I’ve had no spam on the log in the couple of weeks since I implement registered only comments, but registering to leave a comment is a pain. I’ve taken an idea I’ve seen tossed around on the WordPress support forums and enabled a validation code on the comments. The code is simply the first word of the article title that is being commented on.

As always, the patch to wordpress is available here.

I’ve been thinking about scripting information retrieval for another project that has been shelved for a while, but had done little work towards implementing anything. Last week a friend asked how difficult it would be to build an email auto-responder that could provide sports scores on demand to his Blackberry. In response to the challenge, I wrote Globecord Secret Agent Man (aka GCSAM, named after the know-it-all 007). Thus far the agent can:

• Respond with NFL scores from current and prior weeks for all games or just games in which a list of teams played.
• Lookup current stock prices. Portfolios can be stored so quotes can be called via a group name instead of having to list each stock every time. A default can also be set to a request for “stocks” returns the user’s default portfolio.
• Retreive the 5-day forcast for North American cities.

Next I’ll be adding news headlines with the ability to ask for full article text, movie listings, and sports scores for other leagues.

Perhaps I should pickup a Blackberry myself.