I've got a birthday coming up so on the advice of Colin, I typed it into the Wikipedia and found out all kinds of interesting things about September the 4th.

So our flickr feeds are broken temporarily since flickr updated their app to include geotagging. Now, you can actually place on a map the location you took a photo. Pretty cool since you could then, say, check out all of the photos taken around Athens, GA by browsing a map.

If you haven't gotten the new Google Notifier you should go get it now. Not just for Gmail anymore, it keeps you aware of what's happening on your Google Calendar too.

Probably the bigger news is Google Apps for Your Domain. Basically, this means you can get the power of Gmail and Google Calendar to run specific to your domain. Instead of having your @gmail.com address, with Google Apps you could have Gmail power your @yourcompany.com email address. You can do the same with Google Calendar. Only users in your company sharing a private calendar hosted by Google.

For a lot of small businesses (plexus included) this is an appealing alternative to Exchange.

It seems every few months some new technology pops up in the realm of web development that everybody claims is better, cheaper, or faster. Obviously, the everybody is largely comprised of the current advocates of the technology and not the everybody in the world, but it sometimes just takes a few people making a lot of noise to get your attention.

Plexus Web Creations was a Microsoft shop until last year thanks to the noise created by the community of Ruby on Rails developers. We found that Ruby on Rails was quicker, cheaper, faster and much more enjoyable to work in compared to our previous technologies of .NET and classic ASP (see, even I can make noise and be an everybody).

After switching to Rails as our development platform, our requirements for an operating system changed. We were no longer required to use Windows. My initial jump was to a dual booting Debian/XP machine that I only booted into Windows when maintaining old code. After a few months Apple released the MacBook and I just had to have one. I was stuck with a shiny new MacBook on my desk that just played my iTunes playlist while I worked on my old machine in Windows. As much as I would like to sell every old client on new technology I realize that the cost actually is not cheaper for them since we have to basically redo what is already working fine.

In an effort to satisfy my desire to use my MacBook and maintain old sites I decided to try Terminal Services. This is a workable solution only if you don't mind typing and waiting five minutes for your text to appear. I was happy to subject myself to this punishment though until I realized how much time I was losing and realized since the customer can't pay for network latency I must find a better alternative. On a whim, I tried the demo from Parallels, a company that makes a virtual machine for Apple machines. I was very impressed with the interface and ease of setup. In thirty five minutes I was running XP within OS X. Even more impressive was the performance. I installed Visual Studio .NET and hammered out some code and was amazed at how much it felt like I was on a real machine.

I think web development is all about the right tool at the right time. If you prefer to have an Apple but need to help your customer no matter what the platform grab a copy of Parallels Desktop for the Mac.

I got a free iPod Nano when I purchased my MacBook thanks to a back-to-school promotion by Apple. So, to recoup some of the cost of the MacBook, I put the Nano on eBay. The starting price was $149.99 with a "Buy it Now" price of $175. About two hours before the auction ended (no bids had been made) someone hit the "Buy it Now" button. I got the following cryptic email from them about an hour later:

Hello,
Good Morning to you,how is business,family and all other things, hope all are in good condition. well I'm Bonner Goldbach from CA(Sebastopol),but Presently i'm leading a trade fair program in Australia.I saw your item above at ebay(150022885893)and i will like to buy it for my grandson that study in a Computer science school in University of Lagos at Nigeria Next week as a gift,i will like to informed you first of all that i will be handling the shipment on my own risk over to Nigeria.Do not worry about the shipping of the item,i have an account with FEDEX and will be sending you my FEDEX account number for the shipment, and if you decedided in sending the item to so that you can add the shipping cost to the cost of the product you can still do it and you will have to calculate the cost over to Ikeja,Lagos state,23401 Nigeria.Moreover i would have prefer to send you a cheque but due to the fact that i want you to ship the item first thing monday morning,i will be sending you the payment vai PAYPAL,and so make sure you get the package ready for monday shipment ok And kindly send me your paypal email address,so i can direct the payment to your account right away.
Best Regards
Bonner Goldbach.

I immediately sent a reply giving him my PayPal email address and telling him that I didn't quite understand his email, but that I could only ship the iPod within the United States by USPS.

I didn't hear from him for two days, so I re-sent my PayPal email address and reminded him politely to please pay promptly. Well, finally after three more days, I got the following email from "PayPal" (pay attention to the grammar):

Pay With Pay Pal,
Pay Pal makes it easy to receive Dineen Villaruz money, to received this payment into your account,you will have to sent the shipment tracking number to our customer care department at the link below(payp.alcustomercare@consultant.com) for shipment verifications, then we can process and credit funds into your account. We are sorry for the inconveniences we might have caused you, as this is our new policy to protect both the Seller and the Buyer from fraudulent activities. And if there is any problem within you and the buyer you are to contact our customer care representative in the immediately. For more information please contact our customer care at the above link.

The terrible English and obviously falsified email address finally convinced me that this guy was just some moron trying to scam me out of a free iPod. This is the email that came right after the "PayPal" email:

Hello,
I have made out my payment to you for this item purchase (150022885893),So check your mail for the comfirmation mail from paypal.Get back to me immediately if you receive the confirmation mail from paypal and don't forget to send me your physical contact address and your phone number so that i can arranged for the shipment okay,and the exact time you will be at home tomorrow.So that i can schedule Fedex to come and pick it up from you in other to reduce the stress of you driving down to their location to send it.Then i can send you my grandson's address and fedex account number.Hope to hear from you soon.

Well, I was furious that I had to waste a week waiting for this guy, just to find out that he was trying to commit fraud. I sent a pretty heavily-worded email back to the guy telling him what I thought of him and his scam.

I guess this should serve as a lesson to other people that this might happen too. Pay close attention to everything.