Bud Boy Tech

3D Modelling in Firefox

Rob Steenwyk — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:00:09 +0000

I know I'm at risk of becoming a Ars Technica whore, but I thought their article on WebGL being implemented in Firefox was sweet.

The future of the web is bright with the <video> tag coming with HTML 5 and WebGL on it's way perhaps even sooner. w00t!

If you are a nerd like me, definitely read the article.

Chrome coming to Internet Explorer

Rob Steenwyk — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 02:09:42 +0000

According to Ars Technica, Chrome is coming to Internet Explorer in the form of a plugin. Once the plugin is widely deployed, web masters will be able to put in a simple meta tag telling IE to pass off the rendering of the webpage to Chrome's renderer.

The plugin is not yet available, but Google has open sourced the code and is hoping for testers and contributors to contribute to the project. I honestly don't know how many people will actually install the plugin, or how many developers will require IE users to install it, but it could definitely become interesting if Google can get even 25% of IE users to install the plugin.

I'm sure web masters the world over will be rejoicing if the plugin can become mainstream.

Did the Google Search Bar Get Bigger or am I going crazy?

Rob Steenwyk — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 22:01:17 +0000

Am I crazy or did Google change their search bar?That seems to be a question many people are asking. No, you aren't going crazy, at least not in noticing this change. Google made the search input box larger, and also made the search suggestions that drop down while you are typing in your query a much larger font. I'm not exactly sure why Google didn't put a notice up on the main page explaining this change, perhaps they didn't think people would notice or care. People do care though, I have heard a few people at work wondering out loud WTF was going on. I would have been in the same boat, but thankfully I had read a post on the Google Blog explaining that the change was coming, so I could just cackle with knowing glee :).

German parliament passes internet censorship bill "for the children!"

Rob Steenwyk — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:41:47 +0000

This sickens me. The German parliament has passed a law that requires ISP's and hosts to block websites that host child pornography. Of course, the German government is in charge of creating the list, so the possibility for abuse is enormous. No one likes child porn, but laws like this are just the first step towards a society where free speech online is stifled. Apparently one member of parliament is already seeing if they can also block access to "killer games" like Counterstrike. How about this? Instead of creating a list of sites where child porn is, why not GO AFTER THE PEOPLE POSTING AND CREATING THIS STUFF IN THE FIRST PLACE! DO YOUR DAMN JOB, STOP PANDERING!

I saw a post by Phurge on Slashdot, and thought that the quote he posted was quite hilarious/sad in this context.

The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.

Guess who said that?

This douche bag.

Twitter ported to Commodore 64 - Facebook missing out on large market

Rob Steenwyk — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:39:27 +0000

Twitter on Commodore 64Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, officially crapped his pants when it was announced that Johan Van den Brande had ported the popular social networking tool Twitter to the widely used Commodore 64 platform. The Commodore 64 is known for being popular with white males between the ages of 30 and 40. This is a demographic that advertisers have been clamoring to target on social networking sites, but they have tended to stay away from sites such as MySpace and Facebook as they do not support their preferred computing platform, the Commodore 64. The reason for the lack of ports is that progamming for the Commodore 64 generally requires knowledge of COBOL or FORTRAN, programming languages that are similar to Old English in that the only people that can understand them died roughly 900 years ago.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams telling Mark Zuckerberg to, "suck it"Thankfully for Commodore 64 users the world over, Johan Van den Brande became determined to write a Twitter application after appreciating the full capabilities of the platform. You may be asking yourself how Johan could write a port of Twitter for the Commodore 64 if no one knows how to write COBOL or FORTRAN code. Well, Johan doesn't write code in COBOL or FORTRAN, he uses magic. Since there haven't been any new applications written for the Commodore 64 in over 15 years, it is expected that Johan's port of Twitter will gain 90% marketshare on the Commodore by the end of the week.

This is a huge blow to Mr. Zuckerberg and Facebook, and Twitter has been quick to pounce on the news. Twitter CEO Evan Williams was quick to note on his blog, "ahahahahaha! Suck on that Suckerberg!" We attempted to contact Facebook and Mr. Zuckerberg, but all we got was a voicemail with crying and blowing noses.

To install the application you can click here. If you would like to view it in action, see below.

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WorldLeadersTheGame.com Video Overview - BBT Video Episode 2

Rob Steenwyk — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 01:29:50 +0000

Click on the image to view BBT Video Episode 2

After hearing from Jay, the creator of World Leaders The Game, on my first post about the site, I decided I'd take a look at the new interface. I have to say, I am very impressed. It is extremely slick and even more user friendly than before. But instead of writing about it, I thought I'd show you the interface in a video, and explain it a bit that way!

Click here to view BBT Video Episode 2, an overview of World Leaders The Game.

The State Of Managed Services APIs

Rob Steenwyk — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:11:05 +0000

Joe over at MSPMentor.net, my favorite blog that talks about the Managed Service Provider market, wrote an article today about what questions a MSP should ask about the APIs their RMM and PSA vendor provides. If you don't know what RMM or PSA stands for, I'll clue you in. RMM stands for Remote Monitoring & Management, and is typified by companies like Zenith Infotech, Kaseya, and N-Able. PSA stands for Professional Service Automation, and in the context of Managed Services, companies like Connectwise and Autotask are the big players.

Recently, there has been competing announcements from these companies about the APIs they provide and the 3rd party software that they hook into. While these announcements are great, I still don't think the APIs are anywhere close to where they could be. Joe is right when he says, "the MSP software provider with the best API strategy could emerge as the Windows of managed services — ubiquitous, and sitting at the center of an emerging software market." While the Remote Management & Automation tools will continue to incrementally improve and adapt, it seems that they are all good enough across the board. There are feature differences, but all of these software packages are pretty much offering the same thing, patching, remote desktop, scripting etc.

Currently, the APIs seem to be offering the same thing as well. They can move data from, say, Reflexion Email Filtering into Connectwise for billing and reporting purposes, but things should be moving much farther forward than that. The first company that can offer the ability to create a new company/user and automatically provision those users into Reflexion (or any third party service) for email filtering will be at a huge advantage. I don't see any reason why we can't provision new domain names, backup services, spam filtering etc. from our PSA software.It would truly bring automation to Professional Service Automation.

The current workflow for technicians to setup a brand new company on managed services, frankly, sucks. I think the big RMM and PSA vendors know it, and they are scrambling to create full featured APIs that are easy to develop for. It will be extremely interesting to see what the RMM/PSA world looks like in 2 years, it may be a completely different landscape.

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Analog Modem from 1964 used to access Internet... at 300 baud

Rob Steenwyk — Fri, 29 May 2009 23:13:57 +0000

I haven't seen something this cool in a long time. This guy that goes by the handle phreakmonkey picked up a Livermore Data Systems "Model A" Accoustic Coupler modem and uses it to browse the web with everyone's favorite text browser, Lynx. Pretty amazing that a modem from 1964 can still be used today. The beauty of open standards!

Take a look:

Terminator Fuel Cell Butane Lighter FTW!

Rob Steenwyk — Fri, 22 May 2009 01:13:22 +0000

Seeing as how I'm just about to head out and see Terminator 4, I figured now would be a good time to let my readers now that you can purchase the Skynet created nuclear powered fuel cell for only $19.99 from Hollywood Collectibles. Okay, so this version is actually powered by butane, but we can't be all that far away from a machine uprising, can we? This nerd is hoping...

Tech Blogs/Sites You Should Read

Rob Steenwyk — Wed, 20 May 2009 23:59:12 +0000

There are a lot of great tech/IT focused blogs & web sites out there, and here are some of the ones I read frequently.

That isn't a full list, but I read those blogs pretty much on a day to day basis. Any more that you think I should add?