Topics

126

Found Deals and Discounts / Vendr.com Beta invite code (good for first 100 people)

« on: June 08, 2010, 08:50 AM »

I was contacted recently by Vendr and asked to review their service on one of my blogs. The particular blog they wanted me to post it on (Snailware), it really doesn't fit with the theme of the blog (it's not desktop software for old computers), so I replied and declined.

They responded to my reply and informed me that the beta code they supplied in the original email, for inclusion in my article to be used by my readers, is still mine to give away to other people in any way I wish.

So, I figured I'd post it here in case anyone is interested in trying out their service.

This invite code is good for the first 100 people that use it to sign up for their closed beta.

MVA750CGY2

For more information on what exactly Vendr is, please refer to this article: http://thenextweb.co...eb-store-beta-codes/

127

Living Room / How The Mainstream Media Stole Our News Story Without Credit

« on: June 03, 2010, 11:51 AM »

You hear so much crying from the mainstream media about bloggers stealing and republishing their content without credit, but you rarely hear about the reverse, where the mainstream media is ripping off bloggers and not giving them proper credit, not disclosing them as the source of their information. But it does happen and probably more often than we know about.

Here is one such case of the mainstream media ripping off a blogger and not giving him the credit he should have had, and in many cases giving someone else the credit, instead.

On Friday, I broke a tasty story about a woman suing Google, claiming bad directions caused her to get hit by a vehicle. Today, I discover our story is everywhere, often with no attribution. Come along and watch how the mainstream media, which often claims bloggers rip it off, does a little stealing of its own.

Woman Follows Google Maps “Walking” Directions, Gets Hit, Sues was the story I posted on Friday afternoon, Pacific Time. I was tipped to the lawsuit by Gary Price of ResourceShelf. Gary hadn’t written about it himself but thought Search Engine Land would be interested in it. He came across it through the regular monitoring of search-related news that he does across a variety of resources (Gary watches many, many things — he’s a research guru extraordinaire). Gary downloaded a copy of the suit via the PACER Service and sent it to me.

No one had written about the case before I put my article up. I know. I checked before publishing. There was nothing out there. So what happened next?

http://daggle.com/ma...ws-story-credit-1906

128

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / NANY 2011 Withdrawn: Something cross-platform

« on: May 13, 2010, 04:22 AM »

I pledge at least one cross-platform application for NANY 2011.

I have been meaning to rewrite a few of my applications to be cross-platform, so that Linux and Mac users can enjoy them, too. This will involve a rewrite, since all that Win API stuff I have in them will have to be done another way, since those other OS's wouldn't be able to handle that stuff the way they currently are written.

I am not sure which of my apps will be the first to be finished, so I am not committing to a statement of that at this time.

There are a few things I am going to need volunteers for, when the time draws closer to the actual release date:

• Someone with a Mac that can handle compiling a Lazarus/freepascal project and testing it. (I don't own a Mac)
• Someone with some mad art skills that can redesign the icon for Instant Boss (if that application will be one of the ones released), retaining its personality, but creating something suitable as a dock icon for Mac. The current icon art is too small and can not be easily made larger and still look good...and we know how fussy the average Mac user can be with regards to this kind of stuff. A great app with an awful icon won't see much use from the average Mac user.

129

Living Room / Giveaway: HP #23 Tri-Color InkJet Print Cartridge (hp c1823d)

« on: May 05, 2010, 01:53 AM »

HP #23 Tri-Color InkJet Print Cartridge (hp c1823d)



New, still in it's factory sealed box. (packaging varies from the pic, but it is the same product inside). Originally purchased for around $40. I don't have the printer any more, so I don't have a use for it. I'd like this to go to someone that owns a printer that can use it.

I am willing to ship it anywhere in the US.

130

General Software Discussion / What free multi-user CMS best matches this description?

« on: April 27, 2010, 03:28 AM »

This is for building a community powered blog-like photo gallery site in which anyone can join and submit content

• User registers on the site, followed by email validation

            user name
            email address
            password
            avatar upload
   

• User fills out a form

            select photo from hard drive
            Give it a title
            fill in caption
            check off TOS agreement box
            submit button
   

• Submission goes into moderation queue

• Multiple moderators can process the queue with approve or reject

            moderators can edit submissions if necessary
   

• Approved entries are posted to main blog-like page, limit 5, with link to see older posts (same style)

• Posts on main page present photo, caption, link to individual post page, credits section containing user name and avatar of uploader linked to profile page

• Post pages contain photo, caption, credits section containing user name and avatar of uploader linked to profile page, embed code, area for members to rate and comment

• sidebar section contains thumbnails & links to 10 latest approved submissions

• Sidebar section contains thumbnails & links to 10 top rated submissions

• Profile pages with list of each user's approved submissions, with thumbnails, titles, and links to post pages

• Award system with badges for best of day, month, year, with badges appearing on post pages and user profiles

• Lots of RSS possibilities, including individual feeds for each user.

131

Living Room / Bit.ly is Harmful to Your Reputation

« on: April 18, 2010, 03:33 PM »

If you tweet links on Twitter, retweet links from other people, or have a website in which someone might tweet a link to it, you are going to want to read this, because this can potentially affect any or all of us and harm our reputations.

It started with me trying to promote DC a little, to a writer on TechCrunch, which lead to a discovery of how Bit.ly blacklists links shortened by other services, adding an interstitial page that calls the target site harmful, malware, a forgery, spam, and phishing.

When the writer retweeted my link I sent to him, DC was flagged as a bad site, just because I choose to use a competing URL shortener and his twitter client automatically shortens all links with bit.ly (whether they need it or not).

I contacted bit.ly about it, attempting to get the flag removed from the DC link, and their response and attitude were quite alarming.

For the full story, read my blog post about the whole thing;

http://cranialsoup.b...your-reputation.html

132

Living Room / Which prize would you choose?

« on: April 15, 2010, 06:54 PM »

Either choice is a free ticket, not only for you, but everyone else involved, too. There are two drawings, and you can only choose to enter one of them. Whichever choice most people make reduces the odds on winning that prize.

I am most interested in the justification behind your choice. Why would you choose the prize you did?

133

Living Room / How I'd Hack Your Weak Passwords

« on: April 01, 2010, 06:14 AM »

Stop whatever you are doing and read this article. Then go fix your password issues. Don't wait till tomorrow or next week, do it now.

   * You probably use the same password for lots of stuff right?
    * Some sites you access such as your Bank or work VPN probably have pretty decent security, so I'm not going to attack them.
    * However, other sites like the Hallmark e-mail greeting cards site, an online forum you frequent, or an e-commerce site you've shopped at might not be as well prepared. So those are the ones I'd work on.
    * So, all we have to do now is unleash Brutus, wwwhack, or THC Hydra on their server with instructions to try say 10,000 (or 100,000 – whatever makes you happy) different usernames and passwords as fast as possible.
    * Once we've got several login+password pairings we can then go back and test them on targeted sites.
    * But wait? How do I know which bank you use and what your login ID is for the sites you frequent? All those cookies are simply stored, unencrypted and nicely named, in your Web browser's cache. (Read this post to remedy that problem.)

And how fast could this be done? Well, that depends on three main things, the length and complexity of your password, the speed of the hacker's computer, and the speed of the hacker's Internet connection.

http://lifehacker.co...-your-weak-passwords

134

Living Room / Yahoo Primary Source of Malware and Doesn’t Care

« on: March 24, 2010, 04:14 AM »

You usually expect to catch an infection of malware from some shady unknown website that you shouldn’t have clicked on, but a study done by Avast! has uncovered something disturbing. Popular advertising networks are now being infiltrated by malware and you don’t even have to do anything special to get infected. You don’t even have to click on anything. According to CNet:
   

Found in ads delivered from those networks was JavaScript code that Avast dubbed “JS:Prontexi,” which Avast researcher Jiri Sejtko said is a Trojan in script form that targets the Windows operating system. It looks for vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader and Acrobat, Java, QuickTime, and Flash and launches fake antivirus warnings, Sejtko said.

    Users don’t need to click on anything to get infected; a computer becomes infected after the ad is loaded by the browser, Avast said

Where will you find these infected ads? On some of the most popular websites like TechCrunch, The New York Times, The Drudge Report, and Whitepages.com. How could such well-known websites get infected with malware? It seems crazy to think about. They’ve got to be screening their websites and code thoroughly, right?

http://www.blackweb2...y-source-of-malware/

135

Found Deals and Discounts / Greenbox LogoMaker: Free

« on: March 23, 2010, 06:01 AM »

Greenbox LogoMaker 3 is normally $29.99, but I found a page on Avanquest's website where you can get the older v2 for free if you register for their mailing list. Additionally, through this mailing list Avanquest will tell you when they have other offers for free software.

http://www.avanquest...om/UK/free-logomaker

I just tried it out and it's a rather nice application for the graphically challenged, much nicer than the Sothink logo maker that is being offered free on GAOTD today.

136

Living Room / Ubisoft DRM servers down; Europeans can't play Assassin's Creed 2

« on: March 08, 2010, 07:11 AM »

We had a feeling this might happen and what do you know? We were right. While the PC port of Assassin's Creed 2 is not yet available here in the US, Ubisoft's SINGLE PLAYER ONLY open world action game is available in Europe. And it looks like Ubisoft's DRM servers, which were supposed to protect against the game being pirated, have instead kept legit consumers from playing the game across the pond.

http://news.bigdownl...lay-assassins-creed/

137

Living Room / This Car Runs on Code

« on: March 06, 2010, 08:20 AM »

The avionics system in the F-22 Raptor, the current U.S. Air Force frontline jet fighter, consists of about 1.7 million lines of software code. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, scheduled to become operational in 2010, will require about 5.7 million lines of code to operate its onboard systems. And Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner, scheduled to be delivered to customers in 2010, requires about 6.5 million lines of software code to operate its avionics and onboard support systems.

These are impressive amounts of software, yet if you bought a premium-class automobile recently, ”it probably contains close to 100 million lines of software code,” says Manfred Broy, a professor of informatics at Technical University, Munich, and a leading expert on software in cars. All that software executes on 70 to 100 microprocessor-based electronic control units (ECUs) networked throughout the body of your car.

Alfred Katzenbach, the director of information technology management at Daimler, has reportedly said that the radio and navigation system in the current S-class Mercedes-Benz requires over 20 million lines of code alone and that the car contains nearly as many ECUs as the new Airbus A380 (excluding the plane’s in-flight entertainment system). Software in cars is only going to grow in both amount and complexity. Late last year, the business research firm Frost & Sullivan estimated that cars will require 200 million to 300 million lines of software code in the near future.

http://spectrum.ieee...s-car-runs-on-code/0

138

Developer's Corner / The programmer as (starving) artist

« on: February 21, 2010, 08:05 AM »

Discussions about code as poetry and how code and art differ from each other are not new, but the growing popularity of free software among both developers and users may make software developers more like artists than they have been in the past in one very important respect: A majority of programmers may end up writing code without getting paid directly for their work. Perhaps, before long, "starving programmer" will be as familiar a phrase as "starving artist" is today.

http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/33035

139

Living Room / What’s Better: Saving the World or Building Another Facebook app?

« on: February 17, 2010, 10:40 PM »

Running on just sugar and caffeine, 32 teams of students worked non-stop for 18 hours to develop applications that they hoped would blow the judges’ socks off. This was at the UC-Berkeley Hackathon, last weekend. Indeed, many teams succeeded in their mission. They built some amazing software: to provide server-side rendering of games, convert website mockups to HTML/CSS, create sophisticated playlists for Youtube videos, and to analyze Twitter streams. One team even built a gaming interface for a neural headset.

There were so many cool tools that the seven judges, who included representatives from Zynga, Facebook, Y-Combinator (and me), had a hard time picking a winner in each category. The exception was the “social good” category. There was only one team worthy of receiving this prize. The team built a system to enable villagers in developing countries to send SMSs to volunteers across the globe who provide emergency medical advice. But the Silicon Valley judges couldn’t see the value of this technology. One commented, “If the villager has a cell-phone, why doesn’t he just call 911? This is really dumb”. (Most of the judges didn’t understand that 911 services don’t exist in most places in the world, and that SMSs have become the internet of the developing world). Instead, the panel awarded the prize to a team that developed a polling technology for university classrooms and for conferences. The rationale for this decision? “Helping universities is a social good.”

This brings me to the point of this post. What if we challenged these students and Silicon Valley to build businesses that do good for the planet and make a healthy profit doing so? Today, the world faces more problems than perhaps at any point in recent history. The economy is on the brink. Greenhouse gases threaten to turn Earth into a giant steam room. Scarce resources such as food, water, and oil have already become international flashpoints as the developing and developed worlds jockey for position to sustain or improve their standards of living. Drug-resistant bacteria threaten us with doomsday plagues. Yet we have the greatest minds and the deepest pool of investment capital in the world focused on building Facebook and Twitter apps.

http://techcrunch.co...nother-facebook-app/

140

Living Room / Boxed PC games market 'gone by 2011'

« on: January 13, 2010, 04:06 PM »

1C’s international publishing director Darryl Still has accused retail of failing to support boxed PC games.

The industry veteran says that by refusing to stock certain games and moving PC titles to the back of the store, retail is forcing publishers to head towards digital distribution. And that PC games software will be sold entirely through digital channels by next year.

“In the PC market at the moment the growth in digital is phenomenal,” said Still.

“If PC games manage to get listed at retail, then they’re rarely getting any exposure because they’re appearing at the back of the store.

“There is still demand, but retail is forcing PC games out. Digital is fantastic, and we’re very pleased with it. But it is not us as the developers and publishers driving products to digital – it is because the options for the PC at retail are so limited.

http://www.mcvuk.com...-market-gone-by-2011

141

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / NANY 2010 Final Release: Startup Bully

« on: January 01, 2010, 01:18 AM »

NANY 2010 Entry Information

Application Name	Startup Bully
Version	1.0.0.2
Short Description	Removes Startup folder shortcuts made by misbehaving applications
Supported OSes	Win-All
Web Page	(page not created yet)
Download Link	http://appsapps.info...ads/StartupBully.exe
System Requirements	Windows (any version) A misbehaving application
Version History	1.0.0.2 Initial release
Author	app103

Description
Every once in awhile you come across an otherwise good application with one single nasty little fault: Every time you run it, it insists on sticking a shortcut file in your Startup folder and has no option to opt out of this behavior. You delete the shortcut and the next time you run the application it comes right back.

I have found plenty of utilities that can handle preventing this sort of behavior when the application tries to add itself to startup through the registry, but none to handle when it is making actual shortcut files in the Startup folder.

Startup Bully will opt out for you by removing this unwanted shortcut each time you run the offending application.

Features

• Launches the application
• Waits a specified length of time
• Deletes the unwanted shortcut and then exits

Planned Features
none at this time



Usage
Installation
Copy StartupBully.exe to a folder somewhere on your hard drive.

Using the Application
Edit the original desktop or quicklaunch shortcut (not the unwanted startup folder one!) to the misbehaving application as follows:

• Right click and select properties.
• In the target box, edit the text as follows: [path to StartupBully.exe] [original target] [text of unwanted shortcut] [seconds to wait]

Example:

• The original target for this particular misbehaving application was "E:\Programs Installed\Friendfeed Notifier\FriendFeed\FriendFeed.exe"
• The path to my StartupBully.exe file is "E:\Programs Installed\Startup Bully\StartupBully.exe"
• The text of the shortcut the misbehaving application keeps making is "FriendFeed"

• I want it to wait 10 seconds after launching before it deletes the unwanted shortcut.

So my desktop or quicklaunch shortcut target will be this:

"E:\Programs Installed\Startup Bully\StartupBully.exe" "E:\Programs Installed\Friendfeed Notifier\FriendFeed\FriendFeed.exe" "FriendFeed" 10

Make sure to use quotes around any paths that contain spaces, quotes around the unwanted shortcut text,  and to leave a space between each parameter.

I would start with 10 seconds to give the misbehaving application a chance to load and create the unwanted shortcut. If that isn't enough time, then adjust it as necessary.

If you want the desktop or quicklaunch shortcut to have the original icon of the misbehaving application, then before you close the properties box, click the "change icon" button, browse to the original exe file of your application, select it and choose the correct icon.

When you are finished, click "Apply" and "OK".


Uninstallation
Delete StartupBully.exe and any shortcuts you made that point to it.

Known Issues
none, I hope

142

Developer's Corner / “Is PayPal good for your microISV business?” A short PayPal horror story

« on: December 20, 2009, 01:55 PM »

I’m running my Mac indie software business for more than 3 years now. For the first 2.5 years all my sales went through Kagi and later I decided to switch to PayPal. The sales were not high, PayPal worked well and all was good.

This year, me and my partner Kosta decided to do some creative marketing for our application, ImageFramer. We decided to partner with several other developers of graphics software for the Mac and to sell all the software together, as a bundle, for 2 weeks. After months of preparations, negotiations and development, finally, MacGraPhoto bundle was launched on Nov 16.

We, at Apparent Software, were responsible for all the execution of the sale and part of it included handling all the money related issues, such as collecting the payments and distributing to other developers their shares. There were 6 other developers in addition to us. We corresponded over email, sent them a Terms and Conditions document and got their agreement to it by email.

We chose PayPal as our payment processor for several reasons but the main were low fees, the fact that we already knew how to integrate it to the sales backend and that it should be easy to pay them and to affiliates. We used our regular PayPal account, which we used for regular sales. We didn’t expect what happened next.

The launch was successful and we were pleased with how the sales progressed in the first days. Three days into the sale I’ve got a phone call from PayPal and the person on the other side asked me about nature of the spike in account activity. I explained that we had a 2 week sale, a special promotion and it looked like the call went fine.

What happened next and what they put these poor developers through can only be described as a complete nightmare. Paypal has since resolved the issue, but what happened to them could happen to anyone.

http://blog.apparent...paypal-horror-story/

143

Living Room / Google Wants to Speed Up the Web: Launches Its Own DNS Service

« on: December 03, 2009, 12:19 PM »

Google just launched the Google Public DNS. Just like OpenDNS, Google Public DNS will allow users to bypass their ISPs Domain Name Servers (DNS). DNS servers are, in many respects, the backbone of the Internet. DNS allows you to type a domain name like www.senate.gov into a browser instead of a machine-readable IP number like http://156.33.195.33/. Google argues that it wants to give consumers an alternative to their ISPs' DNS services in order to make the Internet "faster, safer and more reliable."

According to Google product manager Prem Ramaswami, the company's engineers have been working to improve DNS over the last few months. Instead of performing DNS lookups on an ISP's DNS server, Google will use its data-center and caching infrastructure to resolve these domain names.

After SPDY (an which augments HTTP), this is Google second major project that touches upon the core infrastructure of the Web.

http://www.readwrite...endns_competitor.php

144

Living Room / 74% of the world, Google's Chrome OS is not for you

« on: December 01, 2009, 11:21 AM »

Google made a huge splash when it announced its plans for the Chrome operating system, a web-centric OS where essentially everything is run through a web browser. One great promise of Google’s Chrome OS is the arrival of low-cost, lightweight hardware, since most of the storage and other data handling is done in the cloud. Perhaps that 100-dollar computer will finally become a reality.

But there is a problem. A rather big one. The strength of the Chrome OS, that it makes maximum use of online resources, also limits its potential adoption. To have any real use of the OS you need a decent Internet connection, and that has some significant implications we need to look at.

5 billion without Internet access

Before we even discuss broadband, let us first get one piece of statistic out in the open: 74% of the world population doesn’t have Internet access. At all.

In other words, 5 billion of the world’s 6.8 billion people will have little use for Google’s Chrome OS because they don’t have Internet access.

http://royal.pingdom...e-os-is-not-for-you/

145

Developer's Corner / Anyone really good with ActionScript3 and looking for work?

« on: November 30, 2009, 10:46 PM »

Someone I know is looking for a well versed ActionScript 3 Programmer for a very large project.

I have no other details about the project. If you want to know, you have to talk to him directly.

If you are interested, send me a PM and I'll put you in touch with him.

146

Living Room / Anyone have an xbox they don't want any more?

« on: November 13, 2009, 07:03 AM »

Long time friend and fellow coder, Krishean, who has helped me quite a bit over the years with coding and inspiration, is in a bit of a jam.

For the past 3 years he has been hosting his website on an xbox (original, not 360) and it no longer works.

He is in need of a new (used) one for hosting his website.

If anyone has one in good working order that they do not need any more, that they would be willing to donate, it would be much appreciated.

draconislabs.net has been gone for quite some time and i think i should explain why
for close to three years, if not three years, draconislabs had been running continuously on an xbox (original, not 360)
at the beginning of this past october, the xbox started to overheat, it had reached the end of its lifespan
it was never designed to run for such a long period continuously and finally said no more.
currently, the server is being run out of a virtual machine, but hopefully soon i will have a new server for it.

-http://draconislabs.net/index1.php

147

General Software Discussion / Looking for a difference tool

« on: November 04, 2009, 01:15 PM »

I need a tool, either desktop or online, that can show me the difference between 2 blocks of text.

I just want to be able to paste them both into boxes and click a button, rather than having to create files from them in order to compare.

It can't compare line 1 in box A to line 1 in box B and say they are different and leave it at that. It needs to be able to highlight why they are different.

• Has something been added?
• Has something been removed?
• Has something been moved or rearranged?

And it should color code the highlights so I can know what the deal is. And it can not highlight the whole line. It needs to highlight only the differences within the line or block.

I am looking for comparisons like this:

0989878677656545435798-09-9-09-0886675654543544798987978968756754654
0989878677656545435798-09-9-09-0000075654543544798987978968756754654

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
WXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV

oiuhuyeekggtdfdsfgesfddhhlkjlokuhyhgffgdfgkjnlk
oiuhuyggtdfdsfgesfdboodhhlkjlokuhyhgffgdfgkjnlk

jfchkjsjhsaflk1234jahbflkjhalkjfhalkjfnakj9000kjhdkjghkjdhgkjdhkjfdhjkd
jfchkjs5678jhsaflkjahbflkjhalkjfhalkjfnakjkjhdkjghkjdhgkjd1234hkjfdhjkd

The quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog.
The quick brown dog jumped over the lazy red fox.


So far I haven't found one that can do this with comparing a very long single line string to another, and without me having to make files out of them first.

148

General Software Discussion / Volery Makes Installing Software Incredibly Simple

« on: October 06, 2009, 02:37 PM »

Volery is a cool new service created by two programmers in San Francisco who believe that installing software shouldn’t require work. It’s simple to use and has a large selection of popular freeware and open source applications. Just pick the apps you want to install, download the Volery installer, then walk away and do something fun while it does all the work for you. The service installs the software with default settings and says “no” to any extra crapware (like browser toolbars) the installers might try to sneak in. Volery isn’t even installed on your system, you just use a stand alone executable to begin the install process.

http://www.howtogeek...e-incredibly-simple/

Invite code and link are at end of the article.

149

Living Room / Diagrammr: Create and share diagrams by writing sentences

« on: September 19, 2009, 08:11 AM »

Diagrammr is an interesting web application that will allow you to make auto-generated diagrams by simply typing in sentences. The first word becomes a block, the last word another block, and they are connected in the direction in which they are written, with the middle of your sentence alongside the arrow.

Typing in the same block name again will create a new relationship with that object.

Every diagram has its own unique URL which can be shared. Whoever you share it with can edit it, adding and removing items. This makes it possible for a group to work on the same diagram together, or you can come back later and make edits, yourself. (make sure you save the image to your computer and share just the image, if you don't want anyone editing it.)

http://diagrammr.com/

_{And if you want to see something really scary...}

here's my social flow, yo!

150

Living Room / Happy Programmer Day! 1111 1111

« on: September 13, 2009, 01:45 AM »

Q: When is Programmer Day?
A: Programmer Day is the 256th day of every year, September 13th or the 12th on leap years.

Q:Why the 256th Day of the year?
A: A byte can have 256 possible values, bytes are very important to programmers. Not because they are required for programs to work, but because the payroll system and Krispy Kreme doughnut cash registers require them.

Q: How is Programmer Day celebrated?
A: Anyway you want! Here are some suggestions:

• Speak in code (or pseudocode) all day - Thanks to Sam Pospischil!
• Decorate a tree with zeros and ones to make a binary tree
• Make Happy Programmer Day cards using ASCII art
• Have a contest for the best binary pun / programming joke

Q: Your logo has 1111 1111 that's 255, not 256, right?
A: While 1111 1111 = 255 as a direct conversion, it's the 256th value so it is correct. January 1st is 0000 0000 so if you celebrate Programmer Day on the 255th day you're guilty of an off by one error.

http://programmerday.info