Tech Stuff

Over the last couple of weeks some people I know have had their WordPress installations hacked. The one common denominator is that they were all running older versions of the software and had not done upgrades for a while. The best thing to do is to make sure you do the upgrades. Now I know doing that is not always convenient, so I went looking around for some ideas how to make it a little more secure using Apache. The article with the best advice came from Matt Cutts and had to do with using Apache’s .htaccess file to limit access to the /wp-admin/ directory by IP address. If you have a dynamic IP address you may have to FTP into your site and edit the file to include the new IP address before you can access the admin section of your blog. The next tip he had was making sure you don’t leak unnecessary information to a potential attacker by putting a blank index.php file in the plugins directory. You can also turn off the directory browsing in Apache. The final tip was to remove the WordPress version tag from your header template so a potential attacker can’t view it and find out quickly what holes may exist. For details on how to do the above check out the article.

In an articles on Forbes.com, “The Death of Hardware”, they discuss Zillow and their recent use of Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing platform to recalculate the values of some 67 million homes for their site.  Zillow estimated the task would take 6 months and millions of dollars before they went with the EC2 platform which was about $50,000, roughly 3 weeks and used 500 servers.

In the article Forbes also mentions that Microsoft is expected to roll out their own form of the computing cloud (Windows Live Core) this month which is aimed at large businesses. Yahoo is expected to release theirs later this year. With the talk about Microsoft purchasing Yahoo we will have to see if the cloud happens for Yahoo. I hope Yahoo does as I would think their platform would be linux based and that is what I am looking for. Would be nice to see more competition in the space which would help drive more advancements and hopefully even lower prices.

Below are a couple free online storage websites that I have been using.  I am sure there are many more so if you are using one that has a cool that others don’t be sure to leave a comment.  Always looking for new stuff.

XDrive.com
XDrive is a service of AOL.  This means if you have an AOL or AIM you have an account with them.  You get 5GB of storage for free.  If that is not enough you can upgrade to 50GB for $9.95 a month.  The one feature I use the most with this is service is the ability to upload a large file (i.e. PowerPoint Presentation, Word Doc, WMV, etc.) and email the file to someone else.  The way this works is that the recipient is sent a link to where the file can be downloaded.  This bypass the limits on many SMTP for the file size of out going mail and also mailbox limits for your recipients.  There are a couple other things that makes this product stand out a limit more than the rest.  There is an option called “AutoCopy”.  This will automatically copy your photos and music online.  There is also a product called Desktop.  This allows you to drag and drop files to copy online and also allows you to access you files through a mapped drive on your computer.  The product which I haven’t tried out yet is their mobile version.  One of the interesting things is the ability to choose a file and send it as a fax directly from your phone.

Windows Live SkyDrive

The service works using the Windows Live ID system.  If you have a Hotmail, MSN Messenger or Passport login you have an account.  You get 5GB of free storage.  I didn’t see an option to buy more storage if you need it.  Skydrive supports drag and drop uploading if you install a plug-in which makes it pretty user friendly.   There is the ability to send a link to someone so they can access a specific document.  It doesn’t seem to have as many bells and whistles as XDrive.com, but who can’t use a little extra storage online.

Since I posted the other day about using the Wii remote to do Desktop VR I figured I would also post a video I came across about doing it with the PS3. Hopefully this is all an indication of what is to come in the next generation of gaming systems.

Over the years I have used many different devices to backup my data. Here is a quick list:

• 5 1/4 Floppy
• 3 1/2 Floppy
• Iomega Zip Drive
• Iomega Jaz Drive
• CD-R
• DVD-R
• FTP Site
• USB hard drive

The all had their pros and cons. Usually the pro was that the next device had more storage and was easier/quicker to use than the previous one. The cons always seemed to be that you had to remember to do it and still took time. I have decided it is time to move to the next logical device. This would be backing up my data online. This gives me the extra benefit that my backups are off site and I don’t need to remember to bring them out of my house. In the back of my head I always worried about my house getting broken into or a fire. Either one means I could easily be without my data.

One possible option is to use the Amazon S3 service for the backups. There are several companies/individuals who have written software to do this. Also there are companies that specialize in online backups. I am going to give several of them a try and figure out which one will work best for my needs and for the most reasonable price. I’ll let you know which one I settle on. If you have any suggestions for ones to try let me know.

When Google does something they seem to definitely go all out and go big. Some people with Google in Moscow put together the video people. For the details of what went into making the art check out the GMail blog.

Google announces a Contacts API is now available.  This is great news for people like me who love their GMail account, but also use Outlook for somethings.  Hopefully there is a developer out there already busy writing a GMail to Outlook Sync program for Contacts.  Between this announcement and their other announcement about a Calendar Sync utility I may finally get my data in all the locations I want/need and not have to retype and sync it by hand.

Google announces the new Google Calendar Sync which will sync your Google Calendar with Outlook.  I know I have been waiting a long time for this.  Has always been a pain trying to keep the two calendars in sync.

Well it turns out if you think you only have one email address you are wrong. You have a huge possible set to choose from. On the GMail blog they release information on some special characters a dot (“.”) and plus sign (“+”). Turns out if you put a dot in a GMail address it is completely ignored. Also any text after a “+” sign is completely ignored. Think of the power of this. You can give unique email addresses to websites and know when the spam starts coming in where it came from. Also can setup filters to label or star emails to certain addresses automatically. Also for those contests that require unique email addresses. No more creating new fake free email accounts. Have fun.

Well this may sound like a stupid question and my answer is I use mine to play bowling on my Wii. There is a PhD student using his for head tracking for VR desktop. All I have to say is wow and I am going back to my bowling.