The Twitter community has a very positive feel to it. This is in part because unfollowing other users is easy, and unless the people being unfollowed have special tools in place, they’ll never know.

But sometimes, simply unfollowing someone is just not enough. That’s why there’s now Gunfollow.com, the Twitter hitman. You can “hire” Gunfollow to unfollow and block a user. It’ll be quick an painless, and you can choose a message that gets delivered to the “victim”. If you prefer, this message can be delivered anonymously.

I had the basic idea for this website at six in the morning last Friday. I tweeted about it a few hours later, and @BruceJillis offered to help out. Working in our spare time only, we had a working prototype two days later, and now, after less than a week, the initial version is ready for you to try.

So, if you’re following someone who deserves to be unfollowed “with a vengeance”, give Gunfollow a try. You won’t regret it, but your victim will…

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The most important thing about keeping your data safe is that whatever backup or redundancy setup you choose, it has to be easy. If you need to remember to make backups, you’ll forget. For me personally, I’ve opted to go with a RAID1 solution, where my data is written to two separate disks. This means my data is safe from drive failure, and since I’m using a version control system, I don’t really need any kind of rotating backup scheme. That’s why I got a QNAP TS-210 a couple of weeks ago, and so far I love it.

I’m no expert when it comes to NAS devices (this is my first one), and so I’m not saying the QNAP is better than the similarly priced Netgear ReadyNAS Duo or the Synology DS210j. I couldn’t find any comparative reviews, so I went with the one I thought looked cool and had the best hardware specs. I did want to go with a specialist brand as opposed to something like the WD “World Edition”. I’ve never really trusted consumer solutions, and WD isn’t my favorite brand.

Installation

Installing two 1,5TB Samsung EcoGreen drives into the TS-210′s plastic enclosure was as easy as screwing them in place and connecting a couple of cables. The process is described in a Quick Start Guide and shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes. Once you’re done, you connect the drive to the network, and locate it using a small utility called “QNAP Finder”. The initial setup process is easy enough, although it involves downloading the latest firmware (95MB) and takes a little time.

Web interface

The device’s web interface is among the best I’ve seen for any type of device. There’s a silly slider-type menu that sorta mimics the Mac OSX dock, but it’s needlessly complex. I was happy to find it can be disabled in favor of a more conventional icon-based menu. From there on in, the screen layout is excellent, with the TS-210′s many features arranged and categorized very conveniently.

I found it very easy to format the drives, set them up as RAID1 and set up network shares (Samba). I connected the NAS to my computer directly in order to copy my stuff onto it, and then moved it to my router. I’m on wifi at the office, and I’ve been working “off of” the QNAP since then. Large files take a little longer to open, but nothing serious.

Overkill

This may be an entry level NAS device, its feature set is amazing. There’s a download client (bittorrent), iSCSI support, a web server, FTP, automated backups, remote rsync and many other things of which I’ve yet to find out what they mean. I could even run WordPress off of it if I’d want to. I guess that’s what you get for buying a NAS from a manufacturer that specializes in professional solutions.

I have yet to set up FTP and other types of remote access, but so far I love the QNAP. It feels like a very solid product, and that’s important for a product that’s designed to safeguard your valuable data.

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As some of you may know, Twitter is fading out support for “basic authentication”. This basically means that app developers (like myself) can’t just send a user’s login information to Twitter’s server when we want to send a tweet or change a setting. Instead the application needs to be “authorized” by the user using a process called oAuth.

For Snapatar, this meant I needed to make a lot of changes. OAuth is far from trivial to implement, and I was lucky to find a library that handles most of the complicated stuff. With it, I was able to get oAuth working on snapatar.com, and beat the August 16 deadline.

Unfortunately, I messed up when I put the new version live. I forgot to update a setting in Twitter’s app registration system, causing the oAuth process to fail. But that has been fixed now, and you’re welcome to give the new authentication process a try. Currently, there’s absolutely no error handling, so you may run into an occasional poorly formatted error message if something failed. Most of the time however, it should just work.

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I was approached by Mastiware, a new game development studio founded by four French students, to take a look at their first game, “Joe the Worm – Escape or Die”. As a casual gamer, currently hooked om a poorly made but very addictive Bust-a-Move clone on the iPod Touch, I’m absolutely not a gaming expert. But I decided to take a look anyway, and now I wish I hadn’t.

In “Joe”, your task is to keep a little worm alive. this wouldn’t be very hard if not for two complicating factors. First, Joe is very hungry. You need to point it to fruit scattered around the screen. But at the same time you have to keep him away from two intersecting “beams” that move across the screen randomly. This means our little worm is either constantly hungry, or in risk of serious harm. Fortunately, there are several powerups, which you get when you complete a “recipe”. Certain combinations of fruits unlock things like increased speed, or the ability to stop the beams temporarily.

As charming as “Joe” is, I ran into several problems when playing the game. The first and most important one is that I absolutely suck at it. I don’t like how this game frustrates me. I’ve always had difficulties with games where sprites leave the screen and appear on the opposite side. My brain just doesn’t handle that well. Another issue is that when Joe is moving along the edge of the screen, there’s no way to make him cross that edge. There’s simply no room to tap there. This leaves me struggling so hard to keep Joe away from the beams that I regularly miss powerups.

If you can handle a little frustration, and are looking for a potentially addictive, beautifully designed game, Joe may be just what you need. As for me, I think I’ll give up. You can find Joe in Apple’s App Store. Don’t say I didn’t warn you though .

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I know they look good, but placing your external hard drive vertically (as many are intended these days) is actually a data security risk. Models like the Lacie pictured here, many WD models and countless others may be easier to fit onto your desk than horizontal designs, but you can knock them over. It happened to a friend of mine yesterday, and it looks like he’ll have to pay a lot of money to get his data recovered, or consider it lost.

This also adds a reason to why RAID1 drives (with two disks that store data twice) are safer. Typically, those type of devices have a wider base and are much less inclined to topple over. But anyway, if your drive is the kind that can be placed flat on your desk, I’d recommend doing so.

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Recently, I came across discussions on Twitter, and a blog post about ‘hidden links’ in my WP-Cumulus WordPress plugin. Quite frankly, I’m a little embarrassed by this, and I’d like to explain how the situation came to be, and what I plan to change in upcoming versions.

History

When I did the first couple of versions of WP-Cumulus, it was not hosted on wordpress.org. All there was in terms of user support was the comments section of a blog post on this blog. To help people troubleshoot flash plugin trouble, I linked to that post in the alternative or “no flash” content. This content is shown only to user without (the right version of) Flash. It is very common among Flash developers to link ‘home’ this way. I was aware this would also be shown to search engines, but at the time there were only a couple of users. My reasoning back then was that providing a helpful message was important enough to warrant putting the link there.

Whoa, millions of incoming links…

Then, Cumulus started catching on. I moved it to wordpress.org, where it made the top 10 most popular plugins a few times. People were starting to port the plugin to other platforms, and I started getting tons of support requests. Some days, just answering these would take hours. I was overwhelmed. Around the same time, I started noticing an increase of traffic on my blog. At first I thought it was because people were googling for the plugin, but it soon became apparent that there was more going on.

As an unexpected side-effect of the ‘no flash’ link, my blog now had thousands of incoming links, causing it to rank well in Google. Because I sometimes write about things like hosting, advertisers were starting to show interest, and I have to admit I jumped at the opportunity. As time went by, it became increasingly ‘difficult’ to remove the links. Here I was, making a little extra money because of a link I forgot to remove somewhere along the way. But even so, I no longer feel comfortable with the current situation, and have been planning to remedy it for a while.

Future versions

As you may have read on this blog, I’ve been trying to get more people involved in the project. It needs a better programmer than I am to keep it up to date. Unfortunately, this has not proven very easy. As a result, WP-Cumulus 2.0 has been in development for over a year, and one of the things it aims to fix is this ‘hidden links’ situation. I’ve decided that any link in the alternative content should be optional, and disabled by default. And it should probably point to the wordpress.org page instead of this blog. By default, it makes sense to show the regular (html) tag cloud to users without Flash. Version 2.0 will probably do it that way.

I’ll be working on Cumulus 2.0 this week (with one of the best software developers I know, whoohoo!), and I hope to have a rough version some time this month. It’ll put you in control of what is shown to users, search engines and everthing else. As it should have been all along.

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I’ve been trying to come up with a clever title for this post for over half an hour. There has to be some brilliant pun with words like “desire” and “erect”. It just seems to elude me. Oh well. What really matters is that this little piece of plastic makes sure my Desire is always ready to go.

Modern smartphones run out of steam so quickly you need a quick way to charge them. This particular desktop charging cradle was sent to me by Mobilefun.co.uk, and it offers great value for money. The base has rubber feet that give it plenty of grip, and on the back there are two micro-USB connectors. One is used for power only, whereas the other offers full data sync capabilities. A data cable and a small power brick are supplied with the cradle.

I don’t usually use my phone while it’s in cradles like these, and this one clearly wasn’t made to do so. The phone doesn’t penetrate the dock very much so the micro-USB connector pretty much holds the device in place. Unlike the car kit I tested earlier, this absolutely is a Desire-specific product, and my guess is that this was done so the buttons beneath the screen would still be easy to press when the phone is docked.

Since I got a dock for my iPod Touch, I’ve been using it a lot more, and I hope this product will do the same for my little robot phone. Recommended.

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I’ve been using computers daily since I was twelve, and I’ve never had any trouble with RSI or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. When I look back at how I sat hunched over my Amiga 500 while playing games, that in itself is a small miracle. Nowadays, I pay close attention to my posture, and I can work long days without even the slightest hint of pain. Until I pick up one of my mobile devices that is.

Last night, I couldn’t sleep because my shoulder was sore. Had it been a Friday, this wouldn’t have surprised me, but this was Monday night, the end of my three-day weekend. When I started going over what I’d done the last couple of days, I started getting the suspicion that my iPod and phone were to blame. I’d not used my desktop PC in three days, and my laptop was still in it’s sleeve.

Think about it. If you’re the type of person who read long web pages on their phone and tweets often throughout the day, you end up holding that device up in front of you for extended periods of time. Modern smartphones are usually around 150 grams, so it’s no workout, but still. My current theory is that it’s mostly the weight of the arm itself.

At this point I’m going to try cutting back on my iPod and phone usage for a while, and see if that helps. I’m also not getting an iPad, because I’m pretty sure it would kill me. I’m also wondering whether other gadget freaks have similar issues. Are these mobile gadgets going to spawn a new RSI epidemic?

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Google recently switched on full navigation for Android devices here in the Netherlands. Suddenly, my HTC desire doubled as a PND (Personal Navigation Device). The maps on my TomTom were starting to get old, and updating them costs about as much as a new unit, so Google’s timing was perfect. All I needed was a holder to affix my phone to my car’s windscreen. Luckily, MobileFun offered to send me a review unit of their “HTC Desire car kit“.

The “pack” consists of a car charger and a suction cup phone holder. One of the first things I noticed when it arrived is that to holder has a marking on the back that says “I-3G”. This sounded suspiciously like “iPhone 3G” to me. I contacted MobileFun and it turns out that this is indeed an iPhone holder, that also fits the Desire quite well. Despite feeling a little cheated about this being a “generic” product rather than tailor-made, I have to agree that it holds the HTC very well.

With three joints and a lever style suction cup, the holder is easy to use and position. Considering its low price, it feels sturdy and I have no problem entrusting my robotic sidekick to it. The charger also works well. Without it, constantly downloading Google Maps and using the GPS would drain the phone’s battery. It’s a good thing these two things come in a bundle.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Desire has an AMOLED screen. This type of display is known to have very poor performance in direct sunlight. Somehow, in my car this is not much of a problem. Your mileage may vary. Also, this is no car kit in the sense that it amplifies audio or has a microphone for handsfree calling. You’re still have to use the Desire’s abysmal speaker for that.

As for Google’s navigation software itself, I found it to be quite usable. I’m not sure of this is the case in other languages, but the Dutch female voice sounds a little distressed. As if she’s more nervous than you are approaching that large intersection. And for some reason she’s consistently late in telling me to exit a roundabout. This is only a reminder, because it will tell me beforehand what exit to take, but still.

If you’re seriously considering using your HTC as a PND, I’d recommend getting this bundle. It’s cheap and works well. Chances are that a Desire-specific car kit will become available eventually, but why wait?

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I’ve been promising a new version of WP-Cumulus for a long time. I’ve tried working with more experienced PHP developers, but it’s been hard to find a really good one who’s able to devote time to the project. I still think a plugin like this should be a team effort, but for now I’m going to kick things back into motion again myself.

What’s ready at this point is a much cleaner rewrite of the plugin files, with the display logic in a neat little class that port authors will hopefully be able to reuse. I’ve also got a Flash movie that uses a user-defined system font, as a result is much smaller, and supports unicode tags.

Burning bridges

I’ve decided to bump the required WordPress version to 2.8 or 2.9. There’s so much code in the current version that’s there only to support older versions and adds nothing. Running older WP versions is a bad idea anyway, and I want to use the new widget and option page APIs.

Another thing I consider a bad idea in hindsight is the “compatibility mode”. It way helpful for debugging WP-Cumulus on blogs with poor markup, but I’m going to trust that SWFObject 2.2 does a better job and once again skip all the extra code required.

Lastly, to support unicode, your blog’s visitors will need Flash Player 10.

Security

Now that I have the main two parts (plugin and Flash movie), I need to hook the two up to each other. The basic idea behind how WP-Cumulus works has always been that WordPress supplied the tags through its wp_tag_cloud function. It was easy and convenient to simply pass that function’s output through to the movie using the “flashvars” interface.

However, as some experts have found, the technique of passing URLs through flashvars, while extremely common among Flash programmers, poses a security risk. Versions 1.22 and 1.23 pathed the biggest holes, but there’s still a very eloborate social XSS that could pose a risk to Cumulus users. Another issue is that some themes alter the output of wp_tag_cloud through an API hook. This is fine for the html tag cloud, but for WP-Cumulus it means my Flash movie doesn’t get the data as it expects it.

This means I’ll have to rethink the flow of data, and as a result, the movie’s technical interface is going to be radically different. I’m thinking along the lines of having the movie request its content from a fixed, relative url, and using JSON instead of XML. I know this also affects the authors of ports to other systems, but my primary concern is the WordPress community.

ASAP

There are lots of things that still need to be done. Like i18n, the data interface and better alternate (“no-flash”) content. I’m really committed to getting a completely rewritten version of the plugin out there as soon as possible, but I also want to make sure it’s stable. Think weeks, at least. There’s not a single line of code in the new version that I copied from 1.23, so it’ll need extensive testing.

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