Of course, many of those same examples (and more, though not all) are offered at the Adobe AIR showcase page. Still, the showcase is just a handful of highlighted examples and some, such as the WebKut page clipping tool and the XDrive app aren't listed. You can instead find those and dozens more at the AIR Marketplace. Curiously, a few of the makeuseof linked examples aren't even listed in the the Marketplace site, including the Google Analytics (still in beta), Pownce, Twhirl, or Digg ones, to name a few. (That may be old news to avid AIR fans, but I thought I'd point it out for those on the periphery.)

Given that, and for those who don't look at the Showcase or Marketplace pages regularly anyway, I thought this blog entry worth highlighting. In any case, It's nice to see outsiders picking up the baton in the AIR race.

BTW, I'm a huge fan of the site it's posted at, makeuseof.com, as they offer really valuable resource links on a wide range of tech topics every day.

right-click and save this updated xml file

If you're using BlogCFC, you can just drop it into your /blog/client/includes directory (saving your old one to restore if needed, and you may need run the query string option "?reinit=1" to reload blogCFC settings.)

This will instantly your captcha will change from this:

to this:

I've confirmed that the original captcha.xml is the same between releases 5.005 and 5.5 beta 1, where Ray is now including the changed XML file himself in the product itself.

For those curious about what I mean by "simplifying", a few weeks ago I wrote an entry explaining how you could simply your Captcha to just a couple of letters, with a much easier read background and format. I also proposed why I think it's ok. We bloggers don't need to keep out really determined hackers (with a double-keyed deadbolt lock), we just need to keep out the annoying pests (with a screen door).

Since that post, many bloggers have indeed taken up the suggestion, but I have seen blogs where some commenters have pointed our my older entry, with the blogger's saying, "I do plan to get to it". That other entry offered the specific steps to change the captcha.xml file, but if you haven't changed it yourself since implementing BlogCFC, just drop this in. Of course, if you want to do a comparison to make sure, there are lots of good compare tools. My favorite is BeyondCompare.

I'd like to put out a plea to at least consider listing your name, either in your title ("clever name - by blogger name"), or just in some text below it, or in your toolbar. Better still would be a small bio, or a link to a page that has one. (Maybe it would help if blog software offered an "about" pod that made you think of it more readily.) A photo would be nice, too. And for reasons (and with cautions) I propose below, I recommend you also list your email address.

Why bother with name, bio, and/or email? Because it's in your interest!

There are a couple of reasons to consider it, and they help both you and your readers.

First, as for listing at least your name, a good reason is simply to associate yourself with all the value you create by your blog. Why not get credit for your work? Plus, many would really like to know who you are. (And if your blog software puts a tiny "by" under each blog entry, I'll argue that's not enough. I've missed that myself on more than one site.) Again, whether in the title, below it, or in the toolbar, just put it somewhere! :-)

As for a bio, again, even just a couple sentences about yourself (below the title or in the toolbar) can really personalize the blog. Don't assume everyone knows your background, even if they know you by name. Many readers will appreciate knowing more about where you work, where you're from, etc. Such details can also lend perspective to what you write about. (For instance, if you're a fan or a foe of something where that would color all of your posts, it can be helpful for people to realize, "oh, he works for them|on that open source project|with that tool| etc.)." Let people know where you're coming from.) But at least consider offering some background, even a single sentence.

Finally, as for your email address, someone may want to contact you to offer feedback that's not specific to a post. They may want to offer you work (and not want to announce that in a blog comment)--and even then, which post should they enter such a generic note to you in, anyway? Keep in mind that not all readers realize that you get notified of all comments by email, so they may give up trying to contact you.

Heck, they may even have trouble posting a comment, and therefore need *some* way to contact you. I've certainly seen that before.

But isn't it bad to post your email address online?

OK, I realize you may not want to offer your email, as spambots will capture it. But you've probably noticed more and more people listing their addresses as "name (at) domain". The thinking is that people can figure that out, but spambots (at least the dummer ones) will not. I'll grant that they'll eventually catch on. You just need to way how important the benefits are against the pain of more spam. (You do have a spam catching program, I hope? I love the one I use, Cloudmark Desktop. No, it's not free, but there are certainly many of them you can check out.)

Be careful using that (at) trick with Mailto links
If you do decide to use the (at) approach, but you also offer a mailto link, like:

<a href="mailto:myemail@domain.com">myemail@domain.com</a>

be careful: you need to list the "anti-spammer" address in the mailto (used to launch the email) as well as between the a tags (as shown to the user). Spambots grab all the text on your page, not just what's "visible". This is a pain, because then in the email that's opened the user must notice that you've done this and change it, or the mail will fail to get to you. What I do is explain to the user that by forcing some body text into the mail that's opened. Did you know that was possible?

<a href="mailto:charlie (at) carehart.org?body=please change the spam-fighting email address format I filled in for you, replacing the (at)!">charlie (at) carehart.org</a>

And for those who maybe already knew about it, did you know that you could also use:

<a href="http://tipicalcharlie.blog-city.com/forcing_a_line_break_in_an_html_email_link.htm">force a line break within such content in an HTML email link</a>

(this is from another blog of mine, typicalcharlie.com, which is for generic, non-CF tips)

So please, bloggers, step up and identify yourself. We'll all appreciate it!

Sound counter-intuitive? Aren't captcha's supposed to be difficult to read, to hamper spammers? In my last entry, I made a call for simplifying captchas and why they aren't all bad. As a blog owner who uses them to weed out the random spambots who would otherwise clog my comments and feedback mechanisms, I like captchas, and I'm grateful for the work Peter's done.

That said, I have to admit that as I've encountered them in the blogs of others, I've grown a tad weary of their complexity. They require the user to type several characters and have several swirly ovals, random lines, and a wavy background. Frankly they're quite hard to read, and it would be a shame to lose commenters for that reason.

Again, the intent is to make it hard for some spammer to scan the captcha request somehow and figure out what's being requested so as to automate around it. Fair enough, but as I said in my last entry I'm really not that concerned about protecting my site from determined break-ins. I'm not a bank. I just want to keep out the automated pests.

With just a couple of changes to Lyla's captcha.xml file, you'll have a much simplified captcha, if you want one.

Lyla is highly customizable

On a lark, I decided to try to find out if Lyla might just be modifiable to dial down the intensity. Turns out it is, by simple changes in the lyla captcha.xml file, as documented in this PDF. Thanks again, Peter! :-)

After a few simple tweaks, I reduced my captcha to just asking for 3 characters, all lowercase, without all the swirly ovals, lines, and wavy background.

Changing Lyla's captcha.xml

In BlogCFC, the captcha.xml file is located in blog\client\includes (or just \includes if you've installed the blog client directory as your webroot.)

To effect the change I wanted, I ended up with the following values for the following entries. Again, see the docs for more info:

You can change them to suit your taste. Note that if you do change the randStrLen, the value selected represents the "average" length of the string that users will be asked to enter, and may vary by +/- 1 from that.

Make the changes, and check 'em out for yourself. Note that with Ray's BlogCFC, you need to reinitialize the blog (add ?reinit=1 to your blog URL) to see the changes. What I did was had one browser page open to do that, and another sitting on a blog comment form. After running the reinit, I could then just reload the comment page to see the impact. (If there's a still-simpler way to test changes to the captcha.xml, let me know.)

If you don't use BlogCFC, then you have to re-instantiate the captcha object after making changes to the XML file. If you've stored it in a shared scope (like application), you need to run some code that reloads it. Of course, restarting ColdFusion will also reload the CFC in whatever scope you stored it in.

Conclusion

Making these changes won't solve the accessibility problems some have with captchas, and it certainly could increase the risk of a determined spammer more easily breaking your captcha. As I said in the last entry, I doubt that's a real concern for most of us. If it proves to be so, then you can dial the intensity back up.

I just want to keep from annoying my readers, and I hope others will consider these changes to keep from annoying us all. :-)

PS: I do realize that one could skip the captcha graphic entirely and just go to prompting the user for a random string. That may just a bit "too" easy for a spambot to get around. To each his own.

Thanking Peter

One last note: while Peter certainly appreciates your kind comments (and do share them, as I'm sure many don't bother), those who REALLY appreciate his work should note that he gratefully accepts contributions by way of his Amazon Wishlist or you may may make a donation with PayPal, using his address, pjf@maestropublishing.com.