Don's blog

I've been using OpenDNS for some time now, mainly for faster DNS queries which result in faster website connect times. Something that's annoyed me, though, is that OpenDNS always shows, for example, "Did you mean 'donmorris.com'" when I type just "donmorris" in my browser's location bar. Seems like they could figure that out, but instead they want to show me a bunch of ads whenever I don't provide the TLD (.com, .net, etc.).

Just picked up 2Do for my iPod Touch; this was a close race between 2Do and Todo, but in the end the latter won because of its slick interface.

"Apple keeps pushing back the launch date [of the Apple tablet] -- what does this tell us?"

Excuse me, but Apple hasn't announced a tablet, let alone a launch date for one.

Over last couple of weeks I've come to the conclusion that the economy can't possibly be as bad as the news would have us believe. Sure, there are industries and occupations that aren't doing as well as they once were, but there are obviously others that must be doing very well.

This month I needed to hire developers for two projects I'm working on. Project A is pretty specialized, so I contacted a half-dozen developers whose work has impressed me in the past. Of those six, three didn't bother to respond—for a job that could earn them five figures.

Occasionally a sale for $7 Secrets will come through where the buyer attempted to change the price (usually $0.01); fortunately $7 Secrets Scripts has fraud protection and will prevent the download when the amount received is less than the price set by the merchant. I usually just add the buyer to The $7 Blacklist and let it go at that.

My friends over at MaxBlogPress, the creators of the Ninja Affiliate Plugin (which I highly recommend), have launched a new service that that blows my mind: if you have a WordPress plugin that no longer works because WP has been upgraded, they will fix it—for free!

A support request earlier this month started out amiably enough, with an affiliate asking "I was wondering how long it take for me to see payments to my paypal for my sales? I know I have made sales already, I was in person watching the book getting purchased."

Of course I was concerned, since payments on referrals of $7 Secrets are paid immediately and directly to the affiliate's PayPal account, so I asked the affiliate (let's call him "Jeff") to tell me who made the purchase and I'd look into it.

I had the opportunity to download Windows 7 Ultimate this weekend and install it on my Mac. You might not be aware that Microsoft is offering to let you try Windows 7 for an entire year for free; the Release Candidate is about as close to the real thing as we're going to get until October and won't expire until June 1, 2010.

A couple months ago my Palm Treo 650 finally ticked me off enough that I stopped using it and went back to my previous phone, a Sanyo that I stopped using when I upgraded to a smartphone. I had originally purchased the Treo despite poor reviews by existing users; I had used a Palm for years and wanted to stick with a hardware/software platform I was familiar with.

After reading a Macworld column today, I rushed to the App Store to download a copy of RemoteTap for my iPod Touch. This app is very useful; essentially, it's a VPN client for your iPhone/iPod Touch that, with a companion preference pane on your Mac, makes it possible to remotely log in to your Mac, viewing and controlling it from a distance.