Akismet is one of the most popular plug-ins for WordPress bloggers to fight against spam, and until now it never has any competitors.
But now there is a new technology and very much similar to Akismet called Defensio, well from the FAQ and what they have said about it in their website it looks very well to be the replacement for people like me, who do not want to sign up for a WordPress.com account just so that they get an API key to use Akismet.
In at first glance it has all the features of Akismet and you need to sign up for a Defensio account to get an API key so that you can keep track of your spam count and other customized settings.
What this has more is the spam sensitivity level option and the option to hide obvious spam.
I believe for sites getting huge spam counts these two options are very useful indeed, and unlike Akismet this highlights obvious spam so that user can go on skipping those and avoid reading them altogether thus making the job of sorting through spam a whole lot easier. There is also a checkbox to hide these obvious spam altogether from your view.
There are so many things that can go wrong with windows. For me it seems, every time a problem occurs it is something new to me. A few days ago I had a terrifying experience with windows. When I turned on my computer and logged in with a password, all I saw was a black desktop with no icons, no taskbar, absolutely nothing. Only mouse pointer was sitting there. As you may have heard of this before many problems can be solved with system reboot. So I restarted my system and the scenario was the same. I panicked and tried to calm myself saying “it is windows, it is going to be ok after another reboot, and another, and one more”….. No, it was not ok. My system was damaged.
Do you happen to leave your laptop unattended at public places such is university or library, maybe just for a minute to say hello to a friend or fetch a cup of coffee and than continue to work on? What if you come back and your laptop is gone, stolen? Well, the best option is to always take it with you every time you go away, but for those who are let’s say lazy like me, there is something interesting to help you to prevent or even catch the thief if worst happens.
Ever since I started being interested in computers I have been reading and listening to the complaints about windows. On the other side there are people who are in love with windows no matter what version. This seems normal for people have diferent tastes and needs, but at the end we all probably share the same opinion about these two issues: windows xp is definitely a mature system and windows vista is abnormally resource demanding like no operating system ever out there. Now, here is a question for you? If xp is a mature operating system, why do we need another one, and further why does Microsoft want to convince us, we need vista if we know vista brings little and takes more?
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When I was buying my laptop all I had in mind was performance. I wanted to have core2duo, 2 Gb of ram, discrete graphic card and Vista operating system. I thought with that specs, especially with core2duo, my laptop would fly with speed. And finally when I got it I had a terrible experience. Laptop was sooooooo slow like it was running celeron processor! I knew Vista was not the fastest operating system but I tweaked it and removed all unnecessary applications and services…. but performance was not much better. Which component was causing this?
or 
or maybe 
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October 21, 2008 (Computerworld) Google Inc. has patched its Chrome browser to block a months-old bug that can be used to trick people into downloading and launching malicious code.
The fix has not been pushed out to most users, however.
The security researcher who reported the vulnerability, which involves a combination of the “carpet bomb” bug with another flaw disclosed in August, called the fix “enough for the time being” but said Google’s patch wasn’t the final word.
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Recently The new Update of WordPress 2.6.2 arrived and now lot of people are thinking of upgrading and some a scared to upgrade since some plugins might break the site or throw some other kind of conflicts or errors. So I thought of sharing with everyone the method I use to upgrade WordPress.
You might be wondering why go through all this hassles when you can use automatic upgrade plugins like WP-Automatic Upgrade, but WP-Automatic Upgrade throws loads of errors and problems and it’s a nightmare.
So here is the method I use for upgrading whilst having a backup of the old files, It has worked flawlessly so far and I hope it will work always.
The Steps for a Failsafe Update (proven by time)
Today, the Woopra team announced their fully finished Woopra - WordPress stats integration plugin 1.30. I tried it out and It was absolutely awesome. The Woopra team has done it again, I wish to thank John and all the Woopra developers for an awesome job well done.
Recently a lot of people including me were asking for help and some even complaining and criticizing the woopra team since the previous beta version of their plugin was not working properly, I think that all the criticism was unfair as that plugin was in beta, and the whole point of beta is to iron out errors.
But I should say, what a work the woopra team has done! this version is simply stunning (I?m out of words). This is going to be the 1st truly integrated plugin for WordPress with super advanced woopra features yet its not obtrusive like the wp-stats plugin (I do not like wp-stats plugin), but absolutely wonderful in every way. Guess you have to be a Wooprite to feel it. All I?m saying there is no-point me writing about it pages, because you have to implement it in your blog to see how good it is.
Well done guys, and thanks for yet another wonderful innovation.
I?m Proud to be a Wooprite.
Here are some screens of Woopra - Wordpress plugin 1.30 in action:
Another week, another beta. New in beta 2:
See the full list of changes since beta 2.
I found this wonderful article on Lorelle’s Blog, Like her I too believe that internet censorship is unfair and WordPress.com should not be penalized due to a single blogger, and free speech should always be allowed. I specially don’t like some countries blocking the whole WordPress domain, just because they don’t like some things they see in one or two blogs. So I thought of quoting her wonderful post on how to bypass censorship.
As discussed in WordPress.com Banned Again: Why Aren?t You Concerned?, WordPress.com continues to be a target for censorship and blocking from various countries and groups around the world attempting to penalize the whole for the ?wrongs? of the few the courts or governments decide to penalize, those cutting off thousands of blogs from access.
I was also recently blocked from accessing Gmail and this WordPress.com blog from a free hotel WIFI in Chicago, which inspired me to write How Do You Know If Your Blog is Banned or Blocked? on the Blog Herald, as your blog can be blocked from anywhere at any time, not just by a country or legal decision. Bans and blocks can happen from companies, educational institutions, public WIFI access points, Internet Providers, and more.
