Dallas Clark

This blog has moved.

2008-08-10T21:09:00.002+10:00

You've found my old blog. :(

Never mind, the new one is a click away.

http://www.dallasjclark.com/blog

Another patent... another lawsuit

2008-04-13T21:42:00.000+10:00

Yet another lawsuit for breaking a patent, Ultra is suing the majority of it's competitors. They are suing 22 other modular power supply manufacturers for not violating the patent, but being an accomplice to end users who are violating the patent. Yes I hear what you are saying "how would we have known about this patent?"

Ultra says they sent several letters to the manufacturers and they are requesting 3 times the damages being made. Oh, and unless we're missing something here, Hewlett Packard filed a modular power supply patent in 2000 -- we certainly recall Screen Savers covering the devices way back in '99.

If I became a politician, I would definitely get rid of patents. Even a person who has nothing to do with the patent can be making riches from having it, really it's just documentation of an idea. No different to notes in my top draw of my desk.

Another patent... another lawsuit

2008-04-13T21:41:00.002+10:00

Another patent... another lawsuit

2008-04-13T21:41:00.001+10:00

PHP runs up to 130% faster on Windows Server 2008

2008-04-12T12:10:00.001+10:00

From recent tests conducted with StreetDirectory.com shows that PHP executes a lot faster on Windows Server 2008 now with their built-in CGI support. In fact it runs 130% faster then any other server operating system out there.

The built-in support of FastCGI enables PHP applications to run efficiently on Windows Server 2008, with significant performance boosts. As can be seen in the graph from the case study:

The Windows Server 2008 installation was a core installation with no performance tweaks, making it a out-of-the-box solution for all server administrators.

As you can note with the graph above that the 4000 users point, Windows Server 2008 becomes slower then Linux. Dennis from Microsoft says many server administrators would evaluate the performance by looking at where 75% of the maximum hits is located.

If we take the same approach from Dennis here, then most server administrators would be scaling out to another machine at about 45,000 sustained hits, whereas on the Linux box it would be around 30,000 sustained hits.

So what does this mean? Less servers for the administrators to maintain, less hardware to have problems with and less network/software issues to deal with. It will also be cheaper and more effective to scale out when needed or for 'just in case' scenarios.

I haven't been brain washed by Microsoft as a Microsoft Partner but I do seriously believe that Microsoft has made dramatic changes to both Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista. Look out Linux!

Related Articles
* PHP runs up to 130% faster on Windows Server 2008
* Minty White - PHP runs up to 130% faster on Windows Server 2008
* Windows Server 2008: PHP runs up to 130% faster
* As Windows Server 2008 RTMs, Customers and Partners Adopting with Help of New Tools, Training

User-Generated Guinness Book of Records

2008-04-12T12:09:00.001+10:00

The Internet is emerging with user-generated sites like YouTube, Flickr and more. Another user-generated site has come to the surface for users to submit their own world record attempts.

Once you’ve posted your record, others can add their records for the same task as well. Users can also add attempts, results, and comments, which are nice ways of gaining a community feel for the site. Continue exploring the site by checking out the related records, see where on the globe the records are coming from, and add votes and ratings for records and comments. Mashable

The site has a lot of random record attempts, like holding your breath for the longest and most received emails in one day. So if you have a record attempt you want to get out to the public, check out What's Your Record and post up your belching alphabet attempt.

PHP Error Control

2008-04-12T12:08:00.002+10:00

I use this script quite frequently now on PHP projects for simple error reports straight to my email account. Your clients are well pleased when you have the bug/error fixed before they report it to you.

All you need to do is copy the following script and paste it into a file and include it into your project.

ie:


< ?php
 include('error_control.php');
?>

The page error_control.php contains the script below


< ?php

 $debug = true;
 define("EmailNewLine", "\r\n");
 set_error_handler('error_handler');

 function error_handler($errno, $errstr, $errfile, $errline) {
  global $debug;
  // echo a message to the end user
  echo 'There has been a major error, now that we know about this error we will fix it!';

  $message = 'Date: '. date("d") .'/'. date("m") .'/'. date("Y") .' '. date("h") .':'. date("i") .':'. date("s") .' '. date("A") .'
';
  $message .= 'File: '. __FILE__ .'
';
  $message .= 'Line: '. __LINE__ .'
';
  $message .= '
';
  
  switch ($errno) {
   case E_USER_ERROR:
    if ($errstr == "(SQL)") {
     // handling an sql error
     $message .= "SQL Error [$errno] " . SQLMESSAGE . "
";
     $message .= "Query : " . SQLQUERY . "
";
     $message .= "On line " . SQLERRORLINE . " in file " . SQLERRORFILE . " ";
     $message .= ", PHP " . PHP_VERSION . " (" . PHP_OS . ")
";
     $message .= "Aborting...
";
    } else {
     $message .= "My ERROR [$errno] $errstr
";
     $message .= "  Fatal error on line $errline in file $errfile";
     $message .= ", PHP " . PHP_VERSION . " (" . PHP_OS . ")
";
     $message .= "Aborting...
";
    }
    exit(1);
    break;
   
   case E_USER_WARNING:
    $message .= "My WARNING [$errno] $errstr
";
    break;
   
   case E_USER_NOTICE:
    $message .= "My NOTICE [$errno] $errstr
";
    break;
   
   default:
    $message .= "Unknown error type: [$errno] $errstr
";
    break;
  }
  
  $to = 'name@domain-name.com';
  $subject = 'WEBSITE ERROR: Name of project/web-site';
  $headers = "Date: " . date("r", time()) . EmailNewLine .
     "From: website_error@smg.com.au" . EmailNewLine .
     "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 ";
  mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
  
  // if $debug is equal to true then show the full error on the website, when you
  // make the website live make sure you set $debug equal to false
  if($debug == true) {
   echo '
'. $message .'';
  }
  
  return true;
 }

?>

Microsoft Heroes Happen {2008} Partner Event

2008-04-12T12:08:00.001+10:00

I was photographed on the night and placed into the the above Microsoft Heroes Happen poster, I was then placed up on a large screen during the event.

I attended a Microsoft event last week on Wednesday 26th of March called Heroes Happen. It was an event for Microsoft Partners to demonstrate new features in the next line of Microsoft products to come out.

The night started off with demonstrations of the new virtualisation that will available in Microsoft Server 2008, which I must admit, looks pretty sweet. What used to be hours of work has now turned into simple 5-minute tasks. Clustering in Server 2008 is all controlled by a simple interface.

The general manager of Microsoft SQL Server David Campbell also made an appearance showing some facts and features of Microsoft Server and SQL Server together.

HP made an appearance in 2 ways, one with a speaker who simply advertised HP from start to finish and then secondly with their loud blade servers in every room we were in.

I was taken into a separate presentation for Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 which demonstrated some of the new debugging and compilation features. This presentation was pretty limited, didn't receive much information at all.

Overall, I think the Microsoft Event needs some revamping, I noticed a lot less attendees compared to the 2006 presentation which I suspected as it was fairly ... lame. I think the event would have been a total let down if I didn't receive any free software (Microsoft Vista Ultimate, and Microsoft Server 2008).

Microsoft please revamp your presentations!

Donkey Gamer: they love games and so do we

2008-04-12T12:07:00.000+10:00

Every person must admit they love to play a game here or there, especially these days with the amount of interaction game play has (internet, tilt sensing controllers). Donkey Gamer are independent people from Australia and UK who simply like to talk, write and play games.

About Donkey Gamer from their website

We are a bunch of people from Australia and the UK that love gaming, but are sick of the typical news stories; they are good don't get us wrong, but fail in pointing out the lighter side and the memories associated with gaming. While we often take the piss out of anything we can in games, we realise that a big chunk of our childhood memories are older games, and now that we are "old" we can also see another side.

It started as an idea to highlight areas of gaming that made us go "wtf!?". For example, why are there watermelons in a missile silo? Originally the project was called "Gamedero" but so not to limit us to just an Aussie audience, it was decided that Donkeygamer would be a more appropriate name.

The team is diverse, both in tastes and writing styles, which works well to bring a new level of satire to gaming websites. We hope to prove that 'non-gaming' aspects of gaming can also be worth talking about.

I've found out a fair bit of gaming info from this site, on one occasion I found out a bit too late (had already brought the game), so I hope you all enjoy what these guys have to offer. In the mean time I'm going to play a bit of Guitar Hero III with my fiance and mate Thuan.

JavaScript -> IE Issue

2008-04-12T12:06:00.000+10:00

I'm having no luck with this code below and I'm asking the community for help as I've been working on this bit for about 2 hours now and have no luck. This is a snippet of code from a large script. Now this snippet does work in Firefox, however it doesn't work in IE.

When I look at the output (source code) everything looks correct. Hope you have more luck trying to get this to work and don't hesitate to ask me questions about it.


var customerMealsDiv = document.createElement('div');
   var customerMealsRow = document.createElement('tr');
 
    // TD Field
    try {
     var customerMealsField = document.createElement('');
    } catch(e) {
     var customerMealsField = document.createElement('td');
     customerMealsField.setAttribute('colspan', "6");
    }
    customerMealsFieldDiv = document.createElement('div');
    customerMealsFieldDiv.innerHTML = 'Catered Meals (numbers required for catering purposes only Payment to be made when purchasing the meal)';
    customerMealsField.appendChild(customerMealsFieldDiv);
    
    // TABLE
     var customerMealsTable = document.createElement('table');
      var customerMealsTableHeadingRow = document.createElement('tr');
       var customerMealsTableHeadingCol0 = document.createElement('th');
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol0.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol0.appendChild(document.createTextNode(' '));
       var customerMealsTableHeadingCol1 = document.createElement('th');
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol1.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol1.setAttribute('bgcolor', "#999999");
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol1.appendChild(document.createTextNode('Fri'));
       var customerMealsTableHeadingCol2 = document.createElement('th');
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol2.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol2.appendChild(document.createTextNode('Sat'));
       var customerMealsTableHeadingCol3 = document.createElement('th');
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol3.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol3.setAttribute('bgcolor', "#999999");
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol3.appendChild(document.createTextNode('Sun'));
       var customerMealsTableHeadingCol4 = document.createElement('th');
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol4.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol4.appendChild(document.createTextNode('Mon'));
       var customerMealsTableHeadingCol5 = document.createElement('th');
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol5.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol5.setAttribute('bgcolor', "#999999");
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol5.appendChild(document.createTextNode('Tue'));
       var customerMealsTableHeadingCol6 = document.createElement('th');
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol6.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol6.appendChild(document.createTextNode('Wed'));
       var customerMealsTableHeadingCol7 = document.createElement('th');
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol7.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol7.setAttribute('bgcolor', "#999999");
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol7.appendChild(document.createTextNode('Thu'));
       var customerMealsTableHeadingCol8 = document.createElement('th');
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol8.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol8.appendChild(document.createTextNode('Fri'));
       var customerMealsTableHeadingCol9 = document.createElement('th');
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol9.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol9.setAttribute('bgcolor', "#999999");
        customerMealsTableHeadingCol9.appendChild(document.createTextNode('Sat'));
        
       customerMealsTableHeadingRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableHeadingCol0);
       customerMealsTableHeadingRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableHeadingCol1);
       customerMealsTableHeadingRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableHeadingCol2);
       customerMealsTableHeadingRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableHeadingCol3);
       customerMealsTableHeadingRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableHeadingCol4);
       customerMealsTableHeadingRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableHeadingCol5);
       customerMealsTableHeadingRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableHeadingCol6);
       customerMealsTableHeadingRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableHeadingCol7);
       customerMealsTableHeadingRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableHeadingCol8);
       customerMealsTableHeadingRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableHeadingCol9);
       
      var customerMealsTableLunchRow = document.createElement('tr');
       var customerMealsTableLunchCol0 = document.createElement('th');
        customerMealsTableLunchCol0.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol0.appendChild(document.createTextNode('Lunch $6'));
       var customerMealsTableLunchCol1 = document.createElement('td');
        customerMealsTableLunchCol1.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol1.setAttribute('align', "center");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol1.setAttribute('bgcolor', "#999999");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol1.appendChild(document.createTextNode('N/A'));
       var customerMealsTableLunchCol2 = document.createElement('td');
        customerMealsTableLunchCol2.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol2.setAttribute('align', "center");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol2.appendChild(addNewInput("checkbox", numberCustomers, "meals_lunch_sat_", "Sat", ""));
       var customerMealsTableLunchCol3 = document.createElement('td');
        customerMealsTableLunchCol3.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol3.setAttribute('align', "center");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol3.setAttribute('bgcolor', "#999999");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol3.appendChild(addNewInput("checkbox", numberCustomers, "meals_lunch_sun_", "Sun", ""));
       var customerMealsTableLunchCol4 = document.createElement('td');
        customerMealsTableLunchCol4.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol4.setAttribute('align', "center");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol4.appendChild(addNewInput("checkbox", numberCustomers, "meals_lunch_mon_", "Mon", ""));
       var customerMealsTableLunchCol5 = document.createElement('td');
        customerMealsTableLunchCol5.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol5.setAttribute('align', "center");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol5.setAttribute('bgcolor', "#999999");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol5.appendChild(addNewInput("checkbox", numberCustomers, "meals_lunch_tue_", "Tue", ""));
       var customerMealsTableLunchCol6 = document.createElement('td');
        customerMealsTableLunchCol6.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol6.setAttribute('align', "center");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol6.appendChild(addNewInput("checkbox", numberCustomers, "meals_lunch_wed_", "Wed", ""));
       var customerMealsTableLunchCol7 = document.createElement('td');
        customerMealsTableLunchCol7.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol7.setAttribute('align', "center");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol7.setAttribute('bgcolor', "#999999");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol7.appendChild(addNewInput("checkbox", numberCustomers, "meals_lunch_thu_", "Thu", ""));
       var customerMealsTableLunchCol8 = document.createElement('td');
        customerMealsTableLunchCol8.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol8.setAttribute('align', "center");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol8.appendChild(addNewInput("checkbox", numberCustomers, "meals_lunch_fri2_", "Fri2", ""));
       var customerMealsTableLunchCol9 = document.createElement('td');
        customerMealsTableLunchCol9.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol9.setAttribute('align', "center");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol9.setAttribute('bgcolor', "#999999");
        customerMealsTableLunchCol9.appendChild(addNewInput("checkbox", numberCustomers, "meals_lunch_sat2_", "Sat2", ""));
        
       customerMealsTableLunchRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableLunchCol0);
       customerMealsTableLunchRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableLunchCol1);
       customerMealsTableLunchRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableLunchCol2);
       customerMealsTableLunchRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableLunchCol3);
       customerMealsTableLunchRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableLunchCol4);
       customerMealsTableLunchRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableLunchCol5);
       customerMealsTableLunchRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableLunchCol6);
       customerMealsTableLunchRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableLunchCol7);
       customerMealsTableLunchRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableLunchCol8);
       customerMealsTableLunchRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableLunchCol9);
       
      var customerMealsTableDinnerRow = document.createElement('tr');
       var customerMealsTableDinnerCol0 = document.createElement('th');
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol0.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol0.appendChild(document.createTextNode('Dinner $7'));
       var customerMealsTableDinnerCol1 = document.createElement('td');
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol1.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol1.setAttribute('align', "center");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol1.setAttribute('bgcolor', "#999999");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol1.appendChild(addNewInput("checkbox", numberCustomers, "meals_dinner_fri_", "Fri", ""));
       var customerMealsTableDinnerCol2 = document.createElement('td');
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol2.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol2.setAttribute('align', "center");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol2.appendChild(addNewInput("checkbox", numberCustomers, "meals_dinner_sat_", "Sat", ""));
       var customerMealsTableDinnerCol3 = document.createElement('td');
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol3.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol3.setAttribute('align', "center");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol3.setAttribute('bgcolor', "#999999");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol3.appendChild(addNewInput("checkbox", numberCustomers, "meals_dinner_sun_", "Sun", ""));
       var customerMealsTableDinnerCol4 = document.createElement('td');
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol4.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol4.setAttribute('align', "center");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol4.appendChild(addNewInput("checkbox", numberCustomers, "meals_dinner_mon_", "Mon", ""));
       var customerMealsTableDinnerCol5 = document.createElement('td');
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol5.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol5.setAttribute('align', "center");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol5.setAttribute('bgcolor', "#999999");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol5.appendChild(addNewInput("checkbox", numberCustomers, "meals_dinner_tue_", "Tue", ""));
       var customerMealsTableDinnerCol6 = document.createElement('td');
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol6.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol6.setAttribute('align', "center");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol6.appendChild(addNewInput("checkbox", numberCustomers, "meals_dinner_wed_", "Wed", ""));
       var customerMealsTableDinnerCol7 = document.createElement('td');
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol7.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol7.setAttribute('align', "center");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol7.setAttribute('bgcolor', "#999999");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol7.appendChild(addNewInput("checkbox", numberCustomers, "meals_dinner_thu_", "Thu", ""));
       var customerMealsTableDinnerCol8 = document.createElement('td');
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol8.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol8.setAttribute('align', "center");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol8.appendChild(addNewInput("checkbox", numberCustomers, "meals_dinner_fri2_", "Fri2", ""));
       var customerMealsTableDinnerCol9 = document.createElement('td');
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol9.setAttribute('width', "92");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol9.setAttribute('align', "center");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol9.setAttribute('bgcolor', "#999999");
        customerMealsTableDinnerCol9.appendChild(document.createTextNode('N/A'));
        
       customerMealsTableDinnerRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableDinnerCol0);
       customerMealsTableDinnerRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableDinnerCol1);
       customerMealsTableDinnerRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableDinnerCol2);
       customerMealsTableDinnerRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableDinnerCol3);
       customerMealsTableDinnerRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableDinnerCol4);
       customerMealsTableDinnerRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableDinnerCol5);
       customerMealsTableDinnerRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableDinnerCol6);
       customerMealsTableDinnerRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableDinnerCol7);
       customerMealsTableDinnerRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableDinnerCol8);
       customerMealsTableDinnerRow.appendChild(customerMealsTableDinnerCol9);
       
      customerMealsTable.appendChild(customerMealsTableHeadingRow);
      customerMealsTable.appendChild(customerMealsTableLunchRow);
      customerMealsTable.appendChild(customerMealsTableDinnerRow);
      
     customerMealsField.appendChild(customerMealsTable);

  customerMealsRow.appendChild(customerMealsField);
  customerMealsDiv.appendChild(customerMealsRow);

  customerDiv.appendChild(customerMealsDiv);
  document.getElementById('customers').getElementsByTagName('tbody')[0].appendChild(customerDiv);

I also have this custom script below to add new inputs, it shouldn't be the reason why the code doesn't work in IE as IE using this script below in other areas without an issue.


 function addNewInput(inputType, customerNumber, inputBoxName, inputBoxID, inputBoxValue, labelValue, onClickEvent, checked) {
  var inputDiv = document.createElement('div');
   var inputBox = document.createElement('input');
    inputBox.setAttribute('name', inputBoxName + customerNumber);
    inputBox.setAttribute('id', inputBoxID + customerNumber);
    inputBox.setAttribute('type', inputType);
    inputBox.setAttribute('value', inputBoxValue);
    if(checked) {
     inputBox.setAttribute('checked', checked);
    }
    if(onClickEvent == "calculateCustomerTotal") {
     inputBox.onclick = eventHandler(calculateCustomerTotal, [customerNumber]);
    }
 
   var inputLabel = document.createElement('label');
    inputLabel.setAttribute('for', inputBoxID + customerNumber);
    inputLabel.appendChild(document.createTextNode(labelValue));
  
   inputDiv.appendChild(inputBox);
   inputDiv.appendChild(inputLabel);
  return inputDiv;
 }

Change the way your page prints with CSS

2008-04-12T12:03:00.000+10:00

Sometimes your pages just aren't that pretty when you print them and these days users are printing a lot. Even with all the actions to try and limit printing, we're still increasing our printing by 300% each year.

With CSS we can remove anything we don't want printed, change particular parts to our liking or add more details in, anything you want to do.

You can create the CSS as a separate file (recommended) or add it into your headers. When you reference this CSS file simply add the attribute of media="print" like shown on my home blog site.

Inside the css file you can style anything you want or use the script below for simplicity:

body {visibility:hidden;}
.print {visibility:visible;}

With the script above you can apply the class of "print" to anything you want printed and the rest of the page will be removed.

NOTE: For a better environment please try and limit the amount you personally print, use 'Print Preview' to test the scripts above.

Hide the paths to files on your server with PHP

2008-03-13T13:53:00.001+10:00

If you want users to download files off your site but you don't want to expose the links of the files on the server, the script below in PHP is an excellent way to hide your files to your viewers.

Basically the script works by changing your browser's mime type to application/octet-stream, you can then pass the file through this page ($file in the script below), and name the file however you wish the end user to view it as ($filename in the script below).

When the user is downloading the file they see the source of the download as the page rather then the actual file ie: downloadFile.php rather then downloadFile.zip.

< ?php
   ob_start();
   $mm_type="application/octet-stream";
   $file = "downloadFile.zip";
   $filename = "download.zip";

   header("Cache-Control: public, must-revalidate");
   header("Pragma: File Download");
   header("Content-Type: " . $mm_type);
   header("Content-Length: " .(string)(filesize($file)) );
   header('Content-Disposition: attachment; 
    filename="'.$filename.'"');
   header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary\n");

   ob_end_clean();   
   readfile($file);
?>

Click to see this script in action.

You can add security to this script to only allow authenticated users and more. If you have any queries or suggestions for this script, please don't hesitate to comment below.

JavaScript: isDate() Function

2008-03-12T19:46:00.000+10:00

If you're looking at how to test whether or not a date is valid, use this JavaScript function below to test your dates. Any recommendations, improvements etc are welcome.

Microsoft announces Office Live Workspace to the public

2008-03-05T08:12:00.001+10:00

Microsoft hasn't hit the online community (yet), instead they've released a service for you to share your office docs across the Internet called Office Live Workspace. Many believe that this will allow Microsoft to focus on one version of Office and thus creating better applications, others believe that Microsoft should throw out the desktop applications all together and just focus on creating online office applications.

What Microsoft have released is an online version of Microsoft Sharepoint which allows you to share documents and sync edits. There are some additional services like an online Word editor (however very limited).

The service also includes these features:-

* Activity panel. A new activity panel shows all the activity in a workspace at a glance.
* Notifications. People can now receive e-mail notifications about changes made to their workspaces or documents.
* Direct links. People can now bookmark their workspace or a workspace item via a unique URL in a browser window.
* Multi-file upload. People can now upload several files simultaneously by simply dragging and dropping from their desktop.
* Improved sharing. New sharing functionality includes an easier user interface and auto-completion of e-mail addresses.
Microsoft

Links
* Mashable - Microsoft Office Live Workspace Now Available to Everyone
* Techcrunch - Office Live Workspace Beta Opens To the Public

DataPortability Logo Concepts

2008-02-28T20:07:00.000+10:00

If you missed out on what happened to Data Portability late last week, read it up here.

Now Chris Saad, one of the founders of Data Portability has started a new campaign for the public to make a new Data Portability logo, more details can be found here.

Prizes as stated on Chris Saad's blog as of 28/02/2008
* iPhone from Jive Software
* Weeks ad space on Techcrunch! Thanks to Michael Arrington over at Techcrunch
* A Month ad space on either CenterNetworks (www.centernetworks.com) or HTMLCenter (www.htmlcenter.com) thanks to Allen Stern
* $100 from Bub.blicio.us thanks to Brian Solis
* $100 of Compete Credits to get access to premium reports thanks to Jay Meattle at Compete.
* $500 and a “I’d sync that” T-shirt from Plaxo thanks to John McCrea
* An A0 Trendmap from Information Architects
* $100 from HedgeHog Lab

2nd and 3rd Prize will be:
* An A0 Trendmap from Information Architects

I've entered the competition myself with the following pictures, please click on the links under each image to leave a comment on Flickr or simply leave a comment on my blog.

Flying Data

Do you want my data?

Data Floating Down to Share

Data Floating Away

See other Data Portability concepts in the "DataPortability (Pool)" group.

YouTube's Personalised Homepages

2008-02-27T11:08:00.000+10:00

Finally YouTube have taken the approach to create personalised home pages, which is part of what YouTube is lacking to become a social network.

This gives you a better, centralized away in which to experience YouTube, putting all your recommendations, updates from across your subscriptions, and friend activity on one page. Mashable

Google is in the lead for high data demands

2008-02-27T07:44:00.000+10:00

The Internet Backbone is beginning to already show struggles of all the new high data Internet services and we've been informed by experts in the past that we would expect brown outs by 2010 (now only 1.75 years away).

Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, Google, KDDI Corporation, Pacnet and SingTel are planning to build a new trans-Pacific cable between Japan and California and will initially increase Trans–Pacific lit cable capacity by about 20 percent, with the potential to add up to 7.68 Terabits per second. Tech Crunch

Google's approach isn't the answer to this issue but it is indeed a stepping stone to ensure we won't experience Internet dropouts into the future.

“[Google’s] participation in building Unity ultimately helps provide our users with faster and more reliable connectivity.

If you’re wondering whether [Google is] going into the undersea cable business, the answer is no. We’re not competing with telecom providers, but the volume of data we need to move around the world has grown to the point where in some cases we’ve exceeded the ability traditional players can offer. Our partnership with these companies is just another step in ensuring that we’re delivering the best possible experience to people around the world.” Google’s Manager of Network Acquisitions, Francois Sterin

More information:-
* The official Google Blog
* Google Press Center
* Mother Earth Mother Board

The Sims Online -> EA-Land

2008-02-26T21:25:00.000+10:00

EA Games will be launching The Sims Online as a free service under a new name "EA-Land" which will be in direct competition to Second Life.

The biggest difference between EA-Land and Second Life will be the monitoring and safety net of the game. So people can join and know that they are in safe hands of EA and not an individual like Second Life sometimes encounters.

EA is finally accepting that gaming should be targeting the Internet a lot more for functionality and multi-playing.

I have the game downloading at the moment on my fiance's computer (total of 1.5 gb) and will keep you posted about what I personally think about the game.

The game is still under development but still playable.

Recover from the HD DVD disaster

2008-02-25T16:53:00.000+10:00

If you haven't heard that HD DVD dead and buried and the HD format war is over then please read here, for those who have brought HD players you're part of the statistics of the HD DVD casualty report: over 1m players, recorders, and drives lost to the format war.

* Xbox 360 drives (worldwide) - 300k
* PCs with HD DVD (worldwide) - 300k

Standalone players/recorders:
* US - 600k units
* Europe - 100k units
* Japan - 30,000 units

Add that all up and that's about 1.3 million customers, compared to 10+ million Blu-Ray owners out there.

However you can change your HD Movies to Blu-Ray so you don't loose all your $'s you've spent, checkout this wiki page that gives you instructions on how to backup and convert your HD Movies to Blu-Ray.

Google and Samsung team up for the next mobile phone

2008-02-25T16:39:00.000+10:00

The Samsung phone which is expected to be released later this year, will feature Google's Android software. What makes Android so special is the fast and easy development.

Open
Android allows you to access core mobile device functionality through standard API calls.

Breaking down boundaries
Combine information from the web with data on the phone -- such as contacts or geographic location -- to create new user experiences.

All applications are equal
Android does not differentiate between the phone's basic and third-party applications -- even the dialer or home screen can be replaced.

Fast & easy development
The SDK contains what you need to build and run Android applications, including a true device emulator and advanced debugging tools.

The new phones will definitely be in direct competition with the Apple iPhone and Windows Mobiles.

another URL shorten service, but for multiple URLs

2008-02-17T16:37:00.001+10:00

LinkBunch works just like tinyURL and many others, except LinkBunch enables you to create a short URL to link to multiple URLs.

Example: http://linkbun.ch/0kj

I hope services such as Twitter, Snitter and others start using this service to shorten URLs into messages.

"as soon as you need instructions, you fail"

2008-02-15T19:39:00.001+10:00

I'm making this a quote for others to remember and hopefully get it stuck into those who make user interfaces:

as soon as you need instructions, you fail
Dallas J Clark - 2007

I told this over and over to my multimedia students at WideBay TAFE all last year, and I believe it stuck into some peoples minds. Yes it is cool to show a different interface that is really different to others out there, but you're making a big risk in doing so.

The above interface shows an interface that's pretty simple (and it still required instructions), but imagine if this was a full shopping cart system with 100's of products.

Some flash sites out there can be the most confusing, especially when they don't follow good design practices. Plain and simple, if you stick to the normal user interface principles, your users can enjoy the service or your users will be able to get the information they want from your site.

The worst thing you can do for your viewers is confuse them about how to use the site, they won't pursue to figure out how to use it, they will simply walk away.

PageOnce to Put All Your Online Accounts in One Place

2008-02-14T13:11:00.000+10:00

PageOnce is onto the ball about making a portal that accesses all your account on the web. From services such as banking, social networking, airline, email, and shopping accounts such as Citibank, Facebook, American Airlines, Gmail, and Amazon.

They haven't been able to gain relationships with all the services out there (as of yet), as not all services have an API to enable services such as Facebook to be able to login and modify data. However they are able to read your data from some of your services and then they provide you with the links to edit this data.

For more information, check out Techcrunch's Post here.

Aviary - Creation on the fly tools

2008-02-14T08:20:00.000+10:00

My friend from way back Daniel Sim just showed me something impressive that will shock the image editing market. Aviary is a collection of tools that are web based or as downloadable AIR applications.

Our tools all communicate and relate to each other. To illustrate an example: You can import a swatch from Toucan into Phoenix, while doing complex bitmap processing of a 3D object developed in Hummingbird. Finally, you can take your finished artwork and lay it out in Owl as the DVD artwork for a music CD you and your friends put together in Roc and Myna and offer it for sale in our marketplace, Hawk. Aviary

I recommend watching the video above showing them re-skin Hillary Clinton, more video examples can be shown found at http://a.viary.com/blog. To obtain use of the application, sign up to http://a.viary.com/'s early bird invitation.

They are developing applications to handle the majority of multimedia, from image editor, typography, music, 3d and video.

Silk Icons

2008-02-14T08:19:00.000+10:00

If you are looking for some icons to use on your web or desktop application then this icon set will definitely save your time in the GUI process. Check out Silk Icons created by FAMFAMFAM.

“Silk” is a smooth, free icon set, containing over 700 16-by-16 pixel icons in strokably-soft PNG format. Containing a large variety of icons, you're sure to find something that tickles your fancy. And all for a low low price of $0.00. You can't say fairer than that.

Download the Silk Icons here.

ICANN flips switch on IPv6 DNS root servers

2008-02-14T08:18:00.000+10:00

IPv6 took another significant step forward yesterday, as the root DNS zone was updated with IPv6 addresses for six of the 13 root servers. Most root servers are "anycasted:" physical machines are placed in different locations, but share an address. Requests are automatically routed to the closest server. arstechnica.com

This change now means that you can get a IPv6-only system to connect to another IPv6-only system without the need to do DNS lookups over IPv4. A lot of people have tried to test the new protocol on it's own without IPv4 and have found a lot of servers that highlight themselves as IPv6 compatible to fail.

Changing servers to IPv6 is indeed a huge task, especially for those who run DNS servers, but what if we run out of IPv4 addresses before IPv6 is functioning well? Hopefully this won't happen, otherwise there will be a lot of people/sites that cannot make a unique IP address for their home Internet or web sites. Those who already use shared IP addresses for their Internet connection will be under threat of competing to get an IP, without an IP -> no Internet.

My plea to server administrators read everything you need to know about IPv6 and go forth and enable it on your systems, and don't forget to download the latest named.root file if you run a DNS server.

psssst! Free download of DivX Pro

2007-12-14T17:45:00.000+10:00

As a pre-holiday gift from DivX to the general public, they are giving away their DivX Pro for $FREE. For a limited time only, go to http://www.divx.com/dff/index.php and follow the steps.

Creating new tabs from a Firefox Extension

2007-12-13T11:21:00.001+10:00

Something that has been driving me crazy lately, is trying to get a Firefox Extension to open up new tabs in the Firefox browser. However mine goes a bit more trickier and involves getting links in an iframe to open up new tabs.

Incase you're wondering about how to do it straight from the Firefox Extension (not through a link in an iframe), the following JavaScript should help you out.

function newTab( url ) {
   var browser = top.document.getElementById("content");
   var newtab = browser.addTab(decodeURIComponent(url));
   browser.selectedTab = newtab;
}

If anyone figures out how to catch links within an iframe, please let me be the first to know.

Free Windows Vista = Your Privacy

2007-12-12T08:06:00.000+10:00

If you would like a free copy of Windows Vista, then simply go to http://wfp.microsoft.com/.

The catch? You have to allow Microsoft to watch your every move for 3 months, and there are also some other requirements (below). This of course isn't for everyone, some people wouldn't care less and some would definetely have to think ten times about it before going ahead.

I really don’t know how I feel about this program, since my privacy is worth quite a bit. Will they be tracking websites I go to, software I use, content I post on websites? In a world where spyware software exists to calm the ever increasing paranoid attitude of the public, how would a program like this be treated by the masses? While I am fairly confident that my online security is safe with Microsoft (credit cards, etc) do I really want to put my digital life on the line for the small price of one software product? Kevin - Notebook Review

What do you get?
* Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit and 64-bit DVD)
* Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007
* Microsoft Money Plus Premium
* Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008
* Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008

Requirements?
* First off, you have to be an American resident and over the age of 18 years.
* You must own the computer you will be using.
* You are required to fill out a survey at the start, and then every 2 weeks.
* The automated program is offered to Windows Vista and Windows XP customers only.
* The survey feedback program applies to all versions of Windows.
* Microsoft, comScore, and MarketTools employees are not eligible to participate.

France plans to cut-off Internet Pirate Users

2007-11-27T10:41:00.000+10:00

Internet users will have to start thinking seriously about their illegal use of downloading music and films without paying for them as France will shut down web access to each individual who makes the offence. Other countries are in discussion of following France's 'ground-breaking' agreement such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

The plan won't be 100% harsh on the offenders and will be on a 'three-strikes-and-you-are-out' policy against repeat offenders. The proposed enforcement government body will be forcing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide data/information on their highvolume users to detect illegal file-sharing.

For more information checkout:-
* MSNBC
* CBC
* Slashdot

FeedDemon now supports APML

2007-11-27T10:30:00.000+10:00

Just a quick post: Nick Bradbury created a post recently about the new features of FeedDemon 2.6 RC2a Pre Release. You can "Export Subscriptions" as an APML file, but is experimental at the moment.

Look forward to checking FeedDemon out this afternoon.

Christmas Lights: Where you are in control !

2007-11-26T16:41:00.000+10:00

I found this on digg.com today that stood out amongst the rest (due to the fact of me thinking about Christmas lights lately), a homeowner has setup a website where the public can control his Christmas lights. You can access the site here and join the queue to get into control.

He has also given some details on how it all works here. I've been thinking lately of creating a system that syncs with music, I think that would definitely make the biggest difference on my street. The only thing I need to create the lighting system is time, which I don't get much of.

Internet brown outs by 2010

2007-11-26T15:15:00.000+10:00

In recent study, the booming demand for Internet Services lately (video, messengering, news and more), the current infrastructure could leave the Web vulnerable to brown outs within three years. Nemertes Research said the Internet providers need to spend around $50 billion to be able to handle the next phase of online technologies.

We may not get the next YouTube, Joost or Flickr unless the Internet has the ability to handle it, after all there will be no point in creating a heavy data site if the Internet is not going to support it. BBC has already been under question earlier this year by ISPs with its plans to broadcast channels online, threatening BBC to pay for the infrastructure or they will block the site.

The problem is that bandwidth usage is outpacing infrastructure build outs. While core fiber and switching/routing technology 'will scale nicely,' Internet access resources could soon be overwhelmed in three to five years. Nemertes said

For more details, checkout China Daily

Google Maps Street View Heads Overseas

2007-11-26T14:50:00.000+10:00

Google Map's Street View is now heading outside of the United States, in September cars were spotted in Canada and the United Kingdom. Today there have been sightings of the cars in Sydney and Perth, Australia.

In relating news, there have been a lot of privacy aspects that Google are infringing with Google Maps Street View, people walking into adult stores, people caught naked are just some of the privacy issues that Google has captured with this technology. So is it illegal to walk down a street, take a photo and post it on the Internet?

Google are however taking complaints quite seriously and are removing any images that are showing adult or offensive materials.

Adobe releases Flex 2 for free

2007-11-26T14:42:00.000+10:00

to regional educational institutions, students and faculty only

Adobe have made this effort to encourage the use of Web 2.0, a new version in the World Wide Web. However I'm sure they have also done this to get more people to use the software after their education.

Adobe Flex 2 is an integrated development environment (IDE), for designing and developing rich Internet applications (RIAs), and is available to download straight from the Adobe website for qualified education end-users.

The Web has revolutionized the way we access data and has transformed the way we interact with our networked environment. This has led to educational institutions, worldwide to academically promoting Internet-based information sharing and content creation, said Jacob Alex, Adobe Middle East's Channel Manager.

Google used as a password cracker

2007-11-26T13:22:00.000+10:00

Some researchers at Cambridge University's Computer Science department have used Google to help crack obfuscated passwords in the Message-Digest Algorithm 5 (MD5) format. Steven Murdoch (Security Researcher - Light Blue Touchpaper blog), discovered that someone had intruded his wordpress blog and created an administrator account.

He later carried out some computer forensics to discover the extent of the damage the intruder made, Murdoch then became interested in working out the intruder's password he used for the administrator account.

As Wordpress passwords are MD5 hashed and stored in a database, Murdoch wrote a script which MD5 hashed all the words in the dictionary to find a match. This failed, and so did using a Russian dictionary, so he turned to Google.

Murdoch simply inputted the MD5 password hash into Google and got several hits with one thing in common: the name 'Anthony'.

Because of this technique, Google is acting as a hash pre-image finder, and more importantly finding hashes of things that people have hashed before, said Murdoch. Google is doing what it does best: storing large databases and searching them. I doubt, however, that they envisaged this use.

Web auctions help fuel the live auction industry

2007-11-26T13:08:00.000+10:00

Auctioneers used to quote that online auctions were a major threat to the auction industry but they're now saying it has contributed to a huge boom. This is due to rivals forming partnerships that produce bigger audiences for their sellers, often by simulcasting live auctions onto the web.

Buyers are also moving away from auction sites such as eBay, where they've had little luck, to live auctions that also give the thrill of competing in person. These Internet savvy users that are transitioning from eBay are not appearing to the auctions in person but rather by sites that broadcast live auctions.

the Internet is the greatest thing ever to happen to the live-auction industry because it made the industry reinvent itself. Tommy Williams - National Auctioneers Association

Sales of goods and services at live auctions totaled $257 billion in 2006, a surge of 7% over 2005.

Africa's Web 2.0 Sites

2007-11-26T09:04:00.000+10:00

These days it doesn't matter where your business is, you can still reach any audience. This also affects the way you think about competitors, are competitors only local or are they international?

A post from Read/Write Web shows some of Africa's Web 2.0 sites that are coming in by the masses as you can see below.

Firefox 3 (Beta 1) arrives in fighting form

2007-11-25T20:44:00.000+10:00

Firefox 3 is months behind schedule but Mozilla has finally released the first official beta of Firefox 3 on Tuesday (20/11/07). Whilst it is a beta, so it has bugs, the release shows some brilliant ideas and improvements to both the user interface and performance that are looking good for the final release, which is due later this year.

Firefox used to be the only real alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, but in a month or so the final version of Firefox 3 will be significantly more mature than its predecessors. There is Opera, Internet Explorer 7, Safari 3 in competition and Firefox 3 looks like it will have its work cut out for it.

Many Firefox users have criticised the browser before for it's bloat, memory leaks and dodgy performance issues, but Firefox hopes to change that perception with this release, which is indeed slimmer and sleeker than its predecessors.

Firefox 3 beta 1 is noticeably snappier. Page loads are quicker, and Ajax-heavy sites like GMail refresh almost imperceptibly. Scott Gilbertson - Wired

Firefox 3 (Beta 1) on Mac OSX Leopard

Invite Share

2007-11-21T12:46:00.001+10:00

Came across this cool site today that enables you to put your name down on pending lists for invites to Private-Alpha, and Private-Beta stages of applications. The site is called Invite Share and allows you to browse/search through all the organisations/developers that have listed their product on Invite Share.

There are a lot of large companies already that are using this service such as Joost, Pownce, Demonoid, Moola, Orgoo and more. So if you're the type of person who wants to know what's happening out in the industry or you simply just want to check out all the cool new apps then check out Invite Share.

There is one criticism I would like to add, it lists your email address under the applications you've requested an invite for. Even though the email text are images, I still don't like the fact that my email address will be listed to the public to use.

Fanbox: another webDesktop based site

2007-11-21T12:33:00.001+10:00

These types of sites seem to be appearing everyday and it's starting to get a little bit too crazy. Another company to hit the web-top based market is FanBox with it's Microsoft Vista type of interface.

The online desktop is fairly buggy with moving windows issues (cannot stop a window from dragging, very jumpy), and a range of other issues listed below. However they have taken on a smart idea to integrate the public of developers into making applications for Fanbox through their wiki site.

Developers can create Flash games and anything they wish with the use of Fanbox's API, already there have been hundreds of developers that have created games for Fanbox. To check out Fanbox, go to their site www.fanbox.com and you can log in as a guest.

Bugs I've found, write a comment below if you find any more:-
* Dragging windows (can't stop dragging on many occasions)
* Dragging windows (very jumpy)
* FanBox Homepage (how do I close it?)
* Word Processor (hard to select text)
* Word Processor (error script when trying to upload an image)
* Word Processor (right-click sub menu is cut off by small window size)
* more testing to come

PayPerPost Bloggers Get Slammed By Google

2007-11-19T17:24:00.000+10:00

If it wasn't bad enough having bloggers being sponsored about their materials by PayPerPost but now bloggers have a more serious issue with Google's new implementation. Google will be lowering the PageRank of PayPerPost bloggers which will not only affect the bloggers but PayPerPost as well (less people will see the posts).

IZEA (the new holding company for PayPerPost) CEO Ted Murphy is not surprisingly calling foul on the move, claiming that it’s part of some sort of censorship conspiracy by Google. Better still Murphy claims that it’s part of Google’s attempts to deny competition because PayPerPost is a “a very attractive alternative” to Adsense.
Duncan Riley - TechCrunch

Wall Street Journal and Digg Collide

2007-11-19T12:38:00.000+10:00

Wall Street Journal (WSJ) have taken on an unexpected decision to add "Digg This" (Digg) to their articles. Which means both their free and premium articles will be available to public when an article is digged.

Some statistics about WSJ
* Average age: 48 years
* 63% male

Statistics about Digg
* 94% male
* 88% 18-39 years
* 64% HHI above $75k
* 52% IT professionals, developers or engineers
* 26% managers or above
* 39% publish their own blog

Combining both of these audiences will give both Digg and WSJ a much larger audience with the abilities to go further.

For more details, check out Daniela Barbosa's post Digg and the Wall Street Journal - both building a new audience base.

5 Most Essential Web Apps

2007-11-19T11:15:00.000+10:00

1. Gmail Java app for mobile phones

http://www.google.com/mobile/mail/index.html
Very useful for your everyday needs, calendar, email, contacts and more.

2. Google Maps for Mobile

http://www.google.com/gmm/index.html
Very easy to use and works well with your GPS, maps are clear and there is constant data updates. A real competitor to Nokia's attempt.

3. Opera Mini

http://www.operamini.com/
A lot faster then Internet Explorer Mobile and a lot easier to use, they have really concentrated on every detail to make the software really easy to use.

4. Fring

http://www.fring.com/
This handy little lightweight application is the best I've found for IM usage. The speed of the application is instant and it supports Skype (chat and calls) and kicks ass over the Skype Mobile application. The application supports the following services:-
1. Fring
2. Skype
3. MSN
4. Twitter
5. and more

5. Shozu

http://www.shozu.com/
Nothing worse then having to copy your files to your notebook/computer after you've spent the day taking photos on your mobile. Shozu allows you to simply browse your photos/videos and select which files you want to upload to your account (Flickr, YouTube etc).

For more details, check out Read/Write Web

Easy Photoshop Editing

2007-11-07T15:37:00.000+10:00

Before Photo

At Adobe Design Sessions today and gone through some of the new features of Photoshop, editing photos is soooo much easier, I feel lazy doing it. But this is a quick example.

After Photo

Get bug.gd

2007-10-12T11:18:00.000+10:00

Billed as “humanity’s last remaining hope against computers” Bug.gd is aiming to build a collaborative search and answers database of computer bugs. Duncan Riley - Techcrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/28/buggd-collaborative-search-and-bug-solutions/)

Really simple idea, users jump onto the site, they enter their email address and the bug (error message). If someone already has a solution they will be prompted with the answer, otherwise the user will be shown a message that the bug could not be found.

In general, the user will eventually find a solution, bug.gd will automatically send an email out to the user requesting the solution to the problem so others can benefit later. This will provide a regularly updated collaborative database of problems and solutions (as long as the users follow up on their bug).

The service is free and ad-free, Microsoft have already been generous enough to share 60 000 bug fixes (that's a scary figure).

Check the site out at bug.gd

Iran blocks access to Google

2007-10-12T11:00:00.000+10:00

As a part of a clampdown on material deemed to be offensive, the Mehr news agency reported that Iran has blocked access to the Google search engine and its Gmail email service.

"I can confirm these sites have been filtered," said Hamid Shahriari, the secretary of Iran's National Council of Information.

There is no real explanation to why the sites are being blocked, there are several other foreign sites that are inaccessible to Iranian users from Monday morning. Iran has some tough censorship on Internet sites and services, banning thousands of websites and blogs containing sexual and politically critical material as well as women's rights and social networking sites.

The rules are applied by ISPs who are preventing access to baned sites based on keywords, which means that some perfectly anodyne sites are not accessible as well as those that are more sensitive.

Iran is in the midst of one of its toughest moral crackdowns in years, which has already seen thousands of women warned for failing to obey Islamic dress rules.

Google Calls for International Privacy Standards

2007-09-17T09:47:00.000+10:00

This has been in the air for a while now, I can remember Google announcing this last year to prevent malicious software installed on consumer's computers. The biggest issue of most downloaded applications off the Internet is 'what else did it install?' There are a lot of free applications out there that will install keylogging applications onto your computer, which is a huge threat for those who do Internet banking, emails and so forth.

Google's Global Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer took the stage at a European regional meeting on the "ethical dimensions of the information society," organized by the French Commission of the UNESCO, to call for international privacy standards. Other search rivals to Google are in the picture as well such as Ask and Microsoft.

Now is the time for such standards, Fleischer says.

There is an accelerating globalization, technological innovation and concern over personal privacy. Fleischer cites the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Privacy Framework as the standards of International Privacy.

The APEC Privacy Framework, according to the organization's Web site, is built on nine principles: preventing harm, integrity of personal information, notice, security safeguards, collection limitations, access and correction, uses of personal information, accountability and choice.

More information here By Nicholas Carlson (Internet News).

Is Google Apps ready for Enterprise?

2007-09-11T23:21:00.000+10:00

It was announced earlier today that Google Apps will be available for the Enterprise market through Capgemini, a consulting and outsourcing service. For $50 / year, companies can subscribe to the Google Apps Premier Edition, which includes all the usual plus a few more like Google Docs, Spreadsheets, Gmail, Calendar, Google Talk, Page Creator, Start Page, Administrative tools, APIs, 24/7 tech support and a 99.9% uptime guarantee for Gmail.

Other web application services offer off-line modes and even options to host on your own site. This is a huge difference over Google Apps as they cannot be accessed offline.

Zimbra is a competitor to Google Apps and had this to say in an email:

Google’s deal with Cap Gemini today definitely raises visibility for the SaaS market. However, the pair face a challenge: since all Google Docs are stored on Google’s servers, public companies would face big Sarbanes-Oxley compliance issues if they deployed Google Apps. Zimbra’s Web 2.0 messaging and collaboration platform provides enterprise customers with freedoms that Google Apps just can’t provide, including the ability to archive for compliance purposes. They can use Zimbra as a hosted service or deploy it on-site. They can use it online or offline while retaining killer AJAX functionality. They can offer their employees access from any desktop, Web, or mobile client.

Zimbra is trying to grab a slice of that Google hype for itself, and it’s not the only company to do so: Microsoft is also taking shots at Google Apps today.

I signed up for PPP!

2007-08-28T22:43:00.000+10:00

This service is really changing the way to advertise online. I came across this service from a Twitter friend of mine who is making a lot of money just for blogging.

One thing I've found good about PPP are the categories of opportunities you can choose from, there are plenty to choose from, and there are plenty of opportunities to choose from. So if you are a popular blogger then give PPP a go and start making some quick cash.

At the time of signing up to PPP, they were offering $20 for your first post! The posts you get to write are creative and unique content material for you to share, so sign up today and drive traffic to your site.

Very cool image manipulation software

2007-08-28T00:02:00.000+10:00

If you crop an image, you can loose some major parts of the image. If you resize an image, it might be too small to see what exactly it is showing. The video above shows a demonstration of some smart algorithms that can keep the major parts of your images in normal size and reposition the rest of the image to make it smaller. Excellent idea for the new era of Internet browsing with mobile devices.

I would particularly like to see this type of technology developed in Flash, Silverlight or AIR, people are already requesting anyone to make a plugin for Photoshop that has the same behaviours on Techcrunch (I Want This In Photoshop Immediately).

For those who are having Adobe CS3 issues!

2007-08-24T13:13:00.000+10:00

I've heard a lot of issues with the latest suite of applications from Adobe, whether it's the full master collection, design collection or web collection - I've only heard of one installation of Adobe CS3 that installed successfully on the first go (for the record, he was a Windows XP user). Others have had to install multiple times, changing Windows settings, safe mode and more. All from Windows XP and Vista users.

A twitter friend of mine Nick Hodge from Microsoft Australia linked me to his article with his experience of installing Adobe CS3 on his machine. At the end of it he comes to a successful result, you may or may not have the same issues as Nick experienced but he points out many ways to try and install Adobe CS3 for you to try.

Let me know how you went or if you have any further tips/hints by writing a comment below, and thanks Nick for dropping me your link.

By the way, I haven't heard of any issues with installing Adobe CS3 onto Macs, and it installed successfully first time on mine.

Australia to Censor the Internet

2007-08-15T23:19:00.000+10:00

Thankfully it will only be voluntary...

Mr Howard will also confirm a previous announcement that the Government will pay $90 million to provide every household that wants it with software to filter internet content.

If the issue will be forced upon ourselves, I'll be packing my bags and moving to USA. I strongly agree that the Internet should be safer for our children and ourselves, but there is no easy way to make the Internet safe without annoyances. If you don't know already, China has created the 'Great Firewall of China' that censors the Internet and blocks anyone accessing particular websites within China.

I've had friends who have their site blocked, and one in particular is just a site for cooking recipes. You can check to see if your site is blocked by visiting www.greatfirewallofchina.org. My website is blocked as well, for what reasons, I don't know.

Read more about this story at:-
* Australian IT
* Ars Technica
* Sydney Morning Herald

European ISPs will charge additional fees for BBC’s new online TV Player.

2007-08-14T15:31:00.000+10:00

European ISPs are up in a debate about BBC's new TV Player "iPlayer." And just when you thought the letter 'i' before a word has been over used and extinct.

The ISPs have all joined forces to debate the issue against BBC claiming that they will have to under go a major upgrade over the popular iPlayer. With an estimation of $2 billion for the ISPs upgrades, they simply claim that the Internet is not ready for TV and will leave the ISPs begging if iPlayer goes continues ahead.

There are opinions raised over the issue such as the end user, they are the ones paying for the Internet service and it's the ISP's responsibility to ensure their service is fast and stable. ISP's are requesting compensation from BBC for the pounding iPlayer will have on their servers or otherwise they will throttle their website to poor speeds that will discourage users from using it.

More information available from TechCrunch here.

Adobe is entering the office market.

2007-08-14T15:17:00.000+10:00

Adobe definetely has a huge market in the Multimedia industry from their photo editing software, video production, web developing and more. Now they have their eyes set on the market that Microsoft dominates, the office applications market.

According to Adobe group manager for platform evangelism, Mike Downey, it wouldn't be outlandish to predict the company throws its hat into the ring soon.

Though we have not yet announced any intentions to move into the office-productivity software market. Considering we have built this platform that makes it easy to build rich applications that run on both the desktop and the browser, I certainly wouldn't rule anything like that out. Says Mike Downey

Adobe may make use of their AIR product (Adobe Integrated Runtime) or standalone software built for Windows and Mac. Their intentions haven't been made clear but the bets are on AIR as their platform.

More about Adobe's office announcement here.

The tests are out on the Terrabyte drives!

2007-08-14T15:08:00.000+10:00

1 terrabyte = 1000 gigabytes

In this report of the Hitachi's Deskstar 7K1000 1TB hard drive, TechReport find lightning fast results in their extensive benchmarking.

One factor of the new 1TB hard drives is the whopping 32mb cache size to handle large transfers.

Read the article for the full story (Hitachi's Deskstar 7K1000 hard drive - The Terabyte has landed).

Google announces Commenting on their Google News site.

2007-08-09T09:55:00.000+10:00

The feature itself is nothing big at all, but it will change the point of view of stories and articles that are published through Google News. Have you ever had a thought about a news story about yourself and it wasn't just quite right? Now you can insert a comment reflecting the story onto Google News.

To stop an overhual of comments, only a special subset of readers can make a comment which includes people or organisations that are related to the story.

Here's how it will work

If you are involved in a story, you send your comments in to Google along with statements supporting how you are connected to the story. Google won’t edit your comments but can have them removed for hate speech, etc. And they aren’t yet saying how connected to a story you have to be to get in. Whatever the rules, this is going to require a ton of manual labor on Google’s end.

This cannot simply just be automated. Google is going to have to see a very, very large increase in page views to justify the expense. But I don’t see it working too well, not only are they going to have to read entries that describe how the person is related to the story, but check to ensure they are the real person.

What Google will see often, a news article is written about Bill Clinton and the Lewinsky Affair, John Smith writes into Google describing that he is Bill Clinton and gives his 2 cents (comments) on the story.

More information can be found on Techcrunch.

Is your Company Literature up to scratch?

2007-08-04T11:52:00.000+10:00

Strategy #1

How many times have you heard yourself saying you've been meaning to get your company literature up to scratch? You know how crucial it is to engage your potential and existing customers with every manifestation of your business.

So how come your company literature doesn't work quite as hard as it could? Here are some design, layout and content techniques for helping you get dressed for the party.

1) Make all your literature relevant and remember that in terms of the words and design - less is often more. No one's going to slog through boring reading material and cluttered page layouts just because you sent them - even if they like you and your product. Give them a tool they can use.

2) Use plain simple English. Your own working life might be immersed in jargon, but avoid letting them infiltrate your literature. Technical terms and complex scientific charts and illustrations will come across as technobabble. HUGE turn-off.

3) Don't overlook the basics. Essentials like contact details are often overlooked. Make sure the customer knows how to get a hold of you if they want more information - your address, a telephone number, mobile number, email address, website address. Make sure it is easy for them to find you, no one wants to research for your existence.

4) Insist that your designer uses a font which can be read easily. Calligraphy-style writing may look pretty on a gift card, but will you like to enjoy reading a whole page like that? Check your font size, not too big, and not too small.

5) Make the design easy on the eyes, fun and funky designs don't have to mean that paragraph one is nowhere near paragraph two. Looking good can still make sense.

6) When it comes to your customers, size does matter. Be sure that the innovative new product spec you've requested will still fit your customer's filing cabinet.

7) If you are going to be re-using old photographs - be careful! While the photograph may still be an accurate one of your product, the man in the 70's suit holding it may make it look decidedly dated.

8) Be sure to proof-read your literature carefully! Spelling mistakes look sloppy and will reflect the type of business you are.

Twitter Mosaic

2007-08-04T11:51:00.000+10:00

I've been meaning to post about Twitter Mosaic for quite some time now, very cool service for the community to get involved. There are two ways to get involved:-
1) With your Twitter Account (get one if you haven't got one) - add twitter_mosaic (or better known as follow twitter_mosaic).
2) Go to www.twittermosaic.com and upload your own picture to be turned into a twitter mosaic. Very likely that your picture won't be chosen.

What does Twitter Mosaic do?
It simply makes a mosaic out of twitter profile images with the pictures people upload to TwitterMosaic.

Full resolution image of end result.

Negative Mosaic of the world.

My Twitter profile image has also been used on the following mosaics, see if you can find them!
1) Soylent Green
2) Silence of the Lambs
3) Transformers

Using Ubuntu as a web-server - Installation

2007-08-04T11:50:00.000+10:00

After a default installation of Ubuntu, here are the following steps I have to take to install Apache, PHP and MySQL.

# SSH Server (for my remote access)
sudo apt-get install ssh

# Database Server
sudo apt-get install mysql-server

# Apache HTTP Server
sudo apt-get install apache2

# PHP for Apache HTTP Server
sudo apt-get install php4
or sudo apt-get install php5

# MYSQL for Apache HTTP Server
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-auth-mysql
sudo apt-get install php4-mysql
or sudo apt-get install php5-mysql

Google Street View

2007-07-04T16:01:00.000+10:00

If you haven't noticed when using Google Maps is their new view option called "Street View" is now available for everyone to use. Simply click on the 'Street View New!' link at the top and you'll see some camera icons appear over USA. Click on one of the camera icons and you will be shown something similar below.

Above: Map View with the Street View activated.

As the instructions show, all you have to do is drag the little orange man and drop him on a blue outlined street (or you can just click on a blue outlined street). Then you will get an image as shown below, I clicked on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Above: Google Street View of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, USA. Click on image for full version.

The best of this feature is the ability to get a 360 degree view of the area you are looking at and the ability to zoom in/out as well. You can choose to go to another spot on the map just like the same way as explained before, or you can simply click on the white arrows that appear along the orange stripes down the street.

This will take you one step into that direction, this is a really cool feature as you'll be able to give someone else 'proper' street directions to your house or wherever you may be going. Some things aren't shown on a map. One thing I'm hoping for the near future is the ability to specify a starting point and an end point of your journey, and it will render out a movie for you to download/view so you can see the trip you need to take from start to finish.

Check out this Google Maps Street View HowTo by clicking here.

Particls gets a new sidebar...

2007-07-04T15:24:00.000+10:00

I'm really impressed by the latest build of Particls, it's faster, easier, and more user friendly. One thing that is coming out in the near future for Particls is this really cool sidebar.

The left sidebar is at its normal state, where all the feeds have loaded in. The right sidebar shows the sidebar in a transition where new information has come in.

The sidebar can be sorted into different methods (By Relevancy, By Date Aescending and Descending) and also has all the options you would expect (ie: docking, font sizes, always on top, mark as read). It also has 3rd party options such as Del.icio.us, Reddit, Digg, Magnola, Furl and more.

This new adapter is definetely a huge improvement to the Particls application as the application has received huge criticism about its current adapters, such as the news ticker and popup messages. The new sidebar adapter is easier to read (not moving), can be sorted as you wish, and behaves like many other rss readers except you get the added bonus of relevancy sorting of your data.

Try out the latest version of Particls here today by clicking on the image below.

I'm getting married ...

2007-07-04T12:15:00.000+10:00

Amanda in the private spa on the top balcony.

Amanda and I were on our 4th anniversary (of our relationship) last weekend and I thought it was about time I asked the question if she would marry me, and as the title suggests, she said yes!

It was a risky question as I've had to organise the engagement party before the question, due to calendar clashes with everything else. I've organised the engagement party a few weeks ago to be on the 21st of July, the other issue was invitations. Luckily Amanda brought a address book not too long ago and I've used that as an excuse to ask people for their addresses, sending out emails along the lines of "Amanda and I just got an address book and we thought we would put it into good use, what's your full contact details?"

I think Amanda must have thought it was a bit strange that I was really eager to get everyone's addresses but at least she knows now why I was over the top about it. So the invitations were made on Monday and sent out, it was a quick job but a good job (I'll take a photo of an invitation shortly).

The engagement ring.

The million and one questions have been asked like "when is the wedding?" and "what's next?" Amanda's friends were filled with joy about the whole event, one jumped at a fright and nearly knocked the ring straight out of my hand.

Well all is well now and I'm looking forward to our future together, love you always Amanda!

Get Particls today!

2007-06-27T17:50:00.000+10:00

I've been using Particls (aka Touchstone Live) for a while now, I must admit it has had it's ups and downs like any product in development but the product is becoming quite a solid product. It has only just came out of it's private-beta stage into public-beta and is available for anyone to download.

So what is Particls?
Particls ranks RSS items (and other types of inputs) one by one. Good posts scroll across the ticker, great posts pop up on an alert (both fully customisable by you). The news flows by you. Use Particls to feed your addiction by getting news in real time (until you have time to dig through your feed reader) or use it to filter out the noise so you can just focus on the stuff you care about.

In a nutshell, it sorts through your input items (RSS, email optional) and filters out the items that don't matter to you. This way you can add 100's of RSS feeds and have all the posts filtered - otherwise you would need to pay for a secretary to do it for you.

Click the above Particls icon to download Particls today.

An image from my blog will appear in your ticker (top alert tool), this image can be modified to your personal choice by going to the Status and Options Window, and clicking on Change Settings and Skins. Change the image in the PrimaryLogo field.

Disclaimer: I was previously employed by one of the companies who are funding the Particls project.

Walt Mossberg's review of the iPhone

2007-06-27T11:14:00.000+10:00

I'm upgrading my notebook!

2007-06-26T15:44:00.000+10:00

I'm currently using a Dell notebook I brought back in early 2004 and it's starting to chugger on some of the new programs out and also the hardware (ie: CPU Fan) are needing replacement. I found some promo codes to use with Dell and got quite a good discount.

Some more Dell promotional codes I found at Coupon Chief:

Save $350 off all Dimension C521 & E520 desktop purchases of $999 or more
Coupon Code: 6JHJWDHQ85D?BX Expires: Wed, Jul 11th

Free upgrade to 2 GB Memory and 160 GB Hard Drive and Save $225 on select Inspiron notebooks $1399 or more
Coupon Code: W8DDR56FXJ6KCM Expires: Wed, Jul 18th

$200 off Optoma HD73 720P DLP Home Theater Projector
Coupon Code: XLBHHVD0B6JRTH Expires: Wed, Jul 11th

$175 off XPS M1210 Notebook
Coupon Code: K0BH3R50CX2M4V Expires: Thu, Jul 12th

It's the end of the financial year so I spent big and got myself a 17" Dell XPS M1710 notebook with some upgrades such as 4 GB RAM, and 512mb Video Card. Came to a total of $3934 (with coupon).

Pirate Bay bring out another cool service!

2007-06-26T15:17:00.000+10:00

Pirate Bay is one of the most famous torrent trackers who are known for turning a blind eye to authorities. They have just launched another service called 'bayimg,' which is a censorship-free image upload/hosting service. Like Flickr, but you upload anything you want - this is great news for the recent discussions about Flickr and Yahoo censorship issues.

I could see this service getting flooded with you know what, but hopefully they create a filter or something so you can use the site safely at work. Otherwise people will have fear to use it as pornography and other materials could simply get people sacked (at work) or divorced (at home).

Another service Pirate Bay are working on is a youtube like service which is currently in private beta. Link: http://thevideobay.org.

Click the above image to go to bayimg.

Apple’s 10 new features of their upcoming operating system.

2007-06-17T22:19:00.000+10:00

Desktop
The desktop wasn’t changed to any great degree, for good reasons because it works and we’re happy with it. The desktop has the following changes:-

New Menu Bar

Improved Dock

Stacks – clean up desktop

Consistent window look

Prominent active window

New Finder

New Sidebar

Search other Macs & Servers

Easier sharing of files/folders

Back to my Mac – Internet networking

Cover Flow – view the cover of each file like a slide show

Quick Look

Live file preview – preview a file without opening its application

Works with text files, images, movies, PDF, Word, Excel, and more

Plug-in model – if your file is not supported you can easily add it in

Full-screen previews

64 Bit

64-bit from top to bottom

64-bit goes mainstream – it will run 32-bit and 64-bit simultaneously – only one version of Leopard (no 32-bit and 64-bit versions – just a 64-bit version)

Core Animation

Developers will be able to make more intuitive applications

Items such as text, 2D graphics, OpenGL renderings, and video are placed on thousands of layers – when content changes so does the visual

Supports multi-core processors

Developers can create animations automatically that can react to user input

Boot Camp

Now built into Leopard

Runs Windows XP and Vista at Native Speed

Completely compatible

No CD burning to install drivers

Spaces

Group applications into separate spaces

Instantly switch between Spaces

Easily move applications between spaces

Bird’s eye view of all Spaces

Dashboard

Over 3000 widgets now available

Cool movie widget included with Leopard

WebClip – easily make your own widgets through Safari, you really have to see this feature in action – you can grab a component off any site and make it a widget (so when the website updates, your widget will update with just that component)

iChat

Better audio quality with AAC-LD

Tabbed chats

Photo Booth effects

iChat Theatre – show your desktop or applications through iChat (will make Video Conferencing very easy)

Backdrops – change your backgrounds without the need of a blue/green screen on the fly

Time Machine (Backup)

One click set-up

Automatically backs up everything

Backup to a local hard drive or network server

Search for lost files – this feature works really well, another feature you need to see in action to get an understanding of how well it really works

Preview previous files with Quick Look

The pricing for Apple’s Leopard is US$129! With no different versions (no basic, no ultimate), everything is included in the US$129 version.

Apple is looking very promising as a gaming platform!

2007-06-17T19:32:00.000+10:00

Big gaming companies like EA Games and id Technology are going to start supporting Apple simultaneously to PC. Which is very good news for Apple as gamers are moving away from Microsoft Windows to other operating systems to get better performance out of their games.

EA Games will be releasing Command & Conquer 3, Battlefield 2142, Need for Speed Carbon, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for Apple. EA Games gave a demo of the Harry Potter games during the WWDC07 conference, visuals/graphics were exceptional and I can see good potentials for Apple as a gaming platform.

EA Games will also be releasing all of their sporting games starting in August to support both Apple and PC, games such as Madden and Tiger Woods PGA Tour.

Web 2.0 Supermarket

2007-06-12T08:08:00.000+10:00

What would happen if your local supermarket became Web 2.0.

Dell and their use of real estate.

2007-06-05T16:54:00.000+10:00

Whether it will be print, email or web - I find Dell to be a bad example of "too much screen real estate." Screen real estate refers to how much of the page is taken up.

Take the following ad as an example from Dell's weekly email subscription.

One could argue that the 20" screen looks more appealing but if you're reading emails from Dell on a weekly basis, you should know the general costs of their monitors. However they decided to utilise some of the available space for a smaller monitor at a higher price. Why? When there are far more products that Dell sell.

Stunning High Res Photo of San Francisco After 1906 Earthquke

2007-05-28T22:56:00.000+10:00

The image speaks a thousand words.

Click on the image for high resolution photo.

Making a product a platform, why?

2007-05-28T19:56:00.000+10:00

I’ve seen this happen quite a fair bit with companies thinking they can steal the OS market by making their product a platform, yes it would be great if consumers would only use your platform but why would they?

There is a huge amount of people using Google, Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, Flickr, MSN and more, but why do companies think about developing a platform to run their popular products and services. I speak for most people who use the Internet and computers in general; you don’t want to be restricted to the products the platform allows. So why bother wasting time developing it?

After all, Apple and Linux are better then Windows but there is more software available to Windows that attracts people to using it, and the majority know how to use Windows. That however is on a strong increase of change (especially with Apple in the notebook market and Ubuntu all round).

I’ve even heard quotes that Firefox is the new Operating System, but people don’t just use Firefox. Some people will try out the platforms but they will eventually turn back to their previous operating system or try out a new one.

One way to determine what is the hottest OS at present (if it isn’t obvious) and in the future is to look at what game developing companies are targeting, if games were targeted towards Linux then it will be used by the majority.

Technorati has a relaunch.... and then it's down

2007-05-24T13:22:00.000+10:00

Technorati has made some huge changes to its data architecture and the user interface to make it easier for the new crowds in Technorati's user base. It isn't just geeks that are using Technorati these days.

Technorati have moved to showing media search features and have moved away from the blog search. As Google Blogsearch cannot be won over in the long run. Technorati had to shut down the site for maintanence (or most likely, too many visitors), as you can see from their very appealing brb image (above).

An easy way to describe RSS to your mum

2007-05-16T16:24:00.000+10:00

I found a video on donloeb.com that easily shows what RSS can do for you.

So if you haven't heard of RSS or don't know where to start, I recommend you to watch the video ont he direct link below. Whether you want to use RSS or not.

Direct link: How-to-describe-rss-to-your-mom

A couple of rumours on the web

2007-05-16T13:46:00.000+10:00

Again, these are only rumours and should not be taken seriously.

Google selling YouTube to Yahoo for $1.2bn

Skype to be acquired by Microsoft for $900m.

Facebook music will be announced next week!

Askimat to be acquired by Google

Another company offers the qaulity of work

2007-05-16T12:13:00.000+10:00

Just like Google and many other companies following this trend, Facebook offers employees (and I assume sub-contractors) the fun and entertaining experience of working by offering these benefits:-

Medical, dental and vision plans with no premium for employees

21 vacation days per year, plus 8 company holidays and 2 floating holidays

Complimentary catered breakfast, lunch and dinner daily

Complimentary beverages and snacks

Dry cleaning and laundry service onsite

Free downtown parking permit

Subsidized gym membership

Catered Friday Happy Hours at the office

$600/month housing subsidy if you live within one mile of the office

Standard-issue 24" LCD monitors and your option of 15" Apple MacBook Pro or IBM ThinkPad

Worldwide notoriety by having your face on sample Facebook flyers

Jobs at Facebook

However due to the size of Facebook in comparison to Google, you won't find all the benefits to be the same however it is a company that I would highly enjoy to work at and I'm thinking of sending in an application. If theory is that if you enjoy working, the quality of work you produce will be far more superior.

I only wish my current employer was the same, I'm stuck with trying to get around block sites such as youtube.com, digg.com and more.

Simple is better, simple is more.

2007-05-15T23:52:00.000+10:00

One thing I've always stated with creating a design, interface and application -> keep it simple. Which is why sites like Twitter have taken off so much, because it doesn't require you to learn the interface, you simply use it and get addicted.

Tom Conrad (CTO of Pandora) used to work for Apple and has made the following quote about some of the different stages of simplicity Apple have taken until today:

Apple II? Didn’t have switches on the front.

Macintosh? No tape drive. No cursor keys.

Next? No disk drive.

iMac? No floppy drive.

iPod? No on/off button.

iPhone? No keyboard.

The iPhone is going to be the next big thing, Apple is looking at launching 1 million iPhones with more in the production queue. One quote I always use in my lectures is "if your viewers HAVE to learn or read instructions on how to use your application, then it fails." Apple is heading in the right direction.

Especially with our generation, we only look at manuals when we're stuck.

Microsoft about to enter into patent war?

2007-05-15T23:46:00.000+10:00

I hate patents and this is a good reason why:

Fortune Magazine has an in-depth article about Microsoft and its claim that free software infringes on 235 of its patents. I don’t know where the truth lies, but Microsoft has more than 800 lawyers and it looks like they are going to make sure that they remain relevant through legal action. This has deep implications for a whole sector of our economy because there are lots of companies that rely on free software (Google being the mindshare leader that I can think of, but most of the startups I interview use LAMP, Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP, to build their companies).

Microsoft up to this point has used patents defensively (i.e., only if sued themselves) but the gestures that the leadership is sending to the marketplace lately is that they are about to enter into a more offensive phase of using patents.

Scoble, 2007

Check out Techmeme for the latest reactions to this story.

A job interview with Amazon

2007-05-15T23:42:00.000+10:00

Justin Rudd recently had an interview with Amazon and successfully got the job (congratulations). Here is just a snippet of the interview:

The next day, I get a call from a senior developer. He explains what the process will be and how long it will take. The very first question - why do you want to work at Amazon? Now I knew this was coming. Every interview I’ve ever had I get asked this. But I ignored my cardinal rule and wasn’t prepared with a good answer. I had general ideas about why I wanted to work there -

Humorous - “I’ve spent enough money there over the years. I’d like Amazon to give some of it back.”

Greedy - “I want to move to WA”

Technical - “I want to work on truly large systems”

In the end, those are all reasons why I wanted to work there. But the last one - work on truly large systems - is the one I told him. There are very few truly large systems in the world. Everybody says they want a developer that can build a scalable system, but Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, and a few others are the only ones that truly do need those types of people. To work with datasets that encompass millions of orders a day is a humbling experience.

Read more at Justin Rudd's Drivel

Justin Rudd's post gives me some confidence in going for the ‘larger’ companies. I am keen to work for Microsoft or Google, not just because they are truly large but also for their work ethics and spirits. Which to me and many other people, is really important!

Orgoo - The Web Email/IM Replacement

2007-05-15T23:34:00.000+10:00

Something that I've been wishing for, a nice easy webmail interface that can take 3rd party pop accounts. If anyone can get me an invite for this straight up, I'll be more then grateful.

What is orgoo, it's an online webmail service that is going to be very popular especially for those who roam and have multiple email accounts. It emulates Outlook's style of a desktop mail application (more advanced then the latest version of hotmail).

Another feature is that it integrates instant messaging from all of the major IM providers into the interface (without making it over crowded). Orgoo is following many social trends to creating a web application that runs directly from the website, no installation required; simply login and your in.

I don't have a notebook at the moment so I cannot simply have Outlook installed and loaded on my notebook and used that to check my mail on the go. However whether I had a notebook or not, this service is on my favourite list of web applications and I'm definetely going to use it once I've got my invite.

An overview of Adobe's products

2007-05-15T23:32:00.000+10:00

Scoble has created an excellent collection of Adobe product demos, if you want to get an idea of the software before you buy, it is definetely worth while checking out these links below:-
Adobe Premiere CS3 49 minutes.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 53 minutes.

Adobe Illustrator CS3 47 minutes.

Adobe Flash/Flex architecture overview 30 minutes.

Adobe Flex goes open source 25 minutes.

Adobe Flash CS3 overview 55 minutes.

Adobe Apollo overview 43 minutes.

Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 34 minutes.

Adobe Connect overview 29 minutes.

Adobe Acrobat 8.0 19 minutes.

Whoa! Photobucket sold for $250 million.

2007-05-09T22:59:00.000+10:00

That's 10x more then what Yahoo paid for Flickr.

Check out more about this at Techmeme.

What's new with Peepel?

2007-05-08T17:31:00.000+10:00

Peepel has released new features for the free Online Office.

Contact Manager
You can now use the ContactManager to add other Peepel members and enable them to share and collaborate on WebSheet and WebWriter documents.

Collaboration
You can now collaborate with other Peepel members on WebSheet and WebWriter documents without worrying about overwriting their changes.

File Sharing
You can now share your files with others, so long as they have signed up to be a member of the Peepel Community.

This has definetely put Peepel on top of other online office suites. By far the best online office suite available on the market today. The collaboration feature works really well, I tested this feature with a workmate of mine and found it really easy to use and it is virtually instant.

Peepel have also included a browser which comes really handy from time to time, and templates to get the common tasks done quickly. Worth checking it out and start considering of dropping your current office suite to Peepel's free online office suite.

Check out Peepel at www.peepel.com

Disclaimer: I used to work for Peepel Technologies.

Proposal for IPv6 Day

2007-05-07T22:19:00.000+10:00

We are getting closer to specifying the IPv6 transition day, which should be happening sometime this year. There should be a day that all public internet services should be aiming for to support IPv6 on all networks so there are no faults. Biggest issues are related to NATs, Firewalls, and Security.

The United States congress will decide on which day the IPv6 will happen (likewise with the Australian Government), however we should all be making sure we can ensure all our networks support IPv6 now.

More information about IPv6 can be found here on Wikipedia.

35 Designers x 5 Questions

2007-05-01T16:38:00.000+10:00

The five questions:-

1 aspect of design you give the highest priority to.

1 most useful CSS-technique you use very often.

1 font you use in your projects very often.

1 design-related book you highly recommend to read.

1 design magazine you read on a daily/weekly basis (online or offline).

Some very interesting and useful responses came back from those 5 questions that were given to the 35 designers. Particularly to the question "1 most useful CSS-technique you use very often," a lot of tips to help you design your CSS pages from resetting pages to browser bug workarounds.

They also go into detail about web usability with the quote "Don't make me think!," which exactly is what you should have in mind whilst creating a web site -> users should be able to easily navigate and find links on your site. You should never have to learn how to use the web site, nor have to even think about it for the slightest bit.

More details can be found at '35 Designers x 5 Questions' - worth reading for all web designers.

Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments II - The Domino Effect...

2007-04-25T00:22:00.000+10:00

I came across this Diet Coke and Mentos Experiment that I just have to show.

They only used 251 Coke bottles and 1506 mentos mints.

Check out the video at Google Video here.

Google Rains On StumbleUpon Parade: Launches Direct Competitor

2007-04-24T22:55:00.000+10:00

The same day that news broke out about eBay acquiring StumbleUpon for $40-$45 million, Google announces their new functionality into their toolbar that is very similar to StumbleUpon's feature. Google works a bit different though, instead of taking you to highly voted web sites - Google will point you to website that you will find interesting, based off your previous search queries.

So if you search for "web 2.0" frequentely, then the next time you click on this new feature (a little dice icon), you will be taken to a new website based around web 2.0 or another highly used search term you use. So this is more personalised and is far more superior then StumbleUpon's functionality. But the end result is the same - discovery of new and interesting websites based on your interests.

It seems that Google has done this to lash out at ebay and StumbleUpon because they lost the deal, it seems like it is very likely - however I think it is a better move for Google. As the old saying goes "if you cannot beat them, join them." And Google have joined them into providing the same services.

Web 2.0 is changing colleges and universities.

2007-04-24T19:42:00.000+10:00

The methods in which most colleges and universities are adopting is communicating to students with Web 2.0 internet applications. Students are expecting and demand to be engaged, active and part of a collaborative building environment.

Here's why:

The online MySpace community has ballooned to more than 160 million members in just a few years. Over 200,000 new members sign up each day; it is one of the most visited Internet sites in the world. The social networking site of choice for most students is Facebook.com, which describes itself as a social utility that helps people better understand the world around them.

95% of students are engaged in an collaborative, sharing, expression, and information gathering socially driven community. When it comes to education they expect the same type of environment, which is bad news for teachers/tutors/lecturers who still teach in the traditional methods (like a three-hour lecture delivered in the one-way, top-down tradition of old media).

Another factor that students expect is instant messages (whether it will be IM applications, email, sms, or phone). If some alterations have been made to an assessment, it is expected that they are given an instant notification to the changes.

The generation that weaned on television may have been happy to sit back and passively consume information fed to them from above, but those days are over.

Web 2.0 saw a shift from static websites serving information, to dynamic communities engaged in a two-way conversation between publisher and audience - with the lines between the two ultimately being blurred beyond recognition. Now the same process is working its way through higher education institutions, irrevocably changing the learning experience once and for all.

Staying Awake - Is Coffee The Answer

2007-04-23T21:07:00.000+10:00

It's another late night for me, it's currently 11.50pm and it looks like I'll be awake for another 2-4 hours as it is. I'm looking around the house for answers to keeping me a awake, as currently I'm experiencing the big black doors closing over my eyes every minute (or so - too tired to remember the last time).

.... the bed never looked so good

I've got a couple of options to look at, as the house I stay at (in Hervey Bay) has a coffee shop attached - so my product selection ranges from refrigerated drinks (sport drinks to softdrinks), coffee (latte, black, cuppucino, etc), water, alcohol, and more.

Traditionally, I've always gone for the coffee to keep me awake, I've found a couple of interesting points about coffee and which method of taking coffee is best for keeping you alert and most importantly 'awake.' Instant coffee doesn't have the full caffiene affect that grounded coffee beans contain (which is good news for me as there are plenty of coffee beans).

Adding milk to your coffee can also make you more drowsy, and sugar has similar affects (however I cannot find any evidence about sugar and I'm too tired to look - I'm just going to take Brewed Coffee's word for it). Many findings show that straight black coffee is the way to go and the best method for keeping you awake.

However, I have conflicting findings - performed by an IT magazine. They tested out performance (energy drinks), and coffee. They tested the performance of the drinks by supplying the drinks to an internal employee over a long period of time and analysing the output of the employee and his alertness.

The employee had to keep the same sleeping patterns, and eating plans to make the results accurate - they found very little difference between each drink. They decided to come up with the idea to mix up all the energy drinks and coffee together and give a sample of the drink to the employee - they found a high improvement with the employee (by up to 50%).

Unfortunetely I don't have the 150 drinks they mixed nor the money to try that test out myself. I do not recommend anyone to take any of the advice above seriously and I strongly recommend you to sleep rather then striving to stay awake - it's well worth your health.

More resources
Lifehack - 165 Energy Drink Reviews
Wikipedia - Energy Drinks
Jolt Gum Review
Very cheap fatigue reduction tablets ($4.99 / 60 tablets).
Coffee health issues #1
Coffee health issues #2

eBay Acquiring StumbleUpon

2007-04-23T20:33:00.000+10:00

eBay buys out StumbleUpon, a toolbar to rate websites and videos. The purchase was between $40 - $75 million with later confirmations that the payment was between $40 - $45.

With StumbleUpon's large client-base, I hope they acquire more then $75. On another note; StumbleUpon has only ever had one financial investment of $1.5 million. So they have definetely made a good profit!
Read more here.

Hitwise Acquired by Experian for $240 Million

2007-04-23T20:25:00.000+10:00

You have probably noticed Hitwise before for their Top 10 Hitwise Badges like the one below.

They perform web site analysis and user analysis through surveys and internet traffic monitoring. Hitwise are regarded as a high web intelligence company that provideo accurate data and graphs detailing user's internet activities. Well used by large clients like Google, eBay, CBS News, and more.

Hitwise will now gain the experience of Experian and we will all look forward to their new services, analysis methods, and products.

Read more at Techfold.

A huge milestone for APML.

2007-04-22T23:21:00.000+10:00

First off what is APML?

APML will allow users to export and use their own personal Attention Profile in much the same way that OPML allows them to export their reading lists from Feed Readers.

The idea is to boil down all forms of Attention Data – including Browser History, OPML, Attention.XML, Email etc – to a portable file format containing a description of ranked user interests.

Scenarios

* Keep control of your own Attention Profile - it's very valuable (read attentiontrust.org)

* Ask Amazon to export an APML file of your Attention Profile (the same one they use to recommend books to you) so you can move to another bookstore (just like OPML lets you easily switch feed readers).

* Upload your APML file to Digg to get a customized view of Digg stories that match your interests.

* Use your APML to filter incoming alerts (using something like Particls)

* Submit your APML to an Attention Brokerage service to allow synchronized access to your Attention Profile across all APML compatible services. In this way all your sites and services can keep track of your changing interests.

The APML workgroup have just released their Open Source Libraries in C#, allowing anyone to make contributions to the library at Google Code. Being Open Source it will allow anyone to further enhance the product.

APML will allow you to easily move between internet applications/sites and keep a cental file as your attention data profile. So if you search for a particular author on Amazon a lot and export this data to your APML profile then you would notice the next time you visit eBay your automatic search results would be based around this author (and any other characteristics of your APML profile). By the way, Amazon and eBay do not support APML yet, just used for examples.

I have a strong feeling that APML supported services will be appearing very frequentely by the end of this year.

For more information, visit:-

Particls Blog - Announcement: APML Open Source Libraries in C#

APML Website

Why do we think of mobile as separate from the web?

2007-04-18T21:20:00.000+10:00

This came up in the Media 2.0 panel the other day and it’s a fantastic question. When you think of it our phones are and will become just another interface to the web. It’s simply a browser with a smaller screen. It seems so simple yet a lot of us think of mobile as a whole other world.

Olsen's Observations - Web 2.0 Expo Bits

It's interesting that we do find mobile users to be a totally separate industry when really it's just another device. They can access the same way and have very similar Internet experiences. I've always had a personal opinion about the mobile community when it comes to planning projects, one question I always look into "will this benefit the mobile community?"

The mobile community is huge, when it comes to leaving the house, the next most important thing after grabbing your keys is your mobile phone. Mobile phones are also more popular then computers alone, so it's worth looking at making a mobile alternative for your projects (no matter how big or small). Mobile phones are also replacing home lines, as plans are cheaper and easier to obtain - best of all, you have your mobile phone wherever you go.

Being a bit busy.

2007-04-18T20:19:00.000+10:00

Lately, as you may have noticed, I haven't been making many blog posts. A couple of things have happened lately which contribute to my lack of time available to research and post any findings about the IT/Multimedia industry.

To begin with, I have a new job, teaching IT and Multimedia at TAFE. The previous teacher for Multimedia was a bit lazy and had never created any resources (or anything really useful) for the past 5 years that he has had the job. So I'm madly making new assessments up (as the current ones are a bit old) and creating some resources.... Not as easy as I thought, I've had 2-4am nights lately and I'm up at 7am each day so I'm drained of energy by the end of the day.

The TAFE I'm located at is in Hervey Bay (3.5 hours north of Brisbane), and I live in Brisbane. So I have to drive up on Sunday night and go back on Thursday night every week. Luckily I have family in Hervey Bay, so it isn't too bad at all, and I end up driving a lot less even with the job in Brisbane. It used to take 1-1.5 hours to drive to and from work, 5 days a week, so a minimal of 10 hours a week. Now I drive to and from Hervey Bay (7 hours) and 2 minutes to drive to and from work, 4 days a week. So hooray for saving time and money on fuel.

On a good note, my partner (Amanda) and I brought a new house. I wouldn't say that we are 100% settled into this house (even though we've been there for 6 weeks already). We just got our new furniture 2 weeks ago and I've been hands on with jobs around the house and yard ever since we've moved in.

I'm going to dedicate some time this Friday to research and look especially at footage of the Web 2.0 Conference. Drop me a comment or email if you have anything special I've missed whilst I've been busy working.

Where is programming going?

2007-04-13T14:13:00.000+10:00

I was part of a hot discussion by a phone conference today with Griffith University about where programming is going. There were some interesting points to the discussion:-

In the next 5 years, we will see software development change and become easier for anyone to create desktop and web applications.

More development tools will be adopted where users can pull together pre-made features to make their product.

Applications will become more dynamic (where the user can change how the software works and what it does). MyStart is a prime example (with Peepel to follow shortly).

If your software is not a web-based application, it will fail. Desktop software is going to become increasingly irrelevant with the amount of web applications that will be introduced this year.

Software and web applications are going to be created by a single developer. The thought of a large team to create a large software suite will become obsolete. After all, even today we're developing faster and better then ever before.

What has changed with programming from the past?
Already we have seen huge improvements in development, especially when creating user interfaces - today we design the user interface with an IDE rather then write the design script ourselves. This type of enhancement will continue into other areas of software development and make it easier for anyone to create an application.

In the past, you needed a professional to create a web site for you; nowadays any child has the ability to create a web site with tools like Dreamweaver and Frontpage, and some online tools that are used on such sites like MySpace. Very shortly, it is going to be possible for any child to create software or a web application.

However programmers will still have their place, we will enter a new erra of software engineering (more complex applications).

Engineers create 'optical cloaking' design for invisibility.

2007-04-04T22:51:00.000+10:00

Researchers using nanotechnology have taken a step toward creating an "optical cloaking" device that could render objects invisible by guiding light around anything placed inside this "cloak."

At the moment, it is only one wavelength of light, however as quoted before "people didn't wait for colour TVs whilst there were only Black and White." This is a stepping stone to an optical illusion that could improve our species or destroy us by members of society who take advantage of this technology all for the wrong reasons.

However, from previous research and findings I've seen, this research has come a long way. It is just a matter of time before we have the ability to bend light in the full spectrum.

Two positive things I can see about this technology, one for personal safety and two to get a closer encounter with nature (for research and more). However I do see this technology being used for all the wrong reasons, but thankfully we're far from it and my generation probably won't see it.

More details about this report article here.

The latest race for the online application market.

2007-04-04T18:00:00.000+10:00

Online Video Editing

We're just getting over the user contributed video sites such as YouTube and Google Video, now we are going to be hit with the online video editing and some companies have already done the hard work to make online video editing simple and easy.

eyespot

Jumpcut

Motionbox

Photobucket

Cuts

Online Video Comparisons

I'm not going to repeat what another review has given so I'm just going to link you to the post.

Check out Techcrunch's review of "Cuts Launches Amidst Online Video Editor War" here.

WOW!.... Peepel.com announces the Beta launch of it’s Online Office Suite

2007-04-02T19:27:00.000+10:00

An impressive contender has entered the race for the online office suite called Peepel. The applications are far more advanced than any other online office suite I've used and the interface is fast, easy and looks stunning. Best of all, Peepel is Free.

Peepel.com is an Online Office Suite of applications and tools that includes Peepel WebSheet, a powerful online spreadsheet, Peepel WebWriter, an online word processor and Peepel Desktop, a virtual desktop running in a web browser.

Best of all, Peepel's applications work and run client side - straight off your computer. So you are not constantly waiting for formulas to be processed by the server like many other online office suites; which is why I have never had any interest in online office suites until now.

Another feature about Peepel is that they have extended the multiple window desktop model to the web. Users can open as many applications (files) and tools as they wish in multiple, resizable PeepelWindows on the same PeepelDesktop in the one browser window. I also tried running Peepel in a full screen browser, and as my desktop background, and makes the office suite so much better.

I love the idea of the workspace manager, you can save which windows you have open before closing so you can open all of those windows at once the next time you are using Peepel (it will look exactly how you left it). Peepel also has its own task manager, so you can find all of the open windows easy.

Impressively, Peepel is fast! Check out Peepel here.

Disclosure : I used to work for Peepel Technology.