Martin Weller wrote an entry in his blog recently entitled Who needs money in the blogosphere? It got me thinking - why do I blog? Well it certainly isn't for money! It is enjoyable to post to a blog without a doubt, and maybe it can help build a reputation.

You may have noticed that modern browsers have a facility to discover search engines on sites and add them to their browser search bar. Flock also shows you what content it has autodiscovered on a site by highlighting various buttons. You may also have noticed that these buttons do nothing when somebody visits your Drupal powered site. Well don't worry this is very easy to fix.

[This method also works for Kubuntu 8.04 64 bit and Flock 1.1 - see the update at the end of this post]

This turned out to be easier than I thought! First you need to get the deb file from getdeb.net and install it manually it manually:
sudo dpkg -i flock_1.0-5~getdeb1_amd64.deb

If you are running a site that is powered by Drupal you might want to take some precautions against spam being posted to your site, particularly if you allow comments. A useful way to stop such automated submissions is to use the reCaptcha system which allows you to generate a CAPTCHA and help digitise books at the same time.

There comes a time, probably when you have heard James Blunt for the thirteenth time in the space of a couple of hours, that you start wondering if there is a better way to discover new music that you might like. Fortunately there is an answer, an answer that has been around for some time now it is last.fm which offers you the chance to discover new artists that you might like based on your existing taste.

For a limited time, Sitepoint are offering a complete PDF download of their book Build Your Own Ruby On Rails Web Applications. I haven't used Ruby On Rails myself, but it has attracted a lot of attention recently. Get your copy at: http://www.sitepoint.com/books/rails1/freebook.php.

I can hear the thuds on the floor as the "I just don't get it" brigade become overloaded by Facebook's announcement that it is extending the ways in which applications can integrate with their mobile platform. They are even opening up methods for sending SMSs. Facebook has been a runaway success as has text messaging. Up to now if you write an application for Facebook you lose members of your audience when they.. well, go out. Now you can interact with them wherever they are.

Kubuntu 7.10 now includes WINE in the 64 bit version, a very welcome addition. WINE is a project to implement the Windows API in Linux, meaning that many Windows programs can run at native speeds on Linux. This is not an emulator, so memory and resource usage tends to be lighter.

Wow! From the look of this thing you would be forgiven for thinking the Kubuntu team have spent six months spitting and polishing this fine operating system to make it a really smooth user experience. I have just installed the 64bit version onto my aging Acer laptop and it has taken remarkably little time to get everything up and running.

Welcome to my first ever blog post! There is a fair chance you are here because you have been reading Prof. Martin Weller's blog post about the new Course profiles application that we have been developing to enable OU students to share with their friends on Facebook.