Just a quick note today that in creating my "Hide Your Desktop" application, I don't know if I would have gotten through all the PayPal "Instant Payment Notification" (IPN) integration work without great articles like this one from opcoders.com.
While that article is a little terse in spots, it's also very helpful, in particular in guiding you through the maze that is PayPal. So, many thanks to Simon Strandgaard for those PayPal IPN notes.
Wow, I knew I was upset at Facebook for all these recent privacy and security changes, but having given it a few days to settle down, I'll now estimate that my friend's postings on Facebook have dropped 50% over the last week -- and probably more than that.
I haven't asked anyone yet, but I'll assume they have the same concerns about Facebook privacy and security that I do, and they're all going to different ways of communicating (i.e. life before Facebook). To support that assertion, I'll also say that the emails I've received from my friends has also risen over the last week, though I don't think it's quite 50%.
Google Chrome Incognito Window FAQ: What is the Google Chrome browser Incognito window, and how does it work?
Flash cookies FAQ: What do you know about "Flash cookies" (also known as "LSO Cookies", and web browser "Super Cookies")?
With the latest "privacy" announcements from Facebook about how they'll take care of your privacy for you (see my story on my Facebook privacy experience), I decided to start researching the murky waters of "web browser privacy".
Web browser privacy FAQ: What things can I do to improve my internet/web browser privacy and security (especially in regards to "Flash cookies", or "Flash super cookies")?
Continuing my research into internet/web browser privacy, I've already mentioned that I stumbled onto the "Better Privacy" Firefox plugin, but I haven't written much specifically about it. So, here's what I know about web browser privacy and Better Privacy.
Facebook privacy facts: I was thinking about writing an article on the "facts" behind the new Facebook privacy changes, as many people seem rightfully upset by them, but few seem to know the actual Facebook privacy facts.
The best, short article I've found that covers some of the "facts" about the Facebook privacy changes is this article on MacWorld.com. It doesn't cover everything, but it does discuss:
Definition of "oxymoron": Facebook privacy.
Until the Facebook people get their act together (or change their leadership), or until another website/service comes along to compete with what Facebook was offering (before all their privacy screwups), I've decided to go back to the old way of communicating with my friends, and I've deactivated my Facebook account.
Just a quick note today that if you're interested in a source for over 30,000 free eBooks, there's a website named Project Gutenberg that specializes in making "free ebooks to read on your PC, iPhone, Kindle, Sony Reader or other portable device". I keep forgetting about them, and was reminded of them this morning, so I thought I'd share this link here today.
I think some things Amazon has introduced with their Kindle device are very interesting, but at $399 IMHO I think it's over-priced by at least $270, maybe $300-350. The only thing I can figure is that since they're not charging you for network access and bandwidth they need to get a big chunk of money from you at the start. That price is just way too high for me.
Here's something I never knew before: The Mozilla Foundation's revenue exceeded $66M in 2006.
A friend of mine was at a search engine strategies conference last week, and sent me these employment numbers, which are really staggering:
(I think those numbers came from Nicholas Carr, but I'm not positive.)
I would have guessed at numbers much higher than those. Hopefully that makes everyone at YouTube a billionaire, or at least a millionaire.
My Altec Lansing inMotion iM600 product review has been moved here.
I've had an Altec Lansing inMotion iM600 speaker system for almost half a year now, and I'm very pleased with it. It supports older iPods, like the iPod Nano I used to have; the sound quality is very good; and I love that it can run on either AC power (i.e., plugged into an electrical wall socket) or you can disconnect it and run it off the battery for a very long time -- it hasn't died on me yet during normal use.
I'm not going to explain this very much, but here's an Expect script that I wrote to test an FTP server:
I'm currently working on a suite of Java and Ruby applications that, in short, require me to keep a number of Microsoft Windows command/cmd (DOS) windows open at one time. Because of this, I like for each command/DOS window to have a unique, custom name in its title bar.
Fortunately, it's easy to open a DOS command window with a custom name in the title bar. First, just open a DOS window (click Start, then Run..., then enter "cmd"), then type a command like this:
One thing I like about Mac OS X is that it's very easy to minimize an open application window using just the keyboard. Just use the [Apple][M] keystroke when you're focused on a window you want to minimize, and the window shrinks down to the dock. When I work on a Microsoft Windows computer at work this is a feature I really miss.
I was really surprised by the installation process of the Apple iPhone 2.1 software update. From my experience with Apple and Mac OS X, their installation process is usually extremely vague, essentially saying "There's an update for your software, and we recommend that you do this upgrade", and few other details are offered, even if you follow a URL they provide.
I've never bought any DRM protected (digital rights management) music, so although it's a well-known fact among techies, I didn't know until recently that you can burn DRM songs to a standard CD. The implication here is that once you've burned the DRM-protected song to CD, you can then rip it back as an MP3 file, which is the part that blows me away. Not much protection there, other than "security through obscurity".
I downloaded an iPhone app named Trailguru recently, and was hoping to give a review of it, but I had no luck with it this morning. I walked a little more than 2.25 miles, but as this screenshot shows, Trailguru says I walked only 0.38 miles:
Okay, this is one small step for me, and not really any steps for mankind ... I never know how to get help on Windows/DOS commands. I try command line options/switches like -h, -help, --help, /help, and \help, and of course none of them works.
Then somehow today I learned that the magic incantation, er, command line option, is /?, like this:
taskkill /?
Duh.
