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Wikipedia does not block Qatar

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Wikipedia logoTechCrunch (among others) have reported that Wikipedia blocks Qatar, due to the fact that the country’s single ISP, Qtel, uses just one IP address that is used to spam. This is not true, although one particular IP has been blocked for less than 12 hours, according to Jimbo Wales over at Wikipedia.

To any and all reporters, from Slashdot, TechCrunch, mainstream media, etc.: You may email me and ask me for my personal cellphone number, which I will answer 24 hours a day to confirm or disconfirm any such story of this type.

Go get ‘em, Jimbo!

Originally posted on January 3, 2007 @ 4:50 pm

WordPress 2.0.6 security release is out now, and 2.1 hits beta

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WordpressWordPress 2.0.6 has been released, and it’s a recommended upgrade.

Here’s what’s new:

  • The aforementioned security fixes.
  • HTML quicktags now work in Safari browsers.
  • Comments are filtered to prevent them from messing up your blog layout.
  • Compatibility with PHP/FastCGI setups.

    • Also we’re told that this will probably be the last release before 2.1 is out, since it just entered the beta stage. Nice.

    Originally posted on January 5, 2007 @ 7:17 am

    Mozilla made $52.9m profit in 2005 (search is the key)

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    Mozilla.orgYes, Mozilla can make money… In a recent blog post by Mitchell Baker the figures for 2003, 2004 and 2005 where released, for Mozilla Foundation and Corporation.

    In 2005 the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation combined had revenue from all sources of $52.9M. $29.8M of this was associated with the Foundation (both before and after the creation of the Corporation). The bulk of this revenue was related to our search engine relationships, with the remainder coming from a combination of contributions, sales from the Mozilla store, interest income, and other sources. These figures compare with 2003 and 2004 revenues of $2.4M and $5.8M respectively, and reflect the tremendous growth in the popularity of Firefox after its launch in November 2004.

    It’s good to see that Mozilla is growing and ensuring that Firefox (and Thunderbird of course) can continue to be an alternative. 2006 should prove to be an even better year for Mozilla since Firefox is gaining ground, and the Google search box that comes pre-installed is the main source of income.

    Read the whole thing, it’s pretty interesting with some background history fluff.

    Originally posted on January 3, 2007 @ 6:01 pm

    Kill a slow day (the best of Kottke)

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    Jason Kottke is the blogger that got his readers to pay him for a year, so that he could blog. The only problem was, the particular year didn’t really differ from the ones before content wise. Jason chose not to continue the experiment…

    Anyway, my favorite thing with Jason’s blog isn’t his regular blogging, but the linkage he provides. Lots of links, and often several times every day with an insight. So when he’s bringing out a big fat list with the best ones of 2006 you know you’ll loose both sleep and working hours.

    Compiling a list of the best things I’ve linked to from kottke.org seems to get harder each year. I estimate posting about 2400 links to kottke.org in 2006, which is roughly one link every 2.5 hours on weekdays. Which is insane…I don’t know how you guys read all of that.

    Originally posted on January 3, 2007 @ 1:00 pm

    10 Web OS Options to Windows Vista

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    YouOSWell, not really, but one can dream, right? I find Web 2.0 fascinating and so do a lot of other people as well. We’re seeing web services that pushes the way we use the internet and the web browser forward all the time. E-mail and calendars have since long moved online for a large part of the web working crowd, and more is to come.

    Could you perhaps move online, totally? A web operating system, wouldn’t that be neat? Just have something to boot up your computer and run a web browser, the rest – applications as well as your files – are stored on a server that runs its own OS. In the web browser, of course. Google’ll do it, right?

    Well, my guess is that we’ll have to wait until late next year before we’re even remotely close to this, but still, there are people who are trying, making web based OS applications for your web browser.

    I have yet to try one that I would even consider, but don’t take my word for a fact, check them out yourself in the Big WebOS Roundup post over at Frantic Industries. If nothing else, it’ll provide you ten links to check out.

    Originally posted on December 29, 2006 @ 11:00 am