SSL Vulnerability November 16, 2009
Posted by cuyler in Web Development.add a comment
Last week, Cisco issued an advisory for a security vulnerability in TLS 3.0. TLS (Transport Layer Security) is the protocol that defines the SSL connections used for encrypted Internet browser sessions — such as those used for shopping and banking transactions. SSL is essential for secure and private communications on the web.
I heard about this man-in-the-middle vulnerability listening to Steve Gibson’s Security Now podcast. Steve plans to go into the details in the upcoming episode. I am not sure that it is time panic, but a fix for the problem is a high priority. According to Computerworld, the attacker must be on your local area network. That means anyone who wants to perform secure transactions should avoid open Wi-Fi hotspots or use a VPN to secure their traffic. Keep your browser updated — fixes are sure to be coming soon.
Find Top Topics with TweetMeme October 12, 2009
Posted by cuyler in Twitter, Web Development, WordPress.1 comment so far
The latest episode of Net@Night interviews Nick Halstead of TweetMeme. TweetMeme is a service that examines all Twitter posts and categorizes them. It crawls through links and determines which articles are getting the most mentions. This helps find the stories getting the most attention at any given time. This is a little different than Twitter’s trending topics, because TweetMeme does not just look at the content of the tweets, but also at the content of the links inside the tweet. Go to TweetMeme and try it.
Web pages can include a TweetMeme button that shows a popularity count and makes it simple for readers to Twitter about the site. Currently the button cannot be used WordPress.com blogs, but TweetMeme is trying to garner support.
TweetMeme also offers a paid Twitter Analytics service that gives website owners detailed reports on how their content spreads through Twitter. In this video, Nick Halstead demos its features:
Drupal Gardens October 1, 2009
Posted by cuyler in Drupal.add a comment
The most recent episode of the Drupal Voices podcast interviews Acquia marketing director Bryan House. He discusses Acquia’s upcoming web service Drupal Gardens. The idea is to make it easy to get a web site started using Drupal, just as WordPress.com lets you get started using WordPress.
Drupal Gardens makes it possible to design a Drupal 7 site right within the browser and allows customization with the built-in theme builder. Once a site is developed it can be exported to allow transfer to another web host (or the web hosting service available through Acquia).
Drupal Gardens is currently in pre-alpha. Acquia expects to make it available as a beta service by January and will be finalized when Drupal 7 is released early next year.
For more information, see Dries Buytaert’s blog and watch the 11 minute preview.
Tweet Analysis with Twitalytic August 24, 2009
Posted by cuyler in Twitter, Web Development.1 comment so far
In the latest episode of the This Week in Google podcast, Lifehacker Gina Trapani discusses Twitalytic, her web server program that archives Twitter posts. It retrieves all the tweets from you, your followers and the followers of your followers storing them in a database on your server.
Besides archiving the tweets, it performs some analysis and shows different views of the data. It performs statistics on replies to your tweets and tracks conversations. It also tells you which followers are the most responsive and which followers share friends with you.
Like Gina, I want to be able to go back and review what I post and when I said it. I didn’t see any obvious way to archive my tweets, so earlier this year I wrote a simple Python program to save my Twitter stream. Gina’s Twitalytic service archives more and incorporates the information into a website. This gives it the potential to become a powerful web communication tool and aid for crowd-sourcing. – Twitalyic
Google’s Chrome Operating System July 13, 2009
Posted by cuyler in Google, Web Development.add a comment
Last Tuesday, Google announced its Chrome operating system. It will support Intel and Arm processors and should be available on some netbooks in 2010.
Google only announced the project and did not disclose too many details. The stated goal is to create an efficient, secure, browser-centric environment for netbooks and desktop machines. The Chrome OS is based on Linux and will be open sourced later this year. Although the kernel is Linux, the user interface is being written from the ground up. It presumably boots directly into the Chrome browser and will mostly run cloud-based applications.
Many are saying the Chrome OS targets Windows and Mac OS X, but I have my doubts. People tend to stay with the environment that’s familiar to them. A case in point: Linux still only has a 1% market share of operating systems on desktops.
What is unclear is how this is going to effect the adoption of Google’s Android, which also targets netbooks and smartbooks in addition to mobile devices. Ars Technica suggests that Google’s real goal may be to change the public perception of on-line computing.
But if the Chrome OS is an attack on Microsoft, Microsoft answered today with the announcement of a free web-based version of Office 2010 that competes with Google Docs.
Update»
Paul Thurrott made an excellent point on Windows Weekly that even if Google never releases the Chrome OS, this is a historic announcement. It signals that the world of operating systems is changing directions and Microsoft must respond in one way or another.
Alert!»
TechCrunch reports that Google Chrome may be introduced next week (the third week of November, 2009).
Do We Really Need Flash? July 6, 2009
Posted by cuyler in Web Development.add a comment
I look forward to the day when we no longer need to add plug-ins to watch video over the web. I used to think that Adobe Flash was cool because it made the web more interactive. But the trouble is, it is a proprietary standard that depends on one company for its support. The Internet is built on free standards and should not rely on any single entity to function.
Firefox 3.5 now includes support for HTML 5 which lets surfers listen to audio or watch video without the aid of a third-party plug-in. If HTML 5 becomes widely adopted, it has the potential to eliminate the need for proprietary add-ons such as Flash or Microsoft’s Silverlight.
Unfortunately, Firefox only supports the open-source Ogg Theora codec for video. This has forced the W3C standards committee to drop requirements for specific codecs. This is a bit of a setback, but I still hope Apple, Microsoft and Oracle eventually make moves toward more open standards. Google has pledged its support, so the other may have to fall in line.
Beyond Viewing Page Source November 7, 2007
Posted by cuyler in Web Development.add a comment
If you are the type of person that likes to see how web pages are constructed, here are a couple of great Firefox add-ons.
The first is Chris Pederick‘s Web Developer toolbar/menu. It has a great set of tools that let you examine web page source and style sheets. It makes it easy to display and edit all aspects of a web page. It also has handy tools like a ruler and magnifier. The Small Screen Rendering tool provides a quicker way of seeing how a page will appear on a cell phone. There are so many useful features, there is no point in trying to review them all here, if you have any interest in this sort of tool you should just go ahead, download it and start playing with it yourself.
And another cool tool is Joe Hewlett’s Firebug add-on. Once installed, you can bring up the Firebug window by pressing the F12 function key. It has a terrific inspector that jumps directly to the HTML and CSS code for whatever web page element the cursor is hovering over. If you bring the mouse down to the source window, Firebug highlights the corresponding section in the rendered source page. If you hover the mouse over the URL of an image, Firebug shows a thumbnail as a tooltip. And it is easy to tweak any attribute or style simply by clicking on an item and hitting the arrow keys. It also has profiling features, which I haven’t had a chance to try yet, but are nicely documented by Firebug’s online videos.
Both Firebug and the Web Developer tools are “must haves” if you are doing any kind of web development. They are easy to download into Firefox with the above links. They require the Firefox browser, which can be downloaded from here.
One of out three people are now using Firefox to surf the web. It is worth switching to Firefox just for all of the add-ons that are available. But if you are a die-hard fan of another browser, you can still try out the Firebug Lite JavaScript. In addition, I am sure the JavaScript version is a great help for getting a page to look right across all browsers.
Blogging with .NET April 11, 2006
Posted by cuyler in Web Development.2 comments
One of my co-workers is interested in developing a web site that covers .NET programming. So I promised I would look into open-source Content Management Systems that use Windows and ASP.NET.
After a brief investigation, I discovered these links summarizing some of the available packages:
- OngETC.com has a list of CMS’s that use ASP
- CSharp-Source.Net has a list of open source CMS’s written in C#
Some of the more popular packages are DotNetNuke, Rainbow, mojoPortal, Umbraco and OpenWiki.
Without delving into the details, I cannot compare the packages. But it is perhaps noteworthy that you can purchase Professional DotNetNuke ASP.NET Portals or read PACKT Publishing’s online book, Building Websites with VB.NET and DotNetNuke 3.0. Searching Amazon for “DotNetNuke”, you can find 3 more titles that are coming out later this year (covering DNN version 4.0). I noticed one of the authors has a DotNetNuke discussion on his blog. The DotNetNuke site also has a nice guided tour.
Microsoft .NET is a powerful system that allows a designer to use almost any modern programming language. Typically you would use Microsoft SQL Server as the database and IIS as the web server. Although this provides a powerful development package, you are pretty much forced to use Windows to host your web site. During my brief investigation I came across DotNetPark which offers a plan for $7 a month.
Joomla! March 26, 2006
Posted by cuyler in WordPress.1 comment so far
I’ve looked into another CMS alternative called “Joomla!“. Joomla, like Drupal and WordPress is PHP-based and open-source.
Joomla is a new offshoot of yet another CMS called Mambo. Mambo originally was a commercial product, but then went to open-source. Apparently the folks at the original company felt the Mambo development was going in the wrong direction and in an attempt to get the project under control infuriated their developer team. The old Mambo developers left and formed the new version of Mambo known as Joomla.
After playing with Joomla on OpenSourceCMS, I was very impressed with the slick management interface. It’s an important consideration because I want non-technical people to feel comfortable about updating the site content. But after reading some comparisons to Drupal, my impression is that Drupal may not look as pretty, but it has more flexibility.
Web Software Demos March 19, 2006
Posted by cuyler in Web Development.add a comment
I discovered a great site, opensourceCMS that lets you play with the various CMS software packages. You can log on as administrator and play with all the features and options. The sites are restored to their original conditions every two hours.
This is just what I needed: sample installations so I can review all the available options. What a timesaver being able to go to one place with all of them setup and ready to go. Many thanks to the opensourceCMS developers.
