hertenberger.co.za

Anything laying around for a while without receiving attention attracts grime and dust. In the world of the blog that kind of neglect implies digital dust. Digital dust is an outdated look, comments from spammers and ratings that have dropped.

Thankfully, the digital realm is reasonably easy to sort out. First off, I monitor all comments and mail messages that are sent here. In the past few months, I’ve simply not been in the mood to respond or mark them according to their status. Of all messages coming in, a huge percentage is obviously spam and is caught by Akismet. There are a number of comments that masquerade as something useful. Those make it into the comments queue, ready for tagging by web spiders and inclusion into search engine results. Those need to be marked individually and deleted.

First off, I helped out the ailing WordPress installation by updating it to the latest version, currently 3.0.1. It’s incredible how easy the entire upgrade process has become, not that it’s ever been hugely difficult. A single click in the dashboard view of WordPress is the only action required once a good backup of the database has been generated. Even the update of plug-ins is hugely simplified, requiring a single click to update all plug-ins that are presently installed and active.

As an aside, WordPress is still a fantastic platform regardless what advantages a solution like SquareSpace provides.

With the update out of the way, I had a look at some of the comments and incoming links. The banality of these surprises me every time I see them.

I spend little time worrying – click and mark as spam…

Last, but not least, is the installation of a new theme to at least make it seem as though things are once again happening. The design is of my own making and still requires quite a few tweaks and improvements.

And there we have it. Back up and running with new software, a new look and a cleaned-up comments queue.

Attempting to dupe Internet banking users out of their account numbers, PIN numbers and passwords seems to have become the latest hotbed of criminal activity. The attempt to catch unsuspecting FNB customers seemed amateurish – the fake website looked just that: fake, and unlikely to be taken seriously. The ABSA scam had me convinced after I had a look at the exact replica of the actual ABSA Internet banking site hosted at an obviously wrong location. In that case, the URL was the only giveaway.

Now, I’ve received a request to log on to a fake Nedbank Internet banking site. Scammers are taking advantage of the fact that Nedbank has indicated that some changes will be made to the official site and that additional services will be offered soon. The fake site lives at this URL: http://netbankonlinebanking.9hz.com and looks similar to the actual site.

Curiously, Nedbank refers to its own Internet banking service as Netbank, which I don’t fully understand. In any case, at first glance the fake website is quite convincing and mimics the style and layout of the actual site very well. All it takes is the entry of the Profile ID, PIN and password – don’t simply click on links and enter any details before you haven’t verified that you’re on the site you’re intending to be.

Call the institution if you suspect that something is awry and check the URL carefully before you do anything.  At the time of writing, Firefox doesn’t yet block the URL as one that is dubious.

Google has quietly launched an interesting website related to all the services it provides. The Google dashboard shows a quick overview of all data associated with a Google account, all the way from GMail to the Google Calendar and including such services as Picasa. Basically, the dashboard is a springboard to all Google services you’re already using (and some you may have forgotten you signed up for). Summary information is displayed for the content those services contain and links are provided to quickly access the relevant information.

The page shows all of your data that Google is the custodian of. Scared yet? Time for a backup and a plan to fail-over to some other solutions in case Google ever goes pop, methinks…

With an eye on next year’s World Cup, Google has just announced the South African version of its online mapping resource, Google Maps. Anyone accessing maps.google.co.za should now see a default view of South Africa.

The usual levels of detail and various views are available.

One very useful addition is the ability to request driving directions. These are displayed on the map view and are also provided in textual form to assist in guiding eager tourists to the nearest shopping mall, B&B or liquor store. Locals will probably find the ability to request detailed route information useful to – we know where the cheapest liquor stores are located, natch!

And just in case you’re desperate for a drink, queries can be entered to assist you in finding what you’re looking for.

In time for the 2010 World Cup, Google Street View of five large metropolitan areas will be available online. For use on the go, Google Maps is accessible on most mobile phones that provide a browser.

I’m not an FNB customer, yet this mail still arrived in my inbox.

This is yet another example of a really poor phishing attempt, but one that is likely to catch out at least a few unsuspecting victims.

First off, never ever click on any link in an email provided without first checking where it goes to. In this case, the link for the online banking URL points to http://67.19.209.82/%7Eblack/www.fnb.co.za, which is in no way the official FNB banking URL. The page is already blocked by Firefox, but users with other browsers may still run into a phishing site.

Secondly, no bank or financial institution will ever request you to update your details in this way. Be wary of the Internet. Even though it’s a great place for gaining access to services that would ordinarily require us to spend a lot of time completing, it’s just as easy to be duped into providing too much personal information to the wrong people if you’re not careful.

And another year has passed since August 2005 when I started this blog. It’s still an endeavour I enjoy, hence I’m able to maintain my goal of a post a day without too many exceptions.

With a change in interest, visitors will notice a change in direction and content. My switch to the Mac means that there is hardly any content regarding Linux, for example. That’s not to say I no longer dabble or have an interest in Linux, simply that I have something new that takes precedence.

There’s a reasonably steady stream of hits on a daily basis, though I find various peaks and troughs as my content veers from Windows Mobile to Symbian and then to the iPhone, as another example. I neglected to enable statistics after moving the blog to a new hosting provider, with the result that my statistical information for most of 2008 is not available. No matter, really. That’s just for interest in any case, but does provide even a slight assurance that hits are coming in.

Here’s what I had in 2008, provided by Awstats:

And here’s a view of 2009:

A slight increase overall, but reaching a plateau, it seems. Popular search terms that lead here still include GRUB error 17, lightscribe templates and iPod Touch firmware updates.

Overall, this site hovers in the top 30 at SA Top Sites, every now and then veering crazily towards the 50 mark.

Achieving good statistics and rankings is not the aim – I just find the information interesting and use it as a yardstick of sorts. The new versions of WordPress now include statistical information of their own. Here’s a sample for August:

Thanks to regular readers who find their way back here and to those who stumble on to this accidentally. Now, on to year 5…

With a round of computer installations coming up soon, I’ll inevitably find myself looking for my favourite Firefox add-ons once again. I don’t overload Firefox, but have four or so add-ons that I generally can’t do without.

Over at Mozilla, the add-ons site now allows collections of add-ons to be created and stored, then shared. Little more than a website that lists specific add-ons, the collections site is nonetheless rather useful and also provides a wealth of further information on additional add-ons to try out.

Though the collection will not assist with a bulk installation of add-ons, having all add-ons immediately available on a single page makes browser customization on a new system far easier.

Collections can be shared and, if permitted by the creator, augmented with additional add-ons that other choose to include. My rather basic Essentials collection is available here and many, many more are available at the Firefox Add-Ons Collections site.

It’s that time of year again when bloggers in South Africa clamour for nominations and votes. Why should I be any different? The nominations and votes in the 2009 South African Blog Awards run until 1 April 2009 with winners being announced on 3 April.

The obligatory graphic requesting your click and form completion has been placed in the sidebar, so consider voting or nominating this blog if you feel such an action is justified. If not, do it in any case

The categories this year are very broad, so it’s difficult to decide which ones to select. I know you’ll do the right thing Thanks!

Don’t forget that there are heaps of other South African blogs out on the Interweb. Consider nominating and voting for those, too.

I was eagerly watching the lab tab in my GMail settings, hoping to see the new offline feature appear. This morning, I saw that the new feature had been added and I immediately activated it.

Offline GMail utilizes Google Gears, a small framework that needs to be installed to the local machine. WordPress and Google Docs are two online applications that make good use of providing synchronization features for both online and offline content. Google Gears works remarkably well in my experience. So far, I’ve been very impressed with the offline support it provides for GMail, too.

Once the offline GMail feature has been enabled in your settings a new link becomes available at the top of the screen.

To start using offline mail, click the link. This starts the installation of the local framework component necessary to synchronize mail messages. It also installs an icon to your desktop if that is required.

Once that’s been done, the synchronization process gets underway. In my case, I left it running. And, it’s still running There are many, many messages to download during the first run. The process can be stopped and started as required.

The Google team understands South African Internet access difficulties: Flaky Connection Mode must have been added just for us…

Offline access to the synchronized mail content is very speedy and the online experience is preserved. It’s a great feature to have and obviates the need to pull down mail messages into a dedicated mail client on different machines just in case one needs to refer to a specific mail message. The offline GMail feature has made the already indispensable GMail even more appealing!

For the past few weeks, the Adgator folks have tracked visits to this website using some embedded code. Their dashboard is already tallying all the page impressions and today, we should be ready to serve the first real advertisments.

The average number of daily visits is around about 500 and a few, adding up to about 18000 or so per month. That’s not bad and will hopefully increase over time. I’ve no idea yet as to what kind of ads will appear instead of the default Adgator banners. I do trust the selected companies will have been vetted and targeted at the appropriate audience. If I see one Viagra ad, I’ll turn the Adgator off

Here are some stats for the past four months:

Thanks again for visiting!

Update: so I jumped the gun a bit. The ads will be served up shortly…