What a n00b! http://whatan00b.com Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:27:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 Upgrade to Windows 7 Because.. It Sucks Less? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WhatAN00b/~3/of-h6M1XUSI/upgrade-to-windows-7-because-it-sucks-less http://whatan00b.com/upgrade-to-windows-7-because-it-sucks-less#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:27:32 +0000 Wyatt Walter http://whatan00b.com/?p=1086

Well, after a busy couple of months I’m finally back. I did miss the release of Windows 7 on my blog, but I definitely enjoyed watching the fireworks between Apple and Microsoft through their commercials on tv. Microsoft has definitely come out with a product that the public seems to like (which ultimately is all that matters). One of the commercials, however, caught me a bit off guard.

In the commercial, ‘Angela’ says: “I don’t want to worry about my computer freezing or crashing … and suddenly, Windows 7″. Uh, what? Did we just hear an admission from Microsoft that Vista had problems? I hate to add to my anti-Microsoft list of blog posts, but seriously, what are they thinking with this ad? They should’ve just said: “Upgrade to Windows 7, it sucks less than previous versions”. Definitely not the positive spin on Windows that I was expecting.. With a product out the door that the company can definitely be proud of, I expected them to tout some cool new features, but that’s not the stance we’ve seen from previous versions.

Related Posts Related Websites ]]> http://whatan00b.com/upgrade-to-windows-7-because-it-sucks-less/feed 1 http://whatan00b.com/upgrade-to-windows-7-because-it-sucks-less Google Adds Push Mail to Sync for iPhone, Windows Mobile http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WhatAN00b/~3/lj_RNdMraHY/google-adds-push-mail-to-sync-for-iphone-windows-mobile http://whatan00b.com/google-adds-push-mail-to-sync-for-iphone-windows-mobile#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:03:03 +0000 Wyatt Walter http://whatan00b.com/?p=1081

In a blog post from the Google Enterprise Apps team, Google has announced that syncing iPhones and Windows Mobile phones with Gmail via ActiveSync now allows users to sync mail as a push account. Until now, users had to use ActiveSync (or Google Sync as Google likes to call it on the server-side) for calendars and contacts and exclude mail from syncing. Then the user had to setup their Gmail account as a separate IMAP account on the iPhone/Win Mo to get their email. It appears that push email is available to both the Enterprise and free personal account customers.

As far as I’m aware, we still have no word on whether Gmail will support some of the more advanced features of ActiveSync the way that Exchange (and now Zimbra 6.0) can. So far, Exchange competitor Zimbra can do things like initiate wipes to mobile devices, lock devices when an incorrect password is entered, and pause (and resume) syncing to the device.

Gmail has differentiated itself from the market, however, as being the only free email provider (that I’ve heard of) that offers push mail, contacts, and calendars via ActiveSync (or other similar way to your choice of device). Others (like Hotmail) aren’t even offering IMAP access to external mail clients to free customers.

Related Posts Related Websites ]]> http://whatan00b.com/google-adds-push-mail-to-sync-for-iphone-windows-mobile/feed 0 http://whatan00b.com/google-adds-push-mail-to-sync-for-iphone-windows-mobile Never Deal with Phone Menus Again http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WhatAN00b/~3/h-TFnNazCuE/never-deal-with-phone-menus-again http://whatan00b.com/never-deal-with-phone-menus-again#comments Mon, 21 Sep 2009 05:47:00 +0000 Wyatt Walter http://whatan00b.com/?p=1079

I just read through LifeHacker’s 2009 top ten list of the web’s most under-hyped apps and just can’t get over number 2: Fonolo. Most of the other applications are just web apps that perform the same function as desktop applications, but Fonolo seems to stand out among the rest as one of the more innovative and useful applications I’ve seen in a while. The application is really simple (something that seems to make the good ones stand out), but it allows users to call common businesses that utilize phone menus and display the menu visually. Once the services gets through the menus, it connects to the users’ phone to pick up.

In a world where most things are available to us online, there’s a surprising amount of things that one still has to pick up the phone for and this allows consumers to have the convenience of browsing, much like the web, but still be able to get to talk to a real-life person. I can see Fonolo being ripe for the picking from the likes of Google to add to Google Voice as a wonderful time-saving feature. Hopefully we’re not too far from the day where businesses offer such a service right from their website as well, but I’m sure we’re a long way from that day..

Related Posts Related Websites ]]> http://whatan00b.com/never-deal-with-phone-menus-again/feed 0 http://whatan00b.com/never-deal-with-phone-menus-again Forget Monitoring, Just Check Twitter! http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WhatAN00b/~3/-SVTD4QI_4s/forget-monitoring-just-check-twitter http://whatan00b.com/forget-monitoring-just-check-twitter#comments Sat, 19 Sep 2009 05:28:01 +0000 Wyatt Walter http://whatan00b.com/?p=1075

Tonight Facebook seems to be having some issues. It has been resetting connections from my browser and is almost as reliable as my workout schedule. How do I know it’s not just me? I searched Twitter, of course, and seem to have found a significant amount of others having similar problems. At the beginning of this month, Gmail had a fairly major outage and Twitter was alive with comments about Gmail being down as well.

This concept really isn’t all that new, but it’s amazing how much visibility one can have into what’s going on in the world. The last two issues that I’ve experienced with large services, I found out that thousands of others were having problems within moments. Of course, that’s only the tip of the iceberg of things that Twitter can be useful for. Being able to see what’s being said about your product all the time is incredibly useful as well. I suppose the system works, however, only until Twitter breaks down and we have to find some out-of-band tool to check on it (which, given Twitter’s track record, we may need that fairly often).

Update: Ha! Just after posting, I had problems logging in to my Adsense account. Guess where the first place I looked for and found others having the same problem? :)

Related Posts Related Websites ]]> http://whatan00b.com/forget-monitoring-just-check-twitter/feed 0 http://whatan00b.com/forget-monitoring-just-check-twitter Is Microsoft Supporting Old Products Only When It Feels Like It? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WhatAN00b/~3/uckbAbn2uLc/is-microsoft-supporting-old-products-only-when-it-feels-like-it http://whatan00b.com/is-microsoft-supporting-old-products-only-when-it-feels-like-it#comments Wed, 16 Sep 2009 05:39:59 +0000 Wyatt Walter http://whatan00b.com/?p=1072

It was barely a month ago that the web development community watched in horror as Microsoft told the world that dropping support for Internet Explorer 6 was not an option. I completely understand and would agree with the rationale here. They released Windows XP with IE6, so a freshly re-installed desktop would be unsupported if they had dropped support for IE6, which is certainly a bad plan. However, that doesn’t seem to be the same Microsoft that we saw this week when they told us that they won’t be patching the critical TCP/IP flaw found in all versions, but patched in Vista.

What really leaves me scratching my head about these two circumstances is that Windows XP is used by far more users than Internet Explorer 6. It’s commendable that they continue to support IE6 even after some very serious push from the community to try and force users out, but Windows XP market share is still extremely high while IE6 market share is waning. Perhaps the Windows team has been a bit busy lately with patching new vulnerabilities being discovered (though disclosure of the last one was pretty irresponsible assuming it really was released publicly first) as well as finishing off Windows 7.

Related Posts Related Websites ]]> http://whatan00b.com/is-microsoft-supporting-old-products-only-when-it-feels-like-it/feed 0 http://whatan00b.com/is-microsoft-supporting-old-products-only-when-it-feels-like-it Why No Camera On the New iPod Touch? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WhatAN00b/~3/9gjddJTpWPE/why-no-camera-on-the-new-ipod-touch http://whatan00b.com/why-no-camera-on-the-new-ipod-touch#comments Thu, 10 Sep 2009 05:50:37 +0000 Wyatt Walter http://whatan00b.com/?p=1069

Today Apple gave its iPod lineup a bit of a refresh with a new version of the iPhone firmware, iPod Touches with larger capacity and a slick new Nano with a camera. The iPod Nano looks pretty slick with its new camera, YouTube/Facebook publishing, and various other new fun features. So slick that I’m thinking that I want one and I don’t really get excited about devices all that much. Problem is, I’d like to run apps and have WiFi.. So I need a Touch.. doh!

I really don’t get it. As far as I understand, they were able to add the camera to the Nano without adding any width to the device. I’m sure there’s reasons that they can’t add the camera without adding width, but I’d gladly sacrifice a little bit of width if I gained a camera. Besides, the iPhone has it. Now Apple’s going to have to come up with some crazy chart like the Windows 7 product comparison chart to decide which model to buy..

Related Posts Related Websites ]]> http://whatan00b.com/why-no-camera-on-the-new-ipod-touch/feed 0 http://whatan00b.com/why-no-camera-on-the-new-ipod-touch Linux Getting Some Upgrade Love http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WhatAN00b/~3/ReHUxNj7iMw/linux-getting-some-upgrade-love http://whatan00b.com/linux-getting-some-upgrade-love#comments Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:26:05 +0000 Wyatt Walter http://whatan00b.com/?p=1067

With Microsoft and Apple both making releases this fall, I sometimes have felt like I need to comfort my Linux desktop that it’s not getting huge upgrades at once after reading tech news. Both Snow Leopard and Windows 7 offer some usability improvements over the predecessors as well as some speed improvements. However, Linux doesn’t have to feel unloved this fall anymore. The new Linux kernel, version 2.6.31, is promising some serious speed increases, specifically for the desktop.

The speed improvements will be much more noticeable on a desktop strapped for memory as it comes from better memory management that reduces the number of reads from disk to memory. The benchmarks also show a dramatic reduction in the number of major faults on file servers as well.

Other improvements to the release include ATI graphics card support improvements, USB 3.0 support and an improved Firewire driver.

I’m glad that I’m finally able to read software release news other than for Microsoft and Apple for a change.. :)

Related Posts Related Websites ]]> http://whatan00b.com/linux-getting-some-upgrade-love/feed 0 http://whatan00b.com/linux-getting-some-upgrade-love The $10 Free App http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WhatAN00b/~3/0D5NxdkCwQI/the-10-free-app http://whatan00b.com/the-10-free-app#comments Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:15:55 +0000 Wyatt Walter http://whatan00b.com/?p=1065

I don’t think it’s fair to talk about my Snow Leopard experience this weekend without talking about the hosing I took from the iTunes App Store this weekend. A coworker of mine and Digg both told me about the new Facebook app for the iPhone. My wife uses Facebook incessantly and I thought that she would be excited about it, but she never said a word. When I asked her about it she checked for updates on her iPod Touch and it said there were none.

Not one to give up easily, I checked the article that was posted on Digg and found out that others had had problems with their devices finding the update and the recommendation was to remove and reinstall to get the new version. So.. we quickly removed the old Facebook app and went to install the new one. Sadly, we were disappointed (more like she was mad and I was in trouble..) to find out that it required the iPhone 3.0 upgrade (her iPod was a gen 2 without the upgrade). Since the iTunes App Store is so closed and wont’ allow to get the older version, Facebook 3.0 did end up being the $10 free app for us..

Related Posts Related Websites ]]> http://whatan00b.com/the-10-free-app/feed 0 http://whatan00b.com/the-10-free-app The Difference Between an Apple and Microsoft Upgrade http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WhatAN00b/~3/kNVpqClc81o/the-difference-between-an-apple-and-microsoft-upgrade http://whatan00b.com/the-difference-between-an-apple-and-microsoft-upgrade#comments Sat, 29 Aug 2009 22:58:08 +0000 Wyatt Walter http://whatan00b.com/?p=1063

Like a good little Apple fan, I went out and purchased a copy of the new Snow Leopard OS from my local Mac store yesterday. I got it home, popped open the box, popped the DVD into my MacBook, told it to upgrade and in 45 minutes or so I was playing with the new features of Snow Leopard. This really was my first operating system upgrade as an Apple fan and I have to say I was impressed. I was an Apple fan before the Leopard release, but I didn’t do an in-place upgrade for other reasons at the time.

Why is this cool or even worth noting? Because that was all I did. I didn’t look at some chart to see which copy of Snow Leopard was right for my computer. I didn’t have to double-check that I was running the 32-bit version instead of 64-bit. I didn’t run my computer and peripherals through some software to make sure they were compatible. All I cared about was that I had a MacBook running Leopard, so I purchased Snow Leopard and popped the DVD in the drive. And guess what? My computer now runs faster! In fact, I am now using something like 6 GB less disk space than before.

The other cool part was that I didn’t reinstall any software, nor did I re-activate anything. Unlike doing an upgrade with Microsoft software involved, I wasn’t treated like a pirate and required to jump through hoops to use my software again. I just loaded it again. The user experience from the store to upgrade complete was very smooth and straight-forward.

While it’s certainly true that the upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard was far less of a jump than Windows XP to Vista or even Vista to 7, but it really doesn’t matter. I had to put far less care into the upgrade and just did it. And that (among a few other things) is why I do, and will continue to do for the foreseeable future, recommend Apple products to those who ask me their opinion on what computer to buy.

Related Posts Related Websites ]]> http://whatan00b.com/the-difference-between-an-apple-and-microsoft-upgrade/feed 4 http://whatan00b.com/the-difference-between-an-apple-and-microsoft-upgrade Running LAMP Applications Using Nginx http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WhatAN00b/~3/meGR_DRNrc0/running-lamp-applications-using-nginx http://whatan00b.com/running-lamp-applications-using-nginx#comments Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:50:19 +0000 Wyatt Walter http://whatan00b.com/?p=1049

While playing with WordPress on nginx for my last post, I discovered that a majority of the how-tos out there on running PHP/MySQL applications using nginx left a bit to desired. Here’s the steps that I took to get my application (WordPress, specifically) working.

Install nginx, MySQL, and PHP
First, let’s install nginx and PHP along with a few PHP libraries:
sudo apt-get install php5-mhash php5-mysql php5-odbc curl php5-curl php5-gd php5-imap nginx php5-cgi php5-cli php5-common

If you didn’t already have MySQL installed on your server, you’ll need that too:
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
The installer will prompt you to enter a root password. Make sure it’s a fairly good password, but also be sure to record it as you’ll need it later.

Install spawn-fcgi
Spawn-fcgi used to be included with lighttpd, but has been moved to its own project, so it can be downloaded separately. Unfortunately, the spawn-fcgi project is not in the Ubuntu repositories, so it has to be installed separately. First, download the tarball from the spawn-fcgi project page. As of this writing, it’s on version 1.6.2. For this particular version, run the following from a directory your user can download to:
wget http://www.lighttpd.net/download/spawn-fcgi-1.6.2.tar.gz

Untar it:
tar zxf spawn-fcgi-1.6.2.tar.gz

Make sure you have the compilation tools:
sudo apt-get install build-essential

Now, navigate into the spawn-fcgi download directory and compile:
cd spawn-fcgi-1.6.2
./configure
make

Now, let’s install it into /usr/bin:
cd src
sudo cp spawn-fcgi /usr/bin/

Now, let’s make the init script. Copy the following example into /etc/init.d/fastcgi:

#!/bin/bash
PHP_SCRIPT=/usr/bin/php-fastcgi
RETVAL=0
case "$1" in
'start')
$PHP_SCRIPT
RETVAL=$?
;;
'stop')
killall -9 php5-cgi
RETVAL=$?
;;
'restart')
killall -9 php5-cgi
$PHP_SCRIPT
RETVAL=$?
;;
*)
echo “Usage: php-fastcgi {start|stop|restart}”
exit 1
;;
esac
exit $RETVAL

Next, let’s create the script to launch the PHP CGI process. Copy the following example text into /usr/bin/php-fastcgi:

/usr/bin/spawn-fcgi -a 127.0.0.1 -p 9000 -C 5 -u www-data -g www-data -f /usr/bin/php5-cgi

Make sure the new scripts are executable:

chmod +x /usr/bin/php-fastcgi /etc/init.d/fastcgi

You should be able to start up your fastcgi process now with the following:
/etc/init.d/fastcgi start

Make the fastcgi process start at boot:
sudo update-rc.d fastcgi defaults

Setup nginx site
I used the following as my site file. A majority of it was taken from the default site and parts from other how-tos. You can rewrite the /etc/nginx/sites-available/default with this templated page (in my example, I assumed that the site is called site.com and that you are using WordPress at /var/www/wordpress). Be sure to change the “root” and “SCRIPT_FILENAME” lines.

server {
listen 80;
server_name site.com;
access_log /var/log/nginx/localhost.access.log;
location / {
root /var/www/wordpress;
index index.php;
if (-f $request_filename) {
expires 30d;
break;
}
if (!-e $request_filename) {
rewrite ^(.+)$ /index.php?q=$1 last;
}
}
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root /var/www/nginx-default;
}
# pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
#
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string;
fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD $request_method;
fastcgi_param CONTENT_TYPE $content_type;
fastcgi_param CONTENT_LENGTH $content_length;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/wordpress$fastcgi_script_name;
include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
}
}

Before restarting nginx, make sure everything is cool with the config and correct any errors:
sudo nginx -t

Now, restart nginx with the new changes:
sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart

Install your application
You can now install your application as you normally would using Apache. In this example, you can download the WordPress packages to /var/www/wordpress and install from there, making sure that the files are owned by the www-data user.

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