ownCloud – centralize your data and keep control
I'd like to point your attention to the ownCloud project my friend Frank is running which just announced the release of its first beta this weekend.
What is ownCloud?
I'll let Frank answer that himself:
You can use it to store your files in your personal cloud storage and access it from all your devices. It will also support versioning, backuping, sharing, syncing and other server based functionalities which are useful additions to KDE applications.
ownCloud is the central exchange point for my data and a companion for different KDE powered devices using the AGPL license.
So there you go. Your own online storage with connectivity to virtually all your gadgets. The benefits are obvious: You don't give your data away as it will still be on your own hardware. That alone is a big improvement over most other online storage systems. I hope my favorite mobile office applications, namely the Files, QuickOffice and iThoughts applications for the iPhone will support ownCloud once it has reached a certain stage.
Help a good idea to grow!
Currently the ownCloud project is in beta stage and is looking for PHP and Qt developers for support. So if you're interested read Franks full announcement, check the mailinglist and the sourcecode and sign up!
The CAPTCHA arms race
CAPTCHAs... we have all seen them. CAPTCHA means Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart and is a family of techniques to make sure a user (typically on a website) is indeed a human being and not a program trying to act like one.
When you leave your comment on this blog you will be asked to type in two words which are displayed as distorted graphic. Most bulletin boards and free mail providers ask you to do the same before they allow you to create an account.
CAPTCHA 101
The reason behind is the same most of the time: Preventing SPAM. Spammers use forums, blog comments and contact forms to post their ads. They use bots (quite similar to the bots that update the search index on Google, Yahoo and all other search websites) to automate that process.
So the idea of CAPTCHAs is to present a task to a website visitor that is difficult to solve for a machine, but easy to solve for a human. The graphical CAPTCHA is the most commonly used one.
There are other CAPTCHA variants such as audio-based ones or image recognition based CAPTCHAs. I've even seen a simple math question as CAPTCHA.
Thank you all and a Happy New Year
I would like to thank all of you who visited my blog in December 2009 for their interest in what I have to say. Thanks for making the WebDevelopment Dominique Stender a success in such short amount of time. Over 900 human visitors and almost 11,000 page views per month not counting spiders and bots is a solid number for a blog that is less than two months old in my book.
I'm glad you like the topics and ideas I present here. I'll continue to give my very best in 2010 and I promise I have a couple of interesting topics already piled up.
A successful and prosperous year of 2010 to all of you!
Great Indian Developer Summit 2010
Title: Great Indian Developer Summit 2010
Location: Bangalore
Link out: Click here
Description: From the website:
Great Indian Developer Summit is the gold standard for India's software developer ecosystem for gaining exposure to and evaluating new projects, tools, services, platforms, languages, software and standards. Packed with premium knowledge, action plans and advise from been-there-done-it veterans, creators, and visionaries, the 2010 edition of Great Indian Developer Summit features focused sessions, case studies, workshops and power panels that will transform you into a force to reckon with. Featuring 3 co-located conferences: GIDS.NET, GIDS.Web, GIDS.Java and an exclusive day of in-depth tutorials - GIDS.Workshops.
At GIDS, you'll participate in hundreds of sessions encompassing the full range of Microsoft computing, Java, Agile, RIA, Rich Web, open source/standards, languages, frameworks and platforms, practical tutorials that deep dive into technical skill and best practices, inspirational keynote presentations, an Expo Hall featuring dozens of the latest projects and products activities, engaging networking events, and the interact with the best and brightest of speakers from around the world.
Start Date: 2010-04-20
Start Time: 08:00
End Date: 2010-04-23
End Time: 18:00
Web enabled custom fonts with cufón
A frequent issue in web development is the clients wish for individual fonts for this site. This ranges from the understandable desire to maximize the companys corporate image by using the corporate fonts to more or less useless eye candy such as in headlines and menus.
The solution that comes up by reflex is to use graphics, often auto generated. But keep in mind that graphics are meaningless for search engines. Your SEO suffers if you use graphical headlines (the most important bits of information as far as search engines are concerned).
The next solution is flash. Google is able to read flash, so your SEO might suffer not that much. But what about your visitors? Ok, Flash is installed on virtually any PC these days. But not on the iPhone. So do you care about your mobile visitors? I think you should.
Furthermore, I use the NoScript Firefox extension as a security measure to disable JavaScript and many other "dynamic" content such as Flash by default. So I won't see your Flash headlines - all I see is a nasty empty box with the NoScript logo. Don't think I'll enable Flash just to see your headlines. Chances are that I leave your site in favor of another one with similar content, without flash.
Improved social bookmarks for Wordpress
I further enhanced the social bookmarking options in this blog by dropping the Tweet This plugin that I mentioned in an earlier post in favor of the wordpress plugin for AddThis. This was done because the CSS sprite hack I did on Tweet This kept bugging me although it worked just fine - I hate hacks. Besides, the many icons don't really make the blog look better.
The AddThis "Social Bookmarking & Sharing Service" provides the possibility to share my blog to virtually all social bookmark services (currently over 200) with a single (!) button and also has an easy option to send links via email. Similar to ShareThis, AddThis provides me with an analytics-like overview of which articles have been shared when and where. Pretty neat. The documentation on AddThis is better than the one for ShareThis though so I went for the former.
Since with removing the Tweet This plugin the "auto-post to Twitter" option is gone I installed WP To Twitter to compensate for that. In fact WP To Twitter has more options than Tweet This, making things even more flexible for me.
If social bookmarking is a concern for you, check out AddThis and WP To Twitter.
Welcome!
Hey! Welcome to my blog.
I'm a software architect and developer, detail driven and opinionated, playful and curious.
Constantly learning, I strive not to do what others do but what I think is right.
This blog is about my experiences in information technology and the management aspects related to that.
My thought cloud
Popular Posts
- HOWTO: Continuous Integration for PHP, pt. 2 - 651 views
- HOWTO: Continuous Integration for PHP, pt. 3 - 531 views
- HOWTO: Continuous integration for PHP, pt. 4 - 461 views
- Scrum with pen & paper - 458 views
- HOWTO: Continuous Integration for PHP, pt. 1 - 433 views
Events Calendar
- Events are coming soon, stay tuned!
Recent posts
- Successful offshoring part 4: Independence
- Pen & paper Scrum – 10 days edition
- Successful offshoring part 3: Preparation
- Successful offshoring part 2: The coordinator
- Successful offshoring part 1: Time management
- ownCloud – centralize your data and keep control
- Tools for a mobile office
- Thoughts on HipHop for PHP
- Scrum with pen & paper
- The CAPTCHA arms race
Browse by topic
- Agile (15)
- Commerce (1)
- Events (3)
- General (9)
- Management (11)
- PHP (3)
- Social Web (2)
- Test Automation (5)
Other places to find me
Blogroll
Recent Comments
- Interessante Links im Netz 9 | DaRaFF's Blog on HOWTO: Continuous Integration for PHP, pt. 1
- Tweets that mention Successful offshoring part 3: Preparation | Dominique Stender -- Topsy.com on Successful offshoring part 3: Preparation
- What To Do When You Become The Boss: How new managers become successful managers | G2Roms.com on Successful offshoring part 4: Independence
- Tweets that mention Pen & paper Scrum – 10 days edition | Dominique Stender -- Topsy.com on Pen & paper Scrum – 10 days edition
- Tweets that mention HOWTO: Continuous integration for PHP, pt. 4 | Dominique Stender -- Topsy.com on HOWTO: Continuous integration for PHP, pt. 4