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Dropbox and Live Mesh: A comparsion E-mail
Wednesday, 03 February 2010 12:42

Now that I've been using Dropbox and Live Mesh for a while, I can offer a brief comparison between the two.  They are both great and I've found a good use for them both, but they each have their strengths and their weaknesses.

My overall assessment is that I like Live Mesh for all its features and flexibility in folder structure, and I like Dropbox for its simplicity, speed, and reliability - it just works.

 

Dropbox (free version)

Live Mesh

 It's free!  It's free!
 Quick to synchronize files between local and online version  Slow to synchronize files between local and online version
 2 GB storage free - plenty but less than Live Mesh  5 GB storage free
 Works on Windows, Mac, and Linux  Doesn't work on Linux (yet)
 Doesn't let you specify folders other than "My Dropbox"  Flexible in the folders you can synchronize
 Synchronizes all folders locally on all computers  Lets you choose which folders to synchronize locally, and where
 Lets you connect through a proxy  No option to connect through a proxy
 Free extra storage for referring new users  No referral program for extra storage
 No remote control feature

 Lets you control other connected computers remotely

 No drag-and-drop between online and local storage

 Drag-and-drop between online and local storage (not yet functional)



 
How to browse securely for free using SSH E-mail
Wednesday, 27 January 2010 14:09

I am now the proud owner of a secure browsing environment wherever I go, even over unsecured public Wi-Fi networks, thanks to a simple SSH tunnel that took less than 10 minutes (in my case) to set up.  As usual, I found all the information I needed on other developers' and bloggers' sites, and I thought instead of rewriting what they'e already written, I would link to their pages instead.  Before doing that though, I want to offer a brief explanation of how this works, and what you need.

 

An SSH tunnel exists between your machine (the client) and another machine (the server).  On your machine you run a client like PuTTY, and on the server you run one of several servers like CopSSH or OpenSSHIf you own or manage a hosted domain, you should check whether your hosting provider offers SSH access.  If so, you can avoid having to set up your own SSH server by using theirs, which is already always on.

 

Once your SSH server is up and running, you connect to it from your machine via PuTTY.  You then configure Firefox or whatever browser you want to use to route its traffic through the SSH tunnel, and voila, all the data you transmit will be encrypted as long as you're connected to the SSH server.  You can also use this for other applications that allow you to configure a proxy server, like Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail program and DropboxRemember to configure your proxy as SOCKS and not HTTP.

 

The connection you make with the SSH server is authenticated via a private/public key pair.  If you're running on a hosted SSH server, you can create these via cPanel.  Otherwise, if you're setting up your own SSH server, you can create them manually using PuTTYgen.

 

Below are websites that will help you get going, from setting up the SSH server to configuring your client-end machine.  (Don't forget the links to the software mentioned above!)

 

Articles

Software

  • MyEnTunnel - this little utility reconnects you automatically when you get booted off your SSH session.  Not sure if it works with Windows 7.
  • Tunnelier - alternative to PuTTY with more features (and a bigger footprint).  It is free for under 5 users, and is available in portable versions.
  • WinSSHD - commercial SSH software that's free for personal use


 
Useful websites and tools - 1/24 E-mail
Sunday, 24 January 2010 19:08
General
  • ManyBooks.net - there are a lot of free e-book sites out there, but this one has one of the better interfaces I've come across
  • BatteryCare - easy way to get information about your laptop's battery.  It even works with Windows 7.

BatteryCare



 
Useful websites and tools - 1/23 E-mail
Saturday, 23 January 2010 09:52
  • Posterous - pretty interesting site that lets you blog by e-mail.  You don't even need to sign up, and you can send pictures, music files, videos, and even DOC and PDF documents.


Tags: Posterous  
 
A List Apart survey E-mail
Friday, 22 January 2010 18:30
A List Apart 2009 survey

Tags: A List Apart  survey  promotion  
 
How to set a cookie using PHP or JavaScript E-mail
Friday, 22 January 2010 10:27

In my jQuery Woopra plugin, I have added the feature to exclude visits by cookies.  Since Woopra does not yet have the ability to set cookies itself like Google Analytics, you must set it yourself.  Thankfully it's pretty easy to do.  Below I will show you how to set a cookie to use with the jQuery Woopra plugin to exclude visits based on that cookie.

Place the following within <?php and ?> tags in a PHP file.

 
$value = 'true';
setcookie('woopraExclude', $value, time()+(365*24*60*60))
 

The code above sets a cookie with:

  1. name = woopraExclude
  2. value $value = 'true'
  3. expiration = current time plus one year

This is the method I use on my sites.  I've placed the code below in a plain HTML file that loads as the start page on all my browsers, ensuring that all my visits to my own domains don't count as visits in analytics.

To set a cookie with JavaScript, I recommend using the webtoolkit.cookies.js script that comes bundled with the jQuery Woopra plugin.  To set a cookie using that script, place the following within <script type="text/javascript"> and </script> tags:

 
var Cookie = new CookieHandler();
var excludeCookie = Cookie.setCookie('woopraExclude','true',365*24*60*60);
 

The code above sets a cookie with:

  1. name = woopraExclude
  2. value $value = 'true'
  3. expiration = current time plus one year

To make use of this cookie in your Woopra analytics code, you would initialize your Woopra tracking function as:

 
$.trackWoopra({cookie: 'woopraExclude'});
 



 
Speeding up your WordPress site with plugins E-mail
Thursday, 14 January 2010 18:00

It's somewhat ironic that at one end we're collecting more and more data, we're clammoring for more and more bandwidth and storage space and ways to access it.  Yet on the other hand we obsess over the kilobytes and even bytes we can shave off our webpages in order to have them load fractionally faster.  We minify, we GZip, we cache, we do all sorts of things...anyway, it's just an observation I thought was interesting.

I wrote earlier about ways to speed up your website.  Those were mainly .htaccess fixes.  If you use WordPress, however, a lot of the hard work is taken care of for you by some excellent plugins out there.  Here are a few I've tried, and my experience with them on WordPress 2.8.6:

 Autoptimize

Autoptimize is advertised as a do-it-all plugin for your WordPress site, and it works pretty well although I haven't tried all its features.

Observations and conflicts

  1. Optimization of JavaScript code broke Hackadelic Slider Notes on one of my pages.  Enabling the "Add try-catch wrapping?" option, however, fixed that issue.
  2. "Optimize CSS Code" breaks WP-Cufon
  3. I have enabled "Rewrite Image URLs" and changed the "Image Base URL" to use CoralCDN's nyud.net URL appendage, but I haven't noticed it working on the images on my WordPress site.
  4. I enabled "Rewrite JavaScript URLs" and "Rewrite CSS URLs" and they work fine.  (I'm using CoralCDN's nyud.net for these as well.)


 Free CDN

Free CDN lets you use Coral CDN to reroute several types of assets on your website, including CSS, JavaScript, images, and external content.

Observations and conflicts

  1. This plugin worked unreliably in my experience.  I tried to figure out which other plugin(s) it was conflicting with but couldn't narrow it down because it's most likely more than one.  When it was working, it screwed up CSS rendering and some JavaScript functionality.  It should be noted that this might not be the plugin's fault at all.  It has been noted elsewhere that CoralCDN is better for bigger assets (pictures, movies, MP3s) than smaller ones (images, CSS, and JavaScript files).  Using CoralCDN with Autoptimize works fine, so most likely the problem is with the plugin.
  2. It seems to conflict with one of either the Star Rating for Reviews or WP Movie Ratings plugins, or maybe both.  The Movies page on my blog shows up blank when this plugin is activated, and both of those plugins are used on only that page.


 JavaScript to Footer

JavaScript to Footer is a no-frills plugin that does just what the title says: It moves all your JavaScript to the footer of the page for faster loading.

Observations and conflicts

  1. Works as advertised.  There is nothing to configure, just turn it on and go.
  2. It breaks WP-Cufon, which makes me wish it let you configure which files it moves and which ones it leaves alone.

 GZIP Output

Another simple plugin with nothing to configure, GZIP Output does just what it says: It Gzips the HTML content of your WordPress site before sending it out.

Observations and conflicts

  1. I didn't find this plugin conflicting with any other plugins.  However, I think going the .htaccess route is a more efficient way than using a plugin for Gzipping your HTML content.

 Parallel Load

Parallel Load loads all your JavaScript files in parallel, with the additional option to move them to the footer of your webpage.

Observations and conflicts

  1. jQuery fails to load with this plugin enabled, so it won't work for me.

 My CDN

By the author of Parallel Load, My CDN rewrites your URLs to use a CDN.  You can specify different URL for CSS, JavaScript, and theme files.

Observations and conflicts

  1. Rewriting the URLs to use CoralCDN's nyud.net breaks the loading of CSS files, similar to Free CDN.  Again, since CoralCDN works fine with Autoptimize, the problem is most likely with the URL rewriting method used in the plugin (I am just speculating because I haven't looked inside the plugin code).
  2. The good news is that this plugin does not break the site altogether like FreeCDN does.  It's a much smaller plugin with fewer features, which means fewer chances for conflicts with other plugins.

Please remember that these are just my experiences with these plugins.  Yours might be different, depending on the version of WordPress and other plugins you're running.



 
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