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Montastic sidebar gadget

Pål — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 08:16:45 +0000

I’ve recently started using Montastic (the website monitoring service that doesn’t suck) to monitor my web sites. Can’t get much simpler or cheaper (free for 3 sites) and only $5 for 15 sites.

Anyways I noticed they had Widgets/Gadgets for the Yahoo widget system and the Mac OS X, but they had nothing for Windows Sidebar (Vista / Windows 7). So I made a quick port of the Yahoo one for Windows Sidebar.

The Montastic sidebar gadget allows you to keep an eye on your servers from your desktop.

Author: Pål Andreassen
License: free
Platform: Windows Vista / Windows 7
Version 1.0.0
Download Montastic sidebar gadget (106.3 kB, 339 downloads)

Spotify invites

Pål — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:37:25 +0000

Ok, each month I get two new spotify invites since I subscribe to Spotify Premium. Most all family members, friends and colleagues already have Spotify, so if there are anyone out there still struggeling to get their invites leave a comment with your email. Right now I have four to give away.

update: All gone.

Blog moved

Pål — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:38:48 +0000

Just posting a small note to inform you that my blog has moved again. I wanted more control and decided to move it to my own server and at the same time my own domain. I’ve set up a redirect from the old location so most all links should still work. But if you experience any problems or links that does no longer work please leave a comment on this post.

The new blog domain is blog.codewrench.net.

Coldplay give away another album

Pål — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:58:43 +0000

left right left right left

One of my favourite bands Coldplay is once again giving away free music to their fans. This time it’s the live album “Left Right Left Right Left” which you can download in DRM free mp3 (192 kbps) format. So surf over to http://lrlrl.coldplay.com/ and download your copy today.

Thank you coldplay…

Update: Media Connect Configuration Add-In

Pål — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:20:03 +0000

The WHS Media Connect Configuration Add-In has been updated to version 1.0.0.2. It now uses the %ProgramFiles% environment variable instead of hard-coding to \Program Files\. Should now also work with non-english languages of WHS.

Petition to bring Pink Floyd to Spotify

Pål — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:54:47 +0000

I’ve started an experiment, an online petition to try to bring my favourite band Pink Floyd to my favorite music service Spotify. I’ve read about these massive Facebook groups that manages to perform real world actions. Since I’m not on (and have no desire to be on) Facebook I decided to try out Petitions Online. So head over to http://www.petitiononline.com/pf2sptfy/ and sign that petition.

In reality I have not reals hopes, and without spending a lot of time promoting the petition I’ll be lucky to get half a dusin signatures, but hey, no harm in trying…

Will Spotify survive?

Pål — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:55:00 +0000

Almost everyone I know is using Spotify. Sometimes it seems that the whole internet community is on Spotify even though it’s still in a somewhat closed beta. People are very satisfied with the service, and nothing can beat the free price. Does anyone actually buy the premium account?

And that is the cornerstone of my question. I’m listening to Spotify most every day. And I’m supposed to get commercials since I’m running with a free account. Well, I’m listening to Spotify at work about 4-6 hours a day. And I get perhaps 1-2 audio-ads pr. week. And up till now only one ad was not for Spotify itself. I’ve also seen some visual ads, but like the audio they mostly promote Spotify.

Does Spotify make any money? It’s not like me to complain about something beeing too good, but I’m afraid that Spotify might dissapair if they do not make any money. As for the premium it’s just too expensive to consider (especially since there is practically no ad’s with free accounts).

Will the amount of ad’s increase? What will happen with the tousands of happy free users then?
Should they consider lowering the price so they get more paying users?

I for one know that I’m going to be pi**ed if suddenly I get two ad’s between each song. That’s like false marketing by louring users to use and become dependant of the product before they show their “true colours”. (Sort of like the drug dealers giving free drugs to get you addicted). And I can promise that I’m not going to fork out for the premium account if I feel they’ve tricked me.

I can only hope that’s not their plan. Spotify if you can hear me: What’s your plan? Are you making any money? If not, consider halving your premium account price. Then you’d get a lot more members.

VG.no is Rickrolling

Pål — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:56:00 +0000

Doing some http debugging and as usual I use vg.no as a test page since they have such a nice short domain name.

I noticed something funny in their http response headers:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-VG-WebServer: leonora, leonora
X-VG-WebCache: fritz
X-Rick-Would-Never: Give you up
X-VG-Varnish-IP: 10.0.4.152
X-Varnish: 2005612975 2003787473
Age: 541
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 164544
Cache-Control: max-age=900
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:52:28 GMT
Expires: Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:58:27 GMT
Last-Modified: Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:43:26 GMT

Seems someone at VG is Rickrolling every http request

Anders Brenna forlater Digi.no

Pål — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:28:00 +0000

I sin farvel artikkel på Digi.no skriver Anders Brenna at Tore Neset fra ITavisen nå blir redaktør for begge nettstedene. Som jeg skrev i bloggen (kommentar) her om dagen har ITavisen tapt seg veldig de siste årene og Digi.no gjort det tilsvarende bedre.

Jeg håper ikke dette bytte av redakør betyr at vi får mer ITavisen inn i Digi.no eller worst case at Digi.no blir avviklet på sikt.

Uansett, lykke til videre Anders.

digi.no tar i bruk Twingly

Pål — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:52:00 +0000

Nok et nettsted tar i bruk Twingly. Denne gang er det digi.no, IT-verdenens svar på Se og Hør

Vel før iallfall, nå føler jeg faktisk at IT-Avisen (eller iAvisen) har tatt over den jobben. Halvparten av artiklene er dårlig direkteoversatt fra Slashdot, Wired eller andre internasjonale nettsteder. 25% bærer preg av å være insendte pressemeldinger eller reklameomtale fra ulike firma. De resterende 25% handler enten om Apple eller Windows 7.

Godt å se at Digi tar et steg fremover.