John Cox

Blogs · @wyome · Now · Shelf

Interesting

OpenDNS | Providing A Safer And Faster DNS

OpenDNS is a DNS service that improves home internet speed through optimized routing and data centers, while providing content filtering and parental controls to protect against malware, phishing, and inappropriate content across all household devices. The service emphasizes ease of setup and reliability as core features for consumer users.

Permalink

FPA Journal - Personal Financial Ratios: An Elegant Road Map to Financial Health and Retirement

This is a directory and informational resource from the Financial Planning Association designed to help people find and understand when to work with a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® professional. The site emphasizes that CFP® professionals can assist with various financial needs—from setting goals and managing investments to retirement planning and debt elimination—and recommends interviewing multiple planners to find the right fit for your specific situation.

Permalink

Pirate Master on CBS

I appreciate you sharing this, but this appears to be a list of TV show titles rather than a saved article with content to summarize. I'm designed to write summaries of articles—pieces that contain arguments, reporting, analysis, or information—to help you remember why you saved them. If you meant to share an article you'd saved, please paste the text or content of that piece, and I'll be happy to write a summary for you.

Permalink

Pretty URLs - a guide to URL rewriting

This article explains how to convert dynamically generated URLs with query strings into cleaner "pretty URLs" using Apache's mod_rewrite module, primarily for aesthetic and minor SEO benefits rather than dramatic ranking improvements. It covers the technical implementation through .htaccess files with regex patterns and RewriteRule directives, providing practical examples of how to transparently rewrite requests from pretty URLs back to their underlying dynamic scripts. The guide emphasizes that while pretty URLs make sites look more professional, the real work involves manually updating your application's link output to generate the new format, and it warns against changing existing URLs without proper 301 redirects to preserve search engine rankings and inbound links.

Permalink

Kongregate: Play Castlewars

Castlewars is a turn-based card strategy game where players compete to either build their castle to 100 storeys or destroy their opponent's castle first. Players play cards from their hand each turn to construct their own structure, generate resources, or attack and defend, with different card types serving different strategic purposes. The game offers both single-player and multiplayer modes and was developed as a clone of an earlier game called Ants.

Permalink

Google Gears (BETA)

Google announced it was discontinuing Gears, its browser extension framework for enabling advanced web application features, because those capabilities had been adopted into the HTML5 standard and were now being implemented natively across major browsers. The company had successfully migrated Gears' key functionality—offline support through application caches, local data storage via IndexedDB, file handling, geolocation, notifications, and web workers—into standardized APIs that would reach far more developers than the proprietary extension ever could. Gears would be removed from Chrome and receive no further updates, though its open-source code would remain available.

Permalink

20 Ways to Use Gmail Filters - lifehack.org

Gmail filters can be configured to do far more than just organize incoming mail—they can serve as a productivity system for managing to-dos, follow-ups, reminders, archives, and backups by using advanced search operators, labels, and forwarding rules. The article provides twenty practical examples, including using filters to create GTD-style contexts, automatically sort media files and feeds, protect important emails from deletion, and integrate external services like Twitter, Flickr, and calendar notifications into a searchable Gmail-based workflow. While Gmail filters have limitations (such as inability to mark messages as read or create live smart folders), strategic filter setup can transform Gmail into a multi-functional tool that extends well beyond basic email management.

Permalink