather than English, which only makes sense. And Amazon.com advertisement is missing. From those observations, Flickr and Amazon.com must be banned.

I wonder if the restrictions will be eased toward the Olympics when China will have many foreigners.

Update

China Law Blog provided an interesting comment, which I am promoting as an update to the original article.

China typically blocks all LiveJournal, Blogspot and WordPress blogs, but let's Typepad be. Looks like you are typepad (movable type), so that is probably why.

I find it interesting that certain brands of blogs are targeted. In looking through my blog's hit statistics, China ranks about 15 out of 123 countries.

I received a further response from China Law Blog, which I am also promoting as an update.

I have been given two different explanations (but I have no idea if either or both are true)that China does not like the free sites because those are the ones typically populated by Fulan Gang and others "out to get China." I have also heard that Typepad has done a good job shmoozing with China. I too would love to know the real reason. Anyone?

If anyone has any suggestions or answers, please leave a comment.

This is a cool website that shows how the earth's population along with carbon dioxide emissions in simulated real time. Simply click on the picture, and you will be directed to the Breathing Earth website.

(Via J-Walk Blog)

The National Geographic has sent John Walkenbach, author of my favorite weblog J-Walk Blog, a Copyright Complaint letter.

I am disappointed because John's posts did not, in my opinion, take away from the National Geographic. He did not reproduce entire articles or even a substantial portion of articles. He merely posted interesting snippets with links to National Geographic for the entire articles. In my view, he merely provided free advertising.

I would have much more sympathy for the National Geographic position if John had claimed authorship, reproduced substantial portions of the articles, or was deprived National Geographic of revenue and profits. I do not believe National Geographic suffered any harm. Rather, I believe National Geographic only benefitted from John Walkenbach's exposure.

Although I have never met John, I have tremendous respect for him. While I do not agree with all, or even many of, his views, I do appreciate his willingness to voice his opinions. And I do appreciate his effort that he puts into his blog to entertain his readers. I am absolutely positive that John meant no harm and, indeed, caused no harm to National Geographic.

As a fan and fellow blogger, I want to add my voice to denounce National Geographic's position.

Borrowed from the J-Walk Blog, A very nice (and very wide) panorama photo of Paris at night.

John Walkenbach is performing an experiment. His blog J-Walk Blog is my favorite blog.

All you have to do is post a link to this particular blog item (i.e., the one you're reading now). Just call it J-Walk Blog Link Experiment or something like that. After a few days, I'll post a list of every blog I found that linked to this item. If you're not on the list, I'll invite you to send me the link to your entry. I'll post these unfound links, and we'll try to figure out why I didn't find you.

His post concerning his experiment is Attention Bloggers!.

Okay, John, back to you.

If you haven't already seen J-Walk Blog I encourage to you to do so.

I work a lot with Microsoft Excel, and John Walkenbach is the best and most prolific Excel author. You can see his Spreadsheet Page where he has a lot of excellent Excel information. From visiting his Spreadsheet Page, I came across his J-Walk Blog.

I like John's often irreverent sense of humor. John has a strong love of photography that he often combines with his humor. A good example is John's post An Animal Wearing Clothes. John also posts interesting technical information on computers.

If you have a strong religeous or political bent, John's blog is likely to offend you at some point. Don't worry, he is an equal opportunity offender when it comes to politics and religeon. As John says in his blog, Stuff that may or may not interest you.

Try viewing the J-Walk blog for a few days. You just might find that you enjoy it too.