I've been running Community Server on this blog for a long time.  It's good, but there's always been a spam problem.  Unfortunately the guys at Telligent Systems don't seem to see this problem and thus there is no anti-spam tools built into it.  At least not in my version.  As the volume of spam rose, I can't sit by and manually fight it any longer.  So I've implemented a CAPTCHA system developed by Dave Burke (an expert in customizing and deploying CS). Thanks to his free tool and very helpful support, I've installed and seen a sudden drop in the automated spam messages that were flooding my site.  Great work Dave and thanks for the support when I was implementing it.

And to all the readers / commenter’s, I'm sorry for the added level of complexity.  Unfortunately, it is required on the Internet these days.  

With gas prices the way they are, I think a lot of people are starting to think about the alternate options available. Sadly, there isn't much choice - Drive or Not.  I need to drive or I'm not getting to work.  But after putting $65 into the car today and things are only going to get worse, I figured that it might be time to check out some cars with better mileage ratings.  Now, I drive an SUV - a Hyundai Santa Fe, 4cyl, manual. We need the extra space it provides to load the kids and all the stuff that goes along with them when we go places. A quick search on Google brought me to this ultra cool site: www.FuelEconomy.gov that allows you to find the best rated cars, trucks, and SUVs on the market today and even compare them side by side with any other vehicle of your choice. 

According to this site, the best SUV is a Ford Escape with the Hybrid engine. It's rated at 30 MPG compared to just 20 for the Santa Fe.  All that works out to $800 a year less in gas.  Sounds really nice, doesn't it?  There's a catch; the car costs $33,000 compared to just $26,000 for the Hyundai.  That's a total of $7,000 more! Lets see, the extra cost divided by the savings in gas and you get 8.75 years.  You pay more upfront and then have to drive the car for 8.75 years before you make up the extra cost. 

Instead of paying an extra $7,000 I could put that money towards gas and I would get an extra 2.86 years of gas paid for.  So, I pay more for the hybrid and it takes 8.75 years to make up the extra price paid on gas, or I pay less and take the money saved and get 2.86 years of free gas.

I know that some of you might be thinking that hell has just froze over.    Don't worry, it's cold here and I see piles of snow out my windows, but I'm pretty sure hell still has a fair amount of heat left. So what am I doing? Well, thanks to the kindness of Howard Chui of HowardForums.com, I have a chance to play with and get a little personal time with the hottest smartphone this side of purgatory.

My initial reaction is that the interface is pretty slick and the screen is simply gorgeous. I'm not sure about anything under the hood - but I'll have more thoughts once it's charged and ready for a full day's activities.  Stay tuned.  

Thanks to a record breaking (or almost record breaking) snow fall, I have decide to offer my snow collection to those less fortunate than I.  The snow is all relatively new - the majority of it has fallen in February and early March.  The snow is pure white (no yellow snow here) and in powder form.  With the exception of the snow on the bottom, it's a little more compressed than the stuff on top.  The snow is yours for the taking or I will ship it to you at your expense.  (Child not included)

For a while now, I've been looking at ways to use my Xbox 360 with my Dell LCD from my desktop computer.  This isn't the hard part - if I use the cable that comes with my 360 I can connect the red/white audio connectors to my computers speakers and the yellow video cable to the monitors input and all is good.  However, the picture quality sucks.  And when I say sucks, I truly mean it sucks.  I regularly use the 360 on my 42" Plasma using the HDMI cable directly from the console.  So I'm use to seeing the games in high quality.  So having to switch back to the standard component input is a major adjustment. 

What I really want to do is use the DVI input on my monitor and the regular RCA connectors for the audio.  But this requires an extra cable from Microsoft at the cost of $50! I don't understand why I need to pay for an extra cable when the box already has everything, I just can't plug both in at the same because Microsoft decided to make the default cable with a super fat end on it.

As the picture shows, there is little room for both the HDMI cable and the standard cable.  Of course, all of this could have been avoided if Microsoft had added a headphone jack or something to the unit. 

I figured the first thing to try - before dropping $50 on a new cable, is to see if there is anyway to trim down that fat end.  After careful examination, it became pretty clear that it's just a 2 parts that have been glued together. So it should open up rather easily. And guess what....

Tada! I just used a small screwdriver and gently encouraged the plastic to separate.

Adding a little electrical tape to hold the other side on and make sure there's no kinks on the cable where is enters that silver hump at the end of the cable.  Once it's inserted in the back on the console, you can clearly see that there is plenty of room for a HDMI cable now!

So, the red/white RCA audio connectors on the original cable are used for sound and I have a HDMI to DVI cable that handles the picture to my LCD.

I was hoping it wouldn't come to this, but time has run out and Canon has proved to me that they don't know anything about building a quality camera.  The overall pictures and performance of their cameras are good, but the build quality and life expectancy is poor to say the least.

My first digital camera was the Canon G1 - a great semi-pro camera.  I purchased the extended warranty on it - something I normally wouldn't do. However this time the price of the camera, $1300 or so, made me think twice and it turned out to be a good thing. About 6 months into the extended warranty the camera would no longer charge. I sent it in for repair and it turns out some small part of the internal charger died and had to be replaced.  Total cost would have been $350.   Thankfully it was covered and I didn't pay a dime - just lost the use of the camera for a month.

My next camera was a pocket sized point and shoot from Canon called the S400. It seemed like a nice camera. It was much smaller than the G1 which was good for me as I now had kids and wanted something I could easily carry around with me. I didn't purchase the extended warranty on this camera because I figured the first time was a fluke.  Besides, the online store I purchased from didn't offer any sort of extended warranty.   So this one last about 10 months past warranty and then I started to get an error in regards to the memory card.  I tested it with a number of different CF cards and all of them produced the same error. A quick Google search on that error shows that everyone and their brother was having the same problem with that camera and it was related to moisture getting inside the body.  Putting it under a hot lamp for a couple hours would help. But only for a short time.

So that takes me to camera #3 - an even smaller point and shoot from Canon called the SD700 IS. Overall a very impressive camera with huge zoom and ultra fast focus. After the last 2 problems, I figured I better get this from a local store and make sure I get the extended warranty.  Good thing I did - this time it lasted just 5 months into the extended warranty when the camera would no longer focus if I zoomed in at all. There was also a clunking sound when you zoomed in and out.  Which wasn't there before and didn't sound good to me. Great zoom on the camera, but what good is it if I can't focus!  So off it went for repairs. I just got a call from the store telling me it was back from repairs and I could pick it up anytime.  Imagine my surprise when I picked it up from the store only to find that the problem wasn't actually fixed! Sure they corrected the clunking sound but they did nothing about the focus problem. ARGH!  So, back it goes to get repaired for another 4 to 6 weeks. 

That's 3 Canon cameras with 4 repair problems, and that's just me.  I also recommended my in-laws by the Canon SD110. They purchased this from an online retailer and didn't get the extended warranty.  One month after the standard warranty ended, the camera stopped working altogether. The camera wouldn't even turn on.   Canon was nice enough to repair it even though it was 1 month out of warranty. To be honest, they didn't really want to fix it - it took a little convincing on my part before they would fix it.

That's it for me.  I won't buy another Canon product.  There has just been too many problems and too many headaches.  I was thinking of buying a DSLR and had thought about the Canon models. However, with this latest problem, you can bet I'll be looking at Nikon instead, and same goes for a small point and shoot.  I don't see myself waiting another 4 weeks for this camera to come back. I think I'll be buying a new camera in the next couple weeks and then sell the SD700 IS when it's finally repaired.  (I have a feeling it will require a 3rd trip back for the same problem). 

If you use Outlook day in and day out like I do, then surely you're aware of its numerous shortcomings. Especially when it comes to contact management and networking.  That's all set to change when Xobni is released. Watching this video has me dreaming of cool functionality that's been long overdue.  Watch the video and sign up for the beta - if you haven't already.

You can sign up using this link here:

I wonder if they can do anything to help me link contacts together.  It's great that I can list my contacts spouse and children's names, but why isn't that a link allowing me to open that contact directly from within the contact I'm already viewing? Oh well, baby steps... baby steps.