This is just a heads up to everyone out there to be extra careful when handling email.  We have seen an explosive increase in the number of attacks brought about to every day citizens through email.  From SPAM with fake links, to Internet Scams that these fraudsters want you to invest your time and money in, to Viruses/Trojans/Back doors, and of course Phishing attacks where someone pretends to be from some place familiar to you like your bank, eBay or PayPal in an attempt to get your account information.

There are some basic steps to take like using good anti-virus software, and making sure it is kept up to date, that can help you stay safe.  We posted an article a while back with these explained, and I believe we should take a look at updating it since it’s been a year or two.  The basic principals stay the same, and there is still lots of good info there, we will most likely just be adding more stuff to deal with new threats.  Take a look at it here, it’s called Web Surfing Safety, and we hope you find it useful.  In addition to that, be sure to check out the Library, since we have lots of other good information and tidbits in there too!  Thanks.

Here’s another application tidbit that I ran across and just have to share.  If you are like lots of other folk in that you manage or contribute to any number of blogs out there in cyberspace, and although the majority of your writing and editing time is spent at the PC, you’d love to have the option of firing up your iPhone and tapping out a blog post right there on the spot if the desire so moved you.  Now, unfortunately, this post isn’t going to help people that don’t have or use an iPhone, at least not today.  I would expect though, that the app I am going to talk about will get ported to other platforms, especially popular ones (read: droid/googleOS).

OK, for those iPhone users though, there is an app that so far seems to rise above the rest of the crowd.  It’s called iBlogger and in my time with it has been quick, nimble, easy to setup and use and generally makes blogging from my iPhone an almost effortless experience.  The app supports many different blogging platforms, here is a short list that covers the major ones: Blogger, Expression Engine, MovableType, SquareSpace, TypePad, WordPress.  They claim that more are being added all the time, so if your favorite isn’t listed now, you might see it before too long.

Some of the other features that I like are, for example, I can setup multiple blogs and easily post to different ones, you are not locked in.  You can upload pictures pretty easily too, either taken on the spot or from the Camera Roll.  It seems that there is a limit of one pic per post as of this writing, but again I bet that gets fixed soon.  To sum it up, this is a nice little blogging app, and from what I have read and comparing it to other apps that I have tried that supposedly do the same thing, it is light years ahead of the competition.  It’s not free though, so that could be a drawback for some folk.  When I purchased it recently it was going for $9.99 and so far it has been well worth it.

Now, there is one last tidbit I want to share.  This is for anyone that already has this app, or is planning on getting this app.  There is one thing that would happen when I made a post that really annoyed me, and that was when the application would insert an unwanted advert link at the bottom of the post.  You know what I mean, one of those “Posted by iBlogger blah blah blah” links that took people back to their home page.  Now, I don’t mind supporting an app, when I find something good I want to share it with people like I am doing with this post.  But I don’t want a link like that at the end of each and every post, especially when I didn’t know it was going to do it in the first place.

So now I want to share with you how to make the application not do that.  It’s actually really easy to do, but it wasn’t that easy to find, so I want to make sure all of you know about it right up front.  It’s an option setting like it should be, but it’s not an option you get to from inside the application.  Go to the main Settings section for the iPhone itself, and scroll down till you see a link to iBlogger settings.  Click on it and you will see only two options, one for editing the footer and one for turning off the insertion of said footer.  It’s just that easy!

*Note: No compensation or consideration of any kind was received by Solarum for this post/review.

Guess what kiddies, in troubleshooting an email connection for a customer that was unable to send any email through one of my servers, I found the problem was not quite what I expected.  The good news is that the problem wasn’t my mail server, or even on my end at all for that matter.  After some testing and digging I found that the problem is that Verizon has now blocked ALL out bound port 25 traffic.  Period.  As you know, port 25 is the standard RFC compliant port for SMTP communication, and Verizon has blocked all port 25 traffic as a means to fight SPAM.  Uh-huh.  Sure.

This means that you cannot use any other email provider for sending mail unless they support a non-standard port for their SMTP service, or you are using webmail exclusively.  This, to me, is wrong on so many levels.  First off, it’s not helping in the SPAM wars as far as I can tell.  I am told the same thing by some Verizon customers I surveyed.  Second, it’s just wrong to cut out basically all other mail providers like that.  This is yet another example of how stupid Verizon is, and how they cannot manage their service at all.

I have done business with many, many telco’s over the years, and Verizon tops the list by a mile of the worst service providers to deal with.  Some of the most incompetent people, bone headed mistakes and plain batshiat crazy experiences have all been at the hands of Verizon.  I hope this is just the first of many nails in their coffin.

One last thing, conveniently enough, the only way around this is to upgrade to FIOS (or other non-specified broadband service) and pay extra for a static IP address.  How nice.  Read more here.

Greetings folks, I’d like to take a moment to share with you something that I found a while back and have been using since I found it.  What I found was a service, a source code hosting service fully integrated with Subversion.  Now, I had already been using Subversion, I had it setup and running on my own servers in my lab.  I had even looked at the idea of commercial Internet based Subversion hosting since it would put my source code archive off-site and accessible from outside my lab, but the providers and plans I found were either expensive, feature light, or just didn’t seam to be a quality service provider.  Usually more than one of those things.  Besides, I am very picky about where I put my source code.  Call me paranoid, but I don’t toss code around anywhere, I have to be comfortable that it’s in a safe and secure place.

So, now enter Code Spaces, the best hosted Subversion I have ever seen, even over hosting it myself.  The service is superb and the features included go way beyond simple Subversion hosting.  In the end, between the ease of use and the extra goodies that they include with the service, not to mention the reasonable price, I believe in the long run I am saving money over hassling with doing it myself.  Not to mention my code is now safely archived off site, which is great for disaster recovery.

Now, what all do they provide other than great Subversion hosting?  Take a look:

• SSL Encryption
• Real Time Backups
• Project Management Tools
• Bug Tacking Tools
• Project Milestones and Task Setup
• A 45 Day FREE Trial
• A Money Back Guarantee

There’s more to it than that, but you really have to go check out their site to get a handle on all that they offer.  Frankly, if this type of service is something that you want or need, I’d give them a shot for the 45 day free trial.  That’s what I did and I was blown away by how good their service is.  Check them out at http://www.codespaces.com today!  By the way, if anyone is interested, this is not a paid endorsement.  I don’t get any kickbacks or consignments if you sign up and they didn’t pay me or give me a credit/discount for this post, I just like the service that much that I wanted to share it with all my visitors.  Enjoy!

Netflix Logo

One of the things that I like to do here, aside from how-to articles, scripts, tips and tidbits, etc., is to share things that I have run across that I find useful or fun, a good value, and so on.  One such thing recently has been Netflix.  Now, unless you have been living in a cave somewhere, I am sure you have heard of Netflix before.  Their claim to fame is DVD rental by mail with no late fees.  It works, works well, I have used the service in that capacity and been quite happy with it.  However, that is not what this post is about.  No, in this day and age of instant gratification, this post shows off a new feature that Netflix offered up, which is the ability to watch movies and TV shows instantly, over the ‘net.  Bing!

You can do this a couple of different ways, using your computer (this is how I do it) and streaming the content via your web browser, or using a special device that connects to your TV and streams directly to your set.  I haven’t used the special TV device, and I don’t know anything about it, I will just be talking about the browser based service.

For a nominal fee, ($8.99/month) you can get both DVD by mail service and unlimited instant service (over the Internet).  To me, this is a pretty good deal.  That’s a rental or two and you can watch all you want, nice.  What’s the catch, you ask?  Well, naturally you have to have some type of broadband connection.  I haven’t actually tried it on dial-up, but I can’t imagine it would be fun.  The other thing is that their instant content selection isn’t near as vast as their physical DVDs, something like 12,000 instant viewing titles versus over 100,000 DVDs that they can send via mail.  That being said, I haven’t had any trouble finding something to watch.  Yeah, I have found a few things that was only on DVD or what not, but there is still lots of good stuff to choose from and they are adding more all the time.

All in all, I think this is a good deal if you spend a lot of time at your computer (check), and like to watch TV and movies (check), and want the versatility to change it up and watch one thing one day and something else the next without having to buy a truck load of DVDs (also check).  For the record, I am not affiliated with Netflix in any way, I get absolutely nothing if you go sign up (although, Netflix, if you want to send me gifts feel free! :]).  I simply wanted to share something I found to be good with my audience.  Feel free to post your own thoughts and/or experiences in the comments.

XanaNews Screenshot

I was looking for a good, solid and preferably open source news reader (usenet client) whilst booted into Windows XP on my laptop earlier, and I found a dandy. I found a lightweight client called XanaNews, which although lightweight, not over burdened or bulky, it is also solid and easy to use. Throw in that it is open source and free, and it’s a nice application.

I looked at the screen shots and it looked like it was along the lines of what I wanted, so I decided to download it and give it a try.  After running the installer I easilly configured my news server (Giganews, if you aren’t using them and you want AWESOME usenet access, check these guys out! Like NOW!) and off I went, effortlessly subscribing to groups and reading posts on procmail.  That’s what I was working on at the time.

Well, I liked XanaNews so much, that I decided to install it on my main machine running Ubuntu.  I fired up Wine and ran through the same install steps and it again worked like a charm.  So now I can use this dandy little news reader on Windows and Linux.  I felt like I just had to share with everyone, because it seems like good usenet clients are hard to find unless you want to try and use something bundled into a web browser or email client which I usually don’t.  Give me an app made especially for what I want to use it for, and it’s probably going to do a better job of it every time.  Not always, but most of the time I would say.  Hope you enjoy it!