Monthly Archives: March 2011

Saving Time and Reducing Distractions with Instapaper

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Working on the Internet can become burdensome as you find yourself becoming distracted more frequently. There have been apps created to help organize your time and planning, but these aren’t always too great. With news becoming more prevalent than ever before it’s not a surprise to find our society addicted to information.

A new launch titled Instapaper is changing the way we work. The genius of this tool is within simplicity. Instapaper started off as a mobile app for iOS and has grown into a full-blown web application. The Firefox and Chrome extension(s) are some of the many plugins tied into the site’s API.

With Instapaper you are able to save URLs and read them at a later date. It’s almost a personal archive of bookmarks, with the ability to create new folders for organization. After you’ve finished reading a page you may click the archive button, or simply delete it if you didn’t enjoy the link.

This works great with not only news articles, but videos and even images or image galleries. I have created numerous folders where I save interesting posts, wallpapers, and resources for iPhone development.

The beauty of Instapaper is how easy it is to get up and running! All you need is an e-mail and password for creating your account. Validation is simple and it’s even possible to connect your Instapaper account into other mobile applications. Both Tweetie and Twitterrific as Twitter clients tie in seamlessly with the application – allowing you to bookmark links found in your twitter feed.

If you’re interested in the site check it out and see what you think. Instapaper preserves many of the great features found in Delicious or Diigo and brings a brand new nature into the picture. This is of course the mobile revolution, and with Android catching up it’s truly a shoppers paradise.

The mobile app for iOS is free with an optional upgrade for $5.00. It removes all ads from within the app and allows you to work with multiple account signins. For many of the browser add-ons it’s completely free of charge!

InstaChrome

Instapaper Firefox AddOn

Instapaper for iPhone, iPod, and iPad

InstaFetch for Android/WP7

Tips on How to be a Successful Blogger

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For those that may be unfamiliar with its meaning, the term blog comes from the combination of the words web and log. Blogs can typically consist of entries that include comments on culture, hobbies or everyday life, occasionally featuring a video or music. Just about anybody can have a blog, from students to businesses. However, just knowing what a blog is and what potential can stem from it is not enough. If a person wants to have a successful, active blog, they need to take the right steps.

  1. The first thing that those who wish to blog successfully should know is that it is important to blog often. It can be difficult for a potential reader to take a blog seriously if it is only updated once every several months, if not less. They want to be able to enjoy the blog just about every day, and if the blogger cannot make a commitment, neither can readers. This is not to say that it should be updated every hour, but leaving it alone for days at a time shows a lack of interest.
  2. Aside from frequently putting up entries, a maintainer should also make sure that they are having fun. People can tell when a blogger is simply blogging because they feel they should; this will cause visitors to believe that it is not worth their time, and they will move on to something else. Blogs should never be created simply for the purpose of making money or having something to do. The blogger should choose one or two subjects that they are passionate about, which can make it a lot easier to find the motivation to write, the passion shining through in their words.
  3. No matter how nice the layout or written content on the blog may be, however, it means little if the hosting service for the blog does not work properly. Blogs that experience frequent downtime are bound to cause frustration for both the readers and maintainer alike. Therefore, when searching to find the right web hosting plans, it is not enough to simply look for cheap hosting and call it a day. The company should also have a good reputation and maintain excellent customer service. A person can ask around on online forums or even other blogs to find out what works best, or they can simply visit hostingobserver.com.

Blogs are a popular way for people to connect to others and talk about the things they care about, no matter what they might be. However, because there are so many blogs on the internet, gaining a following of any kind can be difficult, especially if the subject of the blog is common. By following the above tips, anybody that wishes to be a part of this world can do so, and become successful at the same time. With hard work, thoughtfulness and determination, nobody is exempt from such a goal.

Tips for Gaming Front Page Traffic on Delicious

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One of my personal favorite social bookmarking networks is Delicious. The process of signup is very simple. If you’ve already got a Yahoo account then you don’t even need to change anything! Since Yahoo! purchased the company in 2005 it’s seen a dramatic increase from the number of users.

It’s important to understand just how Delicious works. Trending bookmarks are prominently displayed on the front page of the site. These are links which have gained a large amount of saves in the past few hours, generally racking up 30+.

However the most popular tab is where a lot of traffic can be generated. Either way the process is the same – create a few Delicious accounts and prepare to get working! With 100 accounts and 200+ working proxies it’ll be a no-brainer.

To start I recommend downloading Elite Proxy Switcher and installing either Lite or Pro. The software is amazing at keeping records of your working and failed proxies, along with their level in security (Elite through Transparent). Elite proxies will ultimately hide your IP from Delicious, so they are the best kind to have saved.

Building a Delicious Presence

After this you may want to set aside a few hours for creating accounts. The quickest solution is to signup for a new Yahoo! Mail account, then directly connect into Delicious and create your unique username. From here Yahoo! will automatically verify your account and allow you to start saving links.

Delicious Personal Bookmarking

After passing the 50 or 60 mark you should notice some more people saving your link. This will become especially apparent if your content is well-liked or offers an interesting perspective. It’s best to let a few hours sit before going to town in the network. Otherwise Delicious admin’s may get wise to your plan and ban all of your accounts! Not a good situation to be in.

The best part of this plan is how seemingly foolproof the setup becomes. Once you’ve created 100+ accounts the odds of losing them are slim to none. You can almost completely reduce the risk by using L1 Elite Proxy servers when connecting into the site and saving your bookmarks.

If you’re looking to start building your collection may I suggest freeproxylists.com? They update daily and their lists are very consistent. Alternatively Black Hat Team has a fantastic proxies forum which bolsters daily contributions.

The Resting Changes Post-Launch for Digg v4

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Digg v4 was launched during 2010 and did not garner very positive reviews. In fact, many users migrated to the more popular network Reddit where news can flow much more freely. Where did Digg go wrong?

I would argue Kevin Rose lost faith in the company. After launching at the turn of the millennium Digg was king online. It offered a fantastic connections system, simple categories and a very popular front page. Most articles would reach upwards of 2000 or more diggs on any given day.

The new release doesn’t even support the home page much at all. Instead it’s been replaced with My News which poorly reflects your friends’ diggs and submissions. Top stories on Digg today don’t generally pass over 400 votes. Comments have also degraded in value since the days of classic Digg.

With news now coming in that Kevin Rose is stepping down from the company, the resolution becomes crystal clear. Digg has failed not because of poor design or concept, but lack of true leadership. Diggnation was a great media outlet for popular news stories and in its heyday truly gathered a crowd.

With top stories not holding much value anymore I stopped watching years ago, along with many other Digg patriots. As the site continually drops in traffic Digg’s new CEO Matt Williams is facing a tough crisis. It will be difficult to bring the social news community back from where it’s already fallen.

Digg v3 screen

Some steps in the right direction would be moving the design back towards classic Digg! I can’t think of a user who was opposed to how Digg was run. The community was fighting against power diggers, but they were really the ones keeping great news stories flowing in the first place. Unfortunately as it may be, Digg’s ship is sinking and it appears even their founder doesn’t care.

Security Concerns with Outsourcing IT Services

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Outsourcing has become very common in recent years, especially in the field of Information Technology. So that companies can focus more on their core business, it makes sense to outsource many of their IT services and work to external organizations. In addition to this, quite often outsourcing can provide a cheaper means of labor if sent off shore, which enables the company to reduce costs and remain competitive. There are however security concerns with outsourcing IT services, some of which include maintaining privacy of sensitive data, quality of service and awareness of local laws and regulations. Vacca’s Computer and Information Security Handbook reminds us that in outsourcing situations, “even non-employees have rights to view/create/delete some of the most sensitive data assets within an organizations.”

In order to effectively secure outsourced activities, it is essential to have in place proper procedures. Securing transfer of data is equally as important as the procedures on how the external organization will store this data and secure it within their facility. Karabulut et al. (2007) discusses the effectiveness of a developing a data protection agreement between the company and its contractor to ensure that they maintain the high level of security expected to protect data and only make it available to authorized parties. Other countries do not have as effective privacy laws and regulations and therefore the use of such an agreement becomes even more important. Alexander at CIO News wrote an article for Search CIO discussing some of the issues with outsourcing. He provided advice on reducing or eliminate the need to send highly sensitive data where possible, for example replacing social security numbers with some other form of unique identifier.

As companies hire or contract out to other organizations both within the United States and abroad, effective security measures must continue to be put in place. Where possible, background checks should take place and processes should be implemented to effectively monitor activities of data access and transactions closely. In the cases where the cost of security may outweigh the benefits of outsourcing, the organization should re-evaluate it’s long-term outsourcing strategy and determine if certain services or work should simply remain within the company.

Coldfusion 9 and IIS

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I have been developing in ColdFusion for a while locally using the built in web server. Recently at work several of the projects I am involved with moved to an IIS production server. In order to test fully in my local environment I needed to install IIS and setup ColdFusion to use it as the server instead of its built in version. I ran into a few problems trying to figure this out so I decided to write a blog post of the process in case it is of help to others who need to do the same thing. I am including a set of steps below:

  1. Download the latest version of IIS at http://www.iis.net/download
  2. If you don’t already have ColdFusion installed, grab the latest version at http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/
  3. Be sure to also grab the latest CF patch, which fixes a number of different issues at: http://www.adobe.com/support/coldfusion/downloads_updates.html#cf9
  4. Install IIS. You can either use the recommended settings or the complete install. If you use the recommended settings be sure to install ISAPI extensions and the IIS Metabase detailed in this blog posting. If you don’t will get a page not found error when trying to access any cfm resource!
  5. If you already have CF installed, run the Web Server Configuration Tool (this is located under the Adobe Coldfusion folder in the Windows Start menu). Next click ‘add’ in the server configuration prompt and then select IIS all sites or whatever additional configuration options you need. If the configuration tool fails, make sure you installed the ISAPI extensions and Metabase listed above.
  6. If you are installing a fresh copy of ColdFusion, choose IIS server when the option choices are presented during the installation process.
  7. At the end of the installation you should be able to access your administration area by browsing to http://localhost/cfide/administrator

If you are new to IIS as I was, you will want to figure out how to add your projects or sites. This can be done by running the IIS Services Manager (available under control panel -> administrative tools). Once loaded:

  1. Expand the server tree on the right hand side to ‘sites’
  2. Right-click sites and select ‘Add web site’
  3. Type in a site name e.g. mysite
  4. Select the physical path to your code base for this project / site
  5. In the IP Assigned field type 127.0.0.1
  6. In the hostname field type the hostname you would like to access e.g. mysite
  7. Using a text editor (e.g. notepad++) open c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts and enter the following line at the bottom of the file: 127.0.0.1 mysite

That’s it – now if you go to your browser you should be able to open http://mysite/. You may need to set up a few other things such as data sources, etc. but this should essentially get you up and running.