The end of “On Behalf Of” in Gmail

Well, not quite the end.   But close.  Google will let you use the remote SMTP servers to send the message, removing the need to fill “sender” and “from” in the message header with different addresses.  But if those remote SMTP servers are hopelessly lame and you are using GMail to avoid using them in the first place … you’re still SOL.

Official Gmail Blog: Send mail from another address without “on behalf of”

We heard your request for another option that wouldn’t show the “on behalf of” text loud and clear, and now there’s a new option that does just that. Instead of using Gmail’s servers to send the message, we’ll use the servers where your other email address lives. Since Gmail isn’t the originating domain, we don’t have to include “Sender” info in the header. No more “on behalf of.”

Free Web Analytics tools

Here is an article that runs down the list of the best free alternatives to Google Analytics.  Very interesting stuff – something new for everyone.

Best Free Website Analytics Tools | Web Design Ledger

Whether you are running a blog or an e-commerce site, this information is vital. That’s why it’s key to have a good set of tools providing you with website analytics. There are lots of tools out there, all with different features and different prices. In this post, I’m showing you the best free analytics tools available.

Blogger version of WP-Cumulus

Here is the port of WP-Cumulus from WordPress to Blogger, along with instructions that should be familiar to anyone who has customized a Blogger template before.

Blogger Buster: Blogumus: a flash animated label cloud for Blogger!

“Blogumus” is an Flash based tag cloud widget which uses scripts converted from Roy Tanck’s WP Cumulus plugin for WordPress. I fell in love with Roy’s original Cumulus plugin when I saw it, and simply had to learn how to convert this for use in Blogger powered blogs. The result is the widget you can see in action at the top of this post. Hover your mouse over the Flash object to see the animation begin. In this post, I’ll explain how you can add Blogumus to your own Blogger layout with ease!

Apple deep sixes Google Voice app on iPhone

Yeah, its TechCrunch, but they have a quote from Google.   They go on to spin a conspiracy theory about AT&T being behind the move, threatened by Google Voice.  While its true that no telecom can be pleased about having to adopt, adapt, and improve (motto of the Round Table and Microsoft)  their business model to accommodate Google Voice, I’d prefer to think that this little show of corporate animosity between Google and Apple may be for the benefit of the FTC.

Apple Is Growing Rotten To The Core: Official Google Voice App Blocked From App Store

Earlier today we learned that Apple had begun to pull all Google Voice-enabled applications from the App Store, citing the fact that they “duplicate features that come with the iPhone”. Now comes even worse news: we’ve learned that Apple has blocked Google’s official Google Voice application itself from the App Store. In other words, Google Voice — one of the best things to happen to telephony services in a very long time — will have no presence at all on the App Store. If there’s ever been a time to be furious with Apple, now is it.

Cool WordPress Tag Cloud

My last post was to an article at a site with a cool tag cloud called WP-Cumulus.
Like a regular a cloud, but displayed as a rotating 3-D sphere.  Try it out.

Java Blog | Job trends for the popular languages – Java, C++ and PHP | Veerasundar

The tag cloud is the Wp-Cumulus plug-in for WordPress. In case your blog is running on WordPress, you may try out the tag cloud.

Programming language by popularity and jobs

So its still Java by a nose. 

Java Blog | Job trends for the popular languages – Java, C++ and PHP | Veerasundar

From the above picture, it is evident that the number of jobs are considerably reduced, irrespective of the programming language, mainly due to recession. Especially the Java job opportunities are fallen sharply, but still leading in the total number of opportunities.

NoSQL Movement Summary Article

A nice little compare-and-contrast essay of various options to the relational database.  The author is impressed by Cassandra, for certain applications.

My Thoughts on NoSQL – Die in a Fire – Eric Florenzano’s Blog

Cassandra has no single points of failure, and can scale from one machine to several thousands of machines clustered in different data centers. It has no central master, so any data can be written to any of the nodes in the cluster, and can be read likewise from any other node in the cluster.

Security for data on your laptop

In order to keep your data safe from customs, you may have to take one step closer to losing it forever, yourself.  But in the end, the worst outcome is that no one will have your data.  Unless they water-board you.

Protect Your Laptop Data From Everyone, Even Yourself

There’s another solution, one that works with whole-disk encryption products like PGP Disk (I’m on PGP’s advisory board), TrueCrypt, and BitLocker: Encrypt the data to a key you don’t know.

Jott is snapped up

Jott, which was a good service when it was free, is being acquired by Nuance Communications.   Very few details about the deal are listed in this article, but it seems that the most fungible part of the company was the voice recognition interface.  It became a popular way for Salesforce users to access their CRM program – which was interesting to Nuance. 

We sort of expected that either cell companies (or these days maybe Google Voice) would eventually provide a similar service for free, just to be competitive, and drive the Jott subscription model from the market.  Even if they hadn’t, Dial2Do still does.

Say What? Nuance Buys Jott for Speech Recognition Service

Nuance Communications, a provider of various speech recognition and predictive text products, said today it’s purchased Jott, whose service translates spoken messages into text and then emails or inserts them into various web services, for an undisclosed sum. As part of the deal, John Pollard, co-founder and CEO of Jott, will become a general manager in Nuance’s mobile division. Jott had previously raised $5.4 million from Bain Capital, Ackerley Partners, Draper Richards and Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom’s investment firm.

Adventure

Just in case you have a Mac and you want to try it.  Its free.

Lobotomo Software: Adventure

Before there was Doom, Ultima, Rogue, or even Zork, there was… Adventure.
There were other text computer games before Adventure, such as STARTREK and WUMPUS, but this was the first of its kind; the first text “interactive fiction” game. It may seem outdated and quaint by today’s standards, sort of like seeing the Wright brothers’ original flyer parked next to a Boeing 747, but many of us remember it fondly.