http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/12/on-google-chromes-future-support-for.html

With this approach however I have to ask myself, will Chrome ever exceed the abilities of Firefox?

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It's basically made my mp3 collection redundant over the last few months (no mean feat, believe me) but until today I hadn't junked it completely because I didn't have a way of listening to last.fm on the move.

Yesterday I however I received my shiny new Nokia E71 on a slightly different contract from 3 which gives me full power to use the internet as I like (well subject to their fair usage policy anyway).

At the same time I noticed the new INQ phone from 3 also supported last.fm and went hunting for a last.fm mobile app, and that's when I found mobbler a free, open source version of the last.fm scrobbler for Symbian based mobile phones i.e. those made by Nokia

I'm glad to say it works really well and as a result I'm going to archive the mp3's and free up a good 100 gig of disk space - woo for social radio!

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At home I have Linksys WRT54GL router which I've had for 4/5 years now.

It's always been a dependable box with all the basic functionality I've needed onboard, but recently (mainly as a result of networking discussions at work) I've thought about doing more things which require more control over my internet connection.

When talking to a friend about this recently, he suggested I try Tomato out, as it's designed to work on boxes like mine and offers a lot of extra functionality over the standard supplied firmware.

So today I bit the bullet and gave it a whirl, and I couldn't be happier.

I now have a neat little accessible linux based router with all the extra useful features you'd expect - VPN, bandwith monitoring, signal monitoring, decent routing, cron jobs, custom scripting, etc.

Given that my router cost £35 when I bought it and other models that offer this level of extra functionality can cost a LOT more - I'm happy to say the least

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As anyone who actually reads this blog probably already knows, I work for an internet marketing company called Netbasic as projects manager and web developer.

We entered the Tech Track 100 this year and as you can see from their website we're No. 3, which makes us the 3rd fastest growing private technology company in the UK!

Not bad at all for just 7 people!

Since then we've doubled in size, grabbed some extra office space and completely revamped one of our bigger brands, accepted.co.uk - a mammoth task but something necessary to keep us on top of the game!

So what's next?

Well there'll be a number of exciting developments coming over the next couple of years (which I'm not going to talk about here), but keep your eyes peeled, cus credit crunch or not we're here to stay!

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Wordpress version here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/highslide4wp/

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I judge a browser by it's speed when I'm using it on the train (into and out of work), via my mobile broadband and what I can actually do with it in terms of functionality, and unfortunately I'm not impressed.

I don't like bloated software, but I don't like software that's so minimal I can't really use it.

So, though seemingly very fast on a standard internet connection, google chrome has been very slow on my mobile broadband, noticeably slower than firefox but not as slow as internet explorer. Gmail is comparativly slow as are other google apps such as igoogle.

Features wise it's not much better -  so far, it's so minimalistic it's almost unusable. Don't get me wrong, it has a few nice things in it but it's missing all the things I need and use every day.

So what's the answer?

Well I may be able to spped up the browser by turning off the usage statistics reporting (though this is on in firefox without issue), so I'll give that a try soon.

And if google produce a plugin API for chrome and developers actually code for it that'd be great. But saying that, what would be better (for me at least) is an interface that allows you to use native chrome plugins if they exist but, also import firefox plugins where possible.

As it stands, unfortunately, I'm quite underwhelmed with the usefulness of chrome and kinda wish it'd been released with a bit more usefulness than it currently has, at the very least it could have google toolbar options built in...

Lets hope they build on it quickly or else it'll just become another niche product for die hard googlephiles.

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That is why books about CEO Succession by Dennis Carey are so useful. I often read around management and recruitment strategies in my spare time and his books prove to be really helpful guides time and again. Dennis Carey is an author who is particularly insightful and his co-authors as well.

Writing about topics such as CEO Succession, How To Run A Company, The Human Side of M & A, and Music Publishing in Renaissance England can't be easy and he achieves it with gusto!

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It's a fantastic documentary and the guy presenting it went all around the world looking at sculpture and rounded today's show (about sculpture of women) on plastic surgery - modern biological sculpture. He discussed beauty and various facial work, including rhinoplasty i.e "nose-job's".

This inspired me to go off onto the internet have a look at more information on rhinoplasty and other plastic surgry. As I did so I came accross this interesting article on perforated septum repair

It sounds a nasty business so I won't be taking part any time soon, but it is interesting the complications people experience in these operations and you've got to feel sorry for guys like Michael Jackson who underwent this surgery when they were new and fashionable without quite realising the implications further on in life.

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First let me explain who Dan Neumeister actually is. He was the Senior Vice President, as well as Chief Operating Officer for Enloe Health System who also had the responsibility of  being the as Senior Executive responsible for the Medical Center there. He joined the Health System in 1997.

He was instrumental in helping Enloe emerge as a leading tertiary hospital for the north valley, and developed the nationally-recognized Enloe Heart Program, as well as assisting the design and construction of the new Enloe Cancer Center. He led the $80 million dollar expansion effort at the Enloe Esplanade facility, which nearly doubled the size of the Esplanade campus, including a new maternity center, expanded emergency room and all-new surgical suites.

What fantastic guy!

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This is important as it's surprisingly easy for bacteria to make it into pre-packaged, ready-cooked food. Not only that but when considering the quantity of superbugs reported in the news recently I'm sure we'd all be thankful that equipment like this is in use in our hospitals.

The last article I read (the one I've linked to above) was particularly interesting as it showed how effective the the EcoQuest Radiant Catalytic Ionization (RCI) cell was for the inactivation of bacteria such as E-coli, Listeria, Streptococcus, Staphylococcus, and other particularly harmful bacteria on stainless steel surfaces - the overwhelming result ALL micro-organisms tested were reduced by at least 90% after 24 hours of  exposure.

Cool eh?

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What the hell is going on? Surely these don't give better SEO do they Google....?

They certainly don't help my search!

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How to filter user submitted data easily in PHP?

Posted using ShareThis

Firstly, as you can see this is my first post made as a direct result of using the ShareThis bookmarklet, which is pretty neat as it actually worked

Secondly and more importantly, I wanted to flag this up on my blog as it's something that quite often gets missed in PHP which is actually a very powerful tool.

As the author of the post above mentions, array_map() can be a useful function when sanitizing user data, but it has so many more uses too when dealing with the transformation of a data-set.

Basically a call such as $new_data = array_map('process_data', $old_data); will allow you to transform each element in the $old_data array to a new element in the $new_data array via the function called process_data.

What's more you can manipulate multiple data-sets in this way too by specifying multiple arrays, so long as process_data() can take in the arguments.

For example lets say we have process_data($item1, $item2, $item3) which manipulates $item1, $item2, $item3 to produce a single result.

If we need to perform this calculation on a bulk set of data we can do

$new_data = array_map('process_data', $array_of_item1, $array_of_item2, $array_of_item3);

Easy huh?

I still see people performing these transformations, calculations, whatever, using for, foreach and while loops which can be prone to failure under certain conditions, and are probably less efficient code than simply making this call.

So why don't more people use it?  I don't know, but maybe this post will help raise awareness!

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It's a great looking website covering all the current major programming languages (at least when thinking of the web) and the idea behind it, though simple, seems to work really well.

Basically, you have some code that works, but you want to make it better, more efficient, or just tidier. So, you post your code sample and other people suggest changes. It's kind of like yahoo answers for developers or the comments foot of the PHP manual.

The code to be refactored, so far in the PHP section at least, has been of a reasonable standard i.e. that of at least intermediate developers, which is great as these services can tend to get flooded by newbies who don't know their $i++ from their ++$i :p and rapidly lose interest for me.

So far there are only a few PHP samples on there to comment on but I think, as the site begins to grow, there will be a wealth of well developed and critiqued code that serves as good examples or directly useable functionality.

So far I can't really fault it, other than making the "Best" link clearer by calling it "Best Refactorors"  or something similar, and providing some closed, or accepted answer(s) type functionality to stop a thread getting out of hand (it could be that this exists already but I just haven't seen it yet). Maybe even an option to download each refactoring as a plain text file could be useful.

So, to round up, as you can probably tell, I love this site and you can see my standing in the community in the foot of this page! Keep up the great work Marc and I hope your site develops in the way it deserves and gets the recognition it should!

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As a result there are a few programs out there that act as all in one clients for Windows Remote Desktop connections, VNC Connections, SSH, Citrix, etc. These can be REALLY useful in this situation and can save a lot of time and hassle while in some cases reducing the chance of user error when switching between apps.

We worked with a commercial tool, iShadow, for about a year, for this and soon realised its utility but although it was commercial, it was clunky and very very temperamental when it came to storing/loosing passwords and connection profiles. So we set out to find an alternative.

Thankfully, Kelvin, our Technical Manager found MRemote, a free, stable and nice to use client which does the job very well. Yes, it is basically an interface on top of a lot of existing open source client programs which it loads as components, but why re-invent the wheel when these things in their own right work, and work well?

So without raving about it much more, if you manage a load of servers and want to simplify the process somewhat why not give MRemote a go. The only thing I think it's missing, from my point of view, is an interface to the NX Client which I use on some of my machines, and maybe database servers such as MySQL, but aside from that it's fantastic!

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This is the first version so there are some improvements to be made and if you download it, you'll see where some improvements may be made. I will be releasing another version when I've had time to do some further work on it. For now you can find the source code plus any community improvements here: http://www.refactormycode.com/codes/440-universal-file-download-class

I should also mention that this class has been cleaned of some application specific code, so if there's any disjointed bits I apologise - I have tried to deal with any discontinuities before posting but there may be something i've missed (this is also the reason for the bunch of if's in get_file() if you are to use this as is you may want to replace them with your own custom code).

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That said however I have been seeing an increasing number of dodgy/spammy plugins which would probably cause more harm than good to the blogs of people who blindly install them.

These plugins or themes generally suggest they are doing one thing, but are actually doing another, such as building networks of spam links or sending valuable infomration to third parties... not good!

Though I could name and shame these dodgy items here I don't really wish to suffer the wrath of the scum of the internet, so all I'll offer is a plain and simple warning:

BE CAREFUL ABOUT THE PLUGINS YOU INSTALL AND THE THEMES YOU USE

Check them out, make sure they're fit for purpose, if you don't have enough knowledge yourself to understand what the plugin is doing ask someone who does.

Let's face it, at the worst you could expose yourself to having all important server details sent to a third-party and at the least you may end up with a blog covered in spam content getting you blocked by the major search engines.  

A very simple example of a check anyone can perform is to look through the plugin/theme code and look for url's or email addresses that are not anything to do with you or the plugin/theme.

This simple check alone can help protect you against unwanted and potentially harmful disguised code.

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http://lamp.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/soundslike.aspx

Combining methods to better search for words that sound like other words when searching a MySQL database

This kind of idea can be quite handy when combining feeds of data from different sources.

For example feed x may tell you the specifications of a product, feed y may tell you the the purchase information for a product and each feed may come from a different source e.g. feed y may come from a manufacturer and feed y may come from an affiliate network.

If the manufacture has a slightly different name for the product to the affiliate network (in this example), and the name is the only possible field on which to combine the data sources then it may be difficult to associate the two entries.

Methods such as the one illustrated allow us to make an varying levels of intelligent guess of what matches up with what, and as such can massively assist what could otherwise end up being an entirely manual matching process.

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The reason was google didn't know about it, so I added it to my list of update notification services as this blogcarta post explains how to do: http://www.blogcarta.com/2006/10/17/how-to-ping-google-blog-search/

Oddly enough, though I know what pinging is, how it works, etc. I'd not really thought about/researched wordpress pinging to any great extent, and found out that I was missing a lot!

Firstly, I have a feed burner account (http://www.feedburner.com) and can automate a massive amount of the pinging from there so I turned all that on (see the PingShot option under the Publicize tab).

Secondly this got me thinking about what may be missed as feedburner wasn't pinging them, so I turned to the codex list of ping service (which oddly enough I had been to a number of times before but never used): http://codex.wordpress.org/Update_Services and I added all of these to my list too.

Next I saw the Smart Update Pinger on the codex and downloaded and installed that - It basically improves the pinging wordpress does by default by only pinging services when a new post is published and logging the responses.

And then I started looking at all the other posts that existed about pinging services and who should be pinged when and how. And as I'm tired my head started swimming.

So ultimately, what's needed here? Yes, you've guessed it, another improved plugin.

I shall be writing my own plugin to improve the pinging functionality in wordpress. It will be based on previous work, namely Smart Update Pinger but improve the existing functionality of that by including the following features:

1. Central list of sites to ping automatically updated via webservice, so you're always on top of the game (would be so nice if this wasn't necessary, but hey ho!)
2. Re-ping feature to notify ping services that are temporarily down about your post once they're back up
3. Centralized logging to determine when a service goes off-line for extended periods of time or for good

All of the options will be turned on/off-able for users concerned about privacy.

If the guys who write Smart Update Pinger want to add this functionality in themselves, then fine, please go ahead but please let me know first. otherwise I'll be coding this up in a few days time.

If you want to be informed when the first release of my pinging plugin is made then either subscribe to my feed or leave me a comment

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It's a great little machine, but the supplied battery life leaves something to be desired.

On the front of the box when I bought it there was an offer to get a second battery sent out if I registered with Toshiba - I did and they sent me the battery.

Turns out that there are 3 different batteries that are available for the Toshiba Equium A200-1V0:

• The supplied 3 cell one lasting about 45 minutes to 1h 15 minutes depending on usage
• A 6 cell option, which lasts for around 2-3 hours depending on usage
• A 9 cell option which I've yet to try.

Toshiba sent me a 6 cell battery for registering with them which helped me out no end on my journey to work (1h 15 mins on the train each way). With the original battery I had to charge the machine each end, at home and at work, meaning that I always had to carry the power supply plug with me.

With the free6 cell batter I just had to charge the machine once a day i.e. at home over night ready for the next morning meaning I could leave the supply plug behind.

BUT I want to go further and actually get the 9 cell option now I've seen how much an improvement the 6 cell is over the 3.

I looked on the Toshiba website (http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe.com) but there was no information there, so I phoned the number shown: 0870 444 8944 to try and order it as a spare part. Still no luck as I phoned on a Saturday and Toshiba use a 3rd party who don't work weekends to deal with repairs and spares: http://www.topazsupport.co.uk - 0844 800 2835

So I visited them and they only show a 6 cell replacement battery: http://www.topazsupport.co.uk/product248.html which seemed a bit odd.

I'll call them on Monday to find out exactly what the situation is but it doesn't seem that promising

But on the plus side I now know all the people to call if the thing ever goes wrong!

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Maybe not the best idea, but it's how I like to do it, and it also flags up any weird and wonderful restrictions to the development of the plugin as a result of my hosting company's security policy.

For a while now I've worked with just the plain old plugin editor that comes with wordpress, but this is cumbersome to say the least and as such I went looking for a syntax highlighting editor which I could (if necessary) convert into a plugin to (ironically enough) improve the plugin editor.

Turns out that there's quite a few good syntax highlighting online code editors available (list at the end of this post) and at least one neat one (CodePress)  has been converted to a wordpress plugin for theme editing and plugin editing.

This is a really great start, but there's a couple of things I'd really like to see to progress this work - If I have the time I'll do it myself, otherwise someone else reading this post may like to take it up!

Basically the current Codepress for wordpress plugin is missing (in my opinion) a few additional functions to create backups of the plugin or theme files you're working on, to an extent a rudimentary versioning system could and should be implemented within the editor.

There should be an option to package up the plugin you're editing and release it to the community/tie updates into the automatic plugin updater of 2.5

The current CodePress release is great but what would make it even greater would be code hinting when editing.

I don't know enough JavaScript to say whether or not this is possible but it would be cool for the editor to notice that you've just typed or started to type a PHP (or other language) function name, and provide you with a syntax hint for the function.

This would work (in my mind) by noticing the opening of ( and then checking what preceded it back to the last space or operator (*, ., /, etc.), then looking up this string from a function definition array and displaying a tooltip near where you are editing in the text area to remind you of the syntax - possibly with an autocomplete if you press enter.

I think the main problem with this is knowing where you are in the text area to display the div with the tool tip text in it in the right place. I know you can monitor where you are in a text area in terms of columns and rows, so surely if you know the location of the start of the text area and the size of the character in the text area and the co-ordinates of the cursor in the text area via row/column values you should be able to determine the optimal position for the <div>?

I think it would be really great to see that kind of functionality in any of the online code editors listed below on it's own let alone any other stuff such as versioning that I've already mentioned.

So there it is!

I probably will end up doing some work on the codepress plugin myself from a versioning point of view, but if any one else out there can figure out a way of doing the code hinting in JS that'd be fantastic!

Existing On line Code Editors:

• CodePress
• CodeMirror
• EditArea
• MarkItUp
• Helene

Autosuggest example (could be used to provide the tool tip if the positioning is worked out): http://gadgetopia.com/post/3773

Wordpress plugins:

• Codepress plugin for Wordpress: http://rulesplayer.890m.com/blog/?page_id=4
• Flash based code editor with wordpress plugin (dated solution IMO): http://www.flashtexteditor.com/ftf/

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