scattered technology news

Skatter Tech: Get Your Own Gravatar - Friday, April 4, 2008

We recently upgraded Skatter Tech to WordPress 2.5 and along with it we decided to make some changes to the icons that go along with each comment. Previously, each commenter’s icon was based off the favicon from the provided url. Today, we have switched to using Gravatar, “the globally recognized avatar.” Starting now the associated image will be linked to your email instead of the url.

To setup your own Gravatar, visit Gravatar.com/signup. The registration process is as simple as entering your email address. Then just login and upload an image to become your Gravatar. Now the next time you leave a comment on Skatter Tech or any other blog using the Gravatar service, you should see your icon appear! And in case you are wondering about privacy, your email address is kept private by both Gravatar and Skatter Tech so you’ll have nothing to worry about.

Links: Gravatar.com SignUp

Skatter Tech IP Finder - Sunday, November 4, 2007

We were tired of seeing “what’s my ip?” websites which were slow and messy to use so we launched our own service! All you really need is your IP address, so that’s exactly what we’re going to provide you. Nothing else. The page is just under a kilobyte and will load as fast as it possibly could. Skatter Tech IP will provide two pieces of data at this time: your ip address and your domain host. At this point this is all we plan to offer, but we plan to expand our tools in the future. And just like the rest of Skatter Tech, any tracked data is completely kept completely private. We will ONLY use it for statistical purposes. Any specific user information will be not be available for ANYONE to view. Anyways, to find out what your IP address is, just visit http://ip.skattertech.com. Even hit CTRL+D add it to your bookmarks!

If you have any suggestions or ideas to implement into onto this site, just leave us a comment!

Link: ip.skattertech.com

100k Spam Comments Caught - Monday, September 17, 2007

Since we switched over to the WordPress platform about a year and half ago, we’ve have continuously been hit by large numbers of spammers. Luckily with some tweaks, pieces of code, a few services, and some manual labor we’ve been able to catch 100% spam comments on our site. If you were wondering what was our number one tool, one word, Akismet. This innovative spam catching tool, alone, has caught over 100,000 spam comments for Skatter Tech this year. Akismet works by checking checking the data that is posted onto our server with a huge database of items known to be spam. Since the spam database learns by users moderating their own comments, it automatically adapts to new types of spam. According to their website, Akismet has been able to catch 93% of all the spam that would hit a website.

Although this only caught about 60% of the total amount of spam, it took another 3-4 tools, including Bad Behavior, to block another 30%. We still end up having to manually catch and throw out about 10% of what gets onto our sites. We could always implement a captcha system or require registration, however that would only be annoying and would deter everyone from participating in discussions. This tool has been primarily created for WordPress, however it is also compatible with plenty of other systems including Movable Type, Drupal, phpBB, Expression Engine, Joomla and more! We highly recommend giving Akismet a shot if you already haven’t heard about it and are having problems fighting spam.

P.S. We’ll be posting a WordPress tutorial on combating spam very soon!

Links: Akismet.com

Digg Drops Blacklist - Sunday, February 25, 2007

Since the digg started, they have had a large issue combating spammers. This eventually lead to an amazing large list of banned sites. About six months ago this site, Skatter Tech, was for some reason added to that list. We had sent digg a few emails requesting the reason it had been blocked, but we received no response. We expected the ban to be lifted, but it never was until now! Digg has apparently lifted the blacklist on thousands of domains and has implemented a new algorithm for submissions to prevent spam from entering the main page. Hopefully the new code will do the trick and lifting the banned sites will not cause an inflation in spam.

Anyways, for our readers, this means the “digg” link found besides the del.icio.us on our permalink pages will now function properly. (No more submission error messages) Finally, if you find any of our articles “digg worthy” you are welcome to submit them.

(P.S. The digg logo in the image atop can be downloaded from DevianArt.)

Links: digg.com | digg blog
Related: Digg Search Widget

Media Temple Grid-Server v1.2 - Saturday, February 24, 2007

Media Temple (mt) customers are in for a treat. The recently launched GRID server is getting a second major upgrade, v1.2. All customers using the new Grid-Server (gs) will soon receive an update which will consist of many stability enhancements, “micro-updates”, user request implementations, bug fixes, and plenty of new features.

GMR v1.2 System Upgrade:

• Over 800+ Core count cluster - faster than ever
• MySQL GridContainers - currently private beta only
• Email Upgrades - performance, spam, virus scan, & security
• FTP Update - faster connection and transfer rates
• Storage Performance - around 400% faster data access
• Network Speed Increase, DNS cluster, and much more!

We left our previous host, 1and1, we joined Media Temple in September 2006. Since then we have been quite satisfied with their service and the peformance of their servers. (great customer service too!) Anyways, Media Temple will be rolling out the new GMR v1.2 update on 03/02/07 (friday), a week from today, and no action is required on your end.

Links: Media Temple | GMR v1.2 Info

Skatter Tech Forums - Wednesday, February 14, 2007

We recently launched Skatter Tech Boards a few weeks ago, but soon ran into quite a few issues. We were using phpBB and had quite a difficult time managing content due to large spam surges. We didn’t like the fact that we had to spend more time cleaning out spam than responding to questions. As a result we took it down and decided to try Lussumo Vanilla instead. So far we have been pleased as the forum software looks much cleaner and organized than phpBB was. You may now access Skatter Tech Forums at forums.skattertech.com or through the link at the top.

Also note that registeration is now easier than ever. Just enter an email address and pick a username/password and you are done. Sorry for any inconvience switching over may have caused. We’ll stay put for now.

Link: forums.skattertech.com

WordPress v2.1 Upgrade - Friday, January 26, 2007

Only about two weeks after the launch of WordPress 2.0.6 and 2.0.7, the WordPress crew finally pushed v2.1 (aka “Ella”) out of beta. WP2.1, rather than a patch, is a major upgrade from the 2.x series. The blogging engine, which Skatter Tech is currently running, now has a more powerful back-end for administrators to manage content. Although many plugins no longer work for 2.1, we recommend updating since it also includes over 550 bug fixes. The following is some of the major changes implemented.

WordPress v2.1 Features:

• Ajax AutoSave Posts - prevents loosing posts
• Tabbed Editor - WYSIWYG and Raw Code
• Ajax-based Spell Checker for composer
• XML Import/Export - transfer data between blogs
• Search Engine - custom indexing privacy settings
• Front Page - set any page as the main page
• Blogroll - many improvements and changes
• Login - redesigned screen from Shuttle
• Ajax Admin Panel - helps speed up tasks
• Comment Feeds - includes all rather than last 10
• Uploads - management for uploaded data
• Other: Cron support, new APIs, and more

We are pleased with the overall improvments the update brings. Managment and content seems to be flowing much faster than ever before. As we mentioned we are having diffucluties with some plugins, but most of the major ones either already have been updated or work.

Links: WordPress 2.1 ‘Ella’ | Download
Related: Instructions For 2.0.x to 2.1

A Look Back At 2006 - Monday, January 1, 2007

2006 was an amazing year for Skatter Tech. I thought I’d let everyone know some interesting statistics about our site. Last year alone, we had about 1.12 Million visitors from all 193 internationally recognized countries in the world. The most popular Operating System is still Windows XP and Internet Explorer is still the most popular browser. About 80% of our readers are now using Cable or DSL, while 8% are still on Dial-Up. There are many more interesting statistics below such as popular ISPs, Keywords, Screen Resolutions and so on… (P.S. The data provided is not 100% accurate!)

Total Visitors for 2006: 1.12 Million
Average Per Day: 2,100
Countries Visited From: 195 (thats all of them!)

Popular Posts:
1) Stream iTunes To PSP
2) Soda Machine Hack
3) Russell Peters Video
4) Motorola KRZR Review
5) Sony Pocket Station
6) How To Block Fasterfox
7) Royale Theme For XP
8) LG VX9900 Review

Top Web Browsers:
1) Internet Explorer - 55%
2) Mozilla Firefox - 36%
3) Apple Safari - 5%
4) Opera - 2% Read More

Skatter Tech Mobile - Saturday, December 30, 2006

Over the past few days Skatter Tech has been working on a mobile version of our site and it is finally up and running. To access our site from a mobile phone simply enter skattertech.com into the address as you would on any computer (no special URLs required). The portable web pages are XHTML complaint and should work on most WAP 2.0 phones, PDAs, Pocket PCs, and similar devices. From our testing, we found it to work on Verizon WAP 2.0 supported phones, Windows-based Pocket PCs, and on the Blackberry. (also works on the PSP!) If you’ve got a mobile device with a browser, let us know what you are using and whether our site works.

Links: skattertech.com
Related: Skatter Tech Forums

Skatter Tech Boards! - Monday, December 25, 2006

After two years running and thousands of requests, Skatter Tech has finally created some message boards. All our readers are more than welcome to participate. Consider this new feature “beta” as there are still a ton of changes that will need to be made. Anyways for now the forum has got a few categories and sections. Feel free to post any questions you have and help others out by answering theirs. If you have any suggestions please let us know.

Also note from this point on, please avoid posting supported-related questions on the comment feature on this portion of the site and direct them to the message boards. We feel that by doing this it will be easier for everyone to communicate with each other using a forum system. The phpBB-based forum unfortunately requires registration unlike the comments on this part of the site. Please take a minute to register and get it over with, you’ll never have to deal with it again, I promise.

Links: Skatter Tech Boards (boards.skattertech.com)

Update: (02/14/07) The NEW NEW Skatter Tech Forums are now up and running! Just visit http://forums.skattertech.com or press “Forums” link.