Category: technology

Another look at Google Chrome

I’ve never published a “first look at Google Chrome”, but I have been excited about it before. By Google Chrome, I’m referring to Google’s webkit-based browser, not the Chrome OS.

When it was announced that Google was releasing it’s own browser, I wasn’t extremely excited. Then once it was available, I downloaded it to see how well it performed. I was amazed. The javascript executing was blazing fast. I’d never seen a web application respond so well. So, I suddenly became very excited about it and wanted to adopt it as my main browser.

This was soon shot down by the fact that I rely too heavily on certain extensions in Firefox, namely Gmail Notifier, Firebug, ForecastFox, and Adblock Plus. So, I had to keep using Firefox and hoped that one day Firefox would be able to handle javascript as good as Chrome.

Well the opposite has happened. Chrome now has extensions. I’m a little worried that it will be bloated and start performing slowly like Firefox. Firefox was once a lean mean browser. Now it is a bloated mess. It has started crashing without warming in Windows 7. I was once a Firefox advocate and I still like the browser, but it has been going downhill for the past year or two. Let’s hope that Chrome doesn’t follow down this path.

Firefox shouldn’t even be that bloated. Sure, the extensions probably add to memory usage and Firefox reserves memory if it’s available, but should a browser really be using half a gig of RAM? Seriously?

Chrome doesn’t use less memory but it sure responds better. Adding extensions doesn’t seem to lower performance either. I’ve added a GMail notifier, Google Wave Notifier, Forecastfox weather, Firebug Lite, and a couple other extensions and there is no noticeable change what-so-ever.

Now that these extensions are available for Chrome, I think it’s time for me to take the next step. Chrome will be my main browser as soon as the extensions are available for the Mac and Linux versions. It’s already going to be my main browser in Windows.

So, if you took a look at Chrome when it first came out, this may be a good time to look at it again. There are a few added features that may change your mind about it as well.

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Twutils.com

I’ve starting a new website and have almost completed development on the first tool. It’s a site devoted to Twitter tools. I call it Twutils. The first utility is a spam removing tool called Spit Remover. I’ve settled on “Spit” as a good name for Twitter Spam. I’m in the process of moving the site to a new host due to DNS issues on the previous host. A few other ideas I have for Twutils are:
1.) Tweet Scheduler
2.) Follower generator
3.) Unfollow those that don’t follow you (like Huitter.com’s Mutuality.

I’m also planning to keep track of users who are removed with the spit remover. I may use this to show blacklisted spammers. I may generate a list of the most removed spammers, and allow people to remove these people automatically. Or I may just use it to create the biggest spammers list.

Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration

If you’ve seen that error message you’ve probably happened upon a security feature that your shared web hosting provider has enabled. There are a few work-arounds for this error but most require you to have certain privileges on the server that you probably don’t have. Quite frankly, if you are getting these errors you probably don’t have the ability to change these settings yourself.

Rather than try to get the provider to change these settings (let’s face it, they have this enabled for a reason and surely someone else has already tried to get this changed, right?) one can easily get around this with Curl. In most cases, curl will be enabled on the server. So here is the quick and dirty way to get around it:

Create a PHP file and name it anything you want. For the sake of this article we’ll refer to it as curl_functions.php. In this file put the following functions:

<php
function setupMyCurl() {
   $myCurl = curl_init(); 
   $temp = curl_setopt($myCurl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
   return($myCurl);
}
define("myCurl", setupMyCurl());
function curl_get_contents($url) {
   $temp = curl_setopt(myCurl, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
   return(curl_exec(myCurl));
}
?>

Include or require this file. Then, all you have to do is use the curl_get_contents($url) in your code to pull in the xml to a string. Then use the simplexml_load_string() instead of simplexml_load_file(). This will give you the same results but works around the url fopen feature. If you don’t have curl enabled on your host, GET ANOTHER HOST. 🙂

How do I Block and Unblock Internet Sites?

Apparently this is a question many people want asked so I’ll touch on what I use to block/unblock internet sites from my home network. This method will not require one to purchase any additional software or anything. It is designed specifically to be the low cost effective solution.

First of all, your home router controls all of the traffic going to an from your home computers. Some people don’t have routers. The modem, whether it be a DSL, Cable, or dialup modem, handles their routing. These instructions will work for those people as well, but anytime I mention the router, please understand that if there is no router, the modem will be doing all the work.

The router software for various models of routers are different, so it is nearly impossible to have a step-by-step howto for each of them here. Instead, it’s suffice to say that most routers have a block/unblock function. Most even let you time these blocks/unblocks. So one can set up rules as to when certain sites can be viewed.

Refer to your router’s manual for these instructions. It is usually rather easy.

There is a further step that can either be used in conjunction with the router blocks or by itself entirely. This method involves signing up for a free service call OpenDNS.

OpenDNS is a free service that I’ve used for a little over a year. It gives you a great DNS service, plus allows you to do various other interesting things like protect your home network. Basically, all one has to do is sign up for the account and change their DNS settings in the router to the IPs provided by OpenDNS. All future DNS request will go to OpenDNS.

I should probably first explain what DNS is to begin with. DNS stands for Domain Name Server/Service. When you type google.com into your web browser, your computer has no idea what google.com is. It’s oblivious. First it has to query the DNS server. Usually the IP of the DNS server is provided by your ISP. In many cases, the ISP provided DNS server lags behind a bit. You computer asks the DNS server where it can find google.com. The DNS server then responds with the IP address for google.com. Your browser then knows where to fetch the information.

The DNS server configuration can be changed in your router. You will override the ISP defaults and put in the OpenDNS server IPs instead.

OpenDNS updates much faster than typical ISP DNS servers. When you buy a domain name and direct it to your hosting provider, it can take up to 72 hours for the DNS information to propagate across the internet. OpenDNS usually propagates within minutes.

Some of the protection OpenDNS offers is right up there or better than many parental block software. There are automatic settings to make it easy to block pornography or harmful sites. One can also specify sites to block. Anytime a local user tries to access a blocked website, they are told that it is restricted. This is great free service, and I hope this will help you block those unwanted websites, and if you have any questions drop a comment.

Adventures in analog video recording on Linux

Linux does many things well, but the multimedia experience can be lacking without the correct bit of hackery. I mean, some cool things can be done with Linux on the multimedia side, but typically it’ll take a lot of work to learn how it’s done. Mac and Windows make complex things simple, while Linux makes simple things complex.

Back when I purchased my TV tuner card for my PC, I was using Linux as my main OS. I still use it daily but not on my main PC. Only occasionally do I boot to Linux on it. I typically run Windows Server 2008 as I’ve talked about on previous posts. When I bought the tuner I wanted to make sure that it worked under Linux. So, I purchased one that was made specifically for Linux, a PCHDTV 5500.

It has served its purpose as a TV tuner, since I watched a year or so of cable TV in analog on it prior to the digital switch. I have never been able to get the HD side of things to work on it. Either it’s beyond me or my cable company just had all of the channels encrypted. I didn’t spend enough time on it to find out.

Recording analog video in Linux can be FUN. By “fun” I mean the type of fun one has pulling their own toe hairs. Be forewarned, getting a good recording is best done from the command line. I tried many ways. I ended up going with mencoder.

That being said, there’s not much you can’t do with mencoder and ffmpeg from the command line.

I have some VHS recordings I’m converting to AVI and then later on to DVD. I first had to purchase a VCR because, wouldn’t you know it, I didn’t have one that worked.

After that I had to come up with a good way to connect it to my capture card. The card has coax and component inputs. The new VCR didn’t come with any coaxial connections. The capture card had a yellow RCA connection for video. I could use that but then there was the problem with audio. The capture card had a 1/8″ jack for audio. Luckily I had an RCA-to-1/8″ adapter for one of my gadgets (not sure which). I ended up using two sets of RCA’s.

I was amazed I actually got audio and video from it. Here’s where more fun came in. I was running virtualbox in the background. Everything I tried to use to record the video told me that /dev/dsp could not be opened. I went through many hoops trying to troubleshoot that issue. I should have realized it sooner but it was all virtualbox’s fault. Next time I’ll make sure it’s not running when I’m dealing with audio.

After all of those problems were worked out, I was able to use:

mencoder tv:///1 -tv driver=v4l2:width=640:height=480:forceaudio:adevice=/dev/dsp -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=-750:threads=2 -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=64:mode=3 -o /home/five/homevid.avi

I’ll try to explain some of what is going on in that command. Mencoder is the program itself. There’s little to be said there. The next part is interesting: tv:///1  That tells mencoder we are using the tv card and that we want to use the composite1 input. Typically it defaults to input=0 or tv:///0, which is the coax TV input. There are three inputs on the card: tv, composite, and s-video. The next part (driver=v4l2) tells mencoder that we want to use Video4Linux2. Then we specify the width and height of the capture. The forceaudio bit was placed there during my troubleshooting. It just forces the use of audio device /dev/dsp. I had tried a couple other devices during my troubleshooting, thus the addition of that option. Then we have the option for output video codec (xvid). I set the bitrate and the number of threads. I actually upped that bitrate considerably later to around 2048. I believe I’ll end up upping it even more for the next vid. I did the same with the audio output bitrate. I set it up to 256.

That should help anyone experiencing some of the pain I went through.

Slow wifi on iPhone 3GS

I bought a new iPhone 3G S yesterday. These things are very nice, and I’m not an Apple fan boy by any stretch. One thing that was bugging me, however, was the slow speed I got a very  high quality landline phone service so I was getting from the wifi. I was getting faster speeds from the 3G network than my home wireless, and this is while I was sitting right next to the router, so it wasn’t a signal problem.

I found the solution to this after reading through many, many forum posts. I saw others were having the same problem as me and were getting responses from people like “reboot the router” or “reset your network settings on the iPhone.” This is all well and good and I’m sure those people meant well but there was a big problem with their responses.

First of all, everyone having this trouble said that the wireless worked fine on their computers but not on the iPhone. Secondly, there aren’t many settings to “reset” inside the iPhone’s network settings. There’s just not anything in there that would cause this type of issue.

The solution to the problem ended up being an advanced setting on the router itself. From what I can tell of the issue and it’s solution, the iPhone’s wifi is just a bit more picky than a standard PC wifi device. Here are the settings I eventually had to change on my Netgear router.iphonewifisettings

The important items here are the fragmentation threshold and the CTS/RTS threshold. Each of these were set to their max value previously. After changing these two settings, my iPhone started working like a champ.

If you are experiencing the same problems with your iPhone or iPod Touch’s wifi, change these settings on your router. Also note, these settings have slightly different names on some routers. Refer to your router’s manual for more info.

Edit: I’ve gone much lower with these number with much success for my less powerful mobile devices. Going too low does seem to cause issues with more powerful computers on the wireless network. Test this out with lower settings and post your success or failures in the comments.
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The Best Dock for Linux

I’ve been looking for an OS X-like dock bar for Linux for many years. For a while, I used the launcher applet in gdesklets. It works without x-composite and pretty nice, but gdesklets can be a resource hog at times. Most of the gdesklets are written in Python if I’m not mistaking and Python, being an interpreted language, uses much more system resources than a native compiled application.

My next dock was AWN, or Avant Window Navigator. At one point, possibly the present, Google was involved with this project. Again, this is if I recall correctly. AWN is very nice, however, it only works if you are using the composite extension in X, as in Compiz/Beryl/Compiz Fusion. It’s very customizable and behaves much like the OS X dock.

There’s one part of the OS X dock that I really like that isn’t quite the same in these docks however. The fish-eye zoom of icons on the dock is a trademark of OS X. AWN and the launcher in gdesklets both have a zoom function but it’s just not the same.

I recently discovered that there is a great dock pretty much hidden away in a program called Gnome-Do. Gnome-Do itself is a cool search app for gnome. It’s somewhat like a KDE app I remember that lets you launch programs by hitting a keyboard shortcut and then typing the name of the app. I can’t remember the name of that app at the moment though. Gnome-Do does exactly that. One can type super(windows key) and the space bar to bring up Gnome-Do.

Of course, you will have to install it first though. After it is installed, simply run the application and go to the preferences for it. Change the appearance to “Docky”. Voila, the best dock you’ve ever had in Linux will appear. Play with it and you’ll soon see that this is very close to the OS X dock experience.

Digital Converter Box Coupon and How to Use it

If you are using an analog TV, chances are it no longer works correctly. As of June 12th all major broadcast companies are no longer broadcasting in analog. It’s a strictly digital world now.There is a program to help everyone convert however, in case you haven’t heard of it. It’s at dtv2009.gov. You can go there and request two free $40 coupons from the government to purchase a converter box. If you have an analog TV and no converter box, you have to order a converter box to watch TV now.

After you request your coupons, the next step is to order your converter box. The absolute best deals on digital converter boxes are
here. They accept the government coupons and let you buy your converter boxes online at the best prices.

Technology in Reverse

Is it just me or is technology going in reverse? I thought we were making progress, you know with things likes tapes, CDs, DVD, and BluRay. Things like that have generally been going in the right direction. Other things are completely backwards. This seems especially true for things in the communication arena.

For instance, around ten years ago we had these things called alpha-numeric pagers. We could even get two-way alpha-numeric pagers. The service was around $10 per month. This was the precursor to today texting conversations over a normal cell phone. The only major difference is that it costs a lot more to text over cell phones.

This isn’t the reverse part though. We all expect prices for things to climb at least a bit. It’s no surprise that once “texting” caught on with the populous and not just the geeks, the cell phone providers would start jacking with the prices. No, the reason texting is a reverse in technology is the fact that MAKING A PHONE CALL IS SO MUCH MORE EFFICIENT.

Everywhere you look there’s someone typing on a cell phone and even though some of them are extremely fast, they can’t be communicating faster than just using the phone. Image we were in a word where there was no such thing as voice calls. The only thing we had is text-messaging. Now image someone invented the PHONE. Can you just image what kind of shift toward that technology we would have? Everyone would be talking on the phone.

So, just because something is new doesn’t mean that it is better. This is especially true with the internet. There is a lot of talk about Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and other sites that offer “Web2.0” experiences. They are “so-called” user-driven content sites, social networking. This isn’t a new invention. Web2.0 has been around since the early days of the internet. It’s only a big deal now because there are lot more people on the internet.

Twitter is about as useless as these apps get too. It’s horrible realy. I’m sorry but there have been much better technologies in the past. If you take out the marketing side of Twitter, where everyone is trying to sell something, it is just a low efficiency chat room. You are limited to 140 characters. I understand the concept of micro blogging. It’s the same concept of chat rooms. You have friends/followers, and they see what you say. BIG DEAL….chat rooms have been doing that for ages. IRC has been around forever. It’s still the most effective way to chat on the internet, if you ask me. What about IMs? You have friends. You change your status. They see it. It’s the same thing as twitter. The only difference I can see is that you can search for people to add to your friends/followers.

So where IRC would allow you type much more at a time, was more anonymous, was easier hold a conversation in, and was/is a much faster conversation experience, people just love these Web2.0 apps. Even Oprah joined Twitter.

The driving point behind most of these new sites is the ability to advertise to people. They are great for online marketers. Since that is the case, the marketers push these sites heavily. This makes them more popular. Unsuspecting internet users just go with the flow and join these sites because “everyone” is on them. Everyone else is joining for the same reason. That is the angle the marketers take. They talk about how popular the sites are before they even get popular. This in turn drives the traffic up.

In conclusion, my ability to communicate is much better thanks to phones and IRC. I’ll stick to those things. Texting and the new Web2.0 social media sites are very inefficient. The pseudo-geeks that use these things should realize that real geeks and nerds look for efficiency. These new technologies are much less efficient than what we’ve used in the past. Why are we going in reverse?