ThansCorner

For anyone writing a PHP Twitter App to interact with the Twitter API, TwitterOAuth is an incredibly helpful piece of open source code.  It handles the secure authentication through OAuth, and then includes function calls for using that authenticated status to carry out any desired GET or POST exchange with the Twitter API.

The project is located at: http://twitter.abrah.am/

The author is pretty careful to remind readers that the library is still in beta, incomplete and likely to change.  Nevertheless, his documentation, comments, and live examples make this library a must use.

In addition to the extensions described in the previous post, Chrome includes functionality for a few helpful keyboard shortcuts and diagnostic/status information about browser operations.

Keyboard Shortcuts: Many of these are well known but they are all incredibly helpful

• CTRL-F6 or ALT-d: 
  • Select the URL in the address bar
• CTRL-SHIFT-N:  
  • New incognito window
• SHIFT-ESC:  
  • Open Chrome Task Manager
• CTRL-SHIFT-T:  
  • Open recently closed browser tab
• CTRL-Click on a link: 
  • Open this page in a new background tab
• CTRL-SHIFT-Click on a link: 
  • Open this page in a new tab and switch to this tab
• CTRL-TAB: 
  • Switch to the next tab
• CTRL-SHIFT-TAB: 
  • Switch to the previous tab
• CTRL-#: 
  • Switch to this tab

(Full listing available at: Explore Google Chrome Features)

Omnibar commands:

The Omnibar is Chrome’s address bar and search bar rolled into one thing.  Typing a URL goes to that site, typing a search query looks up results in Google Search.

In addition to those operations, Chrome allows access to some valuable information about the browser’s inner workings.

• ? <search-query>
  • search the item <search-query> in Google
• type a web address then hit TAB+<search-query>
  • allows searching of the query on that url’s domain
• about:memory
  • chrome process memory usage
• about:stats
  • load times for Chrome, Javascript
• about:network
  • behind-the-scenes network info
• about:dns
  • dns info, time, stats
• about:version
  • version, user-agent, etc.
• about:plugins
  • installed plugins
• about:cache
  • cached content
• view-cache:[URL]
  • specific content cache info (e.g. view-cache:http://www.thanscorner.info)
• view-source:[URL]
  • source of content (e.g. view-source:http://www.thanscorner.info)
• about:crash
  • crash the tab (just for fun!)

This is the first in a series of several posts outlining ways to take advantage of lesser-known Chrome features.

To try out the most recent development version of Chrome, you will need to make a few easy changes to your installation.

(img src: popandpolitics.com)

Instructions:

1. download the Chrome channel switcher here
2. after installing and running the program, select the ‘Dev’ channel
3. to enable plugins, right-click your chrome shortcut and select properties.
4. in the ‘Target:’  field, add  ’–enable-extensions’  to your path.  (e.g. ‘”<chrome-path>” –enable-extensions’)

This developer channel might be a bit buggy but it gives you the chance to try out the newest Chrome release.  A few notable features at the writing of this post:

• ability to edit starting page thumbnails
• support for extensions (.crx files)
• support for video tag

Info about current releases on each channel can be found on the updates blog for versions: stable, beta, and dev

Available Chrome extensions include:

• AdSweep strip ads from web pages (link).  
  • Provided by Adsweep.org
• Googlepedia (link).  
  • Provided by Chrome Plugins: Googlepedia extension for Chrome – Get Wikipedia articles along search results
• RSS Feed Subscribe (link) 
  • via Chromium Developer Documentation
• GMail Inbox + New Message Count (link) 
  • via Chromium Developer Documentation

Additional flags for adding functionality: (turn them on just as you did –enable-extensions)

• -omnibox-popup-count=10
  • specify the number of suggestions Chrome gives when typing in the omnibar
• -remote-shell-port=10
  • change the port for remote shell
• --single-process
  • run all chrome tabs within a single process (more info about Chrome processes: Chrome’s Process Model Explained)
• –process-per-site
  • run a separate chrome process for each site (2 google tabs will be within the same process)
• –process-per-tab
  • run a separate chrome process for each tab
• –enable-extensions  
  • turn on support for extensions (.crx)
• –proxy-server=PROXYSERVER:PORT
  • specify a proxy server
• –enable-user-scripts
  • turn on support for user scripts
• –enable-user-scripts –user-data-dir=”path\to\your\profile”
  • specify the directory for user data
• –enable-logging
  • turn on logging for developer use
• –enable-greasemonkey
  • enable greasemonkey (place scripts from Userscripts.org in the C:\scripts\ directory)
• –auto-spell-correct
  • enables fixing of little spelling issues automatically

¡ʎɐqǝ uo pɹɐoqʎǝʞ ɐ ʎnq ı ǝɯıʇ ƃuı…ɟ ʇsɐן ǝɥʇ sı sıɥʇ

It’s stupid but cute.  In the extended alphabet sets of, there is a vast selection of letters.  Among these are those that can be used to model normal english characters upside-down.  This site has a script for converting text and a key of each character’s representation.

How to type upside down text and letters in HTML

The age of Web 2.0 has been dominating more clearly with every successfully integrated web app out there. Facebook apps dominate hours of time in the lives of people from all walks of life. The iPhone’s webapp integration is familiar to way more people than it should be, and high-speed internet has steadily grown in accessibility allowing more and more powerful web projects that are more application than web site.

Bungee Connect aims to provide a powerful portal to the design of highly integrated and exciting applications on the web. Now, I’ve just recently started an internship with the company Bungee Lab so I’m somewhat biased. That bias comes, however, in the form only of one who has had the opportunity to really see what this is all about.

The builder requires no downloaded software, relying on a browser-based interface. Developers can build AJAX-driven applications without the complicated and unpleasant detail management of the low-level message-passing involved.

In my opinion, however, the biggest feature offered by this development environment is its focus on integration with existing web services. Bungee Connect provides interfaces for handling the low-level communication between a Bungee app and other information sources on the web. This allows developers to automate the integrate of information like Google Calendar events, local weather details, RSS feeds or Facebook friend details without sorting through the nasty details of coding these connections by hand.

This is an entirely new way of approaching web design that opens doors to powerful applications. The novelty comes with a relatively steep learning curve, but the Bungee Connect team is committed to helping developers overcome difficulties along the way. Anyone is welcome to register and try out the service and I highly recommend taking advantage of this opportunity. The internet is an exciting place to be these days.

Bungee Connect

IEs4Linux Main Site

Why would you want to run IE when you don’t have to?  Some websites require particular browsers and web developers need to test for browser compatibility.   This link is for you.

IEs4Linux simplifies the process of installing several versions of Internet Explorer for linux distributions using Wine.  Download and run the script and it takes care of all the details

Well I’m a bit slow on this one, but I finally noticed that mozilla labs has been working on the project previously known as Webrunner. For those who don’t know, Webrunner was a ‘browser’ of sorts that allows a web application (gmail, google reader, meebo, etc.) to be run as if it were a desktop application. More here (Read: Mozilla WebRunner 0.7).

Prism makes strides to simplify the process of harnessing this web application -> desktop application capability. Once installed, opening Prism prompts for a web url and options to create Desktop, Quick Launch, or Start Menu icons. This new version also gives the users options allowing them to display a location bar, status messages, and navigation keys, should they so desire.

Mozilla Labs: Prism

“The terminal server has exceeded the maximum number of allowed connections”

If you’ve got an unreliable internet connection, it’s possible to build up remote desktop connections that don’t time out when they should, putting you in a rough position.  If you have access to another server machine, you can use the following commands to view and reset active connections.

> query session /server:servername

> reset session [ID] /server:servername

More information at: Command Line Hack for: “Terminal Server Has Exceeded the Maximum Number of Allowed Connections”

Update: In the syntax ‘/server:servername’  The ’server’ is explicitly the text ’server’.  For instance, if my server is at 192.168.1.104, the command would be: 

> query session /server:192.168.1.104

> reset session 2 /server:192.168.1.104

Here are a few rules that would go a long way to clean things up:

1. Ask yourself: If I ran across this post without knowing the author, would I care?
2. Is this adding value to the wealth of information or the organization of the web?
3. No personal, isolated stories included simply for the sake of telling
4. Did some thought and effort go into the composition and actual text of this entry?
5. Are any scientific or concrete claims/statistics cited? You may have a great point, but if it’s based on stats that, for all I know, you arbitrarily dreamed up yourself, I don’t care.
6. Make connections between your article and other related or available info online. Nothing exists in isolation and every story benefits from some context. Even quote related material from other sources.
7. Copying someone else’s work, however, without a citation is not okay. Period.
8. Avoid personal isolated stories or anecdotes about personal life.
9. When commenting on the contributions of someone else, do so in a constructive manner. Far too often do we experience a battle of words between conflicting voices, which does nothing for the readership but polarize and interrupt valuable discussion.
10. Finally, seek out stories from less popular sources. There is so much interesting stuff out there that gets lost in the shuffle. These things deserve a little extra publicity and will break up the monotony of alternating links to Lifehacker and Engadget.

Consider each of your contributions not as a soapbox from which to rant about trivial things in your own life, or selfish goals, but rather a contribution for the benefit of others around you. Try not to pollute this thing we all depend on and love so much.

There are a few classes of web pages on the web:

1. Those from which I can glean some value from, as an anonymous visitor, and
2. Those about which I couldn’t really care less, essentially consisting of a glorified journal entry by someone, somewhere, who assumes the rest of us care.

The web is the “wild, wild west” of information; a haven for free speech and expression as an open medium for the exploration and sharing of ideas and knowledge…

…But come on people. Those billions of “articles” from category 2 are hurting the greater good and dragging us all down into the shady realm of shoddy writing.

If you want a centralized place for friends to catch up on your recent activities, that’s fine. Just don’t publish to directories, and remove yourself from google. Believe it or not, most of us don’t actually care about your fender-bender this afternoon or the lousy guy you just spent the evening with.

We need an internet filter designed to cut through the crap and intercept the masses of junk floating around on the web before it can distract us from what we’re actually seeking.

The team working on the StupidFilter have a good start on this problem in the context of comments:

…an open-source filter software that can detect rampant stupidity in
written English. This will be accomplished with weighted Bayesian or
similar analysis and some rules-based processing, similar to spam
detection engines.

Drop a note in the comments with any ideas on how to clean this all up.