Entries Tagged 'Web/Net' ↓

I recently came across a blog which is really nicely done. JohnnyCoder.com, a blog about C# and the .NET Framework with useful articles for better development.

I was wondering which kind of plugins Johnny is using and what he did to make his blog look like that. He made a public article out of it: The Making of Johnnycoder.com – definitely a nice read for bloggers powered by WordPress.

Cheers
Andreas

Sometimes I’m just registering domains because I think that specific domain name could be worth something. However, I don’t always have an idea for them.

A good advise is to check the domain with different extensions. Let’s say you registered my-domain.de. Now check out my-domain.com, my-domain.net, my-domain.org, etc. and see what they did with that specific domain.

That might help you with building an idea for your domain!

Today, the Swedish Pirate Party launched a new Internet service that lets anybody send and receive files and information over the Internet without fear of being monitored or logged. In technical terms, such a network is called a “darknet”. The service allows people to use an untraceable address in the darknet, where they cannot be personally identified.

“There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet”, says Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate Party. “If the government can check everything each citizen does, nobody can keep the government in check. The right to exchange information in private is fundamental to the democratic society. Without a safe and convenient way of accessing the Internet anonymously, this right is rendered null and void.

File sharing of music, films, and other forms of culture is where the surveillance of Internet addresses has attracted the most attention, largely because the entertainment industry has been so aggressive in suing Internet users for copyright infringement, suing college students and single mothers alike without concern.

“But there are much more fundamental values at stake here than copyright,” Rickard Falkvinge says. “The new technology has brought society to a crossroads. The only way to enforce today’s unbalanced copyright laws is to monitor all private communications over the Internet. Today’s copyright regime cannot coexist with an open society that guarantees the right to private communication.”

“Until we have changed the laws to ensure that citizens’ right to privacy is respected, we have a moral obligation to protect the citizens from the effects of the current routine surveillance,” Falkvinge continues. “This is our technical means to do just that.”

The service is being offered for 5 EUR per month or 50 EUR per year by a company called Relakks. Right now you’re getting a dynamic IP but static IPs are planned.

Sounds like a great opportunity for all you Filesharers out there. I didn’t test the service myself yet but I’m planning to give it a try in the near future.

Here’s the official press release: click

If you’re running in this specific problem you are probably trying to update a pretty large forum. This happens because the post table is too big and the PHP Connection Timeout is being fired.

The browser might just stop loading or showing a blank white page. In some cases this error pops up:

This request takes too long to process, it is timed out by the server. If it should not be timed out, please contact administrator of this web site to increase ‘Connection Timeout’.

..so, whether you increase the Connection Timeout or you manually run the tables by using SSH Access.

If you want to update the big tables manually, here are the queries:

• ALTER TABLE vb3_post ADD COLUMN infraction smallint(5);
• ALTER TABLE vb3_thread ADD COLUMN deletedcount smallint(5);
• ALTER TABLE vb3_post ADD COLUMN reportthreadid int(11);
• ALTER TABLE vb3_thread ADD COLUMN lastpostid int(11);

The post tables took around 48 minutes here, updating 1,6 million rows of postings.

After running those queries, open up upgrade_360b1.php, find Alter Post table OH NO HERE WE GO! — new system will allow a refresh if it dies at least and comment out the following:

	$upgrade->add_field(
	sprintf($upgrade_phrases['upgrade_300b3.php']['altering_x_table'], 'post', 1, 1),
	'post',
	'infraction',
	'smallint',
	FIELD_DEFAULTS
	);

	$upgrade->add_field(
		sprintf($upgrade_phrases['upgrade_300b3.php']['altering_x_table'], 'thread', 1, 1),
		'thread',
		'deletedcount',
		'smallint',
		FIELD_DEFAULTS
	);

	$upgrade->execute();


	$upgrade->add_field(
		sprintf($upgrade_phrases['upgrade_300b3.php']['altering_x_table'], 'post', 1, 1),
		'post',
		'reportthreadid',
		'int',
		FIELD_DEFAULTS
	);

	$upgrade->add_field(
		sprintf($upgrade_phrases['upgrade_300b3.php']['altering_x_table'], 'thread', 1, 1),
		'thread',
		'lastpostid',
		'int',
		FIELD_DEFAULTS
	);

	$upgrade->execute();

Then run it and you should be fine.. hope that helps!

Finally Microsoft is offering a simliar service to Google’s gmail hosted service. You can sign up every kind of domain you own and use the Microsoft Live Mail Interface for it. Although, you need to have the ability to change the DNS records of the domain. One advantage is that you don’t have to wait for an invitation, your account opens up immediately instead of gmail’s hosted service.

I just signed up one of my domains, as soon as my DNS settings are being upgraded I’ll post some experiences with the Live Mail Interface.

Link: http://domains.live.com/

Internet Explorer 7 contains numerous security upgrades. Microsoft plans to recommend that all Windows customers install IE7, but the upgrade will be optional. Automatic Updates will notify users when IE7 is ready to install, displaying a welcome screen with the choices “Install,” “Don’t Install” and “Ask Me Later.”

That’s exactly what I’ve been expecting:

Microsoft announced today that it will release Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) as a “high-priority” security update via Windows XP’s Automatic Updates as soon as the browser package is ready. The release of IE7 is planned for the fourth quarter of this year.

In my opinion that’s the right decision. By spreading IE7 via Automatic Updates almost every usual Windows Customer will use IE7 automatically. That’s good news for all Web Designers or Developers out there because it’s pretty safe to develop for IE7 then. As we all hope, CSS compatibility will be much better with IE7.

I’m looking forward to this `high-priority` security update 😉

The file sharing site The Pirate Bay are set to be making over $25328 a day, with single day advertisements costing 20,000.

The past four months the Swedish company Eastpoint Media have sold ads for The Pirate Bay for an average of 60,000 per month, according to sales manager Luar Busó. The police raid on 31 May resulted in even more visitors to the site and prices for ads went up accordingly.

‘The biggest ads today cost 20,000 and so far we’ve sold four’, says Luar.

Eastpoint sell ads for The Pirate Bay in the Scandinavian market. File sharing is most widespread in Sweden where many people have broadband. But The Pirate Bay runs in twenty five different languages and gets visitors from all corners of the planet.

I expected that Priate Bay probably achieves some nice earnings but I didn’t expect it to be that high. Not bad.

Obviously it does help when starting a new forum! In the past I used to register fake accounts myself on new forums I created and started posting. Nowadays it’s a little bit easier. Most forums run vBulletin, so if you run vBulletin, too, there’s already a pre-built hack for you:

Fake Community Statistics

Here’s an example of what it does:

Total registered members: 5
Added amount: 100
Forumhome now shows instead of 5:
Total registered members: 105

Of course, if a new member registeres it will be 106.

This is helping newly created forums to get off the ground. However, my manual method also included manual posting which is not part of this hack. So you better combine this hack with posting some threads here and there.

I made a custom solution for the Invision Power Board, if you’re interested leave a comment.

Unfortunately there are so many forums in the internet that in most cased you won’t succeed with your forum without pushing it in the first place. Noone will register on a ghost forum, that’s a fact.

I’m planning on releasing a custom written script for an automated posting routine soon. With this script you will be able to feed your forum with postings in a matter of seconds, based on individual topic sources. Check back every now and then to find out when it’s being released.

..have a nice day!

eBay has updated it’s “Safe Payments Policy” to specifically NOT allow Google Checkout.

Here’s the relevent excerpt:

Payment Services not permitted on eBay: AlertPay.com, anypay.com, AuctionChex.com, AuctionPix.com, BillPay.ie, ecount.com, cardserviceinternational.com, CCAvenue, ecount, e-gold, eHotPay.com, ePassporte.com, EuroGiro, FastCash.com, Google Checkout, gcash, GearPay, Goldmoney.com, graphcard.com, greenzap.com, ikobo.com, Liberty Dollars, Moneygram.com, neteller.com, Netpay.com, Nochex.com, paychest.com, payingfast.com, paypay, Postepay, Qchex.com, rupay.com, scripophily.com, sendmoneyorder.com, stamps, Stormpay, wmtransfer.com, xcoin.com.

Now this is something to think about. It seems like eBay doesn’t want to go for a fair fight. Banning Google Checkout from eBay is a step forward in making it a dirty war against Google. It also shows that eBay or specifically PayPal is afraid of Google’s new service.

My opinion: That’s not the right way to go eBay, it will produce more harm than good.

Just installed it and it feels better than the previous beta. I saw many Microsoft employees using the Beta as their Standard Browser already. Testing it out is in my opionion a must for Web Developers, so if you haven’t checked it out yet better go for it! And don’t worry, it can be completly removed from the system and you got your old IE6 back afterwards.

Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) Beta 3 has been designed to make everyday tasks easier, provide dynamic security protection and improve the development platform and manageability. End user improvements include a streamlined interface, tabbed browsing, printing advances, improved search functionality, instant feeds (RSS), dynamic security protection, and more. Visit the Internet Explorer site for more information on IE7 Beta 3.

Download: IE7 Beta3 WinXP SP2

Google finally launched their Payment Service. Many people speculated about the name and now we have an answer: Google Checkout.

Google Checkout helps you increase sales.
And process them for free when you advertise with Google.

That is the first thing you read when you visit the Google Checkout Website.

I wanted to use the new service for my Shopping Systems but one little input field stopped me: Country. For now they only accept Customers and Merchanents from the United States. Too bad. They are planning to expand their service to Europe but until now no date has been announced.

The system is tightly bound to AdWords and features little `Buy Now` Buttons when using AdWords as Merchanent. Here is an Overview:

• Pay with a single Login (like PayPal)
• Financing (like PayPal)
• Costs: 2% of the Transaction + 20 US-Cent (almost like PayPal: 1,9% + 30 US-Cent)
• Deductibles for acquisitions by using AdWords

Let’s see how this evolves..

We all know what spam is, the annoying Viagra E-Mails in our Inbox, the comments stuffed with links or even the SMS Messages on your Handy bugging you to call some Dating Hotline. There are a couple of popular spam forms:

• Spam email = the grandfather of them all
• Spam usenet postings = the grandma of them all
• Spam blogs = splogs
• Spam pings = spings
• Spam referrers = it’s dying… but not yet gone
• Spam blog comments

.. and the newest invention is Spam Trackbacks. Most WordPress Users get a notification and comment about Trackbacks by default. The spammer would post garbarge on his blog about your blog entry and you get a notification because of your blog’s settings. Now you click on the URL to see what the hell he is writing and voila – the Spammer gets his wanted traffic.

Now it’s questionable how effective this is, but it’s pretty annoying for sure. The Volume is increasing by the number of newly created Blogs. As this kind of spam is rising we should consider turning off Trackbacks, sad but true. Another feature exploited to death.

Run by Jon of Super Affiliate Marketing Blog they are doing a few things that the other forums have avoided, including allowing graphical sigs and affiliate links. Right now its Monday morning and there are already 335 members and over 4000 posts.

Will WickedFire be able to compete with other big Boards like Sitepoint, DigitalPoint, WebmasterWorld or v7n? Let’s wait and see.

It’s definitely worth to register there: Wicked Fire

In case you missed those news, everyone is able to download Windows Vista Beta 2 now. The release is reportedly 5384.4, the same release given out at WinHEC 2006, to no ones surprise.

Download:
Windows Vista English DVD 3.12 GB x86 / x64
Windows Vista German DVD 3.12 GB x86 / x64

Enjoy!

Last week Microsoft said Office 2007 will definitely be without PDF Support. Meanwhile there are new plans.

Brian Jones, an Office 2007 Developer, writes in his Blog that Microsoft will offer a free Add-On which enables PDF Support in Office 2007. The Add-On will be downloadable at Microsoft’s Download Center.

Adobe wanted to have a the user pay for PDF Support in Office 2007 but Microsoft didn’t agree in this point.

Adobe should be happy about being featured in Office 2007 and should not think about making money out of such a gift.