I installed the latest IE 6 security patch from the MS update site and lo and behold my Google Toolbar now takes me to G oogle Argentina . How in Blazes… Funny programer’s joke?

My address is ruined. AOL has blacklisted it. My email address is parked in many co-worker address books and some of those poor goobers got hit with the notorious SoBig.F. The worm spoofed my good name and the rest is spam junkmail virus history. What’s funny: My “disposable” (yahoo) email address, the one that I give out to strangers figuring that it was sure to wind up on many nasty bulk mail lists… is unscathed!

def. — mobile blog —
Happened to be researching camera phones and learned truth. The pictures portrayed in the sales pitch, which seem to appear instantly on the phone at the other end, — don’t. They must first travel to a picture-mail server where they are stored. (It would have been really cool to be talking to someone and send a picture while doing so just as the ad leads us to believe.) As an alternative, the caller can send them via email. In any case the recipient ends up doing a download to his computer or enabled phone. And, BTW, these phones are not interoperable.e.g., a Sprint phone can’t send / receive snapshot images from an AT&T customer’s phone. So, most people will end up sending these photos via the email procedure. Following the picturephoning trace it dawned on me that I could create a similar application that would retrieve images AND text and post them automatically to the web. You are reading my first moblog post. Previously, I had to go to find a browser and enter my spiel from a web page form. Now I can submit web log data from ANY email enabled device whether it be Outlook Express, HotMail, a PDA, or even pager or phone.Un-wired. Pretty kewl, eh?

The old way: Lemme tell ya the hoops to jump through to get a photograph on the web (until now). Take the shot. Wait until you get home. Connect your digital camera to your pc with USB cable and upload. Using FTP client software upload the image file to your server. Add html to your web page to display the picture and upload that. Not digital? Take film to photoservice for developing. Retrieve prints. Scan prints. etc., etc…

And how it works: I wrote CF code that checks an email address on the email server and greps any msgs found therein for posting. I include a password in my email header so that other unintended msg errata doesn’t make it to the web. When a genuine moblog is found, its content (title, body, date) is parsed and inserted in the database. When you access this web page the post dynamically renders. An email attachment file is handled the same way. If my camera phone includes an image file, the application will save it to a folder on the strombotne.com server. Easy as pie! Moblogging is the way to go.

Not front page news for everyone but the network is unde siege. By morning, my inbox will be maxed out with ‘wicked screensaver’ and ‘re:approved’ pif attachments. What a royal pain. The SoBig.F mass mailing worm doesn’t go away until Sept. 10 unless somebody figures out a way to kill it sooner. Business (mine) is feeling this one.

I’ve taken pictures — to go with the narration – but the ship’s LAN has all network ports closed save for http and mail. I can’t use my FTP client to upload. Security and all that.

Nick Burns Computer Geek stuff follows: Wrote a line or two of CF code that will rotate thru a random set of graphics each time the page is refreshed. In case you were getting tired (or fond) of the ’57 Coupe de Ville girl, there are additional scans for presentation display. I like the massive bold tooth grill craftsmanship of the 1958 Buick and the linear look on the 1959 Olds.

In an effort to become paperless ( think save trees ), I have designed a form application for the Pocket PC. This particular Form is for logging airline flights. The pilot enters his/her data with stylus pen which saves the record to an .cdb database. This converts to an .mdb access db during desktop pc sync operation and can be utilized in a display application or archived for permanent log storage. The source code was written using eMbedded Visual Basic. Next task is to make it distributable and build a display UI. The image above is an actual screen capture of my product in action.

Further more. Small can be good! These sites are miniaturized for the pocket sized and they do it all minus the commercial fluff and banner ads. This site cuts right to the chase and displays the Wx radar summary. Here’s one that presents content in the way that fathers of the early internet (not necessarily Al Gore (!) originally intended. Compare the Yahoo for the palm with Yahoo for the desktop!

I wrote some browser detection code that will allow this site to sniff for PocketPC handheld devices. Since the screen size on the handheld is a mere 240×320, a much smaller presentation is required. When you browse strombotne.com with Pocket IE the optimized version will now automatically load. View a simulation

This site is hosted with ColdFusion and it only took me two days of coding to add a couple of new features. There is a search form field which allows one to enter keyword or phrase to locate information. Not quite as fancy as Google but hey, this is local flavor. The View by Category is also functional. Pick your favorite blog topic: i.e. boats, cars, girls, planes!