I’ve spent the last few days setting up Wordpress as a CMS and webshop (with wp-e-commerce) for a company. While there are no credit cards involved in the webshop, I still wanted to secure the login and admin page. However, since the website is hosted at Dreamhost, I was limited to the .htaccess file. Moreover, since the .htaccess-file is the same for both SSL mode and non-SSL mode, I needed to use some kind of condition to avoid creating an infinite loop.

Enough rambling. The code snippets over at ‘Administration over SSL’ didn’t work, so I had to write one myself. Here it is:

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^(wp-admin.*|wp-login.*) https://www.yourdomain.com/$1
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} =on
RewriteRule !^(wp-admin.*|wp-login.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1


Also, please note that this snippet must be after WP’s own redirection snippet, otherwise it won’t work. The entire .htaccess file looks as follow:


RewriteEngine On

## Beefing up the security
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^(wp-admin.*|wp-login.*) https://www.yourdomain.com/$1
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} =on
RewriteRule !^(wp-admin.*|wp-login.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1



Update: This will actually not work very well as images for the back-end are not stored in any of the SSL folders. Hence the the server tries to serve the images without SSL while you are in SSL mode, which does not work very well.

I’ve been a fan of FML stories for a long time, as they are very entertaining to read. For quite some time I’ve received my daily dosage of FML stories from FMyLife, but with the raise of Twitter and countless competitors, it’s role became less important.

To resolve this problem, we created FML Ninja. With FML Ninja you can access FML stories from around the web in one place, as we aggregate stories from multiple sources (including FMyLife and Twitter). But we didn’t stop there. We also added a Digg-like voting system that allows our users to vote up their favorite top FML stories.

Ready to change the way you read your FML stories? Then check out FML Ninja now.

We are running FreeBSD 7.2, but this is likely to work on 7.x.

Step 1: Recompile kernel

I assume that you know how to compile the kernel on FreeBSD. If not, you can find out how to do it here. I also assume that you have the source code for FreeBSD installed.

Let’s head over to the code.
#cd /usr/src/sys/i386/conf

Make a copy of the standard kernel-config.
#cp GENERIC YOUR_KERNEL

Now we need to edit the kernel-config. You can obviously use any editor, but I prefer joe.
#joe YOUR_KERNEL

Change the ‘ident’ from GENERIC to YOUR_KERNEL
ident YOUR_KERNEL

This is the most important part. We need to add support for POSIX Semaphores. Add the following line:
options P1003_1B_SEMAPHORES # POSIX-style semaphores

That’s it for the kernel-config. Now just save the changes and exit (^K+X in joe).

Next up is the compiling and installing the actual kernel.
#cd /usr/src
#make buildkernel KERNCONF=YOUR_KERNEL
#make installkernel KERNCONF=YOUR_KERNEL
#reboot


That’s it. If everything went well, you should now have a kernel with POSIX Semaphores enabled.

Step 1: Install Python

I assume you got the ports installed, so here we go.

#cd /usr/ports/lang/python26
#make config

Make sure to select SEM and deselect PTH. If PTH is enabled, Celery won’t work.

If you’re running FreeBSD <7.2, you will need to edit Makefile and comment out the following:

Line 63-71:
#.if defined(WITH_SEM)
#.if ${OSVERSION} >= 701106
#SEM_MSG= ""
#.else
#IGNORE= POSIX semaphore support only works in FreeBSD 7-STABLE and later
#.endif # ${OSVERSION} >= 701106
#.else # !defined(WITH_SEM)
#SEM_MSG= "@comment "
.#endif # defined(WITH_SEM)

and line 186:
#.if ${OSVERSION} >= 701106


Next up, install Python:
#make clean install

Step 3: Test with simple app

With Python installed, let’s see if it actually works. To accomplish that, we will create a simple app.

Create a new file: test_mp.py

import multiprocessing as mp
p = mp.Pool(16)
import time
p.apply_async(time.sleep, 1)


Let’s run it:
#python test_mp.py

If the application silently exits within a second or so, you’re good to go. If not, please re-visit Step 1 and Step 2 to make sure you configured everything properly.

Step 4: Install Celery

This is probably the easiest step:
#easy_install celery

That’s it! Good luck!

Credits: Thanks asksol and raysl over at #celery.

• Review of LifeIO – A first look at this email and social networking aggregation site.
• Taking Thunderbird 3 Beta 4 for Mac OS X out for a spin – A thorough look at the latest version of Mozilla’s Thunderbird.
• Can’t Access Your Hotmail with Outlook, Outlook Express or Entourage? – A quick tip on how to get back on track after Microsoft’s recent service changes.
• Bank emails wrong person, sues – When just receiving an email is enough to get you into trouble.

We’ll definitely be adding to this list quickly in the coming week so make sure to check back often if you’re interested in the email space.

• Fire up Activity Monitor (/Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor)
• Filter the results for ‘Dock’
• Click on ‘Dock’ and ‘Quit Process’

Filter for 'Dock' in Activity Monitor

Unfortunately this will collect all windows into a single ’space,’ but you will be able to once again use Expose/Spaces. Enjoy!

When we’re done you will have the following:

• Central iPhoto and iMovie libraries
• Your central iPhoto library accessible in Front Row
• All your music, movies and TV shows, organized and accessible directly from your remote control

Have all your media accessible with your remote control.

The requirements

Like all solutions, there are some requirements. However, I would consider these requirements pretty basic. For most gadgeteers out there, these are things you already got in your possession:

• A Network Attached Storage (eg. Drobo, ReadyNAS, or an old Linux box). Preferably something with some redundancy (RAID1, RAID5, RAID-Z etc.)
• Two or more Macs with Leopard or later (perhaps a Mac Mini to the TV/Projector and an iMac as a desktop)
• A lot of media (picture, music, movies, TV shows etc).

Sounds too good to be true? Well, it isn’t. Best of all, you won’t have to spend a single dime on software. So what’s the secret? Good ‘ol UNIX symlinks and a software called Plex. That’s it.

Configuring the NAS

Since I have no idea what kind of NAS you’ve got (and it doesn’t really matter), all I’ll say is that I recommend that you create the following shares:

• ‘pictures’ – for the iPhoto library
• ‘videos’ – for the iMovie library
• ‘movies’ – for all your movies
• ‘tvshows’ – for all your TV shows
• ‘music’ – for all your music

If your NAS supports AFP, that’s great, but SMB will do just fine too.

Copying the media to the NAS

While I’m not going to cover how you copy your movies, TV shows and music (as I assume you know that), I will however cover how you copy your iPhoto and iMovie libraries.

Start by connecting to your network shares ‘pictures’ and ‘videos’ (or equivalent). You can do that either by browsing to them in Finder, or use Finder’s ‘Connect to server’ feature (available under ‘Go’ -> ‘Connect to server’).

If you’re a power user, skip the next four paragraphs.

Let’s start with the iPhoto library. Open up your home directory and go into the ‘Pictures’ folder. Now copy the ‘iPhoto Library’ folder over to the share ‘pictures’. Depending on the size of your archive and the speed of your network, this can take a while. Once done, rename the folder ‘iPhoto Library’ on your local computer to ‘iPhoto Library.old’ or something similar.

Now, this is the important part. Go over to the ‘picture’ share on the NAS and drag the iPhoto Library back to the local folder while pressing Command and Option. An arrow will show up under the icon you are dragging. Release the mouse button. If the files start to copy, you did not successfully press Command and Option.

We’re now done with iPhoto. You should now be able to fire up iPhoto and it will access the photos directly from the NAS. To do the same for another computer, all you need to do is to rename the local ‘iPhoto Library’ into something else, and create a link as we just did above.

Next up is the iMovie library (if you use it). Start by opening up the two folders (‘videos’ on the NAS and Movies in your home directory). Now copy the ‘iMovie Projects’ from the local Movies folder onto ‘videos’ on the NAS. Next, rename ‘iMovie Projects’ on the local machine to ‘iMovie Projects.old’ and create a link to the NAS (by dragging it from the ‘videos’ folder to the local ‘Movies’ folder with Command and Option held down). Repeat the same thing with the folder ‘iMovie Events’.

For the power-users out there, there is an easier way to do all this. Simply fire up the Terminal and run the following commands:
$ rsync -aP "~/Pictures/iPhoto Library" /Volumes/pictures/
$ mv "~/Pictures/iPhoto Library" "~/Pictures/iPhoto Library.old"
$ ln -s "/Volumes/pictures/iPhoto Library" ~/Pictures/
$ rsync -aP ~/Movies/iMovie* /Volumes/videos/
$ mv "~/Movies/iMovie Events" "~/Movies/iMovie Events.old"
$ mv "~/Movies/iMovie Projects" "~/Movies/iMovie Projects.old"
$ ln -s "/Volumes/videos/iMovie Events" ~/Movies/
$ ln -s "/Volumes/videos/iMovie Projects" ~/Movies/

For additional computers, just run the same commands, but leave out the rsync.

Automounting the shares

While you would imagine this to be very easy on a UNIX based system, it’s surprisingly difficult on Mac OS. Perhaps there is a better way, but this is the most straight-forward solution I’ve found. If you know of a better way of doing this, please let me know!

Finder -> 'Go' -> 'Connect to Server'

Next we need to open up the folder ‘Library/Favorites’ in your home directory. Within this folder, you will see the two shares you just created in the step above. Leave this Finder window open while you click on ‘Apple’ -> ‘System Preferences’ -> ‘Accounts.’ Then select ‘Login Items.’ Now drag the two shares from Favorites into the list of Login Items.

The Items list after dragging in the two shares.

Moving on to the other media

With iPhoto and iMovie moved to the central storage, it’s time to move on to the other media. Luckily this is much easier.

The cornerstone in managing all the remaining media is a software called Plex. If you never heard of it, Plex is basically a Mac OS version of the popular media center solution XBMC for Xbox. In its look and feel, Plex is quite similar to Front Row, but it offers a plethora of features that is missing in Front Row. Not only are you able to watch your Movies and TV Shows, you will also be able to install apps within Plex which allow you to stream media directly from sources such as Hulu and BBC.

Assuming you’ve already downloaded and installed Plex, just launch it and head to ‘Watch your Videos’ -> ‘Add Source’ -> ‘Browse’ -> ‘Windows Network (SMB)’ -> Locate your NAS and select the share ‘movies’ and press ‘OK.’ Now go to ‘Set Content,’ select ‘Movies,’ ‘imdb,’ and then press ‘Select’. Plex will now scan through the folder and all its sub-folders and run it against imdb to try to figure out what it is. If the movies are properly named, Plex will fetch the description of the movie, the cover as well as the full name and year. It will then take all of that data and present them neatly organized under ‘Watch your Movies’

Now repeat the same thing for ‘tvshows’ and ‘music,’ but select the content accordingly.

The whole process is pretty straight forward, but since the Plex Wiki already does a great job of describing this process in greater detail, I will simply recommend that you read more about that there.

There you go, that’s it really. While there is a whole lot of things that can be added to this article, such as iPhoto integration etc., I’ve intentionally left that out to keep the article a bit briefer. You might also wonder why I didn’t move the iTunes library over to the NAS. The reason for this is that I think that it might get corrupted if multiple users access it simultaneously. That’s why I instead suggested that you simply move the music-files itself to the network, and play them directly in Plex.

One obvious expansion of this setup is to include Plex Media Server. Perhaps I will cover that in a ‘Part 2′

Thanks to you guys’ feedback, we’ve now decided to remove the default prefix in ‘Step 3′. That is, in the past, when you’ve made a transfer with YippieMove from, let’s say, Yahoo Mail, all the transferred folders would by default end up under a sub-folder on the destination side named ‘yahoo’. However, as many of you guys pointed out, that is not a preference. Instead, a you would rather see a seamless migration (ie. the old Inbox would end up in the destination Inbox).

For those of you who do prefer to still utilize our ‘prefix’ feature, that is still possible. Simply click on the ‘Bulk action’ text below the folders and select ‘Use a name pattern’. A window will now pop up where you can enter your prefix (eg. some-prefix/$SOURCE_NAME$).

Again, let me reiterate how much we value your feedback. If there’s anything you like or do not like about YippieMove, please let us know!

ESG Front Page

You could spend a few days doing research and browse through various pay-for-the-top-spot top-lists. Another, and much more efficient option, is to check out brand new service named Email Service Guide. With this tool you can find the best possible provider based on your criterions. With Email Service Guide, you are able to answer questions like:

• Who is the cheapest provider that supports IMAP and gives me 8GB in storage per user?
• What providers offers Exchange hosting with 99.999% or more Service License Agreement (SLA)
• Where can I find email hosting powered by renewable energy?

At this point, our database features over 100 different email plans from all of the leading email providers on the market. Email Service Guide enables you to not only find the best provider according to your needs, but it also allows you to compare the matches objectively side-by-side.

Remember that, once you have found the best email provider for you needs, don’t forget to use YippieMove to move your old emails with you.

Since we were unable to take on the job due to the bug, we didn’t pay much attention to First Class and assumed that they would fix the bug in the next release.

Last week, we took the time to install a local copy of First Class to see if they had resolved the problem. Unfortunately the bug still remained in the latest version (9.1). Because of that, we thought it might be appropriate to write a brief blog post explaining the bug.

About the bug

The bug is pretty straight forward. It occurs when a message has a subject line that includes one or more quotation marks (“). The problem is not that a quotation mark is an illegal character according to the RFC’s, but rather that FirstClass fails to escape them ( ‘ ” ‘ should be ‘ \” ‘). Because of this, when we issue the FETCH command, it’s impossible to tell where the different different segments of the respond ends.

To put this in a real example, here’s an example of the FETCH response First Class is sending:

212 FETCH (ENVELOPE (“Fri, 30 May 2008 15:11:42 GMT” “Re: Fwd: lorem ipsum “foobar”" ((“Replace Replace” NIL “replacel” “replace.com”)) ((“Replace Replace” NIL “replacel” “replace.com”)) ((“Replace Replace” NIL “replacel” “replace.com”)) ((“Repl Repl” NIL “repla” “replace.com”)) ((“Rep Rerpla” NIL “replace” “replace.com”)) NIL NIL ““) RFC822.SIZE 5120 INTERNALDATE “30-May-2008 11:11:42 -0400″ FLAGS (\Seen) UID 89423624)

If this was properly formatted, the response should read:

212 FETCH (ENVELOPE (“Fri, 30 May 2008 15:11:42 GMT” “Re: Fwd: lorem ipsum \”foobar\”" ((“Replace Replace” NIL “replacel” “replace.com”)) ((“Replace Replace” NIL “replacel” “replace.com”)) ((“Replace Replace” NIL “replacel” “replace.com”)) ((“Repl Repl” NIL “repla” “replace.com”)) ((“Rep Rerpla” NIL “replace” “replace.com”)) NIL NIL ““) RFC822.SIZE 5120 INTERNALDATE “30-May-2008 11:11:42 -0400″ FLAGS (\Seen) UID 89423624)

While you might not consider this a very serious but, it really is. FETCH is a very important feature in IMAP and more emails than you’d imagine includes a quotation mark in the subject line. Let’s just hope Open Text Corporation will have this fixed in the next release.

After looking back on the humble beginnings of the communication medium that changed the way we see the world today in the article ‘45 Years of Email – From Military Tool to Mass Market Communication,’ let us try to catch a glimpse of where it is heading at.

Authoritative and comprehensive, yet easy to use, portable and instant—these are just some of the reasons why electronic mailing has been a runaway success for the past years. With the unwavering support of its users and subscribers, the use of e-mail has been a web for communication especially for people trying to bridge the gap of distant locations. Thus, the cycle of email seems never ending and innovative as it grows and grows each year settling new and various controls on the world wide web.

As the future of technology per se soars to greater heights and so is the future of electronic mailing in particular. Adding to the fact that latest trends like instant messaging and video conferencing further improved the ways on how people from all walks of life reach out to the world, such widespread penetration can be seen on the millions of people being hooked in using email as a means to connect to people to whatever technological and communicative endeavors they face: whether it be for personal or for business use. Also, a variety of communication choices have emerged over the past few years and each of the options have their own special appeal—this is made possible because of the discovery and further enhancements of electronic mailing.

Just as electronic mailing revolutionized how the world accessed information and communicated through the years, the ongoing development in speed, bandwidth, and functionality will surely continue to cause fundamental changes on how our world will operate for decades to come. So what’s actually cooking now in the world of innovations? When no one could really tell, but we can always speculate in the light of the trends that we observe today. For one, mobility will be the name of the game. We have already seen wireless networking and we are going to see a lot more broadband roaming in the future. This trend has actually begun! Back in January, Novatell Wireless filled a patent or a technology that allows users to flip back and forth between wireless LAN and mobile phone networks, even at high speed.

Rapid-switching technology

With these developments, distance was not the only thing man was able to conquer, even time. Internet and email can be accessed real time, even when traveling—not to mention the impressive speed. This is yet another feat for mankind. The influence of e-mail globalism will generally become the main reason for the stay of e-mail as it continually distributes globally the information and knowledge for the people at lower costs that lift the need of the community for accessible information. Another reason why it will continue to be a popular communication option is because of the emergence of communities that continually unite to provide information networks and different relationships that will be further established in the cyberspace may this be for political organizations or social networking. This will provide increasingly wide choices to individuals who wish to participate in local communities that share their ideals, thoughts and interests. Electronic mailing integration with an increasing number of other technologies is as natural as a musician’s experimentation with notes. These will cause email to become increasingly integrated with phones, televisions, home appliances, portable digital gadgets, and a range of other small hardware and software devices. Hence, e-mail is one core component of an emerging unified messaging solution set as evidenced by convergence of corporate email and instant messaging.

Will email still matter in the coming years? Absolutely! The unprecedented and rapid growth and impact of email with its growing and improving features will constantly evolve and garner significant respects in the future. However there may be some threat to its future use. A concrete example of this is the Google Wave—the freshest and the coolest communication and collaboration tool today initiated by Google. It is not out yet, but it is the most talked about innovation in the world of information technology.

Google Wave demo

With Innovations such as Google Wave, which by the way is expected to be released later this year, it is interesting to see how people will embrace the new features that Google Wave is promising. For sure, it will serve as a global and worldwide virtual and technological resource that will cater to the information and communication needs of the humankind. Furthermore, e-mail applications will not only become better and better to reflect the natural world, they will also have the fluidity, flexibility, and speed of the digital world. E-mail architecture has definitely just begun as the new horizons set to its future needs are being driven by the constant need for humans to interact, to communicate and to connect to every part of the universe.
It’s unquestionable then that surely we will foresee the growing success of email as the primary hub for communication, media and networking in the future. Indeed electronic mailing catapulted the unsettling success of information technology with its’ generatively and innovative character. It has gained a respective mainstream acceptance from the people and this acceptance will be the bread and butter of its’ future and will determine its life span as the provider of secure methods of communication, especially now that such thing as Google Wave is coming out. We could only gauge its success once it is fully launched