With iTunes links you can provide your customers with an easy way to access your apps on the App Store directly from your website or marketing campaigns. Creating an iTunes link is simple and can be made to direct customers to either a single app, all your apps, or to a specific app with your company name specified.

• To send customers to a specific application:
  http://itunes.com/apps/appname
• To send customers to a list of apps you have on the App Store:
  http://itunes.com/apps/developername
• To send customers to a specific app with your company name included in the URL:
  http://itunes.com/apps/developername/appname

For more details on creating iTunes links, read: Creating easy-to-read links to the App Store for your applications and company.

With iTunes links you can provide your customers with an easy way to access your apps on the App Store directly from your website or marketing campaigns. Creating an iTunes link is simple and can be made to direct customers to either a single app, all your apps, or to a specific app with your company name specified.

• To send customers to a specific application:
  http://itunes.com/apps/appname
• To send customers to a list of apps you have on the App Store:
  http://itunes.com/apps/developername
• To send customers to a specific app with your company name included in the URL:
  http://itunes.com/apps/developername/appname

For more details on creating iTunes links, read: Creating easy-to-read links to the App Store for your applications and company.

I admit it: I was the last person I know to get a cell phone (with the possible exception of my parents), and I've sent and received a total of maybe 30 text messages ever. But my habits as a news-and-opinion consumer have evolved as new technology has afforded easy access to all sorts of information. I use Twitter (where I'm CoCreatorDude) and iGoogle to cull headlines from blogs and other sources I find useful on a daily basis.

Below are some of my favorites, organized by topic. My inclusion of a source on this list does not mean that I endorse the content, only that I find it interesting, provocative or helpful in keeping up with trends, issues and ideas. Let me know of other sites you'd recommend.

National Politics and Issues:

• USDemocrazy (UMBC-based blog, written by students, breaks down policy issues into plain language and mixes in some humor)

• Talking Points Memo (insights and commentary from a generally left-leaning perspective)

• Ezra Klein (analysis from a brilliant 20-something policy wonk writing for the Washington Post)

• The Plank (political analysis from The New Republic magazine)

• Robert Reich's Blog (always-insightful commentary from the former U.S. Secretary of Labor and friend of Bill Clinton; he was one of my professors at the Kennedy School of Government)

• Paul Krugman (well-written and thoughtful commentary from the Nobel Prize-winning economist, writing for the New York Times)

• Swampland (Time Magazine's politics blog)
  

• Marc Ambinder (right-leaning political analysis, for The Atlantic Monthly)

• James Fallows (wise longtime journalist writing about a variety of issues, for The Atlantic Monthly)

• Political Animal (The Washington Monthly's political blog)

• Glenn Greenwald (sometimes-acerbic criticism and commentary from a liberal perspective, for Salon)
  

• Maryland Politics (a blog from The Washington Post)

• BlogNetNews-Maryland (a compilation of posts from blogs about Maryland politics)

• Baltimore Sun Op-Eds

• Inside Ed (Baltimore Sun blog about education news, policy and practice)

• Liberal.Education Nation (blog from the Association of American Colleges and Universities)

• The Paper Trail (U.S. News & World Report compilation of stories from college student newspapers)

• Peter Levine (Tufts-based educator's blog about many trends and issues relating to higher education and civic engagement)

• American Democracy Project (blog from a national collegiate civic engagement initiative in which UMBC participates)
  

• UMBC SGA

• The Retriever Weekly Blog

• UMBC Insights Weekly (news directed at faculty and staff, but often relevant to students)

• UMBC Eats
  

• UMBC Underground

• My Sociology (UMBC alum Eric Grollman's provocative commentary emphasizing social justice issues relating to race, gender and sexual orientation)

• On a Lobster Placemat (UMBC staff member Rose Huber's observations about nutrition, fitness and her creative process)
  

• The Rainbow Road Less Traveled By (student/activist Paula McCusker's personal blog)

• mistypedURL (UMBC alum Michael Castello's personal blog)

• Andrew Gordon's Blog (UMBC alum's personal blog)

• Mashable (great information about news and trends relating to social media)

• Metafilter (links to the most useful or odd web sites; trends seem to start here)

• The Edge of the American West (offbeat blog about culture, philosophy and current affairs maintained by academics based in the Western U.S.)

We've added two new status indicators to iTunes Connect: "Upload Received" and "Invalid Binary." These new statuses give you a more precise indication of the state of your app when you submit your binary through Application Loader.

Upload Received means that your binary has been received through Application Loader but has not yet completed processing into the
iTunes system.

Invalid Binary means that your binary has been received through Application Loader but did not meet the requirements of iTunes Connect.

For more information, refer to the App Store Resource Center, App Store Approval Process section.

We've added two new status indicators to iTunes Connect: "Upload Received" and "Invalid Binary." These new statuses give you a more precise indication of the state of your app when you submit your binary through Application Loader.

Upload Received means that your binary has been received through Application Loader but has not yet completed processing into the
iTunes system.

Invalid Binary means that your binary has been received through Application Loader but did not meet the requirements of iTunes Connect.

For more information, refer to the App Store Resource Center, App Store Approval Process section.

The economist has an article, Gamblers united, on Spain’s lotteries, like El Gordo (“the Fatty”) will will pay out €2.3 billion this year. What I found interesting is that this and other Spanish lotteries are events that enhance social ties.

“Loterías y Apuestas del Estado, the government agency that runs El Gordo and other lotteries during the year, encourages mass participation by dividing each €200 ticket into décimos, or tenths, which sell for €20. This, in turn, allows players to improve their odds by buying small shares in many tickets, often by forming syndicates with friends and colleagues. … All this has transformed the lottery from a glorified tax on the poor, as it is in most countries, into part of the social fabric. Sharing tickets at Christmas has become a way to reinforce social ties, says Roberto Garvía, a visiting professor at Georgetown University. The practice of forming syndicates, which initially started in the 19th century when lottery tickets became too expensive for working-class folk, has become a tradition among all classes. As one banker says, “I don’t want to be the only idiot who has to turn up to work if the office number wins.”

Shades of Y2K! Mike Cardwell reports on a rule in Spamassassin that judges any message sent in or after 2010 as “grossly in the future” and treats this as evidence of it being spam. I just checked and found that our mail server’s Spamassassin is using this buggy FH_DATE_PAST_20XX rule.

If you are using Spamassassin, or think your mail server might be, check the source of mail you have received today. Here’s an example from one of my messages this morning.

X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.2.5 ... on mail.cs.umbc.edu
    X-Spam-Level: *
    X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.6 required=5.0 tests=AWL,FH_DATE_PAST_20XX
      autolearn=disabled version=3.2.5
    Received: from mail-yw0-f142.google.com (mail-yw0-f142.google.com
      [209.85.211.142]) by mail.cs.umbc.edu (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP
      id o01DjJUn011187; Fri, 1 Jan 2010 08:45:19 -0500 (EST)
    

If the message exceeds the local spam score threshold for, you may find a block with more details in your message header, like this example.

Content analysis details:   (6.1 points, 5.0 required)
    
     pts rule name              description
    ---- ---------------------- ----------------------------------
     3.4 FH_DATE_PAST_20XX     The date is grossly in the future.
    -4.0 RCVD_IN_DNSWL_MED   RBL: Sender listed at http://www.dnswl.org/,
        medium trust [130.85.25.80 listed in list.dnswl.org]
     1.8 SUBJ_ALL_CAPS  Subject is all capitals
     0.7 MSOE_MID_WRONG_CASE  MSOE_MID_WRONG_CASE
     4.2 FORGED_MUA_OUTLOOK  Forged mail pretending to be from MS Outlook
    

As a workaround until your server updates Spamassassin, the points that the rule adds to a message’s spam score can be lowered to 0.0 in Spamassassin’s configuration file (local.cf) or your own user-prefs file.

score FH_DATE_PAST_20XX 0.0