Most any blog that’s been Googled, Slashdotted, or Engadgeted – or for that matter pretty much anything that drives traffic to a site – has seen the effects of referral spam. It SUCKS. Porn and marketing sites create a fake link to your blog entry, which results in a link to their web site (usually and unpleasant and unwelcome one) showing up in your referral list for that entry. Your readers click a link and get porn tossed right in their faces. Ugh.

With dasBlog, the only way I had to effectively battle this (I am a victim of referral spam for sure) was to turn off referral displays on my blog. I don’t want that, but this is a family-friendly site for the most part, so keeping the nasty out was important.

But last night Scott Hanselman, a friend and co-worker, sent me a new little C# 2005 Express project ZIP file, told me to compile it, and to try it out. He just built it for himself, and passed it on for me to use.

No more referral spam!

UPDATE: While I was able to kill the nasty referrer links, I have again removed referral listings from the blog for a while, because I have one particular weblog entry that has so many hundreds of referrers, it will crash the browser when you try to load it with referrers showing… But that’s a whole different issue…

Since then, Scott has posted the project source file on his blog, too, so any dasBlog users that need it can take advantage. He plans to make it a little more elegant in the future, but this is a great start!

Scott Hanselman, YOU’RE MY HEEEROOOO.

Tariq’s new SharePoint Tools Galore list is a great resource for people who work with WSS and SharePoint Portal Server. He lists a ton of third party and other tools for use with SharePoint. Check it out:

http://geekswithblogs.net/tariq/archive/2004/12/02/16655.aspx

Also – Joris Poelmans updates the list:

http://jopx.blogspot.com/2004/12/sharepoint-tools-galore.html

Not sure if or where this will actually “live,” but it’s a great start.

For my part – I can tell you that TeamPlate for .NET is very powerful and interesting when plugged into SharePoint and elsewhere, and they have a new version about to come out.

I have neglected posting SharePoint links and info recently. Bad me. Good thing there’s other people out there keeping us up to date. For example, Amanda Murphy recently linked to a few interesting nuggets of SharePoint gold, and I thought I would consolidate a couple of the ones that I find most interesting here, as well. Thanks, Amanda!

Nigel Bridport’s SharePoint User Manager v1.0
http://weblogs.asp.net/nigelbridport/archive/2004/11/30/272173.aspx

“Not sure about other people, but I find it quite time consuming when trying to manage users inside of Windows SharePoint Services sites, especially when the sites in the hierarchy have their security inheritance broken.  A number of customers end up breaking security inheritance at every opportunity and then hit this problem.

“So, I am in the process of writing a SharePoint User Manager Windows Application in order to help out in this area!”

Stramit’s Granular Backup Manager for WSS v1.0
http://blog.spsclerics.com/articles/434.aspx

“Granular Backup Manageris a tool which allows you to create back up file and/or .bat file to make this file for a global hierarchy of WSS site. Its internal is based on the sMigrate.exe of the SharePoint system. the back up file are just Web Package. Each sub site of a WSS collection can have its own web package directly with this tool

I made this tool to make easy the back up operation in the case in large WSS collection with document library. Using granular back up file allow you to restore just little site for recover a document instead of the all collection (less time, less space, just the site).”

Jan Tielens’ Smart Part for SharePoint v1.0.0.0
http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2004/11/23/268644.aspx

Finally I’ve managed to finish a new release for the SmartPart for SharePoint; version 1.0.0.0. This release has some really cool new features, but I'm really excited about the first one: connectable web parts with ASP.NET user controls!

• Create connectable web parts
  In SharePoint you can connect web parts, so they can exchange data. For example you could create a web part that displays a list of invoices, and another web part that displays the details of the selected invoice (master/detail view). Normally you’d have to create your Invoice and InvoiceDetails web parts by hand, implementing the ICellProvider and ICellConsumer interfaces (see Patrick’s excellent article about this topic). With the new version of the SmartPart you can do the same, but instead of coding everything by hand, you can create ASP.NET user controls! Just implement the ICellProviderUserControl or ICellConsumerUserControl on your user control, and you’re done.
• CAS Optimization
  Maxim Karpov did a great job on fine-tuning the Code Access Security for the SmartPart. For running the previous versions of the SmartPart, you’d had to increase the trust level in the web.config to WSS_Medium. In this version this is not required anymore. Of course if your user controls require a higher trust level, you can raise the trust level as usual.
• Hiding the user control selection
  Once you’re finished building your user controls, maybe you’d want to ship the finished web parts/user controls to a customer for example. In that case you don’t want the user to select the user controls from the dropdown listbox of the SmartPart, or filling out the user control name by hand. With the new version of the SmartPart you can create a DWP file which contains all the settings for an instance of the SmartPart showing a specific user control. The nice part is that you can hide the dropdown listbox or textbox for selecting the user control by adding the following node in the DWP after you’ve exported an instance of the SmarPart:
  <ShowUserControlList xmlns="SmartPart">false</ShowUserControlList>.

Got Windows XP and/or Media Center 2005? Then you’ll probably want to get the new Holiday Fun Pack for Windows XP.

There’s lots of cool stuff in there. Note that one thing Microsoft does not make very clear up front is any of the details about the Tweak Media Center 2005 power toy that’s included. Check out this article on Sean Alexander’s digital media blog for some more info in that regard.

If you’re visually motivated and into the winter thing, I don’t see why you would want to skip this download…

Download the Winter Fun Pack 2004 now! Spice up your music, photos and more with amazing holiday visualizations, skins, powertoys and other fun add-ons. There’s something for the whole family!

The Winter Fun Pack 2004 includes:

Stunning Holiday Vizualizations for Windows Media Player 10
Ring in the holiday cheer! Give your desktop the Holiday touch with three cool seasonal Player Visualizations. Enjoy the HOT new WhiteCap Holiday Viz with nearly 20 holiday images that explode in vivid color including a snowman, candy cane, shooting star and more. Cool down with the chilling Ice Storm Viz, then warm up next to the fire place with the Yule Log Viz.

Amazing Holiday-Themed Skins for Windows Media Player 10
Give your Media Player a wintry makeover with 5 skins for Windows Media Player 10 including Frostbite, Ice, and Ginger man and Ginger woman skins. Also, take Windows Media Player 10 to the next level with the hot new Halo 2 skin, which is sure to be one of the hottest selling games this Holiday season. [Ed: Halo 2 skin and Holidays? Uhhh… Ok…]

PowerToys for Windows Media Player 10
Let Windows Media Player 10 take the pain out of your holiday parties with Holiday Auto Playlists (including Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Christmas). Personalize your email or blog by showing the song that’s playing on your desktop. And for power users, easily export your media library information into Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access and others.

Photos, Media Center and More!
Get into the holiday spirit and transform your desktop into a winter wonderland with new captivating desktop wallpaper images from Corbis. Get more out of Media Center 2005 with the new TweakMCE 2005 powertoy. Download Kris the Holiday Dancing Elf, Photo Story 3 for Windows, and more!

(via Sean Alexander)

Eric Rice is thinking hard, pondering what it will take to make Blogcast 1.0 happen, and posts his thoughts over on his weblog.

What will Podcasting’s future hold? What about video? Other forms of multimedia communication? Delivery methods? How can it be made more usable and accessible to new and experienced users alike?

I’m in. Multimedia communication by individuals online is just barely getting started, and this is the place to be for those who are interested in what the future will hold.

And besides, Eric’s a cool guy and a conference he drives is sure to be a hit. Plus he already made up a cool logo.

Don’t know that I can make the drive from Portland to the Seattle area for it (I may try), but if you’re a Windows MCE nut, there’s a Media Center Geek Dinner set to be held on Thursday the 9th in Bellevue, Washington.

See Michael Creasy’s blog for the details.

(via Eric Rice)