This is just too funny. Some guy is selling a Pancake on eBay and has turned the auction page into a blog!

Some crackpot researchers at StillSecure have conducted a “honey pot” experiment, no doubt to get some media coverage. This is what they found:

Over the course of a week, the machines were scanned a total of 46,255 times by computers around the world that crawl the Web looking for vulnerabilities in operating systems.

Once the vulnerabilities were identified, the remote computers launched 4,892 direct attacks with a staggering variety of worms, Trojan Horses, viruses, spyware and other forms of malware.

They also found that up-to-date patches meant that no attacks were succesful, and actually, that the number of attacks dropped considerably. Anyway, that’s not the problem with this article. How many people have a single computer connected directly to the Internet? My guess is almost zero. Most people have multiple computers, so they have a router. Or they have wireless, which also requires a router. Your router blocks the vast majority of these “attacks”. I am not saying their research is wrong, but it’s definitely misleading.

On the other hand, I suppose many routers could be misconfigured, in which case they wouldn’t matter. Ah who cares, just make sure your computer is patched regularly 🙂

Read: DenverPost.com

Sir Richard Branson arrived in Toronto today to announce Virgin Mobile, Canada’s newest mobile phone service:

A costumed Branson drove a big-wheeled monster truck over three cars to demonstrate – with his usual flamboyance – his intention to crush the competition.

The Virgin Mobile approach, pioneered in Britain and since exported to Australia and the United States, is to piggyback their communications traffic on somebody else’s wireless network – in this case Bell Canada’s – rather than building its own. Branson said he hopes that within a few years a “couple of million people” will switch to Virgin Mobile Canada, particularly if number portability is introduced in this country.

Interesting. Prepaid is not the way I like to go, so I probably won’t be switching. I just hope he makes enough of a fuss to get number portability in Canada so I can switch to Bell.

Read: Canoe

We finally got around to creating a Podcast Wizard blog! We’ll of course be posting news and updates related to our software, but we’ll also be posting more general items on podcasting. We read a lot about the subject, so it only makes sense to share what we learn. Hopefully you’ll find the new blog a valuable resource.

Check out the new Podcast Wizard Blog and subscribe today!

(If you have troubles accessing the site, try again tomorrow – the DNS information is pretty new!)

There are some things money can’t buy:

Picture 2-7 Are airport security workers putting their no-longer needed pornographic materials in passengers’ suitcases? This Air Canada luggage sticker reads: “THIS BAGGAGE HAS BEEN X-RATED AT POINT OF ORIGIN.”

There’s a bigger version of the image here. Apparently they have fixed the mistake – too bad! A little comedy on the plane never hurt anyone.

Read: BoingBoing

There’s yet another article on podcasting out, this one from the Boston Globe:

Podcasting is in the same place today as the Web was in 1994. These personal radio broadcasts, designed to be downloaded to an iPod or similar MP3 player, are homespun, rough-edged, and — let’s be honest — not all that riveting.

And isn’t that what makes them powerful? Isn’t that what makes blogs powerful? Obviously we are starting to see professional blogs, and we’ll eventually see some professional podcasts (probably a lot quicker than blogs) but I think part of what makes podcasting a powerful medium is that it’s honest. It may not be as riveting, but it’s a whole hell of a lot more down to earth than my local FM station.

I am picking apart one paragraph of the article, and I suppose that’s not fair. It’s actually a really well-written piece, different from most cookie-cutter articles on podcasting, as Dave Winer noted.

Michael Gorman, who is president-elect of the American Library Association (I am the webmaster for a division of their Canadian counterpart, CASL), has been getting a lot of backlash lately for some comments he made regarding blogs and bloggers. I simply haven’t had time to read what he said until now, but if you’re interested, it’s worth taking a look at.

READ: Revenge of the Blog People!

I figured I was on a roll, so I might as well upload the pictures Megan and I took at Northern Voice last weekend too. Enjoy!

On Friday night we had a birthday party for Kimmi. We went for dinner to Boston Pizza, then we all met up at Dickson’s for some cake, XBOX action, and movie watching. It was good times!

We basically played NHL 2005. I am not sure if it’s because it is really easy to have four players at once, or if it’s because none of us have watched hockey in a while, but that’s the game we chose! As for the movie, we watched Wimbledon. I was just happy to watch something with Kirsten Dunst, but in all honesty, it was pretty good. I kept expecting her dad to shout “Velociraptor! Run!” though.

Thanks to everyone for coming, and Happy Birthday again to Kim! You can check out some pictures from the event here.

I have finally had a few moments to post up some pictures. If you’re interested, take a look at some photos from the server upgrades we all did last week.