How To Stop Unwanted Solicitation of your Browsing History

I've known for awhile that the css :visited property on elements can allow me or others to detect whether or not a certain link has been visited by the user on the other end of a browser.

What I didn't realize is that the browsers have already done things to help us out. If you can forego the need for links you've already visited to change color or background, then the safest option is to turn off visited links. What The Internet Knows About You describes both the underlying issue and some of the possible preventative measures. My favorite...

Firefox 3.5 users will be happy to learn that their browser has a configuration option which disables visited links. To enable it, type in about:config in the address bar and set the layout.css.visited_links_enabled option to False.

I'd much rather remember which links i visit, than have to discard my browsing history and lose the awesome bar.

Amazon 2 Day Shipping Free

I was happy to see how easy this worked out on checkout. If you're like me and just want the free 2 day shipping, don't be scared. You can go into your amazon account immediately and choose a setting to end your free trial.

It's easy to sign up for all the free trials, but normally not so easy to quit. So if you're struggling shutting of your new Amazon Prime free trial because you don't want to fork over $79.

You can manage your Amazon Prime settings by going down the lefthand navigation into Amazon Exclusives. Then click the orange manage my membership button in the lower right. Then click the Do Not Upgrade button and turn off auto upgrade.

So now you got some free 2 day shipping even if you're not interested in Amazon Prime. Thanks Amazon :)

Stand Up for your Right to Healthcare Data

Just heard about HealthDataRights.org today.

This organization is trying to help progress our ability to and rights to our data. The healthcare system needs reform and this is the most important step of them all. Give the patients their data for free or minimal cost.

Give us our data.

Appengine + Django 1.1

So i got past my previous post with a different cell phone number. Now I know getting an appengine account is a more difficult than most online accounts. It makes sense too given free website hosting is at stake.

Anyhow, after a short time i was able to get django 1.1 up and running on appengine. For a little clarity, this provides all the glory of django templates, urls.py, middleware, forms, settings. But because of the big table db implementation of appengine, the admin tool, auth, session, and anything else built-in and dependent on django models will not work.

I found some other blogs that were close, but none of the step by steps worked for me. I followed instructions found at goole python libraries - django.

Since i learn best from code, I checked a basic project into github that i'll continue to update on git as i make updates.

Browse the code on git.

Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Back before Christmas, i made some chocolate chip cookies off that used pudding as an ingreadient. They were unbelievable! Don't be scared by the pudding. The texture of these cookies was fantastic and they kept their moist deliciousness for two weeks.

You're probably wondering...if they're so good, why did it take two weeks to eat them? Well, my wife gave up sweets to prepare for christmas, so i saved her a few cookies. Nothing special to keep them, two weeks in a cookie jar and dropped them in a gift bag.

Enough already...here's the recipe - Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies

I went for chocolate pudding and a little extra vanilla. Eat up!

HTC Hero Review

I've had the HTC Hero from Sprint for about a month now and i've had enough time to digest all the features.

Advantages:
1. Extremely well integrated with twitter, facebook, and flickr.
2. Very flexible customization with seven pages of personalized layout
3. No keyboard means lightweight and small (I've no problems using the touchscreen keyboard)
4. Phone, especially Speaker Phone, work better than my old LG phone.

Cons:
1. Shaky software. i.e. Alarm Clock crashes instead of alarming and calendar app crashes.
2. Advanced Task Killer App is needed to control usage and save battery life ( couldn't android have a built in way to kill apps?)

All in all, I love this phone. My wife has the samsung moment and my preference is definitely for the hero over the moment.

Appengine Disappoints

So i got excited a couple weeks ago about appengine and how easy it could make hosting a simple domain. And i am still excited....but there are some major usability issues with the way they allow you to sign up for appengine accounts.

First thing they require is that you verify via SMS. Okay no problem. right. Unless you're me, then apparently they can't send a message to my sprint phone. Then the form confuses me by making it look like i submitted a different carrier (SouthernLink Wireless) making me try multiple times.

Then i do some web searches to find that not only are other people struggling with the same issue, but their security only allows one account to one phone. Therefore if you play around with appengine using your gmail account, you're screwed if you buy a domain name, sign up for google apps, and then want to host a site with appengine.

This is an embarrassment to google. A company who i was a real fanboy of until recently( see eric schmidt on privacy to learn when i dropped my fanboy stance).

PhoneGap Initial Thoughts

Phonegap a big success. I tried out phonegap for android this morning. Those guys at nitobi have done a great thing for web devs wanting to write mobile apps.

Check them out on Twitter @phonegap