Pingdom has put together a list of some signs from the real world that are “geek + graffiti”. Here are our faves and check out the entire list on the Pingdom blog.

This first one is about rebooting life…

 Grate not found?

A few months ago, over at CenterNetworks, Allen reviewed the Web 2.0 tool ikordo. From Allen’s review, I was intrigued. I decided to try it out for myself and recommended it to a few of my colleagues.

I tested it pretty thoroughly at the beginning to make sure it did everything it was supposed to. The application never balked at any of my tests. I then decided to use it in real life. I set up a meeting through ikordo and let it do the rest. I ran into a handful of small issues, but the meeting still got scheduled successfully.

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Over the last few weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that the idiots that spam blog comment areas must work day jobs. I noticed a huge upwards trend in the amount of spam we receive on this particular blog during the winter holiday break, and have noticed spikes each weekend afterwards.

During weekdays, we seem to receive somewhere around 30-50 spam comments each day. However, on the weekends, that number triples or even quadruples. It is a very strange phenomenon.

I am curious, though, why they even bother spamming sites such as this one, since the comments have to be approved by an administrator before they are published. You would think they would eventually learn that their comments are not getting through our filters, and just quit posting altogether. I guess that’s just too much to hope for, though.

With the holidays fast approaching, everybody and their brother is making a list (and checking it twice) of the best gifts to get and give this year.

From Yahoo! comes a list of the top 10 toys people are searching for on the Web this holiday season. At the top of the list is my beloved Nintendo Wii.

Also making the list are the new version of TMX Elmo, Transformers action figures and Bratz dolls. Sounds like I’d better head back out to talk to Santa, because my wife and I didn’t tell him to bring any of those things to our house this year.

Amazon has announced today that it is offering 20% referral bonuses for affiliates to promote the new Amazon Music Store. What’s interesting is that they didn’t provide a widget for easy linking and frankly searching for a song to put on this page has been very frustrating.

If you are an Amazon affiliate, check out the details on the affiliate blog.

Here is a sample:
Big Girls Don’t Cry (Personal)

I just wanted to make a very quick post to discuss one of my greatest pet peeves in Web design. I don’t know why it is so prevalent, but it is extremely annoying.

I’m not sure how many of you do your shopping online, but I always at least check a few stores online before attempting to make a major purchase. Something I’ve found on just about every major retailer’s Web site is that they all have drop down menus.

The problem comes, though, when the designer decides to place the search box directly in the path of the drop down menus, so that, when you trigger the “drop down” effect of the menu, it covers up the search box.

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This was too interesting for me to not post about it. I just found out that Radiohead is breaking new ground in the world of music releases. Granted, I’m not the biggest fan of Radiohead, and certainly won’t be spending my money on their latest release, but the concept is still pretty ingenious.

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While searching for some information at work, I came across a really neat Web 2.0 application called Gizmoz. Gizmoz allows you to create 3-D animated, talking characters for use on your Web site, in your blog, in your e-mail, for your own amusement, etc.

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Well, Yahoo! has developed a new Web 2.0 beta version of its “My Yahoo!” interface. So far, I’m not impressed. Here are some gripes I have about the “upgrade”:

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Leprakawn posted a link in the HTMLCenter forums to a neat little Flash animation. The title of the Flash animation is “Animator vs. Animation”. It’s a cool animation postulating what it would be like if a character in a Flash animation were to come to life and start attacking the mouse pointer.

The creator also made a sequel called “Animator vs. Animation II”. This one is a bit more abstract and a lot more fun. In this animation, the character escapes the Flash window and fun ensues throughout the user’s desktop.

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