Filed under: Utilities, Blogging, Web services, Freeware, Social Software, web 2.0

If you’ve had a blog for any length of time, you’ve probably been assaulted with blog comment spam. Users of WordPress have the fantastic Akismet spam filtering tool freely available to them by Automattic, the makers of WordPress. But while Akismet is good (really good), it’s not perfect.

If you have been using Akismet, but are still seeing too many spam messages slipping through, think about installing Easy Spam Filter by TanTanNoodles. Simple Spam Filter has existed for a little while now as a basic spam filter, but was recently updated to make use of captcha security via reCAPTCHA. The implementation is beautiful.

Let’s be honest, nobody likes having to fill out captcha forms. And you wouldn’t want all of your site visitors to be facing a captcha form every time they submit a comment. Luckily, they won’t. Simple Spam Filter will only offer up a captcha field to commenters whose comments are flagged as spam by the plugin itself, or by Akismet.

While it’s never going to be possible to have 100% protection from comment spam, the combination of Akismet and Simple Spam Filter sure comes close, at least for now. If you’ve got this problem, maybe the solution is as simple as installing and enabling this WordPress plugin.

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Filed under: Raising money, Apax Partners

Apax Partners, which took clothier Tommy Hilfiger private in 2006 and had planned to take the company public again soon, has shelved (subscription) those IPO plans in light of the weakened capital markets.

The company stated that, “Considering current volatile market conditions, management and shareholders decided to postpone an IPO process until such time that market conditions have stabilized”.

Regardless of when the IPO takes place, the $1.6 billion buyout of the company is a shining example of the value-adding changes that buyout shops can make. After Apax took it private, the company moved its headquarters to Amsterdam, and let its U.S. sales plummet by 50% in one-year, focusing instead on the European market where the label is trendier and able to sell at higher price-points.

As recently as October, it was expected that Apax would be able to book a $1.7 billion profit on the company. As strong as the performance has been of late, I can’t help wondering whether Hilfiger would do ideal remaining private. Even with improved financial statements, Hilfiger is best-known as a brand that was iconic during the 1990’s, and Apax might have a hard time getting investors to pay up for that.

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Filed under: World wide web, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Twitter’s alright if you like to keep hitting refresh on a static web page. But we like our social software to be a bit more interactive. Desktop Twitter clients like Snitter do a great job of making Twitter feel more like an instant messaging platform and less like a web service. You receive a notification whenever someone you’re following posts a new tweet, and you can swiftly post new messages or replies.

The only drawback is that Snitter doesn’t let you login to more than one account at a time. So if you maintain separate accounts for work and personal tweets, you can only use one at a time. Fortunately, there’s Twhirl.

Twhirl has pretty much all the same features as Snitter, and like Snitter, it’s built on Adobe AIR which means you can use the Twitter client on a Mac or PC. Plus it lets you login to multiple accounts. For example, we were able to monitor and update the Download Squad Twitter account at the same time as a personal account.

Twhirl also offers some nice customization options. For example, you can change the font of tweets, schedule how often the program will check for new messages, and determine how notifications will be displayerd.

[via Digital Inspiration]

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Filed under: Internet, News, Social Software, Search, web 2.0

In a similar vein as the Mahalo Follow toolbar, profile links to other social networks have been added to Mahalo Social. We think this is actually pretty cool. In the past, you could include a link to your other profiles on other social networking sites in your Mahalo Social profile. Now that service has just been improved.

When you go to your profile in Mahalo, tabs have been added for some of your other social networking profiles, should you choose to include them. Click on that tab and your profile is launched in an i-frame within Mahalo. If you’re logged into your accounts, you can use the service straight from the frame, which is convenient if you want to send a message about something via Twitter. Right now Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Flickr are all supported via tabs.

For people browsing other’s profiles, it is a nice way of seeing all the different parts of a person’s “social graph” (we hated typing that as much as you hate reading it, but it fit) without having to travel to multiple sites. And for those of us who like to try to keep our profiles as integrated as possible, this provides an elegant solution to not only displaying information, but accessing the services as well.

Facebook profile within Mahalo Social profile

[via Jason Calacanis]

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