From the category archives:

Technology

Desert Code Camp

Here, finally is the post for Desert Code Camp that I promised to make available. First off, thanks to everyone who attended my session on Integrating Facebook Connect. Secondly, please feel free to ask me questions via email, Twitter, or by commenting here.
Please feel free to download the source code. For each file in the [...]

Read the full article → November 6, 2009

Choose better passwords

A friend of mine recently fell victim to the Facebook 419 scam (basically someone logs into your Facebook account and asks your friends for money).
There are lots of ways bad things can happen to your computer and your online accounts, but if you use weak passwords, you’re increasing the risk that something bad will eventually [...]

Read the full article → September 29, 2009

SCP for Komodo IDE

I have just finished developing my first Komodo IDE plugin. I love Komodo. It’s the first IDE for PHP that I’ve been very, very happy using. I’ve run it on Windows, Linux and now on a MacBook. The only frustration I’ve had is that Komodo doesn’t support basic integrated file uploading via SCP. While it [...]

Read the full article → August 17, 2009

Facebook Connect comments as WordPress plugin

My article Integrating Facebook Connect using the Thesis theme has generated a great deal of interest and several requests for a WordPress plugin. I personally haven’t had the time or inclination to create a plugin, but my friend and colleague Aaron Collegeman has. He was interested in the concept for one of his projects and [...]

Read the full article → August 14, 2009

Another way to cache

Obviously, I’m a big fan of the performance increases that can be achieved by using memcache. Another potential cache-based tool for enhancing your server-side PHP code is to use an opcode compiler and caching tool such as APC.
In addition to being a fantastic piece of technology by itself, APC also provides meaningful tuning options and [...]

Read the full article → June 11, 2009

Google Chrome for Linux

On Monday I downloaded Google’s Chrome browser for Ubuntu to test it out (against all warnings).
I’m happy to say that despite the missing features, this browser is absolutely amazing on Ubuntu. It’s lightning fast and very stable. I can’t browse to pages that require HTTP AUTH — but that’s the only thing I’ve found that [...]

Read the full article → June 10, 2009

Poor programmer’s website monitor

If you manage your own web site, it’s critical to know when there are problems, and hopefully you’ll know before your users do. There are several enterprise-grade server monitors and website monitors available ranging from free to expensive, but if you need something right now that’s simple and free, you might consider the solution I [...]

Read the full article → May 26, 2009

Memcache, memcache, memcache!

Possibly the single-most important piece of advice I give to every software developer right now is to use memcache (or memcached to be specific). I’ve become an evangelist of the software since working for Squidoo.
Memcache is just exactly what it says it is — a memory cache daemon (service). It’s lightweight and very fast and [...]

Read the full article → May 20, 2009

Improve Google Analytics load delays using jQuery

I’ve spoken about the complex interdependencies of modern web applications before so today’s massive failure of Google services (#GoogleFail) reminds us again to be careful and deliberate when building our applications.
For my own sites, I’ve noticed occasional slowdowns while loading Google Analytics. While the analytics are important to me, they’re not important to you (my [...]

Read the full article → May 14, 2009

Amazon web services change for associates

Although I haven’t written about it yet, for me the most important set of web services and APIs for my work are provided by Amazon. Without a doubt I use these services more than any others. Today I received this message:

Effective immediately, we are renaming the Amazon Associates Web Service as the “Product Advertising API.” [...]

Read the full article → May 8, 2009

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