beer planet

Everyone hates spam, right? Right, well maybe except for security researchers – it pays their bills. But the rest of the sane world does, and so do I, and while gmail has figured out a way to deal with the problem 99.9% of the time, nobody invented instant messenger anti-spam solutions yet [I think].

Lately I have been getting increasingly annoyed with a certain unexplainable, persistent, and surprisingly intelligent botnet on AIM. From time to time I would get messages from some sort of a fish variation. My list so far consists of the following IM names:  CroppedCoho, FortifiedTrout, FreshenedupTrout, FrozenSolidTrout, HandcuffedCoho, KissableCoho, PreferentialCoho, SmarterCoho, TentativeCoho, WantedCoho, and YoinkedTrout. Does it look annoying already? Well, it is.

Each of the …

Updated: August 20th, 2009

If you haven't heard of Digsby yet, you have probably been living in some kind of a virtual cave or have no friends. Digsby is a multi-network instant messenger application, similar to Trillian, Pidgin (GAIM), or Miranda. I said 'similar', so what makes Digsy special? Reviews I read so far don't give the real reasons and don't dive into the features in depth. Instead, you get a standard load of marketing BS and in the end to you, the user, Digsby may end up being "yet another IM program." Some reviews describe certain features, but so far I haven't seen one that highlighted THE MAIN REASON why Digsby is different. And may I preface it with: finally somebody got a …