v1.0.6 Released

Thingamablog 1.0.6 has been released. This is a small bug-fix release that takes care of a problem with the wysiwyg editor under Java 6.0. There are a few other fixes and enhancements as well. Details are here.

TAMB ping service disabled

The good folks at sourceforge.net have requested that the Thingamablog ping service be shut down (That's the thing that Thingamablog pings each time you publish so your blog is listed on the recently updated page). During a recent audit of their Project Web service, they discovered that it accounted for a significant portion of Project Web traffic.

Sourceforge provides excellent project hosting for absolutely no cost whatsoever, so I'm all but happy to comply with their request and help them in any way possible. But I'm also a little irked because the reason the ping service generated so much traffic is due to spambots repeatedly hitting the ping server. (even though it would fail and do nothing for non-tamb clients). Once the url of the ping server got on some #$@#!*# spammer's list, it was all over... Alas, I'm sorry to say that the ping service/recently updated page is no more.

Now that the server has been removed, it is probably a good idea to disable or remove "Updated Thingamablogs" from the ping service list (Weblog Config dialog/Pinging options) otherwise you'll get an error when it tries to send the ping.