Backing up weblogs

Backing up weblogs

There seems to be really innovative service additions or blog addons from a number of service providers. Of late, I came across a provider who eases the task of backing up weblogs in quick and easy way. Here is more info about the website:

Website: BlogBackupOnline
URL: https://www.blogbackuponline.com/techrigy/

The website currently says that it is in BETA and every user account is allocated 50 mega bytes of storage space for backing up thier weblog in addition to the account being free while in BETA.

'What happens if the user has disabled cookies'

'What happens if the user has disabled cookies'

Cookies are small amount of information that is used by a website for a variety of purposes like the following:

1. Authenticating the information (Storing the User Authentication Ticket)
2. Tracking user activity (Like which sections are most visited etc)
3. User Preferences

These are almost next to impossible without cookies (unless you resort to complex serverside handling of sessions overburdening the webserver) in the environment of stateless HTTP connections.

Once upon a time, when cookies and Internet was new, people were skeptical about cookies and their personal information being stolen by websites through cookies. There was also a rumor that viruses can spread. These are just dumb rumors. A website can store just upto 20 cookies per domain and the most old cookie gets overwritten when it sets the 21st cookie. Also a cookie is a harmless text file and most browsers disallow more than 4 K per cookie or something like that. And these are some of the quick storage info about cookies:

4 KB per cookie maximum

300 total cookies, for a total of 1.2 Mbytes maximum

20 cookies accepted from a particular server or domain

Sometime last week, I encountered a dumb question from one some one regarding a solution to a problem. He was skeptical about using cookies for a non-critical user persistence on the account what would happen if cookies are disabled. I am really getting irritated by such dumb questions in the most advanced and sophistical technology age. Reading from IEBlog, even they have now enhanced the cookie limit per domain from 20 to 50. Check out this post "Update to Internet Explorer's Cookie Jar".

I think going forward, if some one asks such dumb questions, the reply should be like what Pete O'Hannon gave once in a discussion forum here.

Microsoft Java LifeCycle Alert

Microsoft Java LifeCycle Alert

While casually browsing at Eric Nelson's weblog, I learnt that still there a lot of organizations who keep clinging on to Microsoft Java Virtual Machine based solution. Nelson has mentioned about meeting one ISV (Independant Software Vendor) who heavily uses Microsoft VM for their solutions.

Just thought I would also mention about the same for the benefit of other developer fraternity. If you read Microsoft Java Virtual Machine Support webpage here, you can observe the following important dates that we need to remember:

1. MSJVM reaches End of Life on December 31, 2007

Microsoft has also presented a lucid compilation of Transition to alternate technologies like the following:

1. Migration to a more powerful .NET Enterprise platform
2. Third Party Java Vendors.

HTML Kit Tools -- The new face and a new evolution of HTML-Kit

HTML Kit Tools -- The new face and a new evolution of HTML-Kit

Sometime back we saw a quick review of HTML-Kit. Today while just casually browsing through the home of HTML-Kit, I found a good news about the new version (Build Kit) of HTML-Kit being released under the brand name of HTML Kit Tools. 

Though I haven't tried out the IDE yet, even the list of features that have been enumerated seems to be very promising and compelling making it a truly inevitable tool in every Web Developer's toolkit. I just thought I would list out a few points that I got impressed with the new tool:

1. Code Folding: Hiding blocks of code so that navigation in the page is faster.
2. A more powerful GUI for HTML Tidy.
3. Built in File Versioning.
4. Unicode Support

Check out and download HTML-Kit Tools from here.

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It is time to upgrade to PHP 5

It is time to upgrade to PHP 5

While just casually checking out www.php.net website, I found the news flash about 'End of Life Announcement' for PHP 4.x series.  With 13 July 2007 as the announcement got officially released, PHP 5 has been in for three years with a significant number of releases and security/other updates. Now it is considered more fast, stable and production-ready. What's more? The PHP.NET website also claims that PHP 6 is on the way.

After 31st December 2007 there would be no more releases of PHP 4.4. Their team would work on crucial security fixes till 8th August 2008. Hence it is high time, that we also start looking into PHP 5 for our learning and updating our PHP applications and websites.

Source Courtesy:

1. http://www.php.net/index.php#2007-07-13-1
2. From PHPDeveloper

Microsoft Security Summit

Microsoft Security Summit

While casually browsing through Microsoft India events page, I came to know of the Microsoft Security Summit 2007 that is being planned to be organized in many of the cities of India during November - December 2007.

The URL of the Summit is http://www.microsoft.com/india/security/ss-dev.aspx

The Date and Time along with the venue of the summit for the different cities are as follows:

1. 21st November, 2007 Grand Hyatt, Mumbai
2. 23rd November, 2007 Taj Blue Diamond, Pune
3. 6th December, 2007 Taj Bengal, Kolkata
4. 14th December, 2007 The Park, Chennai

Target Audience

1. Software Developers
2. Analysts
3. Architects
4. Project Managers

About

1. To learn about the different security threats that an application need to worry about.
2. A brief about Software Development LifeCycle
3. Understanding the challenges and how Microsoft is trying to address them.
4. Make this an interactive platform where feedback can be shared with Microsoft on its Security initiatives.

You can also contact the event managers for further details regarding the registration at securitysummit (at) erfolgcs.com.

Other References

I also checked out another weblog post on this topic by Praveen Kumar D, just now which mentions about a few promotional offers that were announced. But I could not find on the Security SSDEV page URL that I have mentioned above. The offers, as mentioned by Praveen are:

1. The first 200 to register at the venue can walk away with a FREE copy of "The security development lifecycle" by Michael Howard (worth INR 395).
2. Certification Discount Vouchers. The limited period Second Shot Offer provides upto 25 per cent discount on certification exams in addition to a second shot exam at no cost.

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