MorinFamily.com - Technology category

Is anybody still reading?

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 01:04:57 GMT

I realize I haven't kept this blog up, that's mostly because FIOS blocks on port 80 which means I lose the primary "www.morinfamily.com" url. I keep saying I'll move this over to a real host and get it out of the basement but I never seem to have the attention span -- my mail still goes through this domain and when I do it I want to do it quickly so I don't lose mail.

So I'm curious, is anybody actually subscribed and wondering what happened? Or do I just get the occasional search engine traffic?

Free Ringtones : What's the Big Deal?

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 12:50:02 GMT

Apple has a new feature for the iPhone. See a song on iTunes that you like? Click and turn it into a ringtone! The only problem is that you have to pay 99 cents for the song, and then another 99 cents for the privilege of making it a ringtone. Who is the ad wizard who thought that one up? Or was that one for the "We'll give it a shot and see how many people actually do it before the bad press gets too overwhelming" pile?

Naturally this has started up a flurry of "How to get free ringtones for your iPhone" articles, which in turn has spawned articles for "Get free ringtones even if you don't have an iPhone."

Over a year ago I simply got a phone that actually supports MP3 ringtones (a Motorola v360, to be specific). And then it was a simple matter of getting them on the phone. Easy easy. My ringtone is Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day...") as sung by David Gilmour, of Pink Floyd. The uber-cool thing is that my 5 and 3 yr olds can now both sing that song, referring to it as the song that Daddy's phone sings.

I suggested that my 5yr old sing it for her new kindergarten teacher, but then it dawned on me that her teacher would probably have no idea what she was hearing.

What's up with the referral resume spam?

Fri, 11 May 2007 23:02:23 GMT

Every day I get a couple of stragglers in my referrer logs where the URL is somebody's resume. I'm not quite sure what sort of moron you have to be to think that spamming your resume is going to get you jobs, but it's never really bothered me, I just blacklist them all. Today, all of a sudden, there are dozens of them. Not dozens of different ones, but dozens of hits from the same URLs over and over again. Not really sure what's up with that. All the same, they're all going in the blacklist. What I should really do is follow the link, get the email address and then put them personally in my blacklist just so that I'm sure never to hire them.

Citigroup to Lay Off 17,000

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 12:56:24 GMT

I'd been alerted to this Citigroup news a few weeks ago. A friend of ours from playgroup works for them and was told that although he'd be safe, to prepare for some rough times. I remember when Scudder/DeutscheBank had their layoffs, I was told that I was safe as well. And I was, right up until they turned the lights off. But I eventually lost my job just like everybody else.

Oh, well. I wish him luck. Now I've got to figure out how to get the other 17,000 to BUY MY BOOK! I write from experience :).