cfyves.com - Technology

Google releases Public DNS

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:33:00 -0300

Google recently announced a new service they're offering... "Google Public DNS".

I'm kind of surprised that it's taken this long for one of the major players in web technologies to have released a service like this. DNS is such a huge part of the internet... and it seems as though I've been reading more and more about DNS poisoning...etc.

Security is always a huge issue and it's but one of the things Google is trying to help address with this project.

Quoted from their website:

The DNS protocol is an important part of the web's infrastructure, serving as the Internet's phone book: every time you visit a website, your computer performs a DNS lookup. Complex pages often require multiple DNS lookups before they start loading, so your computer may be performing hundreds of lookups a day.

This is a service I'll be looking into. I've never used my IPS's DNS servers but I've used a few services that were included with domain purchases.

I'll be giving this a look.

Tesla motors is making money!

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:41:00 -0300

Ever hear of Tesla motors?

They make really sweat electric sports cars. They're out of my price range of course but that's another topic.

Apparently, Tesla motors have had their first profitable month. Although that might not sound great... to have 1 profitable month it still means that maybe their brand of high end electric sports cars are taking off.

CNN Money reported on their profits.

I think they're beautiful cars... and for the sports car lovers out there they seem to boast power. The Roadster gets 0-60 in 3.9 seconds... not bad.

Check out Tesla Motors on their website!

CentOS 5 YUM Repository for Zend Optimizer

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:37:00 -0300

I had the task of installing Zend Optimizer on a client's new VPS and it was proving a bit challenging, not necessarily because I could find any info on Zend Optimizer or anything on the server.... but because my home office internet connection kept crappin' out on me!

When I was getting ready to attempt the install it occured to me to look around to see if I could find a YUM repo. I first became familiar with YUM repositories a few years back while working with a server which used CentOS.

This new VPS that we setup is using CentOS 5 and out of the blue I thought... ."What if I could find a repo for Zend Optimizer"... I thought for sure I wouldn't find one.

But as I looked I found.

This is a short "how-to" explaining how to set it up on the Question-Defense website.

The anti-IE6 movement is getting noticed

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:55:00 -0300

As some of you have experienced working with Internet Explorer 6 can be frustrating. Increasingly harder to support.

There's been a movement towards trying to free the world of Internet Explorer 6. One such website called "IE6 No More" explains in a simple way what the goal of the movement is.

I saw that CNN took notice of the movement and wrote an article about it entitled "Web citizens trying to kill Internet Explorer 6". Great name.

They estimate that there are still 15 to 25 percent of people still using IE6. Still a very large number.

A nice multi-purpose pop up window javascript

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:07:00 -0300

Today I ran a little search and found a nice little script I had never seen before... not like I've seen them all!

It's called GreyBox and I've been playing with it on a project and it's very easy to use.

What's really nice about GreyBox is that you can easily use it to display image galleries but you can also use it to open webpages. Pages on your own site or even external sites.

There are nice easy to follow examples on the website and you can find out more about it by visiting the GreyBox website.

Google Chrome will have support for Themes

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:20:00 -0300

Reading up a bit tonight and saw that Google Chrome will support themes and their preparing to launch a theme directory.

I've been using Chrome since it was released. I don't really use 1 browser exclusively but I generally test stuff in a few different browsers (FireFox, Safari, Opera, IE, Camino to name a few others).

I've never really been a huge fan of themes just because I don't feel the need for it. Widgets on the other hand are something that I find quite useful.

In Firefox for instance there are a few widgets that I find quite handy for debugging a web application or Delicious bookmarks... twitter...etc.

Found and read a short article on the new Google Chrome Themes on TechCrunch.

Huge iPhone problem - Possibly hack every iPhone

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:48:00 -0300

Just found this on Yahoo's website.

It's reported that there is a huge security hole in Apple iPhone and it could result in massive amounts of phones being hacked.

According to the article Collin Mulliner will publicize their findings. Essentially by sending a text message, they were able to take complete control over any smart phone's functionality.

Imagine!

Someone could dial numbers on your phone, visit websites, turning on the camera... and who knows what. I'd say the who knows what is the scary part.

The only defense appears to be turning off the phone.

A warning sign for this hack is receiving a text message with a single square character. They suggest turning your phone off. "Quickly" is the exact quote.

Read the article here:
How to hijack 'every iPhone in the world'

OpenBD 1.1 has been released

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:05:00 -0300

For anyone who uses CFML OpenBD 1.1 was released.

I've used both ColdFusion (Adobe) and BlueDragon (NewAtlanta) in my years of using CFML... for those who don't know, OpenBD in an open sourced release of BlueDragon.

Interesting times if you're using CFML (or thinking of it) because the old argument about cost has been thrown out the door with the open source releases of Railo and OpenBD.

New functionality of note (for me) in this OpenBD 1.1 release is cfvideoplayer, although the recent "tweaking" of OpenBD by Vince Bonfanti to run on Google's cloud is pretty darn neat.

My first Magento experience

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:28:00 -0300

On a fairly recent project I'd been working on a webstore using Magento.

Magento is an open source system using PHP and the Zend Framework.

One thing that we needed in this project was automatic shipping calculation with Canada Post... we found a module that gave that functionality and purchased it.

The installation process seemed pretty straight forward, went through the process and the module was then listed in Magento's configuration.

But the module wasn't working. The author of the module had written a test script which I began using to test with.

This module needed to use port 30000 to connect with the canada post system.. I contacted my technical support with the hosting provider and concluded that the port was open. I then used telnet and got a valid response (from the server).

I had also used another PHP script to connect with the canada post successfully which used stream_socket_client() and had programmed (for my own fun) a small test script in ColdFusion which had successfully connected....

After lot's of lookin' around, reading forum posts on Magento's forums, help from a twitter contact and trying a couple of PHP lists I had nothing. I was suspecting that somehow it was the PHP config or the curl command ... so I spent time looking that up.

After a bit, I was in contact with the module's author who suggested a couple of things. One of these things I had sworn I had tried... but must not of... or made the change in code and hadn't uploaded the file to the server in a tired state of mind....

It was to do with options for the curl command. The original code used was something like this:

// setting the url and port
$url = 'http://sellonline.canadapost.ca:30000';
$port = '30000';
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PORT, $port);

So the suggestion was to add the port directly to the url... and get rid of the curlopt_port... which looked something like this:

// basically this is what is being passed to the URL opt
$url = 'http://sellonline.canadapost.ca:30000';
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
// and comment out the port opt
//curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PORT, $port);

By not using curlopt_port and adding the port to the URL.... it worked beautifully.

I should mention that this was being hosted on CentOS. Not exactly sure why it is that it wouldn't work... but it worked with the little fix.... and since this little fix there has been NO glitch.

Works perfectly!

Thanks to the module's author!

Conficker Worm removal

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:32:00 -0300

Just found this post on removing the conficker worm that is supposed to hit today.

Check it out here:
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/4095/how-to-remove-the-conficker-c-worm/

I haven't seen any computers affected yet.... but the day is still young.

Peace!

SES URLs with Apache and htaccess

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:07:00 -0300

After spending a little bit of time trying to see if I could setup an upcoming site with SES URLs on Apache.... I found out how.

Thank you Google. And... Thank you Simon Whatley.

I managed to find a few things with Google quite rapidly.. .and then I found this gem of a blog post.

To make a long story short (you gotta go read his post).... server was setup... but the only thing missing was the .htaccess file's settings.

So, after I added the following in my .htaccess file it worked flawlessly.

 RewriteEngine On
 RewriteBase /
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
 RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.cfm/$1 [L,QSA]

Obviously this example is form a ColdFusion (or CFM) template... but adapting to PHP is nice and easy.

Pretty neat retro super computer

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 15:35:00 -0300

I found this off of slashdot and somehow felt compelled to post a little "thing" on it.

It's a blog post about an old computer.... pretty neat.

The Non-Von Neumann..

Check it out here:
http://chrisfenton.com/non-von-1/

Retro - Atari touch tablet 1984

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 23:03:00 -0300

Over at technologizer.com have posted an article showing the opening and setting up of an Atari Touch Tablet.... a bit of technological history.

Check it out here!

What are you working on?

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 11:26:00 -0300

The last couple of weeks, after the christmas holidays, I went from finishing a bunch of stuff and getting a little bit "slacker" in terms of how much work I have... to now having work lined up for the next little while.

In the past 2 weeks I've had to upgrade software on a couple of servers... PHP, MySQL.. updates... I got to install and learn about APC for the first time.

I also got to work with Magento for the first time. Magento is an Ecommerce platform. Coded in PHP and using the Zend framework. This has prompted me to try to learn a bit more about PHP. Code it a bit more and I'm gonna learn "how it runs" just a tad more.

I've also got a project where I have to merge 2 existing ColdFusion apps... one using Model-Glue and the other a "home grown" kind of framework. These 2 apps then have to be merged into an existing intranet using another "home grown" framework.... user rights... etc.... should be a bit of a challenge in how it's supposed to work.

Then there's a couple of smaller ColdFusion projects.. which should be pretty straight forward.

And last but not least is something I've been trying to develop for quite some time... which I'm going to upgrade. A re-write. It's a ColdFusion app. The upgrade will use ColdBox or Model-Glue for the administrative section. Most likely keeping it's MySQL 5 DB in the backend.

Possibilities for a couple of things in near future too..... so, I will likely be busy.

Et vous??

Yahoo's new social networking move

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:03:00 -0300

I've always been a fan of Yahoo's web apps..... and not to mention their Developer network...

http://developer.yahoo.com/

Found out from SitePoint (on Twitter) that Yahoo! has just released part of their next "Social Networking" phase....

The "smarter inbox"... and there's also some new web apps released with this...

Can't wait 'till I can try out the beta!

I use Gmail alot, but I also have a yahoo account that I use quite regularly.

Check out the SitePoint article!