I initially wanted to get an HTC phone, but after comparing the price and functionalities between these two “touch-technology” gadgets, I came to the conclusion that the iPhone is the better choice. And I was right. It’s wayyyyyy better.

Why iPhone? Well first of all, we all already know how cool the iPhone’s multi-touch technology works. The ability to enlarge pictures by stretching apart your two fingers on the screen, moving things around here and there, zooming in and out, flipping pages and stuffs, all by using the gestures of your fingers on the screen… plus the iPhone’s ability of knowing whether you’re holding the phone vertically or horizontally… these things has never failed to awe anyone who’s new to it. It is just unbelievably advanced and “intelligent” - and soooo cool…. again - that you’ll feel like you got hold of a device from the future. That’s right folks, The Future is Now.

Okay, enough of the sales talk. Three reasons why the iPhone is going to dominate the Web 2.0 world:

1. Browsing websites in the iPhone is exactly the same as like browsing websites on your PC/laptop

Yes! Thanks to the multi-touch technology, the Safari browser inside the iPhone will render webpages just as it normally would in a normal computer! No more impractical WAP-based pages and phones - they are so dead. I hate seeing broken pages and minimalist sites on a slow GPRS connection anyway. The iPhone connects to the Internet via WiFi (now even 3G!), so iPhone users can actually sit at Starbucks and browse the Internet without even needing to carry that heavy laptop. And remember, it renders the actual page! AJAX, Javascript, all will be working correctly. So that means Web 2.0 apps are going to be used for a long, long time ahead!

2. Affordable price

Priced at only USD199 for the new Version 2 iPhone, anyone can afford one these days. I am pretty convinced that the iPhone is going to be the next Windows PC of this era. Everyone is going to get themselves an iPhone, and once everyone starts using it, more and more web apps will be exposed to those people who previously was never really Internet-savvy users before.

3. iPhone apps can be developed

Lots and lots of ever-increasing number of apps can be freely downloaded from the net and installed in the iPhone. If you’re a Web 2.0 developer, it doesn’t hurt to build an iPhone app for your web app as well. More and more iPhone apps are being developed as we speak. The iPhone apps will help boost the functionalities and practicalities of your web app. Take it to your full advantage!

The iPhone is just too awesome that I’m warning other mobile providers like Nokia, Samsung and LG…… YOU GUYS BETTER START WORRYING!

The page I’m talking about is this:

• http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive

Now go ahead and Bookmark it! A very useful resource you don’t want to miss

Topics range from the basic fundamentals of Web 2.0 to the deep inner workings of startup companies, including the limitations, challenges and tips of managing a serious Web 2.0 startup company. So if you have 25 minutes to kill, sit back, relax, and enjoy this video

Hope you learnt something interesting & useful today.

Thanks to StuffThatHappens for the illustration and to FunkyKaraoke for sharing it!

Seems like this 89-years-old gradma turned to the Internet to reach voters in her political campaign as a free candidate for the coming election day (oh wait… it’s tommorrow ). Not only does she has her own campaign blog, she also makes use of Youtube channels, Picasa photo album, and even created a Facebook group to reach out for supporters.

Telling by her age (and the way she gives that “blank stare” into the LCD ), I’m sure someone else is maintaining those online campaign stuffs for her. But I don’t care if she’s gonna nail the election or not (considering her age and background, and what was the name of her party again?), she’s definitely one step ahead than most other candidates out there who still relies solely on traditional street-side posters and a few talks to attract voters. This grandma records herself and posts her videos into Youtube. She pose for pictures and uploaded them to Picasa. She fully utilizes Web 2.0 to do her viral marketing campaign.

You rock grandma!

A few years later, things started to change. Topics like SEO and “friendly URLs” get tossed here and there. Online bookmark applications like del.icio.us and BlinkList started to get into the mainstream lane. All these new adoptions has revealed Flash’s weaknesses in Internet’s content indexing.

However, there were a crowd of people who still believed in Flash and injected it into the Web2.0-sphere. Suddenly web apps like Geni, Scribd and SlideShare sprung up into the Web 2.0 scene introducing Flash as their core technology and proving the true power of Flash in interactivity. People started to realize that with the right application, the strength of Flash can actually be put to good use. This is for the people who keeps bashing Flash out there

“A 100% Flash website” may be somewhat impractical at this age, but Flash itself, is not. It is still playing a huge role in the Web 2.0 scene for its flexibility and cross-platform adaptability. Think about it… there wouldn’t be YouTube if not because of Flash.

BEFORE TREATMENT:

AFTER TREATMENT:

Version numbers are the first thing a typical hacker will look for if they want to attack your server. This is because once they know what version your web server is running on, they can easily look for what kind of vulnerabilities are associated with that version, and then simply run the related exploit to hack your server. Attackers can easily know the type and version of your webserver by looking at the HTTP response headers received after they send requests to your application through a Telnet program, or by using Firefox addons/extensions like ServerSpy and Live HTTP Headers in order to see your web server’s version the moment they visit your site.

So hide your Apache and PHP version!

In order to do this, you need to do some sys admin job. I am going to specifically focus on Apache and PHP because I am more of a LAMP (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP) user. If you use ASP on Microsoft IIS, I can’t help you much with all these version-hiding thingy (but hey, Google is there to save your day! )

So here goes..

Hide Apache version number:

• Open your Apache’s httpd.conf file (in my case, # vi /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf), and look for the line that says: “ServerSignature On“
• Change it to “ServerSignature Off” (this will hide the Apache version normally seen at the bottom of your 404 error pages)
• Then add “ServerTokens Prod” below that line (to hide the version in HTTP response headers)
• Restart your HTTP service (# /etc/init.d/httpd restart)
• Done! No more Apache version numbers

Hide PHP version number:

• Find your php.ini file (in my case, # vi /usr/local/lib/php.ini), and look for the line that says: “expose_php On“
• Change it to: “expose_php Off“
• Restart your HTTP service if necessary
• Done! No more PHP version number in your HTTP response header

Wasn’t that hard now, was it? Just a few tweaks can save you a great deal of security risk, and may save you your business too! Bear in mind that this does not in any way protect from real vulnerabilities that may be associated with your version. Patches or upgrades should still be applied. However, hiding the version numbers will at least make the hackers life harder

Cool ain’t it? Go ahead and re-play it for another round…. I know you want to.

PS: Notice the remark “Won’t you blog about this song”…. ? Aha… I just did…

Credits to the video creator - Richter Scales

“The Web is better when it’s social”.

OpenSocial has been the hype in the Web 2.0 industry for a few days now. What it does is basically providing a common set of open APIs for developers to build social applications across different sites. This is not something that revolve only around Google apps, but it is more of implementing a standard that developers can adapt so that their application will be able to support the OpenSocial initiative.

Ahh.. what am I doing here explaining all these. Why not just let Google themselves explain what OpenSocial is all about in their Campfire One - Introducing OpenSocial.

Web 2.0 developers…. take note!

CakePHP already has quite a number of useful resources for Cake developers to refer to:

• The Bakery - compiling CakePHP-related articles, Components, Helpers, code snippets, etc
• CakePHP Google Group - the official place for Cake Bakers to discuss & share knowledge
• The official CakePHP IRC channel - for quick Q&A

However, I believe some people are just more comfortable doing discussions in a forum board environment (yes… people like myself. Somehow Google groups just seems a bit off to me ). So I bought the domain, designed the logo (can’t use the trademarked CakePHP logo), themes & the header, setup some forum boards & categories, and launched it straight away.

If I’m not mistaken, someone had previously created a CakePHP forum at cakephpforum.com, but I heard it died off miserably (even the domain has R.I.P).

So for CakePHP users out there, welcome aboard!