A while back I posted a link-festooned introduction to TurboGears. In the last six weeks, there’s been evidence of a lot of progress; because TurboGears makes excellent use of already existing projects, it also benefits from the developer momentum in those projects.

Recently it looks like there’s been a special focus on adding CRUD (create, read, update, delete) functionality. At this point it’s pretty well known that this is a core strength of Django, and I think Django’s admin tools will probably remain the gold standard for a long time. As the TurboGears community ponders CRUD options, I wonder if the idea of adapting Django’s admin itself will come up. (Django is a BSD-licensed project, so there’s no licensing obstacle.) I don’t know enough about the differences between Django’s ORM and SQLObject to say whether this idea is feasible.

Several weeks ago I ranted about eBay’s problems with phishing and some things I am surprised they aren’t doing in response. I’m afraid I’ve got a similar complaint today.

I’ve been searching for a present for someone (I can’t be more specific for risk of ruining the surprise!) and noticed that many of the matching items that were coming up in my searches were being offered by sellers in the UK. At least that’s what I assumed, because the prices were in Pounds sterling.

Version 4.1b1 of LaunchBar has been released, with a slew of new features. I like the new file manipulation commands:

• Copy and Paste (Command-Shift-C): Transfers the current selection (e.g. the selected file path, postal address, URL, etc.) to the frontmost application with a single keystroke.

• Copy File Contents (Command-Option-C): Copies the contents of the selected file to the clipboard. Works with most text and graphic file formats.

• Copy and Paste File Contents (Command-Shift-Option-C). Useful for inserting text and graphic snippets in the currently edited document.

This evening I was pointed to a blog posting from yesterday about Sony’s foray into malware distribution. The author gives a heavily technical blow-by-blow account of uncovering sleazy copy-protection software that has come along with his latest purchase from the Sony BMG record label:

…At that point I knew conclusively that the rootkit and its associated files were related to the First 4 Internet DRM software Sony ships on its CDs. Not happy having underhanded and sloppily written software on my system I looked for a way to uninstall it. However, I didnt find any reference to it in the Control Panels Add or Remove Programs list, nor did I find any uninstall utility or directions on the CD or on First 4 Internets site. I checked the EULA and saw no mention of the fact that I was agreeing to have software put on my system that I couldn’t uninstall. Now I was mad.

A few years ago I started collecting Google searches that uncovered common web authoring mistakes or hosting snafus. You won’t believe how many pages on the web are titled “Welcome to Adobe GoLive,” for example. Amaze your friends and scare your clients with other examples from the full list.

Missing in action for many months after a server hard drive failure, the webkit2png utility by Paul Hammond reappeared in August. It uses WebKit to automatically render PNG images of web pages. It beats regular screen grabs mainly in its ability to render full-length images – as if you had an infinitely tall monitor. By default it produces three versions: an actual-size “clipped” version, an actual-size long version, and a thumbnail-size long version (here’s an example). It requires that you have PyObjC.

Russell Beattie has posted a rant about Web 2.0 startups. I actually disagree with much of his critique (he veers toward “640K should be enough for anyone” territory more than once), but the rough taxonomy is useful in sorting the heaps of new companies and projects.