Ralph Whitbeck - Blog - Interesting Links

Why did Sci Fi choose the name SyFy?

Ralph Whitbeck — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:29:49 GMT

If you know me then you know that I am huge fan of the Sci Fi Channel, mainly for Battlestar Galactica. But three months ago they announced a rebranding and earlier this week they executed the name change.

Yesteday, I wrote about why they choose to rebrand on BrandLogic Dialogue:

CNN.com quotes Dave Howe, the president of Syfy, on the reasons why the channel needed the rebranding:

“We needed a unique and distinct brand name that we can own for the future, that works in the multiplatform, on-demand world,” he said, adding that “Sci Fi” isn’t a brand name, it’s “a genre name.”

“Syfy,” he said, “gives us a unique brand name.

“The last thing we want to do is alienate our core audience,” he added. With the new name, shows such as “Galactica” can be exposed to a wider audience, one not scared away by all that “Sci Fi” connotes (”space and aliens and the future,” in Howe’s words).

Howe continues on how the name was chosen:

“This was a two-year exercise,” he said. The new name, he says, needed to be usable all over the world in Internet URLs, brand extensions and merchandising, and “the only way to do that is to create an empty name.

“We explored them all,” he said. “We wanted a word that was uniquely ours,” while not straying too far from the sound of “Sci Fi.”

The post has spurred a good discussion on people's opinions of the name change even spurring a separate blog article from the Technology Viewer blog. What are your thoughts on the name change?

Transparent PNG's and IE 6

Ralph Whitbeck — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:07:45 GMT

IE 6 doesn't have native support for the Alpha channel that make PNG's transparent. This can make PNG's look very ugly in IE6 when they are transparent.

Asking around the office today, I got a cool solution that uses IE's proprietary behavior css attribute to call a Compiled HTML document that applies filters to the PNG to behave correctly.

It's pretty easy to install:

How To Use

Follow these simple steps to add this to your page:

Copy and paste iepngfix.htc and blank.gif into your website folder.

Copy and paste this into your website's CSS or HTML:
<style type="text/css"> img, div { behavior: url(iepngfix.htc) } </style>
That CSS selector must include the tags/elements on which you want PNG support -- basically, give it a comma-separated list of tags you use. It must also include the correct path to the .HTC relative to the HTML document location (not relative to the CSS document!). For instance, yours may look like this:
<style type="text/css"> img, div, a, input { behavior: url(/css/resources/iepngfix.htc) } </style>

If your site uses subfolders, open the .HTC file in a text editor like Windows Notepad and change the blankImg variable to include a correct path to blank.gif like so:
var blankImg = '/images/blank.gif';
Again the path is relative to the HTML file. Otherwise, you will see a "broken image" graphic!

New Features of .NET 4.0

Ralph Whitbeck — Thu, 21 May 2009 19:19:48 GMT

Microsoft recently released Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 beta. I'd like to highlight some of the key new features available to .NET 4.0.

Web Forms

Developers can manage control IDs that affect rendered client ID
Remove ID bloat, and 'mangling'
CSS:

Ideally remove the need to use CSS adapters
Defer to CSS styles and bypass existing style properties

non-inline style attributes

Support non-table-based HTML rendering

URL-routing for web forms

Friendly url handling for web forms
configuration model for url routing

View state

Disable on the page, enable on specific controls - they will provide granular control of viewstate - today it is backwards
Disable on control, enable on child controls
GridView/ListView work better without viewstate

ASP.NET dynamic-data

Ajax

Continue ASP.NET Ajax innovation : RIA
Appeal to JavaScript Developers
Provide support for the page developer
jQuery including Intellisense
Templates and data binding

Client side handling, REST or Web Services
Covers page developer and component developer scenarios

DOM manipulation, selectors ...
Ajax higher-level components

Ajax Control Toolkit is a part of the strategy - they will make the toolkit part of the overall ASP.NET package
New controls

Centralized script libraries and break-up for performance

ASP.NET MVC

Appeal to those wanting separation of concerns, TDD, full control
Ruby on Rails, Django, PHP
Building on from ASP.NET MVC 1.0
ASP.NET MVC (Model View Controller)
Asynchronous controllers
Sub-controllers & Views
Declarative controls

ASP.NET Dynamic Data

Making building data-driven web apps easily
Attacking the Ruby on Rails crowd
Building on from FX3.5 SP1
Dynamic-data and MVC

Scaffolding, templates and data validation

Support for abstract data layer

Removes need for specific DL (SQL, entities ...)
Allows scaffolding of objects

Support for many to many relationships
Dynamic data on MVC -- this is on codeplex today
Built around something called field templates
Enhanced filtering:

Auto-complete, search filters

ASP.NET Core

Address customer pain points
Improve scale and performance
Cache extensibility and performance:

Enable caching like Velocity

There's a couple of videos on Mircosoft's Channel 9 that talk specifically about the points mentioned above:

ASP.NET 4.0 Roadmap by Scott Hunter
New Features of ASP.NET 4.0 by Steven Walther

O3D: Google releases 3D API in a Browser Plugin

Ralph Whitbeck — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 02:25:28 GMT

Google released O3D a 3D API in a browser plugin. See video of rendering demo:

If the future of computing isn't in the browser then this is all a waste of time. Pretty impressive. Check out Ajaxians post on the topic.

What Was Apple Thinking?

Ralph Whitbeck — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:21:30 GMT

This morning Apple released the third generation iPod Shuffle.

I own a second generation shuffle and when I saw the third generation I immediately thought it was a step back for Apple. Here is what I don't like about the third-gen:

You now need a headset with the remote control function on the cord. The standard set from Apple is $29.99 to replace if you lose them. They are also ear buds. I dumped ear buds a lot time ago due always having to shove them back in and the eventually hurt your ears. There is no easy choice for the consumer in which headset
Still no display. They try to solve this by adding a voice to tell you what you're listening to when you want to know (Clicking and holding the center button). I would assume this would be somewhat annoying and not 100% accurate.
In my opinion, and this is probably a matter of personal taste then anything else. I think the design is ugly and clumsy. If you think of what the new shuffle will look like on a person listening to music it'll look clumsy. Headphones that go to a small faceless block that has no interface.
Finally, the usability of the device is pretty bad. My parents bought a shuffle for Christmas and they wouldn't touch it until I showed them how to use it. I can't imagine trying to show them how to use this version. Looking at the documentation online it looks like a nightmare. Double-click and hold to fast forward, Triple-click and hold to rewind? How is anyone going to remember that? More importantly how are you going to know if you clicked it two times or three as it's be hard to figure out when the sound is skipping by. Here's an interesting comment from Ernie Bello :

I’ll agree that moving all of the playback functions on the face of the previous shuffle to one button on the headset of the new one is not as discoverable. However, I’d argue that once the new functions are learned, they are more usable.

Unfortunately anything you learn is going to be more usable. That does not make the usability of the device good.

So how could have Apple made this work? I'd like to see one set of headphones with the iPod integrated into the frame of the headphones. Sort of like the Monster iFreePlay Headphones for the Second Generation iPod:

Now if Apple could take this and integrate the electronics of the shuffle into the back of the headphones in one fluid piece not an add on like shown above and provide the controls on the ear pieces you'd have a cool iPod shuffle.

If you think pushing your finger up to your ear is dumb, think about how many times you push the ear buds back into your ear. If you don't like the design well then think of it as functional. I've heard many examples how the iPod shuffle is for when people exercise. If you've ever tried to run with a pair of ear buds in your ears you'll understand it when I say that you'll tire out faster maintaining the buds in your ears before you tire out while running.

I think Apple went too far to the right in simplicity on this design. In the end though I am not the target buyer for this device. I have a Touch and a second generation shuffle and there is no need for something this simplistic.

It makes you wonder though, will the next generation iMacs come with a buttonless remote? You control it by flicking it due to it's accelerometer? Double-flick to fast-forward triple-flick to rewind?

My BarCamp Buffalo Slides - Intro to jQuery

Ralph Whitbeck — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:39:45 GMT

Update:

Video of my presentation.

My BarCamp Buffalo Presentation - Intro to jQuery from Ralph Whitbeck on Vimeo.

Presentation to BarCamp Buffalo on 3/3/09. My slides can be found http://ralphwhitbeck.com/2009/03/03/MyBarCampBuffaloSlidesIntroToJQuery.aspx

Where to find help for your jQuery questions?

Ralph Whitbeck — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:09:07 GMT

One of the most common questions I see on twitter from people is "I need help with jQuery, any experts around?"

While this is definitely a fair use of twitter. Being an "expert" in jQuery I don't want to reply back with "Yes, I can help" without knowing what I am getting involved in.

But not to fear there are plenty of places one can go to get help online.

My favorite place to get help is Stack Overflow (http://stackoverflow.com). Stack Overflow is the Yahoo Answers, Experts Exchange for programmers. And the great thing for jQuery programmers is that there are a ton of jQuery experts hanging out there. jQuery questions seem to get answered almost immediately.

For more official help try the jQuery Group on Google Groups (http://groups.google.com/group/jquery-en?hl=en). This is a great place to get help as most of the plugin authors and jQuery core programmers are hanging out in here to help.

IRC Channels

If you require more one-on-one help you can jump in to the jQuery IRC room where at any given time there are 400+ jQuery developers hanging out and talking jQuery. Use the following information to connect to the channel.

For general discussion and jQuery development, please visit:

Server: irc.freenode.net
Room: #jquery

For jQuery UI discussion, please visit:

Server: irc.freenode.net
Room: #jquery-ui

Good luck!

ASP.NET MVC Release Candidate - No Codebehinds on Views

Ralph Whitbeck — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 05:55:32 GMT

Check out Scott Guthrie's mammoth blog post on what's changed in this release of the ASP.NET MVC RC that was pushed to the public today. A lot has changed in my opinion. One change that I wasn't expecting was that Views and View User Controls do not have code-behinds any more.

The problem was the only way to have strongly typed Views was to inherit in the code behind. This caused an issue with intellisense in the aspx/ascx pages. You would need to create and immediately build in order to have intellisense work.

No one was using the code-behinds anyways. The code should be in the Controllers.

Here is the write up from Scotts Blog:

Views without Code-Behind Files

Based on feedback we’ve changed view-templates to not have a code-behind file by default. This change helps reinforce the purpose of views in a MVC application (which are intended to be purely about rendering and to not contain any non-rendering related code), and for most people eliminates unused files in the project.

The RC build now adds C# and VB syntax support for inheriting view templates from base classes that use generics. For example, below we are using this with the Edit.aspx view template – whose “inherits” attribute derives from the ViewPage<Product> type:

One nice benefit of not using a code-behind file is that you'll now get immediate intellisense within view template files when you add them to the project. With previous builds you had to do a build/compile immediately after creating a view in order to get code intellisense within it. The RC makes the workflow of adding and immediately editing a view compile-free and much more seamless.

Important: If you are upgrading a ASP.NET MVC project that was created with an earlier build make sure to follow the steps in the release notes – the web.config file under the \Views directory needs to be updated with some settings in order for the above generics based syntax to work.

Google I/O 2008 - Day 1

Ralph Whitbeck — Thu, 29 May 2008 02:54:34 GMT

Google IO is a two day developer conference in San Francisco which is held in the Moscone Center. This year the conference is focusing on technologies like Android (mobile phone OS), Gears (ability to extend the browser to make your site work offline and sync when your online again), Gdata (API to work with Google Services like Calendar, Gmail, etc.) and finally a look into OpenID, OAuth and OpenSocial.

Since this was in San Fran it was fairly heavily covered and TechCrunch has a good write up with live blogging, video demo's (embedded below) and many pics. James Hamilton provides some rough notes from various talks from throughout the day. Update: Andy O posted his blog in the comments which has a well written detailed thoughts of the conference.

Some interesting announcements from the keynote. MySpace is going to work with Gears. Gears officially changed it name to Gears dropping Google from the previous name of Google Gears. The reasoning is that Google wants to strongly urge that Gears is Open Source and is for the community.AOL officially joins OpenSocial.

Here is a video demo of Android:

Finally, Scoble gives an idea of what the hot topics are at the Google Party:

(Photo from flickr user Nancy-. Used undeer the Creative Commons License)

Kings of Code 2008

Ralph Whitbeck — Wed, 28 May 2008 01:09:38 GMT

Last month I first heard of ROFLCon from a coworker who asked for a couple of days off to go to Boston to attend this convention. Well when he went I was doing some searching on Flickr and watched blogs to see if I could see any pictures of him from the uploaded pics. Needless to say we didn't see any pictures of him. I did however see 10 or more pics of John Resig and 100+ images of Jay Maynard (the Tron Guy). So needless to say we are on the verge of firing our employee for lying to us about attending a convention he obviously didn't attend (I am only joking about firing him...or am I?).

Anyways, the point I am trying to make is that I felt that I in some way experienced the convention through the eyes of everyone that attended. There were countless photos, video's, blog posts and twitter was huge as well.

So today I heard about the Kings of Code conference that is happening in the Netherlands today. I only heard about it because John Resig is a speaker. So I try the normal routine of doing flickr searches and blog searches on Kings of Code. Sure enough I got enough info from people that posted on it that I felt like I truly experienced a part of it.

First I started out with the conferences web site (which is translated via Google Translate) and I got a sense of who the speakers are and what the schedule is like.

I then went to Flickr to see if there are people there that are posting pics. This usually tells me if there are people there who are willing to post info on the conference. Sure enough there are people posting pics. And there is a picture of John speaking. So that's cool I get the feel of how big the conference is and what the stage and stuff look like.

Now let's see if I can dig up what the speakers are actually talking about. I go to Google Blogs (or Technorati) and do a search for Kings of Code and sort by date added. Jackpot, I stumble on to Gijs van Zon's blog who live blogged the whole thing. He broke it up by per break. We need to use Google Translate again and the translation isn't 100% perfect but you still get a lot of the information that was presented. Here are his live blogs:

I found some of the info in these talks useful and I wanted to share. Thanks to those who posted pics and took the time to live blog the conference for those of us on the other side of the world to enjoy.

Update: With a little more digging I found some live streams of John Resig's talk.

(Photo from flickr user Inferis. Used under Creative Commons license.)

Observations of MacWorld Blogging

Ralph Whitbeck — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 04:59:52 GMT

Today was the keynote address at MacWorld 2008. I observed quite a few things this year that didn't happen in years past.

For instance this year seemed like everyone was live blogging the event. From Fake Steve to Valleywag to the normal web information outlets for MacWorld Keynotes: Engadget, MacRumors and Gizmodo.

But it seemed the first timers didn't have much luck with keeping their servers up. Fake Steve was using a third party web app to stream the live blogging directly to his blog. Unfortunately the app crashed almost as soon as the keynote started.

Fake Steve then went to the back up plan of using Twitter. Valleywag had also planned on live blogging via Twitter. MacRumorsLive had planned on also posting it's updates to twitter as well as on their website and IRC channel.

Ok so with these big names live blogging on Twitter as well as countless others at the keynote and with millions of people trying to refresh to get the latest from twitter on what was happening....well let's just say Twitter buckled. It went down hard for at least an hour. Even now they are rate limiting the API calls to less then the normal 70 an hour to try to take the pressure off.

With all the live blogging, I found a few who tried to stream video from the Keynote. We watched this stream until someone asked the guy to lower his Camera/phone. The picture was crappy and the sound quality wasn't the greatest but at least you could sort of make out what was going on and related back to the MacRumorsLive notes. We observed at the peak the stream had over 9000 concurrent viewers. The most surprising thing heard in that stream? A baby crying in the audience, seriously who brings a baby to an event like this?

I heard iJustine tried to Stream as well. Seems like she suffered the same fate as above.

But that brings me to my next point live video streaming seemed to be big during CES but it was really noticable today. I caught Scoble recording most of this evening with his Nokia N95. Here he is with Leo Laporte at MacWorld. Here Scoble interviews Qik founder when a Video streaming orgy breaks out by four different people one being iJustine.

So who had the best info this year. Engadget had the best write ups but their server were starting to buckle from people constantly reloading. Their page took forever to come back up. MacRumorsLive had an awesome AJAX solution that didn't require you to do anything photos and updates "magically" appeared on your screen when updates occured. In my opinion MacRumorsLive won the bragging rights.

It's fun to see how the new technology made today a much more interesting event to watch from a far. It was also fun to see how the old technology players struggled as they are the now go to outlets for this event.

Either way with everyone sharing information it makes it easy for everyone to experience the keynote as closely as they do. Thanks to you all for your hard work.

A look at my most popular posts of 2007

Ralph Whitbeck — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 06:34:21 GMT

I switched the focus on my blog to be more informational about problems I solved and to help others find that information a little easier because of my high ranking in Google.

Here are the top five posts from 2007:

Case sensitivity, SVN and Windows is a recipe for disaster - this was a problem I encountered while working with Subversion and a repository on a linux server and that had created two versions of the same file but with different cases. My client tools would error because it didn't know which file to grab.
Uninstalling Cisco VPN client kills internet access - This was a huge problem I encountered when I uninstalled my VPN client on my laptop. After trying all weekend and letting the System Admins at work look at it and give up I finally found a solution hidden in a forum buried way low on the page. This was one of those problems I really wanted to bring the solution to the forefront for other users as fast as possible. In October something must of happened and I started to get really heavy traffic for this page from search engines. Every comment I get from someone I helped with this solution brings a smile to my face.
Pulling twitter updates with JSON and jQuery - I posted the code to my solution to pulling in Twitter updates via JSON and jQuery. I use this code on the right to display my last three Twitter updates. I like using Twitter and have limited the number of posts on my blog in favor of just posting my personal tid bits to twitter and letting them display that way and leaving more of the professional posts to the blog.
Sushi Nirvana - This post details my starting out with making sushi.
Monroe County to get Wireless Internet - This was a post to shed light on the news about a wireless internet network in the city. I was able to connect to the network in November on a flight I took to NYC. Unfortunately you need to be a Frontier telephone customer to connect, which I am not (Vonage) or you need to pay the daily fee to get access. I opted for the free airport wifi instead.

So there is a look at the most popular story pages from the year.

A Visual Explaination of SQL Joins

Ralph Whitbeck — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:59:39 GMT

Jeff Atwood over at Coding Horror explains with visual Venn diagrams how joins work. Even if you know how joins work it is still nice to see it in visual form.

Click here to see the joins.

Click on your own Google Adsense links without breaking policy

Ralph Whitbeck — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:15:08 GMT

Laurent Kempé writes:

If you are developing a site containing Google Adsense you might know that clicking on your own ad is not allowed.

To be able to test and click on your own ad and still follow Google AdSense Program Policies, just add following to your pages:

<script type="text/javascript">google_adtest = 'on';</script>

Don't forget to remove it on your production server! ;)

That's cool! The biggest worry of any Google Adsense participant is getting dropped from the program for clicking on your own links.

Monroe County to get Wireless Internet

Ralph Whitbeck — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 15:06:02 GMT

This is exciting although details are light, it's just exciting that we are talking about it here in our home county. Maggy Brooks announced last night during her State of the County address that there was a partnership with Frontier to provide a wireless network for the county.

That is why I am pleased to announce that Monroe County is working with Frontier to develop a wireless internet network that will serve significant portions of Greece, Pittsford and the City of Rochester…as well as portions of the surrounding towns by the end of the year.

In addition, Frontier has also agreed to develop free wireless internet zones within this network…a critical step in our County’s efforts to bridge the digital divide.

We anticipate this wireless network will continue to expand throughout other parts of the County...and eventually become a full-scale, wireless network to serve all County residents.

Our new partnership with Frontier is a win for our taxpayers, and a win for our community. The new network will be created at no cost to taxpayers, and will soon allow our community to reap the benefits of wireless access to the information superhighway.

Anyone want Chicken Wing Sushi for Super Bowl?

Ralph Whitbeck — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 16:13:11 GMT

Allison over at SushiDay took my suggestion for a chicken wing roll, that I made once last month, and ran with it and made her own for a post on her site. Wow they look good.

I had originally tried this roll one day when my mom had bought pizza and wings for the boys and I was getting tired of the same old crab and salmon rolls I was making that day.

I took a medium wing and some blue cheese and rolled them together.

I was totally surprised at how good it tasted.

I eventually suggested it to Allison on one of her other fine Sushi posts and she loved the idea and asked me if she could use it in an upcoming post.

Makes total sense that she posted it today. Instead of ordering pizza and wings tonight I am making sushi tonight. Although I am not making the chicken wing roll I am planning on buying some Tuna, Salmon, Crab and Shrimp for a Smorgus borg of sushi nirvana.

St. John's Signage Case study

Ralph Whitbeck — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 06:24:27 GMT

In my late night Google searching tonight I found a case study from ASI-Modulex the sign makers that we worked with a few years ago when we rebranded St. John's Universities interior and exterior wayfinding signs around campus.

"In partnership with BrandLogic, hundreds of directional decision points were identified across the two campuses then analyzed to create a wayfinding solution that improved the efficiency of the campus navigation."

I can only imagine the organization and planning that was needed to figure out the need, requirements and the plan to replace every single sign on campus. If you walk onto the campus you'll see what a momentous task this was.

“ASI-Modulex worked successfully with BrandLogic to implement the new logo design and wayfinding analysis for St. John’s University.”
Wynn Medinger
CEO, Creative Director
BrandLogic

In the end I think I only helped out by creating a Word template that was used by the Staff and Faculty to create their name plate for a slide in sign next to their door. Meaning they would use the Word template to print their name and title and the template would control the placement and font treatment. I thought this was it at first but this is a more permanent sign. Next time I go up to St. John's (possibly next month) I'll see if I can spot one of those name plate signs.

You can see BrandLogic's case study of the signs here. The mention of the signs is on the last slide and is part of the overall rebranding that we provided.

Redesigned BrandLogic.com Launches

Ralph Whitbeck — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 18:54:04 GMT

We've spent quite sometime recently getting BrandLogic.com ported over to our BrandEnsemble product. It's pretty exciting to actually have our website using our product. Before we did it in JSP because it was a great selling feature for some companies that we were multi talented (which we are by the way).

I think though that we were never really proud of our site before. But now, I think this is the best version of our website, and we are really proud of going live with it.

It runs on ASP.NET 1.1 and SQL Server 2000. It runs on our BrandLogic BrandEnsemble Content Management System.

Here are some screen shots of the site (click to enlarge).

And some of our admin tools which our CEO states are "the best admin tools I have ever seen."

These shots show how our pages can be edited inline so you get a feel for what the page will look like before you're ready to publish, version control history of a page with the ability to revert a page back to a previous version and how a typical view of a group (our terminology of a directory) looks within the system.

BrandEnsemble has been used in many of our clients sites as well:

St. John's University (Case study)

Red Storm Sports (St. John's Athletics Web site)
Image Manager (Case study)

CareerSpace (Case study)
Rockwell Collins (Intranet Brand Identity site)
Bausch & Lomb (Intranet Brand Identity site)
Texaco (Intranet Brand Identity site)
Wyeth (Intranet Brand Identity site)

Of course BrandEnsemble is only a piece of the overall branding puzzle that BrandLogic services offer to clients. BrandEnsemble is what I am close to as I have contributed to it's development over these past eight years.

Here are some of BrandLogics other services we offer:

And who we did it for.

Feel free to contact BrandLogic for your branding needs.

Don't be offended now but he plays with himself

Ralph Whitbeck — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 04:08:25 GMT

This is just pure genius...I laughed the whole way through it.

(RSS Readers: click through to watch video)

Rush-Henrietta's Sherman Elementary Talks with ISS Crew

Ralph Whitbeck — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 20:49:44 GMT

On January 8th Rush-Henrietta's Sherman Elementary contacted the ISS at 9:35 am with a HAM radio operated by the Amatuer Radio club at RIT and was able to talk for 9 minutes, the window when the Space Station was directly overhead.

I came into work that morning and tuned into NASATV thinking it would be broadcast live but found they were replaying chat's with other school's from previous days.

Today I found that RIT's University News posted a recorded version on their Podcast. I found it very interesting.

You can listen to it here

Secure your sites while surfing on the public wifi

Ralph Whitbeck — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 02:24:19 GMT

Lifehacker had an interesting article about how easy it is to packet sniff in open WiFi hotspots with a free Mac application. One way to secure your surfing is to use https when you are viewing sites, if it's available. Certain sites like web e-mail should only be viewed with https when using a wireless hotspot.

I found that GMail is accessible via https. Google Reader and Google Calendar are also accessible although none of the web applications that are linked at the top of GMail go to https so you have to actually type the address back in.

I set up my FireFox bookmarks to go to my Google Apps with https so that way I don't have to think about.

But then I tried for giggles what would happen if I typed in https://www.damnralph.com, you get a completely different site. I think it's because I am on a shared hosting environment and that maybe the only site that has a secure site on our IP. Anyone have an explaination as to why/how that would happen?

Related Links

What wifi sniffers can find out about you

Best of Damn Ralph in 2006

Ralph Whitbeck — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 17:20:21 GMT

I was looking through what I posted this past year and I wanted to highlight my favorite posts and the posts that seemed to bring in the most traffic.

My Favorite Posts

I got the call this morning... - This post was about my grandmother and her tense visit to intensive care and my trip down to visit her. Afterwards we found out that she had a reaction to the radiation she was getting for cancer. After she recovered from the ICU visit she spent a month or so recovering at home and then the surgery to remove the cancer. She is one tough woman as is my parents cause they dealt with it all. My mom left her job and stayed there for five months and my dad fended for himself during that time.
Car Explodes in front of my House - Man every time I mowed the lawn this year I was reminded of the car fire due to the patch of burnt grass. I am still amazed at how fast the guy got out of the car and only came out of the incident with a couple of burns to his neck and hands.
Nick Tahous Crew have a little fun with me - this one always makes me laugh every time I see it. We used to go to Nick Tahous weekly for plates and one of my coworkers wrote Damn Ralph on the slip for my order they just transfered it over to the plate it was funny to see.

Most Traffic

How to run Ubuntu and Kbuntu in VMware Player - This post on how to make Ubuntu play in the free VMWare Player is always number one in traffic daily. This brings a ton of traffic into the site daily.
Rochester Basketball Player scores 20 points in final 4 minutes...he's also Autistic - The feel good story of 2006. J-Mac graced us with an outstanding story of dedication and miraculous things happened for the kid sending him into national attention. He is now in talks for making his story into a movie and the President even visited him on one of his trips to Rochester this year.
Who really browses on their cell phone anyways? - I replied to a Robert Scoble post about the future of mobile internet browsing and how I didn't think that was the future as it's very hard to navigate. Four days into my blog and I got a link from Scoble's blog...I am still getting links through to this day. He must get some amazing traffic on his site.

Year in review

I still find it difficult to post to my blog. I want my blog to be more technical and personal then just a link blog of sorts. I want to be able to add to something then just posting because I found something interesting. Cause my sources of information is the same common information that everyone else visits. So unless I can add to the conversation I usually won't post about it. For the funny posts I usually let MediaGab handle all of that.

I found while going through my posts that my best posting was done in the beginning of the year and I started to get very sparse towards the end of the year. I think that was due to my schedule and not having any time during that time.

Hopefully I can find some interesting things to write about in 2007.

Development Branch of Firefox passes Acis 2 test

Ralph Whitbeck — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 16:15:51 GMT

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dbaron/126886608/

Liz Lawley on ScobleShow

Ralph Whitbeck — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 16:44:00 GMT

Speaking of interesting videos...I stumbled on this one from ScobleShow interviewing my former Professor at RIT, Liz Lawley.

It's interesting her take on MMORPG and letting your kids play along with you. Expensive, if your playing WoW but interesting none the less.

I let my kid play ET with me...but I am very protective of him online. He is getting a lot better but still doesn't have the strategy skills to make good decisions. In a 1 on 1 gun fight he's excellent. So having that role model there to help guide him is great. And my clan helps him out whenever possible too.

Microsoft Office Accounting 2007 - FREE

Ralph Whitbeck — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 01:32:23 GMT

From LifeHacker:

Windows only: Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007 is a new accounting suite designed with startups, small businesses, and eBay sellers in mind. Oh, and it's free.

Free? Microsoft software? Free? Sure enough, this surprisingly versatile package costs absolutely nothing. Certainly Microsoft's goal is to lure users to its $149 Office Accounting Professional 2007 suite, but I suspect plenty of business owners will find that Express does everything they need.

Specifically, the software can create quotes and invoices, track expenses, manage payrolls (via ADP's integrated payroll service), produce all kinds of reports, list items on eBay, track auction activity, send PayPal invoices, and much more.

Office Accounting Express 2007 requires Windows. And, no, you weren't dreaming: It's free. Thanks, M. Ahmad!— Rick Broida

Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007 [Microsoft IdeaWins]

Firefox 2 Launches Officially

Ralph Whitbeck — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 23:20:46 GMT

Mozilla, this evening, officially releases Firefox 2. After some controversy yesterday when the exe was found and a link of the exe that was on a mirror FTP server spread around and many people started downloading before the release not knowing what exactly they were getting.

Mozilla officials were extremely upset with the early spreading of the bits and spouted off why this was a bad thing to do.

But after a day of waiting it has been finally released and I am downloading now.

Enjoy!!

Related Links:

The Anti-Release
Mozilla Releases Major Update to Firefox and Raises the Bar for Online Experience
Firefox

A Slick CSS Solution to Image Rollovers

Ralph Whitbeck — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 17:27:42 GMT

Here is a simple and elegant solution to doing image rollovers using one image and css to position the image to the rollover state.

Wednesday Post (9/13/06)

Ralph Whitbeck — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 13:51:27 GMT

Come check out some funny ass pics and videos to get you over the hump of the week.

Click here to see more funny pics

MediaGab is a Entertainment news site and forum check us out and give us some love.

SVN Source Control in Windows

Ralph Whitbeck — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 16:03:48 GMT

At work we started exploring using SVN for source control with Visual Studio as Visual Source Safe is still living in 1999 and Visual Studio 2005 doesn't seem to be anymore promising (Jeff Atwood recommends "Anything but SourceSafe"). AnkhSVN was made to integrate with Visual Studio but wasn't the easiest to set-up...Scott Hanselman says there is a new version out but it's still in Release Candidate and requires you to upgrade to a release candidate version of subversion too.

Anyway with SVN being open source I was looking at setting up a version control solution for my personal projects.

Lifehacker recently ran a two part series (part 1, part 2) in it's weekly Hack Attack column about setting up Subversion and TortoiseSVN for Windows. It also includes an optional Apache install to access files from other computers.

I followed the Lifehacker articles and installed Subversion and TortoiseSVN and created a couple of repositories for projects I am working on. I elected to skip the Apache install on my machine as I only develop from my laptop.

I'll tell you that it already saved my butt once this weekend...in a rare act of stupidity (OK it really wasn't that rare) I copied files into the wrong directory...it only overwrote one file. But with version control I just right clicked on the file and hit revert and pulled up the original file I overwrote...without source control I would of had to recreate that file.

I still need to figure out a backup solution that is easy and unobtrusive. I am thinking about one of those one-click backup external hard-drives. Maybe for my birthday ;)

Suckerfish Menu with jQuery

Ralph Whitbeck — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 05:09:14 GMT

Me on jQuery's blog

I think we all have heard of or used Suckerfish CSS Menu's before, written by Pattrick Griffiths and Dan Webb for A List Apart. If not, it's a cool way to make drop down menu's using standards based semantic HTML and CSS. Unfortunately, with IE still dominating the browser marketplace we still need a way to handle the hover state in IE. To do that we need a little bit of JavaScript to attach mouseover and mouseout events to HTML elements.

Myles Angell decided to rewrite Suckerfish's JavaScript with jQuery. Myles uses jQuery's Basic Effects to show and hide the submenus and jQuery's BaseStyle Base module methods to highlight the current moused over menu item. Pretty slick.

Check out some of Myles other experiments with jQuery. For the jQuery beginner these are good examples to start out with. The treeview is another experiment that caught my eye.

I am now blogging for jQuery

Ralph Whitbeck — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 17:27:30 GMT

Check out my first blog on jquery.com about Aptana IDE now including jQuery as a imported JavaScript Library.

How to run Ubuntu and Kbuntu in VMware Player

Ralph Whitbeck — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 14:37:49 GMT

I had an itch today to run Ubuntu. I actually wanted to see how Konqueror compared to Safari in rendering as I needed a way to test since I don't own a Mac. Since Safari is a descendent of Konqueror it makes sense that they render the same for the most part.

I started by downloading and installing the free VMware Player.

I then downloaded the Ubuntu iso (disk image) from Ubuntu's site. I had the best luck with the torrent files. I was able to download the 696mb iso in 20 minutes. Since I'll be touching on it later you can also get the Kbuntu iso from the Kbuntu site.

Now that I have VMware and the iso's I need to make a Virtual Hard Disk. I found directions online here.

First I needed to download and install QEMU because you need the qemu-image.exe to emulate/create the virtual hard disk.

After you installed QEMU open a command window and change directories to c:\program files\QEMU or whatever the directory name you put the files. Once you are in the directory run the following command which will allowcate 3GB for a Ubuntu virtual hard drive.

qemu-img.exe create -f vmdk Ubuntu.vmdk 3G Formating 'Ubuntu.vmdk', fmt=vmdk, size=3097152 kB

For Kbuntu:

qemu-img.exe create -f vmdk Kbuntu.vmdk 3G Formating 'Kbuntu.vmdk', fmt=vmdk, size=3097152 kB

This will create a file Ubuntu.vmdk or Kbuntu.vmdk in the QEMU folder.

Create a folder called Ubuntu or Kbuntu in My Documents > My Virtual Machines and move the vmdk file you just created in there. Also copy the iso file to this folder. Finally, create a blank text file and name it either Ubuntu.vmx or Kbuntu.vmx which are VMware Configuration files.

In the Ubunti.vmx files paste this:

config.version = "8"

virtualHW.version = "3"

ide0:0.present = "TRUE"

ide0:0.filename = "Ubuntu.vmdk"

memsize = "256"

MemAllowAutoScaleDown = "FALSE"

ide1:0.present = "TRUE"



#ide1:0.fileName = "auto detect"

#ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"



ide1:0.fileName = "ubuntu-6.06-desktop-i386.iso"

ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"



ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"

floppy0.present = "FALSE"

ethernet0.present = "TRUE"

usb.present = "TRUE"

sound.present = "TRUE"

sound.virtualDev = "es1371"

displayName = "Ubuntu"

guestOS = "Ubuntu"

nvram = "Ubuntu.nvram"

MemTrimRate = "-1"



ide0:0.redo = ""

ethernet0.addressType = "generated"

uuid.location = "56 4d 5c cc 3d 4a 43 29-55 89 5c 28 1e 7e 06 58"

uuid.bios = "56 4d 5c cc 3d 4a 43 29-55 89 5c 28 1e 7e 06 58"

ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:7e:06:58"

ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"



tools.syncTime = "TRUE"

ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"



uuid.action = "create"



checkpoint.vmState = ""

For Kbuntu.vmx paste this:

config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "3"
ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
ide0:0.filename = "Kbuntu.vmdk"
memsize = "256"
MemAllowAutoScaleDown = "FALSE"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"

#ide1:0.fileName = "auto detect"
#ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"

ide1:0.fileName = "kubuntu-6.06-desktop-i386.iso"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"

ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"
floppy0.present = "FALSE"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
usb.present = "TRUE"
sound.present = "TRUE"
sound.virtualDev = "es1371"
displayName = "Kbuntu"
guestOS = "ubuntu"
nvram = "Kbuntu.nvram"
MemTrimRate = "-1"

ide0:0.redo = ""
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
uuid.location = "56 4d cf a0 97 ef 95 ad-c2 6a 6e 62 5b f2 78 ff"
uuid.bios = "56 4d cf a0 97 ef 95 ad-c2 6a 6e 62 5b f2 78 ff"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:f2:78:ff"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"

tools.syncTime = "TRUE"
ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"

uuid.action = "create"

checkpoint.vmState = ""

Save the file and close it. All you have to do now is double-click the vmx file and it will launch VMware Player and boot with the iso image as the Boot CD (you don't need to even burn a CD).

If you decide to install Ubuntu, at the end of the installation you will be prompted to reboot, before the system starts up go in and modify the vmx configuration file so that it boots off the virtual drive instead of the iso by modifying these four lines

Find:

#ide1:0.fileName = "auto detect"

#ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"



ide1:0.fileName = "ubuntu-6.06-desktop-i386.iso"

ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"

Replace with:

ide1:0.fileName = "auto detect"

ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"



#ide1:0.fileName = "ubuntu-6.06-desktop-i386.iso"

#ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"

The great thing about Ubuntu is that it runs live right off the CD you don't even need to install it if you don't want to. The differences between Ubuntu and Kbuntu is Ubuntu uses Gnome as it's Desktop and Kbuntu uses KDE. Like I said at the beginning I wanted to test sites against Konqueror and with Konqueror being a KDE application it was installed by default in Kbuntu and ran perfectly right off the live CD without installation. It can run off Ubuntu but you'll need to install Ubuntu then install Konqueror from the Synaptics Package Manager.

Dell Laptop explodes at Japanese Conference

Ralph Whitbeck — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 23:36:40 GMT

Heard about this on the latest TWiT podcast. The Inquirer has the story.

Ruby on Rails Tutorials

Ralph Whitbeck — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 03:48:59 GMT

After I asked about tutorials on Ruby on Rails I went searching for a few. Here are about 30 tutorials on Ruby on Rails.

Whose blogging about BarCampRochester?

Ralph Whitbeck — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 17:59:10 GMT

Well of course besides me.

Well obviously the organizers are blogging about it.

Justin Thorp - gave a presentation on Web Accessibility Standards for Content Authoring tools as well as help moderate the event. Justin showed his presentation on slides he created with S5, which I thought was a cool online app.
Erica O'Grady - who also moderated the event gave a great presentation on Web 2.0 Web Applications that are underused. I wrote about the ones I haven't heard about before here or you can see all of them from her delicious group. Erica also provided us with a Flickr feed of the event. Hey where are the pictures of the BrandLogic crew? My wife doesn't believe I attended please upload them for the sake of my marriage!
SeenCreative - The final moderator/organizer. They gave an awesome presentation about their company and their experiences and showed off their Ruby on Rails project that has been getting noticed in the online community called myBillq.com
Larry Roth - Part of the infamous BrandLogic group that stormed into the event late and took over. Not really, but I think you could call our entrance a classic entrance of "shock and awe". Anyways, Larry presented some of our client work and discussed our experiences...I helped were I could but we came not really prepared.

Some other presentations that are now online:

Sam Cole presented on Bliki's and uploaded his presentation

You can keep an eye on future blog posts by watching Technorati for BarCampRochester.

Smart Cars might be a short term solution

Ralph Whitbeck — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 19:26:37 GMT

However, I think this Hydrogen car from GM is the car of the future that is our long term solution to our dependence on oil.

(video)

digg this

What's hot now?

Ralph Whitbeck — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 01:03:27 GMT

Obviously Web 2.0 apps are hot and all the rage. I posted some examples of popular and up and coming apps.

But what I think is surprising to me is that Ruby and Ruby on Rails is the hottest programming language out there right now.

myBillq.com was done in Ruby on Rails. It was done for two reasons. One, it gave the developers and the company something to program to show off their talents plus gave them experience with writing an application in Ruby on Rails.

OK it seems like it might make web 2.0 easier to program? Is that a fair statement? What's a good resource to start understanding Ruby?

Web Based Presentation Slide Show Creator

Ralph Whitbeck — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 21:57:00 GMT

S5 - A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System

Web Applications

Ralph Whitbeck — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 21:28:55 GMT

Listening to a presentation now about web applications. Here's some of the interesting ones that I haven't heard before:

Crazy Egg - Coming soon app that will analyze your click throughs on your site with a heatmap metaphor.

Writely - online word processor

Shopify - online e-commerce solution

gliffy - online visio app

Jambo - proximity chat

Dabble DB - Online Spreedsheet (subscription based)

Sitting at BarCampRochester

Ralph Whitbeck — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 20:30:55 GMT

Just watched a presentation from SeenCreative couple of RIT grads that started a web consulting firm here in town.

They presented their Ruby on Rails site they did called MyBillq all Web 2.0 and really slick.

New Rocketboom out

Ralph Whitbeck — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 23:08:13 GMT

I liked it actually Joanna Colan is a good fit on the show.

jQuery

Ralph Whitbeck — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 18:11:42 GMT

I used to work with John Resig and Julia West before they moved on to become big wigs on their own. They are on their way too, making waves in the JavaScript community with a new way to work with Javascript. They are in the mist of developing a javascript API called jQuery that makes a developers life easier once you understand how it works.

What is jQuery?

jQuery is a Javascript library that takes this motto to heart: Writing Javascript code should be fun. jQuery acheives this goal by taking common, repetitive, tasks, stripping out all the unnecessary markup, and leaving them short, smart and understandable.

I finally used jQuery last night because I needed to make rounded corners on a div. all I needed to do was include the jquery.js file, include the rounded corners jQuery plugin js file then I included these three lines of code:

$(document).ready(function(){
$("#learn-more-container").corner("round bottom 15px");
});

which finds the div with id learn-more-container and sets the bottom corners to round with a radius of 15px.

Just that easy. Definitely check out jQuery and see how easy it is for yourself.

Some Cool Links for tonight

Ralph Whitbeck — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 01:31:31 GMT

Someone found KC-135 refueling tanker refueling a C-5 Galaxy in mid-air. Download the Google Earth Keyhole here to view it. The ghosting effect is a artifact from the planes being in motion. (if you look in one of the field to the northwest you'll see a farmer marked his field with "USA BUSH")
Warren Buffet has decided to give 85% of his fortune away. But to whom you may ask? Bill Gates who else! Actually it's actually to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Beautiful NASA Photos
40 Things you didn't know about Superman, btw going Thursday night to see Superman Returns in wonderfull 3D Imax glory.

Interesting the people you meet at the most unusual times

Ralph Whitbeck — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 17:35:42 GMT

Yesterday was my nephews high school graduation party. Yep my nephew graduated and my oldest son is going into middle school...I am getting old.

At the party my dad said I had to meet my nephews uncle that runs his own business doing what I do...I ask "oh what's that?" "COMPUTERS" I always get a kick out of that. They never realize that that could mean anything.

A couple hours later after my wife had handed me my 8th Crown Royal and coke my nephews grandfather bring him over to meet me.

Turns out he runs pokerdream.com a for pay online poker site. He told me the site was written in VB.NET and the poker rooms were written in C++.

I visited the site this morning and was really impressed with the design and layout of the site...very professional looking.

He's looking for someone to build an affiliate program for the site. I told him about my experience with building banner ads tracker on MediaGab and how I thought that should work...now that I think about it I should of told him about RedStorm Sports and the Ad system we build for that as well...I guess I can thank my wife and the 8 cups of Crown Royal and coke for that.

We exchanged cards and talked about our nephew and his choice of college and his decision to go into Computer Science. I was telling him I think he'll switch to IT eventually because I don't see him have the geekiness to like Computer Science once you get into the Science of it...I know I couldn't handle it and switched to IT in my third year....it's just more satisfying to make things work from existing software and applications then it is to build it from scratch.

Digg v3 coming

Ralph Whitbeck — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 14:50:22 GMT

Digg is launching a new look and feel on Monday June 26th. You can take a look at screenshots and listen to a Podcast interview of the Digg founders.

Last night was the Digg Launch party that was held in San Francisco Laughing Squid has some photos of the event.

Looks good can't wait to see it live.

Google Bans 7 BILLION Pages for Spamming

Ralph Whitbeck — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 03:39:05 GMT

Five domains were caught trying to cheat Googles rankings for spamming purposes and were banned by Google with a total result of 7 Billion pages not indexed anymore.

Our World to Scale with the Universe

Ralph Whitbeck — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 21:39:36 GMT

How big is Earth compared to Venus, Mars, Pluto...The SUN.

How big is the sun compared to other stars.

Well check it out.