Archive for July, 2006
Monday, July 31st, 2006
Here’s an interesting blog post I came across via zerokspot. Blackboard, a dominant player in the e-learning market, has been granted a patent on E-learning. This could threaten open source players like Moodle who provide e-learning platforms on the internet. Another example of how the US patent system is actually going around killing innovation!
On 26 July, Blackboard Inc, which last year took over WebCT, and is the dominant vendor of course management systems, announced that it has been granted a US patent “for technology used for internet-based education support systems and methods”, and that patents corresponding to the US patent “have been issued or are pending all over the world including in the European Union, China, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand India, Israel, Mexico, South Korea, Hong Kong and Brazil”.
Link: Fortnightly Mailing: Blackboard’s US Patent 6988138 seems to cover most of the “commodity” features of a learning environment
Patent Abstract:
A system and methods for implementing education online by providing institutions with the means for allowing the creation of courses to be taken by students online, the courses including assignments, announcements, course materials, chat and whiteboard facilities, and the like, all of which are available to the students over a network such as the Internet. Various levels of functionality are provided through a three-tiered licensing program that suits the needs of the institution offering the program. In addition, an open platform system is provided such that anyone with access to the Internet can create, manage, and offer a course to anyone else with access to the Internet without the need for an affiliation with an institution, thus enabling the virtual classroom to extend worldwide.
Link to the Patent Document
via: http://zerokspot.com/node/714
Posted in General Stuff | No Comments »
Monday, July 31st, 2006
Looking for a good weather script to put up on your site?
Here’s a very good one from Collin Grady, which pulls weather data from the weather.com servers and caches it locally in a MySQL database. The image below is from an actual implementation of Collin’s PHP Weather which I setup to test it out.
Link: Collin Grady » PHP Weather
Posted in PHP | 1 Comment »
Monday, July 31st, 2006
Have you taken a look at the latest from Google - Google Code Project Hosting?
Google Code Project Hosting is an open source project repository similar to Sourceforge. Unlike Sourceforge, Google’s interface is clean and simple to use. They’re using SVN (Subversion) for source control.
Links:
Posted in General Stuff, Sites | No Comments »
Thursday, July 27th, 2006
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RemoveWGA enables you to remove the Microsoft “Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications” tool, which is calling home and connect to Microsoft servers every time you boot. Futures updates of this notification tool will (officialy) setup the connection rat
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PECL Dlls for windows (PHP 5.1)
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Provides an environment variable with a unique identifier for each request
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Collaborate quickly and easily with Unyte™. Share documents, presentations, applications and your desktop in real time with anyone, anywhere, anytime.
Posted in Links | No Comments »
Thursday, July 27th, 2006
Here’s an interesting read from Thomas Myer on encryption of data using PHP.
“In this increasingly virtual online world, you have to be careful to protect your data. Learn the basics of encoding and encrypting important bits of information, such as passwords, credit card numbers, and even entire messages. Get an overview of what it means to encrypt and decrypt information, as well as some practical examples involving passwords and other data, using PHP’s built-in functionality.”
Link: PHP encryption for the common man
Posted in PHP, Security | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, July 26th, 2006
Here’s a new image hosting service from CNET which allows you to host images for your blog / site / ebay auctions. They also allow you to upload your images to an album if you signup for a webshots account.
Do take a look at their terms of service before you start uploading your images over though.
“.. When you post or transmit Content on or through Webshots you grant Webshots, its parent company CNET Networks, their affiliates and partners a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, sub licensable, royalty-free license to use, store, display, publish, transmit, transfer, distribute, reproduce, create derivative works of and publicly perform that Content on and through each of the services provided by Webshots. This license shall apply to the distribution and the storage of your Content in any form, medium, or technology now known or later developed. You may remove Content you have posted on or through Webshots at any time. When you do remove your Content, this license will automatically expire.”
Their license essentially states that in exchange for the image hosting service, they get a license to reproduce or create derivative works from your images as long as you host the images over at their site.
Link: http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/
Posted in General Stuff, Sites | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 26th, 2006
Justin Silverton has some tips over at his blog on how to improve performance of OO PHP code.
“The following tips can help in optimizing object-orientated PHP.
1. Initialise all variables before use.
2. Dereference all global/property variables that are frequently used in a method and put the values in local variables if you plan to access the value more than twice.
3. Try placing frequently used methods in the derived classes.”
More optimization tips over at : Jaslabs » Optimizing PHP objects
Posted in PHP, Web Development | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 26th, 2006
Heard about Flash remoting?
It’s a method for Flash to communicate with a web application server. Here’s how Macromedia defines Flash remoting:
“Macromedia Flash Remoting MX provides the connection between Macromedia Flash and your web application server, making it fast and easy to create Rich Internet Applications. With its powerful yet simple programming model, you can easily integrate rich Macromedia Flash content with applications built using Macromedia ColdFusion MX, Microsoft .NET, Java, and SOAP-based web services.”
AMF-PHP is a project to allow Flash Remoting using PHP. This project was started because Macromedia didn’t provide integration with PHP for Flash Remoting.
Here’s a tutorial from sephiroth.it which shows you how to create an image gallery using Flash and PHP using AMF-PHP:
Link: Create an image gallery with AMFPHP
Posted in PHP, Web Development | No Comments »
Friday, July 21st, 2006
Here’s a news item from Cnet stating that Zend plans to launch the 1.0 version of Zend Framework during the next PHP Conference in October.
“Zend announced the open-source Zend Framework at the company’s 2005 PHP conference and plans to release version 1.0 or a preview version of it at the next show on Oct. 29 in San Jose, Calif.”
Link: Zend to show PHP tools in October | CNET News.com
Posted in General Stuff, PHP | No Comments »
Friday, July 21st, 2006
Want to get your Web applications scanned for security? Here’s a new service from Mayflower GmBH called Chorizo! You can sign up for a free account to scan one site. They also have a paid version if you’d like to scan more sites.
Once you sign up for the service, all you have to do is to configure your browser to use the Chorizo proxy and you’re up and running !
Here are some of the scans performed by Chorizo!
- XSS-Code-Injection (incl. UTF7-XSS)
- AJAX vulnerabilities
- SQL-Injections
- Cross-Site-Request-Forging
- Code-Inclusion
- Information Disclosure
Link: Chorizo! Secure your webapplications on the fly!
Posted in PHP, Security, Software | 4 Comments »
