Jeremy Zawodny has a good description (with photos) of a mid-air collision between a glider and Hawker (small jet) near Reno. I used to fly gliders in the same area, and I can tell you: It’s pretty wild being above the big jets going into and out of KRNO. My highest altitude: 26,500′. You wouldn’t believe (a) how cold it is up there in an unheated fiberglass ship, (b) how long it takes to get down, and (c) how beautiful the ride is in the mountain wave just east of Heavenly Valley. But as Jeremy wrote, without an operating transponder, the big guys won’t have a clue you’re there.

We’re looking for a little help porting one our our utilities here at The Conversations Network and GigaVox Media from Windows to OS X. The UI is coded in wxWidgets, which is supposedly portable. There’s some application code that’s already written in Python, so if you’re comfortable with that, you’ll find this a very simple task. Knowledge of threading/multi-tasking is required, as is how to wrap things up with an installer. We still don’t have any $$ to offer you, but you’ll be helping to make the world a better place. If you’re interested, let me know.

I’m being besieged by trackback spam, and I’m wondering if Blogarithms has, in fact been hacked. An automated spammer is adding more than 100 trackbacks per hour to my blog. I’m running the latest version of WordPress as well as the Akismet and Trackback Validator plugins. What worries me is that even though I’ve disabled comments and trackbaks, it hasn’t stopped the spammer. And I don’t immediately find others having this problem. (Ah…I see that turning trackbacks/comments off only affects new posts. It doesn’t protect old posts. Strange design, if you ask me.)

Update: Definitely looks more like Blogarithms has been hacked, since I went into the database and manually set the comment_status for all posts to ‘closed.’ Got any tips? Seen this before? I’m at doug@rds.com.

Another Update: Okay, so it’s not the comment_status column, it’s ping_status. Setting that to ‘closed’ for all posts stopped the spammers, but it stopped everyone else, too.  I then installed all sorts of spam blockers for WordPress, but the one that finally seemed to do the trick was  Bad Behavior by Michael Hampton. I haven’t studied it in detail yet, but it did immediately put an end to this one spammer’s attach.

From Josh Bancroft, I learned about Dave Winer’s service for blogging from a PDA. This post is from my Blackberry. YoMoBlog.com is indeed dirt simple and it integrated seamlessly with my WordPress blog. Thanks, Dave.

(Javascript required to view QuickTime movie, please turn it on and refresh this page) iPod version (3 MB)

Craig Syverson from gruntmedia put together a great promo video for our upcoming Podcast Academy. We have worked hard to make this the best Academy yet with instructors including including Leo Laporte, Alex Lindsay, Denise Howell, Craig Syverson and others. There is still some space left if you want to learn all about corporate uses, podcast consulting and video podcasting. See you there. [link]

Finally had a chance to record an post a GigaVox Media update (MP3) with my co-founder, Michael Geoghegan.

The GigaVox Media network has launched with our first three channels: IT Conversations, Open Source Conversations and the Podcast Academy. Learn more at the GigaVox Media homepage.

In all the excitement over the past few weeks, I forgot to post the info for PA4, to be held on September 28, the day before (and in conjunction with) the Podcast and Portable Media Expo in Ontario, California. Here’s the one-day curriculum:

• Planning – Developing A Podcast Initiative
  Michael Geoghegan (Willnick Productions, Official Disneyland Resort Podcast)
• Scale – The Magic Behind TWiT
  Leo Laporte (This Week in Tech)
• Implementation – Case Studies From a Corporate Podcast Producer
  Greg Cangialosi (Blue Sky Factory)
• Integration – Successful Web Design for Podcasting
  Kris Smith (Croncast, Palegroove Studios)
• Legal – Navigating the Legal Considerations of Podcasts
  Denise Howell (Bag and Baggage)
• Video Podcast Primer: Do it Yourself, or Hire it Out?
  Craig Syverson (gruntmedia)
• Inside the Production – A Live Episode of 88SLIDE
  Noah Bonnett and Rachel Rhodes (88SLIDE)
• Viral Video – The Secret To Spreading Your Content
  Tim Street (French Maid TV)
• Engaging the Audience – Adding Interactivity to Video Podcasts
  Alex Lindsay (MacBreak, Pixel Corps)

Early registration is still available for only $149. Hope to see you there and at the Expo.

Blogarithms was down for the past week due to (a) a hacker who wiped out my server, and (b) my being in the middle of launching the GigaVox Media web sites (four of ’em). Now that those sites are somewhat stable — still a few gnarly bugs — I was able to focus on restoring the blog. Of course, my last backup of the database was two months ago — insert dope slap here — so we’ve lost all posts and comments after June 3. There was a problem with my automated backup script, so rather than fix it, I just decided to run it manually, oh…every 60 days or so. 🙂