Opinion

At the turn of the century it was estimated that there were over 7 million Websites in the world. In October of this year, Netcraft estimates that there are now nearly 50 million active sites on the Internet. However, I can't help but wonder how many of those 50 million sites are actually unique sites?

As I have mentioned in the past, besides this site I also run a site called "WebCMS Forum" [now defunct]. The forum is a place I started in hopes of bringing users of various content management systems (CMS) together for exciting discussion. While the number of users participating in actual dicussion have always been low, those people that are posting often write something that makes hosting this underused forum well worth my time.

I just got done reading an interesting and important post by David Baron of Mozilla. Although his initial focus is on the Firefox 2 browser, he makes some valid points that easily carry over to lessons learned involving software development and general project management.

Last night, I was up late doing some administrative work for my sites as well as writing some posts. This was my attempt to procrastinate working on an osCommerce site that I promised someone would be done by the start of October.

A few months ago, I posted that I use Akismet in both Drupal and Wordpress. Akismet is a spam filtering service that can be used in content management systems via plug-ins and modules. The Akismet plugin ships with Wordpress 2, but some setup is required.

As I was heading for bed, I just saw ABC's Nightline story on Wikipedia. Wikipedia uses the wiki application MediaWiki for its content management system. The Nightline story was as close to a fair and balance story on an IT subject you can find on a non-technical program. The story focused not so much on technology as it did the people of Wikipedia, mainly the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, and the community of wiki users.

I have been keeping an eye lately on two version control systems, Subversion (SVN) and Concurrent Versions System (CVS). My sudden interest in version control is due to a project team I'm on for my organization. The team is in the early phases of project management and needing to pick either CVS or SVN. At this time we are leaning toward SVN.

The past couple days has been a busy time for those involved in the Rails open source project. Just as busy as the Rails core developers were the users running Ruby on Rails applications (such the Radiant content management system). On Wednesday, the project's developers released Rails 1.1.5. In the announcement of the Rails release, David August called upgrading the new version "mandatory" since the security vulnerability was so severe.

I have two Ping-O-Matic related questions that I cannot find answers too. Maybe someone can help me find the answer to these two burning questions:

I find it very odd that the release of a two-button wireless mouse makes headlines in the tech world. Is this not 2006? The press is once again headlining the release by Apple of a two-button mouse for the Mac. I tip my hat off to Apple not for product this time, but for marketing. Our quote of the week:

"We cut the cord on our popular Mighty Mouse to give consumers more flexibility when using a Mac," said David Moody, vice president of Apple's worldwide Mac product marketing team, in a prepared statement. "A Bluetooth-enabled Mac desktop with an Apple wireless keyboard and Mighty Mouse is the ideal cable-free setup at home or in the office."