2010

Apple approves Mozilla’s Firefox Home iPhone app

Computerworld / Gregg Keizer / July 16, 2010
A fair chunk of the article dedicated to how Apple classified Firefox Home as an adult application because it connects to the Internet based on my reaction blog post.

2009

Judges panned Woz’s cha cha but it’s a hit on YouTube

Mercury News / Scott Duke Harris / March 12, 2009
Got a mention regarding Woz’s Dancing With The Starts Appearance “The blogosphere has given mixed reviews. Web developer Robert Accettura, who admits to being both a Mac and TV addict on his blog, expressed ambivalence. Even if he’s not sure he actually wants to see Woz dance, Accettura said he’d be rooting for him all the same….”

BitTorrent in the Browser

ajaxian / Dion Almaer / January 19, 2009
Asks it’s audience for an opinion to my proposal for using BitTorrent for HTTP failover.

2008

Google Chrome Tips and Pointers

Google Blogscoped / Philipp Lenssen / September 9, 2008
References my post regarding Google Chrome’s about:internets. Post was syndicated to PC World (AU) and Network World.

S3 Outage Makes Developers Consider Redundancy

monkey_bites (Webmonkey) / Adam DuVander / July 21, 2008
Quotes my analysis of the July 20, 2008 Amazon S3 Outage.

Over 40 Proven Ways to Get Far More Out of Firefox

OStatic / Sam Dean / April 4, 2008
Discusses how to get the most out of Firefox and recommends my series of blog posts of Firefox Tips.

Finding a worm in the Apple? Secret APIs in Mac OS X

ars technica / Ryan Paul / February 29, 2008
Article on undocumented framekwork API’s that WebKit is using which would be helpful to Gecko developers, quotes a blog post of mine.

Opera, Mozilla and Safari react to IE’s solution for browser compatibility issues

Opera Watch / Daniel Goldman / January 23, 2008
Article on reactions to Microsoft’s plan to use a meta tag as a toggle for standards mode quoting various developers and includes a quote from a blog post of mine.

Robert Accettura – Presidential Campaigns and Website Secrets

CMS Report / Bryan / January 12, 2008
Referenced a blog for “Secrets In Websites II” follow up in a popular series regarding easter eggs in web code.

2007

Reports of Firefox 3.0 bugs overblown, most significant bugs squashed

ars technica / Ryan Paul / November 19, 2007
Article on software development and deciding the cutoff for bugs in a release cycle, quotes a blog post of mine.

Thunderbird still has potential to fly despite developers leaving the nest

ars technica / Ryan Paul / October 09, 2007
Article on the recent departure of Thunderbird engineers from Mozilla Corporation, quotes a blog post of mine.

Robert Accettura comments on UI for Mac Applications

CMS Report / Bryan / September 29, 2007
Referenced a blog post on Mac UI.

Robert Accettura: Bayesian Spam Filter Poisoning With RSS

CMS Report / Bryan / January 31, 2007
Referenced a blog post on spam filtering

Robert Accettura: Secrets In Websites

CMS Report / Bryan / January 21, 2007
Referenced a blog post on “Secrets In Website” a series of blog posts about easter eggs in web code.

2006

Robert Accettura: Blog Marketing

CMS Report / Bryan / December 17, 2006
Referenced a blog post on blog marketing

See an “IE Only” Site? Report It!

Wired Blogs – Monkey Bites / Michael Calore / October 17, 2006
Wired posted a follow up to an earlier post after I left a comment about using the reporter tool I wrote in Firefox.

Web 2.0 Viewpoint: Backlash From User Generated Websites – Is This “Bubble 2.0″?

Enterprise Open Source Magazine / September 13, 2006
Reprinting (with permission) a blog post of mine regarding the Web 2.0 bubble.

Clean up your Firefox profile

lifehacker / Adam Pash / May 4, 2006
References a blog post I wrote on cleaning a firefox profile. lifehacker is a blog by Gawker Media.

2004

Free IPods — Engraved

Wired Blogs – Cult Of Mac / Wired Blogs / October 05, 2004
Wired posted an email I left them regarding freeipods.com and referenced my blog.

Get a Free PSP (need 5 people) and help me in the process. I already got a Mac Mini and an iPod. Also looking for some help on an iPod Shuffle (need 3 people). Free gear is good.

Any takers?

They did deliver on the iPod, so I now know the company is legitimate. So any help is appreciated.

If you signup using my link (above), and complete 1 offer, you can get a Gmail account (through me). Just contact using the contact form, and let me know the email you used to sign up. Once it validates that you successfully completed the offer, I’ll send you one. Note: You must contact me, so they don’t go to waste.

Take Apple’s new Mac Mini, which is 2″ in height (slightly over 1U). Put several of them on a metal tray. Why? Because it can become a makeshift blade server. Granted your limited to Firewire, USB, and 10/100 Ethernet. Regardless, for rather low cost, you can get some decent power. All with 2U of rack space. IMHO that’s pretty cool. Looks like it’s a pretty simple way to get a cluster. You could even use it for some decent web hosting. 1 as a DB server, 1 or 2 as an Apache server, and perhaps a squid proxy. Mail, DNS. Each could have their own redundancy. All in 2U of rack space.

That’s amazingly low cost for having so many CPU’s, and being able to spread out your load on several physical systems.

If I had the cash, I’d give it a go.

Edit: You can help me get one by signing up and completing 1 offer. They are legitimate, I got a free ipod from them not to long ago.

Today it happened. FedEx dropped off my free iPod. It’s a 20GB 4th Generation Apple iPod. I was just about to leave, so I took a few pics with my Camera Phone and left. I’m to busy to open and play for at least a few days. I’m pretty sure it’s not an empty box (because I know someone will suggest that), since it came directly from Apple’s Shanghai manufacturing contractor/facility.

Of course I posted those pictures for you to see. Go ahead, look, enjoy. They are low quality, from a camera phone, but they should be compatible with most human eyes version 1.0+.

Bottom Line
Freeipods.com/Gratis Internet at least appears legitimate. I did get my offer. They “sent to vendor” 9/15, and I got it today, 10/25. Reportedly shipping has picked up to being about a week or two. Though some Sept people are still waiting for their iPods. I got my iPod for trying a silly offer, and getting a few others to do so. Some sound like good offers, so you may want to seriously consider it. Others are just downright rediculus (like these magic pills). So pick with caution, and read the offer. Some are only free if you cancel within the trial period. Some never bill unless you use the service. Some like eBay don’t require billing.

Spam Report
I am still getting about 3 spam emails a day that originate through this offer (I used a unique address, so only Gratis has used it. This is despite unsubscribing from all mailing through their website 2 weeks ago.

So is it a scam/multi-level-marketing/pyramid scheme
That’s hard to say. If you say it is, then technically any health club providing free membership to those who recommend friends would be too. There was no signup fee, I didn’t pay Gratis a penny. So it’s not really a Pyramid scheme (since those you normally pay to join, then get others to pay you). I’d really consider it to be on the level of how banks used to give out things like Clock Radio’s when you opened an account with them. Or a used car dealer throws in a toaster if you buy a car. With Gratis the condition is you have to refer a friend prior.

Should you do it
If you have time, patience, and think you can find a few friends to help you out… go for it. Otherwise, don’t even bother wasting your time.

Lesson Learned
Don’t fall for anything until you see some evidence. In my case, Wired.com provided that, as well as an interview on TechTV. There are some hoax impostor sites trying to cash in on Gratis’s reputation. Be very careful.

Will I try another
I do have a freeflatscreens.com account. Feel free to signup and help me. We’ll see if Gratis strikes twice with a shipment.

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I’ll keep everyone posted as news happens. This is breaking news (just hung up the phone 2 minutes ago).

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While it may sound trivial, it does make it harder to get repairs (always seems to take longer on personalized iPods), not to mention people who wanted to exchange for upgrades to the 40GB can’t do so.

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eCost: Couldn’t give me a number. But when I asked about the 20GB Apple iPod was told there was ‘a lot’. No backorder. As of 12:30 PM EST.

PCMall: 223 in stock (enough for at least week). As of 12:39 PM EST.

eCost has been a known supplier for freeipods.com. PCMall has been said to be a new supplier. Though no confirmation on that.

The company apparantly has more than a week of shipments. Nobody sounded like there was any sort of problem shipping ipods out the door. No limits seem to be in place. In fact, the PCMall rep even joked with me “buy them all, and we’ll make you a deal”.

The folks at both companies are as always rather helpful. I’ve had a good experience with MacMall in the past. Though this makes me wonder why Gratis is lagging.

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http://www.freeipods.com/donotsend.aspx

Enter your email address there, and apparently in 10 days time, you will not receive any more spam. I’ve tried it and will report how it goes. I currently get 2 a day from them. Lets see if it goes to 0. It appears the address hasn’t been shared with more than 1 or 2 parties. So lets see if it goes away. There seems to actually be a fair chance.

See folks, I do keep everyone updated on this.

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“We are suspending all marketing via email to our customers, and wanted to make sure you knew this was an important and sensitive issue for us,” Martin wrote in an e-mail. “Sending promotions to users is a fairly standard practice for many industries, as an additional source of revenue, but we definitely want to continue to spread a positive and trustworthy image of our company down the road.”

[Source: Wired.com]

I got 2 more today since I posted last night from this source. Lets see what happens? Will more spammers gain access to the address? Will it go away? Or just maintain it’s current flow rate?

I can also confirm the following:

Earlier this month, Jim Youll, a 39-year-old CTO from Cambridge, Massachusetts, signed up with a virgin e-mail address and within hours started receiving spam.

“This is not an encouraging trend,” he said, “and these are not targeted ads. They are garden-variety junk spams.”

[Source: Wired.com]

I’ve had the same experience as I mentioned yesterday. It’s random spam.

I’ve got to admit, investigative journalism is addictive .

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