Give Up and Use Tables
We’ve scientifically determined the maximum amount of time that you should need to make a layout work in CSS: it’s 47 minutes. When your time is up, we’ll even give you the table code you need. Take three minutes to build a table. And ten minutes to get a donut. Bill the client for an hour. Done.
Sandbox Your Apps With Sandboxie
I recently found Sandboxie, a Windows app that creates a sandbox where programs can run without touching your actual OS. When the apps try to write data to your harddrive, it is written to a cache and kept seperate from your real data. This prevents any malware from being installed in your Windows directory, or hijacking any other files. When you’re done using the sandbox, you can choose to recover some files (move them back to your real harddrive) or erase them. It has a lot of powerful configuration options that allow you to do things like:
- Set a whitelist so only specified programs can be launched or access the Internet
- Block any access to sensitive folders (like your taxes)
- Use a secure erasing program to completely delete any left over data
- Set Sandboxie to delete any leftover data after you close all programs.
- Keep your Sandboxie data in a TrueCrypt volume, which ensures any data in the sandbox is encrypted
For example, you could create a sandbox that only allowed FireFox.exe to be started, and only allowed FireFox.exe access to the Internet. If you downloaded any malware, it couldn’t even be started. And once you closed Firefox, the malware would be securely erased (along with your history, cookies, and temp files if you desired).
All of this is done with a fairly low performance hit (unlike running a virtual OS in something like VMware). Sandboxie is free to try, and costs around $30.
TechCrunch Tablet Update: Prototype B
The idea is to get a new type of device into people’s hands for as cheap as possible (we were aiming for $200, it looks like $299 is more realistic). It fits perfectly on your lap while you are sitting in front of the TV, so you can look up stuff on Wikipedia or IMDB as you channel surf. It plays Flash video flawlessly so you can watch movies and TV shows on Hulu or Joost or wherever. Or listen to music on MySpace Music. Or use TokBox to have a video chat with your parents. Then check email and call it a day
I’d love one of these. I’d probably sell my Aspire One netbook for one.
Turn Your Domain Into An OpenID
If you’re using OpenID, there’s an easy way to use your domain as your OpenID without running any extra scripts/software. With a couple of lines of code you can set your personal domain to redirect to your OpenID (known as OpenID delegation). Then instead of logging in with you.myopenid.com you can use yourdomain.com. According to MyOpenID.com add the following in your <head> tags (after changing yourusername).
<link rel="openid.server" href="http://www.myopenid.com/server" />
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://yourusername.myopenid.com/" />
<link rel="openid2.local_id" href="http://yourusername.myopenid.com" />
<link rel="openid2.provider" href="http://www.myopenid.com/server" />
<meta http-equiv="X-XRDS-Location" content="http://www.myopenid.com/xrds?username=yourusername.myopenid.com" />
If you’re using another provider check their docs for the proper server and XRDS URL’s (which isn’t used by all providers). Here are some popular server URLs:
- LiveJournal: http://www.livejournal.com/openid/server.bml
- Vox: http://www.vox.com/services/openid/server
- VeriSign: https://pip.verisignlabs.com/server
- MyOpenID: http://www.myopenid.com/server
- WordPress.com: http://yourblog.wordpress.com/?openidserver=1
- Yahoo: https://open.login.yahooapis.com/openid/op/auth
- Blogger: http://draft.blogger.com/openid-server.g
- AOL: https://api.screenname.aol.com/auth/openidServer
Another advantage of OpenID delegation is that if your OpenID provider goes out of business, you can just change the tags above and your domain will point to the new OpenID.
Weak Password Brings 'Happiness' to Twitter Hacker
The hacker, who goes by the handle GMZ, told Threat Level on Tuesday he gained entry to Twitter’s administrative control panel by pointing an automated password-guesser at a popular user’s account. The user turned out to be a member of Twitter’s support staff, who’d chosen the weak password “happiness.”
Track Twitter Replies in Your Email Without Giving Your Password To Spammers
Twply.com has been spreading over Twitter the past couple days as a simple service to email you @replies from Twitter. The service has come under fire for forcing users to send a tweet when they sign up, but to me there’s a more important issue. In order to use the service you must give them your Twitter username and password, and they must store it unencrypted. The site was recently sold for $1,200, passwords and all. Everyone should know to not give out their passwords, and sites like this encourage people to break that rule (a rule I made sure to enforce when developing TrackThis).
There is a fairly simple way to track these messages without giving up your password. You can easily subscribe to @replies or mentions of you on Twitter using the official Twitter Search. Just search for:
pb30 -from:pb30
Replace pb30 with your name of course. You can subscribe to the feed on the right in your RSS reader or by email using a service like RSSFwd.com or Simply Headlines. There is one issue with this approach, replies from people who protect their updates will not be visible.
I previously used TweetBeep.com to track mentions of me or my projects, but they are apparently having some recent server trouble.
Bus factor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaIn software development, a software project’s bus factor is an irreverent measurement of concentration of information in a single person, or very few people. The bus factor is the total number of key developers who would if incapacitated, as by getting hit by a bus, send the project into such disarray that it would not be able to proceed
Ambient News Brings RSS to You, No Subscription Required
Ambient News, brings RSS feeds into your browser without requiring you to click on a single subscription link or visit a special website. You don’t even have to know or care what RSS is for it to be useful. Ambient News, which is written by Mozilla developer Atul Varma and currently available as an alpha release, tracks your browsing habits and learns which sites you visit most frequently. The add-on then pulls headlines from those sites and displays them for you — in a vertical list that gently fades in — every time you open a blank tab.
Interesting way to overcome the usability and learning curve of RSS. Might recommend it to some people who love news, but don’t know what RSS is.
Downloading your games? Get ready for extra fees
I saw something extra sitting in my shopping cart: the “extended download service,” which cost an extra $6.99, had automatically been added to my cart. Digital River only lets a customer re-download purchased software for a certain amount of time before it’s gone. Exactly how long time frame is seems to vary, but the longest free period appears to be six months. If we want to retain the option for two years (not even indefinitely), we have to pay an extra fee.
I ran into this when buying MS Office through them and it seems like quite the scam.
iFart App Makes a Killing on Christmas
The developer reveals that on Christmas eve sales jumped to 19,520 units and on Christmas day sales shot up to 38,927. After Apple’s cut, that represents $27,249 in net revenue for Christmas day alone.
Goodbye Pownce, Hello Six Apart
We will be closing the service and Mike and I, along with the Pownce technology, have joined Six Apart, the company behind such great blogging software as Movable Type, TypePad and Vox. We’re bittersweet about shutting down the service but we believe we’ll come back with something much better in 2009. We love the Pownce community and we will miss you all.
We’ll be closing down the main Pownce website two weeks from today, December 15th.
Google's new Chrome beta gets bookmark control
Other new features include consolidated settings for privacy options, a rejiggered pop-up blocker, and security features
Google Mobile Uses Private iPhone APIs
Google’s just-released and much-publicized update to their Google Mobile iPhone app features some very clever interaction design for the voice search feature. There is an on-screen button you can tap to initiate a voice search manually, but, as illustrated in their example video, you can initiate a voice search just by lifting your iPhone to your ear.
But here’s the intrigue: There is no public API in the iPhone SDK for using the proximity sensor in this way.
