Blue Security has come up with an innovative way of applying real pressure on companies who use spam to generate traffic to their web sites. If identified spammers don't heed warnings to stop, participants' computers will be instructed to post a complaint to the offender's web site every time a spam message from that site is received.

What a great summary of my life in programming. Adam Bosworth describes the new model of application development:

• Run like mad

• Try things out, watch, learn
• Iterate
• Learn form the customers in real-time
• Real applications, APIs to follow
  

Zimbra represents several steps forward: an open source collaboration server that will certainly give Microsoft's Exchange a run for its money, and a great example of AJAXi technology that promises to make deploying great tools easier and easier over time. Maybe my home network will sport one of these someday!

Ubuntu is a Linux operating system with a philosophy centered around making technology accessible and useful for ordinary people. Whereas many technology projects seem to focus on making techies' jobs easier or making money, this one is different. That gives me hope it will end up being one of the more usable "free" operating system configurations.

ZDNet article tells the Ubuntu story

When I got my first invitation to use Plaxo from a relative of mine, I was suspicious. Any company that was offering to help me manage all my contact (and calendar) information at no charge HAD to be up to something no good. Well, I've been using it for about 6 months now and I am absolutely sold!!! Basically you install a Plaxo program on your computer that copies your contact data up to your own private space on the Plaxo server somewhere in the sky, okay I mean Internet. The first benefit is that you just created an off-site backup copy of your contact data!

This site is built using Drupal, a powerful, flexible, and free system aptly described in this discussion as a web content management system toolkit. Architecturally sound, highly flexible, well-supported, and accompanied by a rich collection of available modules, you can do just about anything with it!

Last night as I was talking and praying with my 5-year-old daughter Evelyn, she asked me about something to which I answered "When you're all grown up." Then she asked when that would be, so I told her she'd go off to college in about 13 years. Her next question grabbed my attention, "Will you be alive then, Daddy?" I at first said, "Of course, I'll only be 53!" But then it sunk in that I couldn't make that promise at all. Not only could I die of accidental causes, but I might fulfill my hereditary destiny of dying of heart disease by then. It would only require that fall in line two years earlier than my Dad had his gratefully non-fatal heart attack.