One of the pillars of a scalable website is ensuring that only activity which is required to build a page should be performed during the processing of a page request. Activities that fall under this category commonly include sending emails, recording statistics and general housekeeping such as removing temporary files.
Back when I started working on sites big enough for these activities to cause a problem I went down the obvious route of making a PHP CLI script for each job that needed doing and getting it to run using cron. This worked for a while but as the sites I was working on got bigger and more complex it quickly became clear that this was becoming difficult to manage, so I started to consider alternatives.
A new phishing attack against Facebook has surfaced recently using the domain fbaction.net. Whenever I see these things I always reset my browser and try signing in with fake details to see what happens. In this case I got a nice surprise. When I got redirected to Facebook I got this…
This is fantastic. Every site should do this. It’s a really simple check to do and immediately informs the user that they have probably been compromised complete with advice as to what they should do next.
assume the missionary part
you work by committee
you had me pegged from the start.
I’ll be pounce pony
phony maroney
pony before the cart.
I’ll be pounce pony.
this ceremony
only fills my heart.
who cast the final stone?
who threw the crushing blow?
someone has to take the fall
why not me?
a punch toy volunteer
a weakling on its knee.
is all you want to hear
and all you want to see.
romantically, you’d martyr me
and miss this story’s point
it is my strength, my destiny
this is the role that I have chosen.
Clarification: I received about 12 copies of this to various email addresses. While annoying I thought it was pretty well done and worth preserving. I have no idea who (or what) wrote it.
It’s 5am and I can’t sleep. When this happens I usually fire up Boxee and find something to watch, so that’s what I did. I was happy to see that since the last time I used it Boxee appear to have added a bunch more internet sources, which is great. However, the following 15 minutes were nearly the most frustrating of my life so far.
I understand regional restrictions. I don’t necessarily agree with the reason they’re there, but I understand why.
What I can’t understand is why they’re not shown up-front when browsing available content. On sites like Joost, Hulu and others you have to actually start streaming content before you get told you can’t view it. They clearly know where you’re coming from but they still insist on not telling you what you can and can’t watch until you actually try.
Maybe there’s a technical reason why it works this way (I can’t think of one that couldn’t be easily worked around), or maybe there’s a licensing reason for it. Whatever the reason it makes attempting to use any of these sites more and more frustrating the more region-limited content they contain.
So here’s my plea… please will these sites make it clear from the highest level possible in the browsable structure whether content is viewable from my current location. That’s all I ask.
Boxee themselves don’t help out with this problem. Take theWB for example. You can’t access the website at all if you’re outside the US (see below), but you can if you use Boxee. Right down to the content level, but when you start streaming you then get a message telling you it’s restricted.
I had a request recently to release some of the code from the TwitApps bots. The core of both bots is actually a shared email handler and I have no problem sharing it with the world.
On the assumption that I’ll eventually get around to sharing some more Twitter-related stuff I’ve created a new section in the projects area of this site. If there’s anything related to Twitter integration that you’d like to see me cover there please let me know and I’ll be happy to help.
A couple of days ago I released a new TwitApps tool called Follows. I know I haven’t talked about TwitApps on this blog yet – that post is coming – but if you follow me on Twitter you should be aware of it.
The Follows service monitors your followers on Twitter and sends you a daily, weekly or monthly email telling you who’s followed and who’s unfollowed you since your last email. Twitter itself has the facility to send you an email every time someone starts following you but does not offer any sort of notification when they stop.
I can see why Twitter have done it this way. When someone starts following you it’s likely you’ll want to check out their tweets and you might decide to follow them back. The same logic doesn’t really apply to when people stop following you, or does it? Read the rest of this entry »
A couple of months back I got an email request via my Flickr account from Schmap.com asking if they could include one of my photo’s in their next update. I rarely say no when politely asked for permission so I happily followed the link and approved it.
I just got a follow-up email from them saying the update had gone live and did indeed include that photo. However, it’s just wrong, so very very wrong. Read the rest of this entry »
A couple of days ago I released a new 
