The Nexus http://nexus.zteo.com Variously Interesting Projects Sun, 01 Nov 2009 10:28:25 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/http://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.gifSome Rights ReservedTheNexushttp://feedburner.google.com MacHeist 4! http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNexus/~3/DlumbhxLcpU/ http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/11/01/macheist-4/#comments Sun, 01 Nov 2009 10:27:14 +0000 Chris http://nexus.zteo.com/?p=2788 It’s coming, with its usual mix of junk-no-one-cares-about and awesome applications you had no idea you needed and at-this-price-it’s-a-steal!
Not to mention the join of scoring the mission-related apps, regardless of how — usually — good they are.

Avid MacHeist fans alonzo and imfrog2002 have even created two countdown widgets to the official launch:

countdowntwo
or

countdownone

Note: Do not forget to backup your MacHeist 3 Loot! Soon, it should disappear from the website.

Edit: Hmmm I just did so myself and it took me quite a while. Turns out, the balance mediocre apps vs awesome apps is largely in favour of the latter!Similar Posts:

]]> http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/11/01/macheist-4/feed/ 1 http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/11/01/macheist-4/ Help Blog Editors Reliably Discover Your API http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNexus/~3/O9l-97Wv8lM/ http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/10/19/help-blog-editors-reliably-discover-your-api/#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 05:07:36 +0000 Chris http://nexus.zteo.com/?p=2779 Wordpress SchawgIt seems that tons of people have the same complaint: the Wordpress application for iPhone does not discover their blog and, therefore, is of no use to them.
The same goes for many desktop-based applications.
I, too, spent quite a lot of time trying to figure that one out but now that I have succeeded, here is how I would recommend working on this issue if your blog is affected:

  1. Go to your blog home page and select “View source”
  2. Look for <link ref=”EditURI”… you will see that this line contains a URL ending with xmlrpc.php?rsd. Point your browser to that URL. A rather empty page should be displayed. Check its source; if it is XML, it’s all good.
  3. If the previous step fails, go to the same URL but without ?rsd. If this fails too, you need to check that you have a file called xmlrpc.php and that: a. No rewrite rule messes up your URL; b. No plugin renders it invisible — e.g. “private”
  4. If both steps work well, it is VERY likely that the blog editor you are using — or trying to use, more accurately — is choking on malformed XHTML code. It is what seems to mystify most of us.

To convince your blog editor to “discover” your blog, we are going to give it a nicely formed XHTML page:

First, make a copy of index.php: cp index.php index.o.php

Now, create a new index.php page with this code:

?View Code PHP
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
 
<head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<meta name="generator" content="WordPress abc" /> <!-- leave this for stats -->
<link rel="pingback" href="http://nexus.zteo.com/xmlrpc.php" />
<link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="http://nexus.zteo.com/xmlrpc.php?rsd" />
<link rel="wlwmanifest" type="application/wlwmanifest+xml" href="http://nexus.zteo.com/wp-includes/wlwmanifest.xml" />
<link rel='index' href='http://nexus.zteo.com' />
<head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

Of course, you need to replace all instances of nexus.zteo.com with your own blog’s information; for instance myblog.mydomain.com

Discover your blog using your favourite blog editor.

Restore your index.php: cp index.o.php index.php

Done!Similar Posts:

]]> http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/10/19/help-blog-editors-reliably-discover-your-api/feed/ 0 http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/10/19/help-blog-editors-reliably-discover-your-api/ ClicDev: display last 24 hours visitors http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNexus/~3/433uXvHOadI/ http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/10/10/clicdev-display-last-24-hours-visitors/#comments Sat, 10 Oct 2009 23:57:42 +0000 Chris http://nexus.zteo.com/?p=2767 A quick note about Clic!Dev: it is now possible, in the admin control panel, to select Setup Hacks > enable 24 hour users to add an extra information dialog to the footer of your hosted board’s main page. This will end up looking like so (but obviously adapted to whatever skins you are using):

Shades-1Similar Posts:

]]> http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/10/10/clicdev-display-last-24-hours-visitors/feed/ 2 http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/10/10/clicdev-display-last-24-hours-visitors/ S2ajax v1.0 connects simply PHP and JavaScript http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNexus/~3/7X487a_3rDY/ http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/10/07/s2ajax-v1-0-connects-simply-php-and-javascript/#comments Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:18:49 +0000 Chris http://nexus.zteo.com/?p=2739 S2ajaxHere comes S2ajax v1.0!
And it was long overdue. Six months already since I posted S2ajax says “hi()” I can hardly believe it.

What I think of as v1.0’s main feature is that it is now possible to simply export classes in PHP and these classes can be instantiated in JavaScript. Whenever these instances are modified through asynchronous method calls, these modifications are transparently persisted server-side.

The concept

Is it a PHP class? Is it a JavaScript class? Why, it’s both! The class is defined in PHP on the server. Instances of the class are created on demand using JavaScript on the client. Whatever modifications are made to an instance are serialized on the server.
You can create a complex application using as many classes and instances as you need.

100

Under the hood

The PHP class is exported; the proxy JavaScript code is generated.
Whenever the client needs to access one of the class’ properties/methods, the proxy transparently talks to the class; the class lives server-side.

99

The Client’s point of view

An arbitrary number of instances of the class can be created in JavaScript.
The only hint that you are using a client-server architecture is the fact that when invoking a method, its return value is obtained through a callback. This mechanism allows your client interface to remain responsive while the server is preparing a response.

101

The server’s point of view

S2ajax automatically persists your instances’ state and data between consecutive asynchronous calls. You still get the benefits of the “shared nothing” approach of PHP but complex objects can be manipulated through an unlimited number of clients requests.

102

A code sample

Server-side

Let’s create a class that will increment an instance variable every time a method is invoked. Let’s keep it as simple as possible:

?View Code PHP
class CounterTester
{
    private $counter;
 
    function __construct() {
        $this->counter = 0;
    }
 
    public function increment_counter() {
        $this->counter++;
        return $this->counter;
    }
}

Clearly, every time increment_counter() is invoked, $counter will be incremented and its new value returned.

Client-Side

First, an instance of our class is created. Then, when a user click on the button labeled ‘Increment counter’, the instance’s increment_counter() method will be invoked and the new $counter value returned to our callback and displayed.

?View Code JAVASCRIPT
<script>
function display_result(val) {
    alert(val); // Display new counter value
}
var counter = new CounterTester();
</script>
<button onclick="counter.increment_counter(display_result);">Increment counter</button>

Note that we could create as many instances of our class as we wish and provided we display the matching buttons, we could independently increment multiple counters.

Get it now!

Click our valiant friend “Octocat”, artistically represented below, to go to S2ajax’s Github page. If you just wish to use the library, look for the [Download] button:

Git!

Git!

Similar Posts:

]]> http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/10/07/s2ajax-v1-0-connects-simply-php-and-javascript/feed/ 3 http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/10/07/s2ajax-v1-0-connects-simply-php-and-javascript/ PHP PDO class and XAMPP/”exotic” MySQL configurations http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNexus/~3/zsTm7n4Otws/ http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/10/01/php-pdo-class-and-xamppexotic-mysql-configurations/#comments Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:26:51 +0000 Chris http://nexus.zteo.com/?p=2728 Last night I was trying to setup a @mail server but the installer kept choking when attempting to connect to my local database.

I am posting here my quick workaround in case you too, dear reader, get a dreaded “PDO” error message complaining about your attempt to “connect to unix://”

Here is I how I solved the issue for @mail: I opened library/Zend/Db/Adapter/Pdo/Abstract.php, found the line that creates the PDO object (”new PDO(…“) and, in this example, the first argument passed to the constructor was $dsn.

The problem is that PDO sees that this variables references “localhost” and decides that, since the database is local, it is going to use mysql.sock (hence the unix:// scheme)

This works as long as the file is found in its default location. If it is elsewhere, you are out of luck. This happens, for instance, if you use XAMPP.

Here is my quick fix, inserted right before the creation of the PDO object:

$dsn = str_replace(’host=localhost’, ‘unix_socket=/opt/lampp/var/mysql/mysql.sock’, $dsn);

All done.

Note: I have not investigated enough to know whether this is something missing in the Zend Framework or in @mail itself.Similar Posts:

]]> http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/10/01/php-pdo-class-and-xamppexotic-mysql-configurations/feed/ 0 http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/10/01/php-pdo-class-and-xamppexotic-mysql-configurations/ Add your Google App account to Thunderbird 3 beta 4 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNexus/~3/kL2L9YSCMJY/ http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/09/27/add-your-google-app-account-to-thunderbird-3-beta-4/#comments Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:23:36 +0000 Chris http://nexus.zteo.com/?p=2713 Mozilla pins (wallpaper)
Beta 4 is out and it is *very* sweet. It even offers Gmail integration like never before.

Well, if you have a @gmail.com account, that is.

But don’t worry! If you have a Google App account, it can be made to work with little extra work. Here is how:

1. You need a standard @gmail.com account. Create a bogus one if necessary.

2. You will not want to do anything with this account. Not really. Thus, in Thunderbird, go offline: File > Offline > Work Offline.

3. Select File > New > Mail Account…

4. Enter the information for your @gmail.com account. Thunderbird will recognize the address and automatically fill out the following box with the correct GMail information: imap.googlemail.com, etc. Green dots all around! Just click [Create Account]

5. Now, in the left-hand tree, right-click on your account name and select ‘Settings…‘

6. Change your account name to something meaningful, then click [OK] — If you do not do this and exit the dialog, the other screens will not be updated correctly.

7. Re-open the dialog, select ‘Server Settings‘ and enter your Google App email account where your @gmail.com account is currently displayed.

8. Select ‘Outgoing Server (SMTP)‘, then ‘Google Mail – smtp.googlemail.com‘ and click [Set Default]

9. Click [OK], leave offline mode, restart Thunderbird to be on the safe side.

10. All set! Thunderbird will start synchronizing with your Google App account using these optimum settings.Similar Posts:

]]> http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/09/27/add-your-google-app-account-to-thunderbird-3-beta-4/feed/ 0 http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/09/27/add-your-google-app-account-to-thunderbird-3-beta-4/ Job opportunities v competencies: focus on these? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNexus/~3/0NZcsu_PIP8/ http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/08/15/job-opportunities-v-competencies-focus-on-these/#comments Sat, 15 Aug 2009 22:46:03 +0000 Chris http://nexus.zteo.com/?p=2708 oDesk, the freelancer haven, did — yet another — good thing and published this awesome table. It’s a “fill ratio” table that show the imbalance between job offers and how much success the companies are having filling them in.

It is very interesting because it is, in my opinion, an indicator of where one should focus their training effort in the current rather depressed market.

Skill Average # Jobs Per Month Fill Ratio
iPhone 93 23.96%
AJAX 315 27.07%
Java 75 27.65%
Graphics 106 29.13%
XHTML 163 29.31%
SQL 112 29.89%
XML 111 30.28%
PHP/IIS/MS SQL 114 30.31%
JavaScript 339 30.90%
SEO 201 30.97%
MySQL 658 31.65%
PHP 731 33.84%
English 109 34.99%
Flash 257 35.86%
Writer 101 36.36%
Joomla 236 37.11%
Drupal 117 37.75%
Data Entry 120 37.95%
html 237 38.16%
WordPress 197 39.36%
Photoshop 285 39.61%
CSS 150 42.71%
Excel 106 48.31%

SourceSimilar Posts:

]]> http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/08/15/job-opportunities-v-competencies-focus-on-these/feed/ 0 http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/08/15/job-opportunities-v-competencies-focus-on-these/ Rich-text editor in Sharepoint with Firefox http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNexus/~3/6cHpUj9q0Y8/ http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/08/07/rich-text-editor-in-sharepoint-with-firefox/#comments Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:45:04 +0000 Chris http://nexus.zteo.com/?p=2701 If, like me, your company’s insistence on using Sharepoint as an Intranet tool contributes to rapid neurons death, there is as least a glimmer of hope: you can still use Firefox without being punished by having to type raw HTML code when editing a page (Sharepoint, unsurprisingly, only likes IE)

Simple steps to use your own rich-text editor:

  1. Install Xinha
  2. Edit SharePoint page
  3. Right-click, select “Open Xinha here!”
  4. Edit! then click [OK]
  5. Now, submit page with all its HTML code. Note: You can edit existing pages as well.

Done!Similar Posts:

]]> http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/08/07/rich-text-editor-in-sharepoint-with-firefox/feed/ 2 http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/08/07/rich-text-editor-in-sharepoint-with-firefox/ “n2″ Message Board Software: Update http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNexus/~3/8YeHtD0LKPI/ http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/07/04/n2-message-board-software-update/#comments Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:34:18 +0000 Chris http://nexus.zteo.com/?p=2692 This is a cross-posting with the nextBBS support board.

Some of you already know about this but keep reading…

Development of nextBBS v2 was steered in a new direction about two months ago and this is for the better.

“n2″ is the software’s new code name. And the change is more than skin-deep because it is actually the result of the merger of three different pieces of software:

+ wtcBB
+ nextBBS v2 “current”
+ My own PHP framework called “Lenses”

The result is a very fast, very user and admin-friendly board with easy install and localization across the board.

This new direction is very exciting for at least two reasons:

1. It allows me to work without being hindered by “youthful” mistakes I had made when developing nBBS v1 such as SEO being an afterthought and an Admin Control Panel that was too intimidating

2. wtcBB and nextBBS share a common philosophy on many levels and integrating both programs allows me to pick the best implementation. A few examples are BBCode editor, sub-sub forums, micro-caching, high logging granularity, editing look and feel in the admin cp…

You can follow progress through my submits and the issues tracker.

Go to my original post to see a few screenshots. I should bring a demo online soon.Similar Posts:

]]> http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/07/04/n2-message-board-software-update/feed/ 1 http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/07/04/n2-message-board-software-update/ Zenoss jobs mailing list: Mistakes to avoid http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNexus/~3/Od6hzaNuoyU/ http://nexus.zteo.com/2009/06/18/zenoss-jobs-mailing-list-mistakes-to-avoid/#comments Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:20:26 +0000 Chris http://nexus.zteo.com/?p=2679 zenoss-100x38Oh, how unfortunate: Zenoss, most likely not by malice but because they were not paying close enough attention to social netiquette, committed a big no-no: they decided that everyone whose email address they had on record was to be automatically added to their new jobs-related mailing list, no confirmation required.

Of course, now people are — some pretty aggressively — complaining and demanding to be removed from the list, and this makes matters worse because their list server is configured so that all replies go out to everybody on the list.

In the process, these unhappy responders’ signatures with work phone number, etc, are in turn published for everybody to see/collect.

And, to make matters worse, their list server does not properly weed out out-of-office messages and these, too, have become part of the email storm.

So, how could you avoid the same mistake(s)?

  1. When launching a new mailing list, it’s OK to *tell* people about it but the list itself should be opt-in (ideally double opt-in), never opt-out
  2. Even so, make sure that all emails sent from your list server contain a prominent link allowing your users to easily unsubscribe
  3. Configure your list server properly! Have a professional marketer do it for you it that’s not your thing. Do not underestimate what could go wrong: this is real-time communication, you do not have a safety net.

Update: – June 18th
Uh-oh. What was, I am sure, a misguided act, is starting to elicit more “hateful” reactions. I hope the Zenoss people address the issue before things get too ugly.
Similar Posts:

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