Category Archives: News

Cloud Integrated Development Environment

Posted by on June 17, 2013 No comments

With so many things in the cloud today why not an IDE that enabled you the web and mobile developer alike to work together. Remote teams can collaborate anytime, anywhere and Cloud9 IDE is the vehicle that will you there.

Cloud9 IDE is open source and developer friendly offering online development platforms for HTML, CSS, PHP, Python, Ruby and a lot more languages which are customizable to the developers preferences.

So code smarter. Code together. And stop over Cloud9 IDE’s website to sign up today.

Website: https://c9.io/

Raspberry Pi – NOOBS

Posted by on June 15, 2013 No comments

The fantastic groups over at raspberrypi.org have introduced a new project shaped around the idea of simplifying the beginner experience when it comes to using the Raspberry Pi.

NOOBS makes setting things up much easier, and while grandma and grandpa may still be left on the outskirts of things you won’t need to do much more that head over to the download page and grad the NOOBS zip packed via direct download or torrent.

NOOBS offers many good choice images you may want to choose from such as Raspbian, RaspBMC, RiscOS, Archlinux and others…

So now even more of us can have a slice of the Pi.

More info can be found here: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/tag/noobs

‘in-depth’ with the Windows 8 task manager

Posted by on June 7, 2013 No comments

One of the newest features in Windows 8 is the new Task Manager. Microsoft gave the Task Manager a complete overhaul that includes several performance tools to help you optimize your PC. In an official blog post, Microsoft goes over these optimization tips. Microsoft has also posted up a video that showcases these tips in action.

You could launch the Task Manager in Windows 8 by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc? The Task Manager in Windows 8 is different from the one in Windows 7, featuring a new Processes tab that has been completely redesigned, Performance and Networking tabs have been merged, and new tabs such as App History and Start-up have been added to the Task Manager.

Source / More Info: http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/extremewindows/archive/2013/06/06/windows-8-task-manager-in-depth.aspx

Active Directory Replication Status Tool

Posted by on June 7, 2013 No comments

The Active Directory Replication Status Tool (ADREPLSTATUS) analyzes the replication status for domain controllers in an Active Directory domain or forest.

The Active Directory Replication Status Tool (ADREPLSTATUS) analyzes the replication status for domain controllers in an Active Directory domain or forest. ADREPLSTATUS displays data in a format that is similar to REPADMIN /SHOWREPL * /CSV imported into Excel but with significant enhancements.
Specific capabilities for this tool include:

• Expose Active Directory replication errors occurring in a domain or forest
• Prioritize errors that need to be resolved in order to avoid the creation of lingering objects in Active Directory forests
• Help administrators and support professionals resolve replication errors by linking to Active Directory replication troubleshooting content on Microsoft TechNet
• Allow replication data to be exported to source or destination domain administrators or support professionals for offline analysis

Download the Active Directory Replication Status Tool

 

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CrashPlan Features Tour: Explore Online Backup Features

Posted by on June 5, 2013 No comments

Apple Icons and Your Website

Posted by on May 31, 2013 No comments

With the big jump in the mobile market places browsing the internet and the way websites are accessed and utilized have changed. Many of us put our hands in the marketability of our web properties pool by making optimizations and much efforts to be appealing to our visitors and search engines.

So why stop there and miss out on other trends that you may possibly miss out on, decreasing your reach. Mobile is no longer just a fad, its change! Recently I took a step and changed this blog site to support many standards and most recently a step in the mobile direction by adding Apple Icons to the website.

With Apple Icons

Apple Icons are simply the graphics you’ve chosen to represent your site when a user saves your page to their home screen in iOS. Sites without them get a compressed thumbnail of your website and displays it as the icon. The result is typically indistinguishable and unappealing, why do that to your visitors, and it’s not a good user experience.

Outside of something awesome, it allows you the website owner another opportunity to have your brand reach more and engage your audience, just like that of the faveicon when added to traditional web browsers.

Adding the icons are simple, here are some steps you can take today:

  1. Choose an image – company log, something that is the brand of your site, product, or the market your reaching out to.
  2. Create it as a square 144 x 144 pixels in .png format – make it look nice
  3. Upload the image to your website into the root folder or where you store your site images. – by default the root is where the iOS devices will look unless specified
  4. Add HTML code to your headers before the closing as such </head> tag: <link rel=”apple-touch-icon” href=”your-image-folder/apple-touch-icon.png”>

Precomposed Icons

iOS by default styles your Apple Icon with rounded corners and glossy effect. If this isn’t what you desire you can remove this with some HTML code in your header: <link rel=”apple-touch-icon-precomposed” href=”your-image-folder/apple-touch-icon.png”>

There is a wealth of information out there so don’t be fearful of taking the big dive in, the water is fine.

Link: How to add a website icon to your Home screen

Link: Custom Icon and Image Creation Guidelines

Have fun! and Like me on Facebook

WiFi Tether AT&T Galaxy S4 SGH-i337

Posted by on May 31, 2013 No comments

I must first thank Zedomax over at galaxys4root.com for his work and information provided which made this possible for me tonight. My hat’s off to you sir.

Please visit his website and follow his YouTube Channel for all the latest and up to date info in rooting Android devices, such as the Galaxy S2, S3, and S4.

So how is this done!

  1. First thing is to root your Galaxy S4 (SGH-i337), this is a must
  2. Next, download the new Wifi Tether provisioning files. (Link) *his link not mine
  3. Use any file browsing app that allows for root access, such as ‘Script Manger’ found in the Google Play Store
  4. Browse as root  to /system/app directory and you will find two files called TetheringProvision.apk and TetheringProvision.odex.  Rename these files to TetheringProvision.apk.bak and TetheringProvision.odex.bak, respectively. I kept the orginal extension in the backup name so that if I reverted back I would remember what to name them
  5. Next go to your Download folder where you downloaded your new TetheringProvision.apk file and copy it to the file into /system/app directory
  6. Reboot your Galaxy S4 and try turning Mobile Hotspot on.  You still get AT&T’s warning message but tethering will now turn on and work.

Awesome isn’t it

Ultimate Credits go to the folks over at XDA - Stop by and give those guys/gals thanks

 

Galaxy S4 AT&T

Posted by on May 29, 2013 No comments

I can feel it coming in the air tonight… And I’ve been waiting for this moment…

Well the wait is almost over for many of us as the folks over at CyanogenMod have just posted the following message ‘The patch to enable nightlies for the AT&T variant of the S4 (jflteatt) has just been merged – builds will be available with the nightly cycle this evening.’

Excellent work and in the nick of time as I am making the jump from my rooted GS2 to the GS4. I am sure there will be more to come soon. And I’ll keep you all posted.

What is CyanogenMod?

logstalgia – website access log visualization tool

Posted by on May 25, 2013 No comments

Logstalgia is a website traffic visualization that replays or streams web-server access logs as a pong-like battle between the web server and an never ending torrent of requests.

On a regular basis I tail the access.log of my website watching request to jermsmit.com
jermsmit.com

Last night I ran across a awesome log visualizer tool called logstalgia. Logstalgia displays request as small balls of color which travel over the screen to the request which was made. Successful request are bounced back to the host requesting them. Those 404′s are just travel off screen as being missed by the web server which is represented as a paddle moving up and down the screen.

Logstalgia supports several standardized access.log formats used by web servers such as Apache, Lighttpd and Nginx and pretty much any web server log meeting the supported standard formats

NCSA Common Log Format (CLF)
“%h %l %u %t \”%r\” %>s %b”

NCSA Common Log Format with Virtual Host
“%v %h %l %u %t \”%r\” %>s %b”

NCSA extended/combined log format
“%h %l %u %t \”%r\” %>s %b \”%{Referer}i\” \”%{User-agent}i\”"

NCSA extended/combined log format with Virtual Host
“%v %h %l %u %t \”%r\” %>s %b \”%{Referer}i\” \”%{User-agent}i\”"

This tool is available under Windows and Linux, so stop by the project site and have some fun with this. I almost can’t wait to get back to work after the weekend to put this up on a display to watch traffic in real time. Now how cool is that.

Link to the Logstalgia Project Home Site

Check out the YouTube video to see it in action - http://youtu.be/HeWfkPeDQbY

If anyone ask, tell them jermsmit.com sent ya.

Google SSL Certificates going to 2048-bit

Posted by on May 24, 2013 No comments

Coming Soon! In August 2013, Google will start the process of switching its SSL Certificates over to 2048-bit for its services adding stronger security. This information was made public on Stephen McHenry’s, Director of Information Security at Google Blog.

The completion of this project is set to be completed by the end of the 2013 year.

Quoted on the blog Stephen McHenry writes

Most client software won’t have any problems with either of these changes, but we know that some configurations will require some extra steps to avoid complications. This is more often true of client software embedded in devices such as certain types of phones, printers, set-top boxes, gaming consoles, and cameras.

Stephen McHenry also listed a number of examples of improper validation practices that could lead to the inability of client software to connect to Google using SSL after the upgrade, such as matching any other certificate exactly or hard-coding the expected root certificate.

Change is coming soon! Don’t be left behind.

More detailed information can be found here