Twitter tools
Tweetdeck
Personally, I think this is the best Twitter client/interface I've used so far - they also have a version available for the iPhone.
TweetStats
Find out more about your Tweeting-patterns:
Twitalyzer
Find out about your Twitter 'influence', 'signal', 'generosity', 'velocity' and 'clout':
TweetPsych
This is interesting - build a psychological profile of a person based on the content of their tweets:
Twitter Karma
Find out who isn't following you back and who you're not following:
BackTweets
Lets you search for links on twitter (even through URL shorteners). Useful if you want to see who's been tweeting about your website. They also have a Wordpress plugin for it.
Twuffer
Twuffer is a "Twitter Buffer" that allows you to schedule tweets for a later time
Qwitter
Qwitter lets you know when someone has stopped following you
Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments. You can also follow me on twitter
Creating a tunnel and SOCKS proxy with Putty
Why?
- Secure a public WiFi connection
- Bypass country-specific-content websites (e.g sites that only allow users from the U.S)
- Connect to a remotely-secured MySQL database via localhost
It's pretty easy to do in Linux (and I think the command is pretty much the same in MacOS or with cygwin installed):
ssh -L localport:hostname:remoteport username@Server
This is how to do it with Putty
Open Putty and enter in the basics: the Server and port (22):
Next, create the tunnel. Enter the source port (in this example, it's 3306 - a MySQL port) and leave the destination field empty (not always left blank, but it works for most cases)
The tunnel will be open/active as soon as you've logged in. Obviously, you still have to set up your proxy settings in whatever application you're using (for those who don't know, 127.0.0.1 is 'localhost'):
I hate Internet Explorer
Any and all versions for that matter.
Text rendering in Firefox:
Text rendering in Google Chrome:
Text rendering in Internet Explorer 8 - WTF is this?!
Ok, I admit: I'm using the text-shadow property... but still!
Google Wave: View all public waves
Search for with:public and you'll have enough to keep you busy testing.
Update: To make your wave publicly viewable, add this "public@a.gwave.com"
Note: You have to add it in the contact list on the bottom-left of the screen. It might not accept the email address, but just press enter anyway and it should work.
Note2: Sometimes the address will disappear from your list - in which case, add it again (I know, it's annoying).
Google Wave
Got my invitation for Google Wave this morning and I'm already seeing just how useful this can be for collaboration. Especially from a developer's point-of-view: Imagine real-time code-reviews, or dare I say, extreme programming (XP) across continents?.
The editor isn't half-bad at all - it recognizes Tabs (unlike Gmail)
To make it better, pressing Enter at the end of the line goes to the start of the tab, as opposed to the start of the new-line (awesome!):
The other thing I've noticed is there isn't any mention of overall space-limitations.
More to come later...
Reducing spam even further in Wordpress
Maybe I'm bored, but I've been spending a bit of time researching on ways to beat spam. Mind you, I haven't had anything get past Akismet anyway. This article is for all of you who want to be hardcore about your spam defences 
I came across "Project Honey Pot", which is a distributed system for identifying spammers and the spambots. Simply said, IPs of your site's visitors are verified against the Project Honey Pot database and spammers are kicked out.
Participating in this network comes in 2 forms. You can either install a Honey Pot (which is pretty easy) or if you don't want to install a Honey Pot of your own, you can link to someone else's.
Installing Honey Pot on a server (optional)
Installing a Honey Pot is easy enough. Start out by visiting Project Honey Pot. Once you've signed up for an account, you can begin adding a Honey Pot:
Depending on your webserver's supported languages, you can choose from a bunch:
Once you've chosen your options, you can download the files and upload it to any accessible-directory on the site you specified. Just visit the site to activate it.
The next step, is to customize your blog or site in such a way that you can actually catch suspicious activity:
Plugin: WP-Honey Pot
In order to make use of your new Honey Pot (or a Honey Pot elsewhere), install WP-Honey Pot. WP-HoneyPot enables you to add a hidden link on your blog in one of several randomised locations to ensure that spammers are less able to adapt to the solution and once you are a contributing member to Project HoneyPot then you are able to use the http:BL (which I'll be getting to just now).
Once that's set up, you'll be doing your part in helping to catch email harversters, comment spammers and other suspicious folks.
Plugin: http:BL
The obvious next step, would be to block the spammers from your site. And that's where http:BL comes into the picture.
Once you've installed and activated the plugin, all you need to do is specify an API key (which you get from the Project Honey Pot site) and the URL to your Honey Pot of choice. And that's pretty much all there is to it.
This flow-chart sums up my Spam protection for the time-being:
So far so good:
If any of you have tried something similar, or tried what I described above, drop me a line below and let me know your experiences!