Internet

Where is Firefox 3?

David Vidmar — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:27:08 GMT

For all Firefox 3 fans who are asking themselves when FF3 will be released today:

Release is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Tuesday, June 17th. For Europeans it means we'll be able to grab it at 19.00.

Update: FileHippo already offers RTM for download!

Watch EURO 2008 live for free on your computer

David Vidmar — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:19:41 GMT

We all know football has low WAF. Having kids around doesn’t help either. So having a live stream on computer helps in this situations. Luckily, these days free TV is easy to find.

Start by going to some P2PTV portal like MyP2P.eu or WorldTvPc and search for live sports. Try to find a TV station with high bitrate, high rating and in language you understand.

Then, figure out which P2P video application you need. Most popular are TVU, TVants (translated) and SopCast. Download and enjoy!

Good choice for Euro 2008 is TVants and Croatian public TV station HRT.

All is not perfect, tough:

be sure to connect well before you plan to start watching as it can take several minutes before you get enough connections (this can be fixed on Vista and XP),
stream is also delayed for couple of seconds to half a minute,
I don’t know about other programs, but TVants has a band of Chinese ads on top and bottom of video window, but it’s not annoying,
picture will hand from time to time, and occasionally freeze, try reconnecting if it gets bad.

Warning: this is ~~probably~~ illegal, so it’s your responsibility if you step on someone toes.

Free DNS Report alternatives

David Vidmar — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:11:11 GMT

Everyone that runs a web server or even a site needs to run a DNS check from time to time. For a long time I have been a happy user of a site DNSstuff.com. But couple of months ago they started charging for their main check called DNSReport.

For few queries a month I'm not willing to subscribe for $80 a year, and I'm certainly not alone.

Finally I have done some research and tried to find alternatives. Here are the results with ratings, where 10/10 is what DNSReport gave us.

CheckDNS.net - 7/10 - Sample

Clear design, errors and warning are nicely visible. Quite fast too. Too bad it check for only basic stuff.

ZoneCheck - 6/10

AJAXy. Only reports error and/or warning. Had a batch mode for multiple domains and desktop program which I don't want to even try. DNS test should be available anywhere anytime.

intoDNS - 8/10 - Sample

Simple, powerful, web2.0-ish. Results are almost identical to DNSReport, it's just that the explanations are not that concise. For example, it says my SOA REFRESH is not ok, but I don't get any recommendations on how to fix it.

Network Tools - 5/10

Only stand alone tools, not DNSReport- like check. Trace and ping are nice though.

pingability - 7/10 - Sample

Solid report, too bad it is terribly hard to read.

iptools.com - 4/10

Similar to Network tools, it only has standalone tools, but no big all-round DNS test. Boring.

DomainTools - 2/10 - Sample

Too simple. Only lists DNS entries.

Free DNS Report - 8/10 (scam?) - Sample

The report looks remarkably similar to that of the original, but the site looks terribly like a scam. I'm kind of scared to enter my domain name in there. If this is real test, please pimp it up a bit!

you get signal - not rated

Doesn't really belong on the list, but it is a nice tool anyway. I use it for port forwarding tests and reverse IP domain check.

My pick is intoDNS. If I need a second opinion, I'll go for CheckDNS.net or pingability. For port scanning and trace router I like you get signal the best.

Technorati tags: dnsreport, dnsstuff, dns, tcp, ip, free

Simplifying my life - Links of the week (Windows Live Writer add-in that generates content from Delicious and RSS feeds)

David Vidmar — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:37:55 GMT

I'll soon have far less free time that I have now, so I'm actively working on simplifying my life. I don't want to give up things, I try to slipstream as much as possible. So far I think I'm doing quite well.

One big time waster was putting together Sunday's regular weekly links. I bookmark stuff I find on excellent delicious using Delicious Firefox buttons. That part is fast and painless, there is nothing I can do to improve that. When creating a post, I basically copy/paste, cleanup and then some formatting. Booooring...

As I grew tired of that, I remembered than delicious has an API that I could use to automate formatting. If I would be just little bit more careful when posting, Sunday evening could be free again. I could use first tag as category, enter a description, so post generation could be completely automatic.

And that's how DeliciousLinks project was born few weeks ago. Since some stuff is hard-coded, the executable is not ready for publishing. But if anyone thinks this could be useful, I'll gladly share the code.

Let's go to some C# code how I done it.... Prepare WebClient object with right credentials.

WebClient webClientDelicious = new WebClient

                                       Encoding = Encoding.Default,

                                       Credentials = new NetworkCredential(username, password)

};

Get XML of links from particular day. I'll repeat that for all dates in a week.

Uri uriDelicious = new Uri(string.Format("https://api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/get?&dt={0:yyyy-MM-dd}", date));

string xmlContent = webClientDelicious.DownloadString(uriDelicious);

Then, using Linq to XML, I sort results and fill data in List<Link>

var posts = from post in xdoc.Descendants("post")

            orderby post.Attribute("tag").Value.Split(' ')[0], post.Attribute("description").Value

            select new Link

                           Url = post.Attribute("href").Value,

                           Title = post.Attribute("description").Value,

                           Description = post.Attribute("extended") == null ? "" : post.Attribute("extended").Value,

                           Category = (post.Attribute("tag").Value.Split(' ')[0]).Capitalize()

};

I also parse a RSS feed, I also parse that with Linq to XML.

var entries = from feedElements in rssXDocument.Descendants(xmlns + "entry")

              select new Link

                             Url = feedElements.Elements(xmlns + "link")

                                    .Where(link => link.Attribute("rel").Value == "alternate")

                                    .Select(link => link.Attribute("href").Value).First(),

                             Title = feedElements.Element(xmlns + "title").Value,

                             Description = "",

                             Category = "Software Updates"

};

Then I'll just roll over results, use StringBuilder to build HTML and post body is done.

But where to put this code into? In Windows Live Writer add-in, of course!

First, I add a reference to WindowsLive.Writer.Api. Then I'll create new class that will extend ContentSource.

[WriterPlugin("{06BDBEB7-0D4F-45bf-AD23-2AAE6D98D745}", "Delicious Links",

    ImagePath = "images.delicious_links.png",

    HasEditableOptions = true,

    PublisherUrl = "http://vidmar.net/",

    Description = "Helps to generate link posts using bookmarks on del.icio.us.")]

[InsertableContentSource("Delicious Links")]

public class WlwPlugin : ContentSource

    Settings settings;

    public override DialogResult CreateContent(IWin32Window dialogOwner, ref string content)

        DialogResult dialogResult;

        using (MainForm mainForm = new MainForm(settings.Username, settings.Password))

            dialogResult = mainForm.ShowDialog();

            if (dialogResult == DialogResult.OK)

                content = mainForm.Links;

            mainForm.Hide();

        return dialogResult;

    // ... some more boring code to read and write settings ...

All done! I can get my weekly links post with couple of clicks exactly where I need them. I love it.

This is how my Windows Live Writer looks like now.

Technorati tags: windows live writer, add-in, code, c#

SnapBomb

David Vidmar — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:28:25 GMT

I came across a site called SnapBomb today. Behind slick Web2.0-ish design there is a classic buzz generating engine. SnapBomb promises to pay bloggers for writing reviews of products and services. It looks and feels like beta, but lets see where this takes us.

I not a fan of blog marketing at all, but one of three "opportunities" they currently offer is to write about new feature of project I respect and have written about before - db4objects.

So I have a hope it's not just another link generating scam and something cool will come out of this.

Let's wait and see!

Technorati tags: snapbomb, buzz, blog marketing, review

This is a sponsored post.

Tomato Firmware with new favico

David Vidmar — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:49:19 GMT

This is too good to wait for Sunday's post.

New version of tomato firmware came out today and it includes couple of bits of my work. I have contributed a new favico to replace the ugly old one!

Technorati tags: favico, tomato, firmware

Complete RSS feeds of AAC torrents for Pwop podcasts (HanselMinutes, .NET Rocks!, RunAs Radio, Mondays)

David Vidmar — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:22:58 GMT

After years of testing I (again!) realized that easiest/smoothest/most reliable way to download a podcast is to use RSS feed and uTorrent.

Unfortunately, not all shows offer such feed. Long time ago I created a small project that transformed RSS feeds of Pwop productions shows HanselMinutes, .NET Rocks and Mondays from MP3 to AAC (Mb4, iPod), which are my preferred format for listening.

Even after two years, then RSS torrent feeds are not available for every Carl Franklin and the gang show, so I rewrote the program and added new RunAs Radio show and here are new feeds:

HanselMinutes - http://vidmar.net/pwop/TorrentFeed.ashx?show=HanselMinutes
.NET Rocks! - http://vidmar.net/pwop/TorrentFeed.ashx?show=DotNetRocks
RunAs Radio - http://vidmar.net/pwop/TorrentFeed.ashx?show=RunAsRadio
Mondays - http://vidmar.net/pwop/TorrentFeed.ashx?show=Mondays

If you need instructions on how to use uTorrent to download podcasts, please see the original post from two years ago. Nothing really changed.

Technorati tags: pwop, podcasts, torrent

Google Apps good news

David Vidmar — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 22:29:57 GMT

Robert has dropped a two good bits of news about Google Apps as comments to this weeks Links of the week.

First, Gmail mobile application is finally available for J2ME (Java) phones!

Just surf to http://m.google.com/a on your mobile phone and you'll have a chance to install the app. It works like a charm. Easily best mobile email client out there.

What is strange is that the Google Apps info page doesn't have anything on it and I haven't seen any news about it anywhere (but I didn't looked very hard).

Second, there is a new setting in in the control panel of Google Apps that should turn on new regular Gmail features sooner.

I haven't turned it on more that 24 hours ago, but I don't see any changes yet. So I'm not sure if it just doesn't work or I just don't get it. If you try it, please report back.

Technorati tags: google, google apps, mobile, java

Find great jobs and hire the best talent

David Vidmar — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 22:44:39 GMT

Users that actually visit vidmar.net site have probably noticed there has been job board embedded in this site. At first I tested the field with my own version of it, but that was later replace with a professional service Hidden network by Alex Papadimoulis, legendary MVP for MS Paint and author of The Daily WTF.

I believe this service on my blog will be of use for both job seekers and employers!

If you are looking for a new challenge, just browse jobs and subscribe to the feed. Just don't forget to report back when you get that dream job, ok?

If you are employer, you can post your jobs for free (international) or with a huge discount using these codes:

100OFF0712 - $100 discount ($199 for first listing)
200OFF0712 - $200 discount ($99 for first listing)
299OFF0712 - $299 discount (free first listing)
INTLFREE7 - free international (non US/CA) listings

When you apply, please enter my referral number 1159. Thank you!

Take a look at some others blogs that are part of Hidden Network:

Technorati tags: job, job ads, employment

Buzzword doesn't get foreign languages

David Vidmar — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 22:57:42 GMT

Adobe's new Flash based on-line word processor Buzzword looks fantastic. It's even got font smoothing build in and some amazing looking fonts. It just puts Google Docs to shame.

But if you are not from the right part of the world it's just nothing you can use. It looks like it doesn't recognize international characters at all. They get lost when you open/upload Word files or the fonts don't support them. What's even worse, international keys like Slovenian characters š, č and ž don't work at all.

I hope the fix this before release!

Technorati tags: internet, flash, text editor, adobe, international, bug