SSL Certificate Generator, SSL Certificate, Self Signed Certificate, Test Certificate:

The Xenos Certificate Generator will create SSL certificates you can use for testing secure applications and web sites.

These certificates should not be used in a production environemnt because they are not signed by a trusted certificate authority.

The Xenos Certificate Generator can create self-signed certificates as well as ones signed with the certificate you specify.

Requires Windows 2000/XP/2003.

What a great tool.

Authorities Shut Down Major Spam Ring - NYTimes.com:

“This will send some real shock waves through the spamming industry, but even if these guys were running a substantial botnet of compromised computers, there are always spammers looking to take their place,” said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos, a spam-fighting security firm. “It wouldn’t be a surprise if people don’t notice any difference in their in-box tomorrow morning.”

My GMail spam folder now holds about 1/4 the spam I had become accustomed to. The only reason I even read this story is when I remarked on that fact, and was tipped off by mexijew and sspenguin on Twitter.

Official Google Reader Blog: Is Your Web Truly World-Wide?:

Believe it or not, the web truly is world-wide. That means there is a lot of interesting content out there in languages other than your own. You might have missed out on this content in the past, but now, with automatic translation in Reader, you don't have to miss a thing!

Next time you find an interesting feed in another language, just subscribe to it as normal in Reader. When you view the feed in Reader, check off "Translate into my language" in the feed settings, and (voila!) the feed will be immediately translated for you. Also, this setting will be saved so you can always view this feed in your own language.

Now I can get the gist of my wife's blogs, mostly written in Bahasa Indonesia which I'm still a neophyte in. I probably already know what they say, since we do live together and all, however regardless of that, thank you Google, bawk bawk!

And thus we need someone to keep track of our online life. I've already got a Plaxo Pulse (due to me using Plaxo) and it aggregates feeds and crap to one place. I'm not very impressed and wish they would go back to what I signed up for, a service that syncs Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks across every mail system, mobile platform, and what-have-you. It is clear, however, that we all have friends who use this service or that, and you end up subscribing to dozens of these social or services sites to keep track of everyone. I have profiles on dozens of social, blogging, photo, etc. sites just to try and keep up with everyone I know, and some I haven't seen in a long time, but updating my status or avatar on a dozen sites is a pain. Seems like other people have the same issue, because in just a few minutes I found all of these works in progress:

• Yahoo Mash
• Orgoo
• Combo.com
• Social Thing
• ImInta
• Google SocialStream Project (not in beta yet...)
  

And those are all just the ones in invitation-only beta, who knows what is under the wraps elsewhere?

Mash:

Mash is currently an invitation-only beta service. The odds are good that one of your friends is in here already. Hit them up for an invite! Already Mashing? Sign in.

If so, send me an invite! Danke.

A cool website for you to check out: The Awesome Highlighter. Highlight a portion of a website and send a new URL to your friends or colleagues with the highlighted portion. How cool is that?

In Rockville I had the fastest connection Comcast would sell me, and in Bethesda I now have the fastest connection Verizon (FiOS) will sell me. I am going to say that Fiber allows for more speed than Cable, though this is clearly not scientific in any way...

Results provided by ZD Net Australia.

FusionDebug 2.0.1 is the latest release of one of the most anticipated and essential add-on's for ColdFusion™. FusionDebug 2.0.1 sets new debugging standards in terms of performance, ease of use and integration for todays CF developer.

[ FusionDebug - ColdFusion Debugger | Home ]

Anyone still using ColdFusion? We're thinking about sticking with it and upgrading to ColdFusion 8. My biggest concern is the IDE, I just love VisualStudio and now I'm spoiled.

Thanks Scot, your IM compelled me to visit spock.com:

And therefore social spam a dozen other people...

Since I am under the impression that I have tons of free time, I'm starting a second blog:

Welcome to my blog about being Muslim and having a mobile life (or at least craving your resources wherever you go). Ever since accepting Islam some 13 or so years ago I have tried to figure out how to get my resources to go with me. I want to know the prayer times, hear the Athan, read my Qur'an, and so on. Finally today I decided if no one else was going to publish a guide, I might as well step up and do it.

[ Muslim To Go ]

Crazy, eh? Perhaps crazy to think I have the time, but I don't know too many people who are as obsessed with mobile devices as I am, and even fewer who are Muslim. And since I've had multiple people ask me how I got my phone to do the call to prayer, and now I'm obsessing over the Amazon.com Kindle device (and how great it would be to have a portable library including religious texts) I might as well blog about it and share the wealth. So if you know a Muslim who is always staring at his/her gadgets and asking "why can't this do more for me", send them my way...

Vimperator is a free browser add-on for Firefox, which makes it look and behave like the Vim text editor. It has similar key bindings, and you could call it a modal web browser, as key bindings differ according to which mode you are in.

[ Vimperator :: Firefox Add-ons ]

But I do love vim. I may just have to switch to FireFox as my default browser...

Props to Nick.

I can't figure out what Twitter is really for. I get the impression that it's where blog meets IM, but I'm still not seeing how the interface is going to get me to Twit ever. However, if you are on this thing, add me and maybe they'll tell me and then I can Twit with you or something. Perhaps I finally know what it feels like to be old...

Moving to the Washington, D.C., area, or just interested in different Washington, Maryland and Virginia communities? Try Local Explorer.

[ Crime, Home Sales and Schools in DC, Maryland and Virginia - Local Explorer (washingtonpost.com) ]

Every time I've moved this information would have been handy. Now that my 5 year plan includes home ownership, the recent home prices is information I've been looking for. All round a good job, thanks Washington Post!

Props to R&R

Yahoo! 360 - Kearns's Profile

I think I have profiles on 1/2 a dozen social sites, Friendster, Orkut, Mutiply, who-know-what-else-that-I-forgot-about. Yaty's got even more. Kinda stupid if you need to belong to a dozen, but I have a warm spot in my heart for Yahoo! since I wouldn't have met my wife without them, so I filled out a profile and spammed invited some IM contacts to "join me in the tempest" or what have you.

Can I pay to keep more of my photos on Flickr?

Absolutely! Upgrade to a Pro Account for just US$24.95 a year. Here's what you'll get with a Pro Account:

• Unlimited uploads (10MB per photo)
• Unlimited storage
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Unlimited photosets
• Permanent archiving of high-resolution original images
• The ability to replace a photo
• Ad-free browsing and sharing

Compare that to what you get with a Free Account:

• 100 MB monthly upload limit (5MB per photo)
• 3 photosets
• Photostream views limited to the 200 most recent images
• Only smaller (resized) images accessible (though the originals saved in case you upgrade later)

[ Flickr: Help: Free Accounts, Upgrading and Gifts ]

This site used to have a gallery, but those photos only just made it up on my flickr. They are pics of my daughter so I restricted it to family and friends, so if you are family or friend but a lurker, it's time to tell me your flickr info so I can add you as family or friend.

I live on the Internets, many of my friends do as well. Some of my friends and family don't. And sometimes I brings things back from the Internets and have to explain them to the people in meatspace.

Exhibit A

How do I explain this one? I ordered a lovely onesie with the baby "Trogdor the Burninator" on it for my future baby (to arrive in early Febuary), but I'm certain I will get questioned about what on earth this is. I think I can explain it here to those who visit the Internets, but don't necessarily live here, or live here but haven't yet experienced some of the odder corners of cyberworld.

Clearly you can find the Wikipedia and look up the entry on Trogdor, but let me sum it up for you:

1. The US government wants to make sure that it can wage war even after a nuclear strike, so they invent the first of many Internets called ARPANET.
2. Some brainy scientific types in Swizertucky who do the Nuclear thing wanted to read each others papers
3. A guy or two in Chicago decided that pictures were nicer than just words
4. Macrodobe used to be more than one company, and one of them decided that we needed their interactive CD product on the Internets, but it was big so they acquired another company and it became Flash
5. Flash is kinda dumb for most everything except Homestar Runner
6. The Homestar Runner is kinda dumb, but his friend/nemisis Strongbad is clever
7. Did I say clever? Perhaps I meant he's kinda Jaka Sembung
8. But funny (funny peculiar that is)
9. He likes to doodle, and doodle, and doodle
10. Geeks like his doodles and go way too far
11. I'm a geek
12. I bought a onesie

And now you are caught up on how it all happened, and what I've gotten myself into.

Oh, and HSR has a wiki dedicated to it (the HSR that is).

The right thumb doesn't know what the right index finger is doing, much left the left hand.

Witness my frustration with bulleted lists on webpages. A bulleted list on a web page should be done with a <UL> and a bunch of <LI>'s like so:

<UL>
<LI>List Item A</LI>
<LI>List Item B</LI>
<LI>List Item C</LI>
</UL>

Which should look like this:

• List Item A
• List Item B
• List Item C

However many people use Microsoft's Word product to create their copy, and then just copy and paste into a WYSIWYG jobby and post it. The Word team doesn't like the <UL> tag, or it just doesn't suit their needs or some such nonsense. So what they create for a list looks more like this:

<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol">·        </span><!--[endif]--> List Item A</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol">·        </span><!--[endif]--> List Item A</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol">·        </span><!--[endif]--> List Item A</p>

What's that? Conditional comments? Microsoft invented those, right? So they'll work flawlessly with my Microsoft products, right? Check again. MS explains 3 types of conditional comments:

Comment Type	Syntax or Possible Value
standard HTML comment	<!-- Comment content -->
downlevel-hidden	<!--[if expression]> HTML <![endif]-->
downlevel-revealed	<![if expression]> HTML <![endif]>

Wait, the conditional comments that were created above don't match any of the MS recommendations, but I'm sure that's an oversight on the part of the specification writers, and none of Microsoft's' programs will choke, right?

Wrong.

I created a bit of test HTML:

<P><!--[if !supportLists]-->&middot; <!--[endif]--> List Item "wrong"</P>
<P><!--[if !supportLists]>&middot; <![endif]--> List Item "downlevel-hidden"</P>
<P><![if !supportLists]>&middot; <![endif]> List Item "downlevel-revealed"</P>

This should work flawlessly in all Microsoft products, and might cause a hiccup in a non-Microsoft product would be anyone's best guess, I suppose. Let's test it:

IE 6:

IE 7:

FF 1.5:

FF 2:

Feel free to use my simple test page to see how your browser stacks up.

Now for the whole truth, the IE HTML that is above wasn't created by me, that's because my Word doesn't seem to write HTML like that. I'm guessing that it is a previous version of Word that is writing the "bad" comments, but I'm still going to fault Microsoft. Why is this particularly irritating to me? Some people use Word to author their emails, and now that I have IE7 installed, that's the engine that my Outlook uses to render HTML emails. Therefore anyone with some certain installation of Microsoft products on their Microsoft OS will always show the stupid "should always be hidden" comments in my Microsoft products on my Microsoft OS, and there is nobody outside Microsoft that can be to blame.

Will this stop me from using Microsoft products, or get on the great anti-Microsoft bandwagon? Nope. But it won't help to convince me that Microsoft is the end-all be-all either. I'm still stuck happily in between the two camps where I can happily complain about both sides.

Nifty. I'll wait for the report before I sign up, though.

[ KooshMoose : Kaboodle for Christmas ]

OK, perhaps it wasn't a lie, but a gross underestimation of how I'd be sucked in. I've signed up for the Kaboodle, ported my amazon.com wish list, and added it to my navigation on the left, as well as farther down I put their little badge thing. So far it's pretty cool.

The Dump method is based on one of the tags available in Coldfusion ( <cfdump> ) providing the ability to display simple and complex variables in a user friendly way that is perfect for debugging/inspecting data. There is no way to do this with javascript and often I had wanted a method to do this. This method will do just that allowing for an infinite amount of data nesting complete with color coding for different data types, the ability to show/hide the data's type (String/Number/Boolean/Object/Array/Function), expandable and collapsible tables/keys and cross browser support.

[ Javascript Struct : Net Grow Web Design Sydney, Australia ]

I gotta say, CFDUMP is a hot tag, and this is a hot extension of that idea for javascript.

Brought to my attention by MetalUnderground's webmastermind, deathbringer.

I want to know why my phone is making a noise, and I want it to be different than everyone elses. That way I don't have to look to know what happened and that it is my phone for sure. If only there was a free internet archive of sounds. But wait...

The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. Freesound focusses only on sound, not songs. This is what sets freesound apart from other splendid libraries like ccMixter. New to this site? Read the What is Freesound page to learn more!

[ freesound :: home page ]

At Doceus, our Solutions Architects design and deliver solutions for small to midsize businesses, associations, and non-profit organizations. Duties include writing technical specifications and developing web based applications, and maintaining said applications, over their life cycle, for our clients.

Our Solutions Architects are a key part of the Doceus professional services team and are expected to provide an exceptional level of customer service, and assist in strengthening our development and service delivery processes and practices. As a member of Doceus' professional services team Solutions Architects are often required to liaise with clients, so strong written, oral communications and analytical skills are essential.

[ doceus :: accelerate success ]

And we're a telecommuting operation, so you must:

... have access to a broadband connection, have a home telephone and the ability to travel into Washignton DC or Rockville, MD for team meetings. Doceus will consider candidates outside of the Washington DC region if the candidate has access to a major metro airport.

[ Apply Online ]

So if you've been itching to work with me, now's the time...

IE 5.x is ancient history now. If you are still using any IE5.x, even on a Mac, it's time to upgrade. Upgrade to IE7:

Today we released Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP. I encourage everyone to download the final version from http://www.microsoft.com/ie.

[ IEBlog : Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP Available Now ]

Of course if you aren't on XP yet, then you should be upgrading your OS as well. What have you been waiting for. If you are on a Mac and still using IE, time to get a real browser (unless you are on OS9, then time to toss your Mac and buy a new one). Don't like IE? Cross grade then, but please stop using IE5.x. Prefer IE6? You're crazy.

If, like me, you make the websites for a living, it is time to stop ignoring IE7. People will start using it. If your autosense code doesn't account for IE 7 (like the CVS website didn't until a few weeks ago), please update it. If your CSS layout is all wacked out on IE 7, well they aren't going to change it anymore, just learn the new tweaks, and forget what IE5.x needed and lets all move along.

The purpose of this list is this: given the name of a character set, find out a little bit about it.

[ Character Set List ]

Sure this guide won't tell you why [CTRL]+g is the character [BEL] in ASCII and on some machines will make a beeping noise if you echo or print it to a command window, but this is a great place to start when trying to understand why "text" isn't a good enough description for the file that you are trying to read, or why your "smart quotes" don't look correct in a web browser on another OS.

These guys:  are some sort of Hallmark creation called Hoops and Yoyo.

Haven't a clue what they are, or what their purpose is, but I find them rather addicting.

Props to Karen for introducing me via their cries for coffee in this e-card:

Personally I don't think so. Master Pages are very similar to the system I had devised in ASP.NET 1.1, but with the added benefit of integrating nicely into VisualStudio and ASP.NET. I find them very easy to understand and straight-forward. However it is nice to have a good page that explains them.

A professional web site will have a standardized look across all pages. For example, one popular layout type places a navigation menu on the left side of the page, a copyright on the bottom, and content in the middle. It can be difficult to maintain a standard look if you must always put the common pieces in place with every web form you build. In ASP.NET 2.0, master pages will make the job easier.

[ Master Pages In ASP.NET 2.0 ]

Master pages are seriously flexible too. The only bug I've found so far is that not all HREF or SRC attributes of controls that are "runat=server" will allow you to use ~ to home them, so far I've found that the <link> tag requires you to leave off the ~/ to do the same thing. Rather odd, but it is what it is.

Example:
:args *.[ch]
:argdo %s/\<my_foo\>/My_Foo/ge | update
This changes the word "my_foo" to "My_Foo" in all *.c and *.h files.  The "e"
flag is used for the ":substitute" command to avoid an error for files where
"my_foo" isn't used.  ":update" writes the file only if changes were made.

[ Vim documentation: editing ]

This one item is the timesaver that is my "killer app" for using vim above all other editors. If you combine this with searching in windows for all *.html files (or some such) and then right-click and "edit in single vim" you can set up the args to be all the files in a webroot or somesuch. Perhaps for changing links everywhere.

Get downloads for Internet Explorer 7, including recommended updates as they become available. To download Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3 in the language of your choice, please visit the Internet Explorer 7 worldwide page.

[ Internet Explorer 7: downloads ]

It seems to dislike the Google Toolbar, or the IE Developer's Toolbar, or both.

Apparently there is a lot that I don't know about gateways for clearing credit card transactions. I was under the impression that there were only 2 real players in the space, Verisign and another which I could never remember. Apparently I was off by a few, and apparently John Conde is willing to share his notes with me:

I've researched some of the more popular gateways; I'll break down their features, costs, strengths and weaknesses...

Some of these gateways offer different features -- charge different prices -- depending on which method of integration you choose to use. I've listed each of these offerings separately, classifying each as its own, unique product for the sake of easier comparison.

[  eCommerce ]

If only I wasn't under a deadline, I'd have time to absorb this. Perhaps if I blogmark it, I'll remember to return and read the whole thing.

Wikipedia is the greatest frickfracker that a squankus could hope for:

A placeholder name is used to refer to an object whose name is either irrelevant or unknown in the context which it is being discussed. These placeholders typically function grammatically as nouns—and can be used for people (e.g. John Doe), objects (e.g. Widget), or places (e.g. Timbuktu). They share a property with pronouns because their referents must be supplied by context.

[ Placeholder name - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ]

I expect that Billy would recommend it, but I recommend setting aside enough time to really explore the janke.

A picture's worth a thousand words
With contact pictures in Gmail, you can pick ones for yourself, see which ones your friends have chosen, and set certain pictures to show up for specific people in your Gmail account. Best of all, you can even send picture suggestions to your friends. Learn more

We're in the process of rolling this feature out to all users, so keep an eye out for it in your account!

        

[ About Gmail ]

I concocted a scheme where I would subscribe to flickr feeds with enclosures and use the folders that it creates to seed the Microsoft Power Toy Wallpaper Changer with those photos for a fun, constantly changing wallpaper. Clearly I spent too much time thinking about it, and not enough time searching for someone else's application that already does this for me:

John's Background Switcher periodically changes the background image on your computer (like every hour or every day).

[ John's Adventures: John's Background Switcher ]

Integrated right in the application is:

You can use Flickr (almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world) - you can choose to select pictures by person, tags, sets or just plain random and there are a host of options to narrow down the pictures and increase the quality of those chosen. You never know what you're going to get next!

I recommend the Flickr Group Domokun Lovers.

CIO Magazine reports that A9 and Amazon are switching from Google to Microsoft for their search. Bet it is less than cheap for them... That reminds me, A9 had that map with the photos thing, and when it launched there was no Washington, DC. I expect that because my office is 2-3 blocks from the Whitehouse that they wouldn't want to photo it anyway. Guess again:

Creepy, eh?

Oddly enough there are still no photos that I can find of the Whitehouse, or an odd "pentagon shaped" area just across the river...

I still can't really determine the usefullness of this site. Things change rapidly in the city, and these photos don't even show the building that went up next to my office, yet people moved in months ago.

Wrote a nifty piece of DHTML that does a gallery pop-up in a DHTML div instead of a separate window. I'm sure I saw this in some on-line gallery, and it seems like a great way to do things, now that pop-ups are practically verboten. Nifty, that is, until I pulled it up in IE6. I haven't done a ton of DHTML in years, and clearly I forgot what a pain cross-browser issues are. Until I had to determine the size of the browser:

There are some constants available that give the document area of the window that is available for writing to. These will not be available until after the document has loaded and the method used for referencing them is browser specific. ... This is a little messy because the clientHeight/Width properties can mean different things in different browsers, and even different things in the same browser, depending on whether the document type declaration triggers the browser's strict mode or quirks mode.

[ JavaScript tutorial - Window size and scrolling ]

Ugh. Worst of all, I don't even want to do this from JavaScript, but from CSS. Since Microsoft has been kind enough to provide CSS expressions, I came up with this super-kludge for making the div full size under (what I believe should be) all circumstances:

#id {
    width: 99%;
    height: 99%;
    _width: expression((typeof( window.innerWidth ) == 'number'?window.innerWidth:(document.documentElement && ( document.documentElement.clientWidth || document.documentElement.clientHeight)?document.documentElement.clientWidth:(document.body && ( document.body.clientWidth || document.body.clientHeight ) ?document.body.clientWidth:"100%"))));
    _height: expression((typeof( window.innerHeight ) == 'number'?window.innerHeight:(document.documentElement && ( document.documentElement.clientHeight || document.documentElement.clientHeight)?document.documentElement.clientHeight:(document.body && ( document.body.clientHeight || document.body.clientHeight ) ?document.body.clientHeight:"100%"))));
}

I think this is likely super-over-kill, but it does work. Oh, and why 99%? 100% will pull up scroll bars on the size and bottom in some browsers (IE7b2 for sure...). And why _width? IE6 ignores the _ and treats _width as width (most "real" browsers ignore these rules). And why is the id "id"? It isn't really, but why use my real code without alteration first?

Welcome to the Complete CSS Guide, a reference to every aspect of cascading style sheets. If you need help learning CSS or if you're looking for info about selectors, properties and all the other aspects of cascading style sheets, this is the place.

[ Complete CSS Guide - Cascading style sheets reference - Contents ]

These guys have done a real bang-up job. I still am looking for the ultimate reference, but this is a great way to learn CSS.

I've been loving my PSP browser (included in OS 2.x) but a DS browser? That means a stylus? Hot.

In Opera's agreement with Nintendo, Nintendo DS users will now be able to surf the full Internet from their systems using the Opera browser. The Opera browser for Nintendo DS will be sold as a DS card. Users simply insert the card into the Wi- Fi enabled Nintendo DS, connect to a network, and begin browsing on two screens.

[ Giving gamers two windows to the Web: The Opera Browser for Nintendo DS™ ]

The question is, does Yaty need a 2nd DS to browse websites for Animal Crossing friend codes?

St. Valentine's Day, what to get for "the wife"...

Oh, her own domain!

yatyasir.com

That's not too geeky, is it?

What is your competitive differentiator? This is what the marketing guys are asking all of the time. Sure you provide a users IP address, or even their browser info, but do you provide a chicken?

• www.whatismyip.com doesn't
• www.whatismyipaddress.com doesn't
• www.ipaddressworld.com doesn't
• www.showmyip.com doesn't
• www.whatsmyip.org doesn't
• www.myipaddress.com doesn't

And who is king of the roost? Well I don't know for sure, but my money is on IP Chicken. (Though IPGilaMonster might be catching up fast)

Props to Smitty.

Coverville is a podcast, produced three times a week, that focuses on cover songs - a new rendition of a previously recorded song. The show is produced and hosted by Brian Ibbott, in his home in Arvada, Colorado - about 10 miles West of Denver.

[ Coverville ]

For some reason I wasn't really getting into pod-catching on my Axim, but the shiny new PSP has me checking out a few again. For the most part it still seems like pod casts are just a bunch of lonely people broadcasting to dozens from their basements; Coverville, however, is quite entertaining so far. And who doesn't like a good cover?

Most users just want to quickly put the content of the screen on paper for bookkeeping or use away from the computer. The key here is that all content on the screen is available to the user and that annoying extra white-space is avoided. No one likes to get extra pages with just one or two lines of content on an otherwise completely blank page of paper. IE 7 solves these problems by introducing: Shrink to fit and Orphan Control to minimize white-space.

[ IEBlog : IE7 Printing: An Experience You Won’t Want To Miss ]

Do yourself a favor and check out the whole article. This is seriously well though out, and looks as if printing is no longer just an afterthought. So far with IE7 it's been nice to have better standards compliance, fancier interface, RSS understood, search providers, etc. But this is really an unexpected delight.

Good job IE Team!

Internet Explorer 7 contains a number of improvements to cascading style sheet (CSS) parsing and rendering over IE6. These improvements are aimed at improving the consistency of how Internet Explorer interprets cascading style sheets as recommended by the W3C in order that developers have a reliable set of functionality on which to rely.

[ Cascading Style Sheet Compatibility in Internet Explorer 7 (Windows IETechCol) ]

I'm not sure how an attempt to finally support CSS the way it was explained is an "improvement" or building an engine that breaks older sites coded against the previous incorrect model is an "improvement".

That being said, I guess it's good to bite the bullet and do it up right, if in fact that is what IE 7 is doing now. I've already run into some oddities, but at least I have a swell MSDN article to help me pinpoint what they've changed in the engine before it gets popular.

Apparently I didn't fully understand the licensing of MSDE, since Microsoft advises us on how to...

Build dynamic, data-driven Web applications with Microsoft ASP.NET and MSDE 2000 using the Workload Governor to limit the number of concurrent operations that the database engine can perform.

[ Using MSDE 2000 in a Web Application (MSDE 2000 Web Resource Kit) ]

This continues with SQL Server 2005 Express, but the connection pool limit seems to have been increased to 25 simultaneous connections.

Since my website is the first that most people check when seeking employment, check out this opportunity:

ABC 7 WJLA-TV is seeking a Director of Web Operations to design and manage company's group of television-related websites across the country. Applicants must have 2-3 years managing large websites, advanced Cold Fusion skills and be proficient in Microsoft SQL and IIS Servers.

[ ABC 7 Job Center ]

What's this have to do for me? Nothing, just passing it along...

Ajax is a brand-new suite of programming solutions.

[ Seth's Blog: What to do if you don't know what to do ]

In addition to getting called on the real reason Chicago is called the Windy City, he's a bit off about what AJAX really is.

Wikipedia is quick to point out that "Ajax is not a technology in itself, but a term that refers to the use of a group of technologies together." and it is simply a cutsie acronym for "Asynchronous JavaScript And XML".

Modern AJAX techniques tend to rely on the javascript XMLHttpRequest but earlier techniques (like the kind I used) invoved an IE-only concept called XmlDataIslands (props to Nate for bringing that one to my attention). The term Ajax (which should be AJAX) was coined by Adaptive Path and has quickly gained favor, especially among the "Web 2.0" crowd. However it must be pointed out that this asynchronous dynamic has been used for years, and it nothing new at all.

And the rest of Ajax, notably the Javascript and XML are even older...

Check your PC for evil cookies:

IECookiesView is a small utility that displays the details of all cookies that Internet Explorer stores on your computer.

[ IECookiesView v1.70: Cookies viewer/manager for Internet Explorer ]

Perhaps dozens of federal agencies should install it...

We're hiring at Doceus (my workplace) still, but we've shifted what we're looking for:

• Solutions Architects
• Senior Developers
• Developers

So if you do ColdFusion or C#.NET and are looking for opportunities, there is a good chance we have something at your level open.

MicroSoft has stated:

In June 2003, the Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit announced that Internet Explorer for Mac would undergo no further development, and support would cease in 2005. In accordance with published support lifecycle policies, Microsoft will end support for Internet Explorer for Mac on December 31st, 2005, and will provide no further security or performance updates.

Additionally, as of January 31st, 2006, Internet Explorer for the Mac will no longer be available for download from Mactopia. It is recommended that Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari.

[ Internet Explorer 5 for Mac ]

So, please stop using IE, and switch to Safari or Firefox.

Props to Big G, a Mac user, who, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't use IE, unless he has to.

My mobile life is getting better. Gmail now has a mobile-optimized interface:

Now you can access your Gmail messages from the web browser on your mobile phone or device. Read and reply to your Gmail messages any time, anywhere.

[ Google Mobile ]

Apparently extensions for Firefox are easy to write, and hard to make unstable. There are dozens of dozens of them by now, and just a few have "improved" Firefox to the point where I might not use IE except for the few IE required sites that I use (mostly internal facing sites).

For example:

Tab Mix Plus is a spin on the original Tab Mix. Like Tab mix, it enhances Firefox's tab browsing capabilites. It comes included with features such as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, undoclosetab and many more. While it may look similar it has a lot more features and added functionality like tab clicking options. Unlike Tab Mix however, it is Mac compatible.

[ Tab Mix Plus ]

Well, I don't know "Tab Mix" from a whole in the wall, but this extension lets you do pretty much anything you can think of to tabs.

Grossberg's beloved Greasemonkey is installed, but I haven't found too much use for it yet. There are tons of "Web Developer" helper extensions, but ColorZilla caught my eye:

With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. You can Zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page. The built-in palette browser allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes. DOM spying features allow getting various information about DOM elements quickly and easily. And there's more...

And, since we all know how much I hate PDFs, it's no surprise I jumped on PDF download. Before I have to read the millions of patent IDs that PDFs are covered by, or risk the instability of a PDF in-place reader, I can use this puppy to download the PDF to my desktop.

Next step: learn how to write my own, so I can create a handy "Blog This" extension like I have for IE.

Amazon Mechanical Turk provides a web services API for computers to integrate "artificial, artificial intelligence" directly into their processing by making requests of humans. Developers use the Amazon Mechanical Turk web services API to submit tasks to the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site, approve completed tasks, and incorporate the answers into their software applications. To the application, the transaction looks very much like any remote procedure call: the application sends the request, and the service returns the results. In reality, a network of humans fuels this artificial, artificial intelligence by coming to the web site, searching for and completing tasks, and receiving payment for their work.

[ Amazon Mechanical Turk ]

The 3 largest issues I see with this are:

1. Getting computers and internet connections in front of people who could make a living at these rates in the poorest of countries
2. Relying on this process for anything requiring a high level of QA
3. Handling the latency of the request if your HIT driven task become unfavorable

However, I can see the potential here, though I'm not sure what it has to do with Amazon, except that they already have the architecture to handle and route micropayments.

Oddly I found this via Seth Godin's blog, who thought it was a joke...

Yes, Henri, there was an Internet Bubble...

In April of 2000 while on a business trip I received a near-frantic email from someone with an unusual request. It seems that she represented a fellow with a company in Seattle (no, NOT Microsoft). Turns out that last September this guy was hired, and in his contract of employment it stipulated that he wanted a desk made out of LEGO.

[ The Desk -- LEGO ]

If so, check this out:

How to enable shortcut keys?

This is done by enabling the VSS Plugin action set. Enable it for each perspective under Window -> Customize Perspective -> Other -> VSS Plugin menu and shortcut keys

The action is invoked on the current active editor or the current selection if there is no active editor. Perfect with code browsing for a fast check out/check in for a small change.

There is also a known problem with the menu on startup before any editor activation/deactivation or before any of the menu actions have been invoked the disablement of some menu options do not work, which might lead to unexpeted faults.

The currently supported keys are:
   Ctrl+Alt+U -> Undo Check Out
   Ctrl+Alt+I -> Check In
   Ctrl+Alt+O -> Check Out
   Ctrl+Alt+R -> Refresh
   Ctrl+Alt+A -> Add

[ VSS Plugin version 1.6.1 for Eclipse 3.1 ]

If not? Then you are probably in the majority. I expect this is only helpful to 2 visitors out of my normal 10 per week...

But listed on Dice now:

We have an open working environment with a casual atmosphere. We value personal skill development and team camaraderie. Competitive salary and benefits offered, including 401(K), health coverage, and dental plan.

[ Dice - Position wspos173078 ]

We're looking for a few good coders at my day job:

At Doceus our Developers architect and deliver solutions for small to midsize businesses, associations, and non-profit organizations. Duties include writing specifications and coding web based applications, generally database driven; and maintaining said applications, over their life cycle, for our clients.

[ doceus :: accelerate success ]

If you, or anyone you know, is interested, you, or the person you know, can apply on our site, or via Monster.

I've made the switch to IE7 from slim browser. I really liked slim browser, but I felt the need to get back to IE, and once tabs were added I thought I'd see if I could do it. One nice thing about IE is I can have multiple windows, slim browser likes everything to be in one. One thing I really missed about switching, though, is mouse gestures:

This article discusses how I've added mouse gesture support to Internet Explorer. The code presented isn't intended to detail every step in the implementation (hopefully the source code will do this); rather it's intended to provide a quick sketch of the steps involved.

[ The Code Project - Mouse Gestures for Internet Explorer - ATL ]

Now I only really use two mouse gestures, and they aren't much to implement, but this little plug in does both and pretty much the rest of the bunch. My most used are "click right left" and "click left right" for going forward one page or back one page respectively.

Now that I have mouse gestures, I wonder what other features of slim browser I can get my IE to do?

Multiple site browser based on tab-page interface - though the IE tabs aren't as flexible
Seamless integration with AI RoboForm FormFiller/Password Manager - which I never used
Built-in Popup Killer based on intelligent identification and pre-defined filtering - though IE's isn't as bright
Site windows killed by mistake are FULLY RECOVERABLE - this always was nice, though at times irritating. Slim browser doesn't block the popup, it fully hides the blockup and if you don't recover it in a short amount of time, kills the hidden window. This is great unless the page makes sound, which the popup blocker doesn't block at all.
Ability to turn on/off Flash Animation - I never used this, it was too difficult to turn on and off all of the time.
Built-in web form spell checker - ieSpell does that for me.
Universal URL Filter: Block ad banners, flash animations, iframes or any components within any web pages by URL patterns - I never really tweaked this, so I didn't get much use out of it.
Built-in RSS News Rendering Engine. Now you can read RSS news directly inside SlimBrowser without additional RSS Reader software - IE7 has this and it's just as stupid as in all of the other browsers. Seriously people, just get bloglines.
ActiveX Filter: block obtrusive dialogs prompting you to install unsafe ActiveX controls - not sure how this is any different than IE has always had.
Convenient access to major search engines by Quick-Search Bar - sure no quick-search, but my google bar works fine.
Seamless integration of most Internet Explorer toolbars - Oddly IE does fine with this.
ScriptPad: Built-in VBScript/Jscript/HTML/Text editor - I never liked this, vi is the editor for me.
Hidden Sites : hide and show a site at users' request
Skinned window frame - WindowBlinds works for me.
Free-zooming of any web page - I don't think I have this, but I bet there is a windows accessability option to do something similar.
AutoLogin: automatically connect and log into specified website with just one click - I'm not even sure I ever saw this.
Seamless integration with online translation engine and dictionaries - with google bar
Ability to suppress script error message dialog - even IE4 could do this, I think.
Site Group: Open and save a collection of sites as a group - not very useful to me
Flexible control of startup actions - don't really need this either
URL Alias: Type short alias instead long URL - like tinurl?

A lot of good functionality in slim browser, but I think IE7 will work fine for me. One thing to note, IE7 works fine inside of slim browser so you'll still get the IE7 browsing engine inside of slim browser, if you have both installed.

How irritating:

In an RSS attack, the content deliver from trusted RSS sites is hijacked and lead the user to offending sites, which collect their personal information to phishers, or download viruses to their computer.

[ IT Observer - Next IE Opens Door for RSS Attacks ]

And how, exactly, is RSS attacked? Or hijacked? The feeds are delivered no different than a web page, except they are in XML. I can no more "hijack" RSS than I can a website.

Plus, as I'm sure all will notice soon, browsers are a seriously crappy way of aggregating RSS.

Nate was inquiring to my "work homepage". It uses this "jobby" to create some thumbnails of my most frequently used "homepage" like sites:

url2bmp is a Windows freeware converting an URL to an image

[ url2bmp ]

to Bloglines:

Create a personal Bloglines page loaded with the freshest news about the things you love.

[ Bloglines ]

I wrote my own system, but keeping it running smoothly takes more effort and time than I can spare. Bloglines has everything I need: central control, mobile version, notification system, etc.

I've even found that exporting my subscriptions as an OPML file which can drive my "blogroll" listing on this site.

Update: Joe Grossberg has just noticed that I've switched to the Green party as well.

Neither is ready for international prime time, in my humble opinion.

Google has the goods on satellite photos of Makassar, Indonesia; but no details on roads, place names, etc. etc.

Virtual Earth totally knows where Makassar is, but the satellite photo sucks, and the interface won't allow zooming in past the halfway point.

If all client side code was written with this article in mind, the Web would be a better place.

When you develop web applications, always consider possible browser differences and be informed about them.

[ Migrate apps from Internet Explorer to Mozilla ]

Props to Joe G.

I particularly like the bits about event handlers, a much better way to achieve cross browser, multi-event, tight code for DHTML. Good tips relating to your Ajax solutions too.

Google maps must rock, MSN now has them too:

Virtual Earth has slick new features for online mapping and local search that you'll want to try!

[ MSN Virtual Earth ]

Why innovate when you can replicate?

Props: Dari, who missed the whole Google Maps craze.

Too bad it's a bit confusing. Pobox.com has a handy wizard to help you piece a proper SPF record together:

Most domains send outbound mail through a relatively small number of servers. Domains should describe that set of servers in an SPF record in their DNS. Internet email receivers can then reject forged messages which don't come from an envelope sender domain's approved servers.

[ The SPF Setup Wizard ]

I've tried to determine where all of my mail might be coming from, and added my first SPF TXT records to the davidkearns.com and geekprime.com domains. I'm also taking the step on a few of my less used domains (dak4.com, k34rnz.com, yatyanddavid.com, etc.) of adding a very restrictive "v=spf1 a mx ~all" SPF record. My hope is that this will cut down on a large part of the undeliverable email messages that I get each day. If not, perhaps I'm just being a better netizen.

Anyone else jumping on the SPF bandwagon?

Want to keep it legit too? The open-source community has developed an IDE that seems to have large support for all sorts of things:

Eclipse is a kind of universal tool platform - an open extensible IDE for anything and nothing in particular. Find out what eclipse is all about - check out the Eclipse Roadmap, white paper, read some technical articles, visit the newsgroups, take a look at the projects, and pick up the latest downloads.

[ eclipse.org ]

For my purposes I downloaded the "platform" version (since I won't be extending Eclipse, just using it), installed the CF plug-in and the VSS plug-in and then got a bit frustrated before finding out the VSS plug-in required the Java Development Tools  to be installed to function correctly.

Once all of that was in place, it appears I have a program that is vastly superior to ColdFusion Studio 5, and vastly cheaper than DreamWeaver MX 2004. It still isn't CF editing in my beloved VisualStudio, but it will do.

I can never remember how to grab the screen as an image on a Mac, so I googled it. I like the fact that there are a bunch of options on how to do this on a mac, though I ended up using the first one listed and creating a PDF of all things. But then we get to what to do with an image on the clipboard:

Use SimpleText to copy the image or part of the image you wish to paste into your documentation

[ Screen Capture Tips ]

SimpleText can do images? That's just confusing...

David Kearns III thinks so:

It appears that what Apple has done is to take meaningful, desirable third-party services and applications and "roll their own" inside the operating system, thus presenting users with a fuller package of features. Of course, the third parties that had been providing these services as add-ons now are left out in the cold.

When Microsoft does this, it's denounced as a predator and a monopolist. When Apple does it, it's praised as an innovator. Still, if Microsoft didn't have Apple to point to as "competition," there might be more calls for government regulation of monopoly operating systems. We certainly don't want government bureaucrats designing our server and desktop environments.

[ Apple: Predator or protagonist? ]

And I have to agree. Of course I have little choice being focused on Microsoft development tools. Even if someone gave me a Mac to replace every PC in my network, I couldn't use them to deliver Microsoft solutions, and I have to relearn my staff in the ways of PHP and Java (instead of the ColdFusion and .NET that we use now). Still resulting in a loss.

Before I even read the email telling me to upgrade my Rhapsody, G$ was all over the place telling everyone to upgrade:

Listen to the music you love on-demand, with the #1 rated digital music service, Rhapsody Unlimited. Rhapsody's ever-growing catalog of over 1 million songs comprises one of the largest collections of music anywhere. Play today’s hottest hits, find yesterday’s classics, and discover the new artists you'll love tomorrow. Just find the songs you want and hit 'Play', it's that easy

[ Rhapsody.com - Music Services ]

Why? 'cause it's hot!

That's hot.

[ Paris Hilton ]

And I agree. Better player, better quality sound, larger library, new free subscription, new to go subscription, now allows your local library and the Rhapsody library to combine, new personalized offering, and just plain cooler. Though I do keep blocking out the fact that they're owned by the evil empire.

I like to check out websites for upcoming games, and games I'm playing. Mostly I go looking for wallpapers to rotate across my desktop (I have dozens of dozens). What I don't understand is when such a good looking game has such a crappy website. If they can't hire a company to build a website to their standards, perhaps they have no standards and their game sucks...

Witness the crap that is:

Dive In

[ Psychonauts ]

Enter

[ Resident Evil 4]

Should I let the sites influence my opinion of the games? Sure I know that the website was probably built by some other company, and I know all the reasons that crappy websites get made, but I still can't stop these sites from making me think twice.

You would think that by now we would have a good technical solution to the question "when can you fit me in?". For my coworkers Exchange and Outlook work like a charm. Outlook even has the ability to post my free/busy data to the 'net via ftp, webdav, or locally. However only Outlook understands that file (even though it is part of the iCalendar standard).

I did find a few people at the fringes who deal with this sort of stuff. The most helpful was iFreeBusy.com, but they seem to have a good system for letting my Outlook know if someone who uses iCal is busy, and not for publishing my free/busy data to the web.

One guy who works for a church rolled his own solution, which is downloadable, but requires perl, which I didn't feel like messing with. Not to mention that it doesn't really detail what version of perl, or what modules are required.

Frustrated, I turned to the only possible solution left: hacking. Witness the newest page to davidkearns.com: free/busy. I simply set my outlook to publish my free/busy data to my website, and then load that file, parse it out, build the object, and render it all purty. Add a calendar to select which day, and voila. I spent less time on the solution than all the research that determined I needed to build it myself. Oh well, I now know quite a bit about standard calendar formats...

Update: iFreeBusy.com is already on top of a solution. Try subscribing to my calendar in Sunbird, or another Mozilla type jobby with the calendar add-on. (Though since Outlook can only publish automatically to one place, my homepage wins out and this data will get old).

I certainly didn't expect this one:

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia (Nasdaq: MACR) in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion.

[ Adobe ]

I have no idea if this is good or bad. And I wonder what becomes of the competing products? And does this mean I won't have to choose between Adobe's Creative Suite and Macromedia's Studio MX? I could buy one suite and get Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and ColdFusion?

OK, these guys have some questions:

Do you have a website or run even a web server and want to secure the traffic between your visitor's browser and the web site? Did you find out that, in order to make your site SSL aware, you'll need a SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate? Were you also surprised to find out that such a certificate can cost you hundreds of dollars, and that they are only valid for one year? For what, you might ask yourself?

[ StartCom Free SSL Certificate Project ]

And basically the answer is that if they don't check out people, anyone can get an SSL certificate, and the little lock will mean nothing but traffic is encrypted. Part of what that is supposed to provide is 3rd party confirmation about who you are dealing with. Clearly installation of their root certificate will make your machine somewhat more gullible, and you won't know for sure that when you see the wee lock that you are dealing with the company that says they are that company.

However, they also point out that few people fully understand all of that stuff, and CAs don't check too much to issue a certificate. Most importantly for web developers this means the availability of a true, valid, painless, SSL certificate for localhost for all of your development needs. Now that's something to get excited about.

Update: StartCom has asked me to "check out our project again", as then have increased their offerings and my above statement is no longer true.

Gmail claims "you'll never need to delete another message" but I'm 9 months in, and I've used 12% of my 1GB. A little math will tell you that I've only got 5.5 more years left, according to Google.

Unless Google has some nefarious plan to rid the world of email in 5.5 years, and I'll be stuck at 98% usage or so, forever...

Or possibly they just haven't thought that far yet, and will worry about it when the first person (with real usage) hits 75% or so, and then they can devise a plan to deal with it. (which will likely be to postpone that by increasing sizes to 2GB or 5GB or whatever, as I'm sure storage will be that much cheaper in 5.5 years).

Or, maybe that's just a marketing slogan, and when my space fills up they'll say "so, what did you expect for free?".

I've just received an email from gmail:

Thanks for signing up to be updated on the latest Gmail happenings. We hope it's been worth the wait, because we're excited to finally offer you an invitation to open a free Gmail account!

Since the email that I gave them now feeds into my gmail account, I received this invitaiton about gmail via gmail, but gmail was nice enough to tag my gmail invite as spam.

I assume that this means that gmail is invite-only no more. Though I still have 50 invitations available to me.

Update: someone should tell Google, though, as the graphic still reads beta...

For quite a while now Gmail has been telling me that I could invite 6 people to use their service. Unfortunately I don't think I know 6 people who are looking for another email address. This morning, however, I notice that I've been bumped up to 50 invites. I assume that I'm not special, and all Gmail users now have many available invites.

Thanks for using Gmail and helping us improve the service. We're ready to expand our test to a few more users, and because you've been a trusted early tester of Gmail, we're looking for your help. Please invite a few more people who you think would like Gmail and could help us make it even better.

[ Invite a friend to Gmail! ]

I've you've been trying to get a Gmail account, but no one would give you one, now must be the time. Just find anyone with a Gmail account, and I'm sure they can spare a dozen or so for you.

Then I'd know how to navigate this overwhelming mess of information, and find out what options I have in automated PDF creation from a website.

Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional software is the advanced way to create, control, and deliver more secure, high-quality Adobe PDF documents. Assemble electronic or paper files — even Web sites, engineering drawings, and e-mail — into reliable PDF documents that are easy to share with others using free Adobe Reader 7.0 software.

[ Adobe Acrobat Professional ]

Yes the CSS Zen Garden is olds (and not news), however I had no idea that they had so many designs. For me this is like "porn for guys":

There is clearly a need for CSS to be taken seriously by graphic artists. The Zen Garden aims to excite, inspire, and encourage participation. To begin, view some of the existing designs in the list. Clicking on any one will load the style sheet into this very page. The code remains the same, the only thing that has changed is the external .css file. Yes, really.

[ mezzoblue css Zen Garden — Design List ]

So many great ideas, and clear proof that the sky is the limit when it comes to designing for the web. If you are a designer and somehow reading this (which is doubtful due to my atrocious design), take this example to heart and make your next site design a real winner.

Another site that looks darn interesting. Where will I find the time to read so much?

Selecting and implementing a content management system (CMS) will be one of the largest IT projects tackled by many organisations. With costs running into the millions of dollars, it is vital that the right CMS package be selected.

[ How to evaluate a content management system ]

I'll just leave it here on my page, and that will encourage me to go back and read it, right?

I'm sure one of the most frustrating things for terrorists and other enemies of the state is reconnaissance. Driving around in your unmarked van, trying to take pictures of bridges and buildings, pulled over by the authorities for questioning... Now they can plan attacks from the privacy of their own lairs:

The most powerful technology A9.com invented for Yellow Pages is “Block View,” which brings the Yellow Pages to life by showing a street view of millions of businesses and their surroundings. Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, and proprietary software and hardware, A9.com drove tens of thousands of miles capturing images and matching them with businesses and the way they look from the street.

[ A9.com > Company > Yellow Pages on A9.com ]

Odd, DC isn't one of the cities they chose... Also odd Jeff Bezos remains a free man...

Yes, this is where I work. Yes we are in need once again:

We are currently searching for a producer/project manager to work with our current and future clients to complete their Web projects. The ideal candidate will have experience in both project management and the Internet. Strong organizational skills and writing ability are required.

[ Employment Opportunities ]

And, since I know that many project managers read my site, I figured I'd link it up.

Some love the bandwagon:

Google has come up with a solution and I think every blog should start to pay attention to it. It has to do with an extra attribute. Anyway here's the athoratative link: google blog

[ Stopping Comment Spam ]

Others are irritated by the brute force nature of this move:

I'm not happy about the breach of protocol, but not as mad as I was when I thought that they were introducing a brand new attribute...

[ KooshMoose ]

Everyone seems to think it's a good idea. I've added it to my “filters” so all links should be rewritten to include this googletastic best practice. Now if I only had the motivation to hack it into .Text as well. Meh, I'll just wait for Community Server :: Blog.