Screenium Screen Recorder

This weekend I was trying to figure out how to make a copy of a streamed Flash movie. There is stream recording software out there. However, the easy to use stuff is not free, nor does it work that well. But sometimes, the simplest solution is the best.



So I ended up buying Screenium which is an inexpensive screen recording tool for the Mac. And it did an excellent job of making a copy of the video. Of course it is not perfect as I had to capture the audio and video. But for my purposes, making a copy of an interview for future reference, it worked great.



Also, Screenium is on sale this week for 50% off. So if you want a copy I think you need to buy it today at the latest.

The Right way to Redirect a Page

Well it seems like every time I do something new with my website, there is always something to learn. I'm in the process of rewriting the CMS I use for the how to's and examples on http://blueskyworkshop.com/topics/. I know I needed to use an HTTP header to forward pages. But after some additional reading, I learned what I was doing was not enough.



To tell a search engine like Google a page has moved, you have to send it a 301 Moved Permanently header. Then, the next time Google's spider reads the site, it will move the statistics associated with the page from the old location to the new one. This is done in PHP as follows:

<?php
// Permanent redirection
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://www.somacon.com/");
exit();
?>

Get the details from Somacon here. The post includes a number of examples for several different languages.



I should be able to confirm the older pages are no longer being referenced using Google Analytics. Anyway, I guess we will see in a few weeks.

Google IO 2012 Sessions on the Net

This is totally awesome! Google has made all the Google IO 2012 sessions available on the Net. So if you were like me who would have loved to go and get those goodies, but couldn't, at least you can listen to the sessions.

Wired Writer gets Hacked Hard

If you haven't heard about this story, it worth a look. A Wired writer was hacked on Friday. His MacBook, iPhone, Twitter account, and GMail all taken over. The interesting part is that most of the hacks used social engineering to get enough information about his accounts to take them over. No password cracker or anything like that.

Apple Dropping Safari for Windows

It looks like Apple is discontinuing support for Safari on Windows. With the release of Mountain Lion last week, Safari was updated to version 6. However, there is no Windows version 6 of Safari. When you go to the Apple website for Safari there's no download option if you're using Windows. However, if you Google for Safari 5.1.7 you will see that there is a link to a support site that has the download.



Here are a couple stories detailing the change.

SitePoint: Dropping Windows Safari is a Mistake

MacWorld: Safari 6 Not for Windows



I have to agree with the SitePoint Writer, getting rid of Safari on Windows seems like a bad idea. Although it is not that popular it is very useful as a development tool. Maybe Apple should consider open sourcing the Windows version? It is important for there to be another WebKit browser on Windows other than Chrome.

Valve Running a Business like a Market

At the end of last week, I saw this longish story on the Valve blog discussing how valve manages their company like a market. To sum up, Valve the company has no management structure. Employees are given a desk with wheels and are told to go find projects they are interested in and start pitching in. Projects and teams are self organizing. Employees are free to work on whatever they want. Sounds cool. However, I have my doubts. Could you apply the same principles to Tech Support? Janitorial services? I wonder.... What do you think?

Million Short Search Engine

Ran across some links to millionshort.com yesterday. The idea is to eliminate some of the top ranking sites before you do a search. An interesting idea. Seems more like a Google feature request, than any sort of search breakthrough. I seemed only find old sites that didn't have any new content. Anyway, definitely worth a look.

Changing the Mouse to a Link Pointer

While working on a collapsable vi cheat sheet over the weekend, I needed to figure out how to make the pointer look like a link when mousing over a header. Turns out it is pretty easy. Just create a style like this:



.Toggle { cursor: pointer; }



Add that to the header and it acts like a link even when it is not.

New Designs for the Blog

The template design has been updated as of this afternoon. Basically, the site is using the Blogger Picture Window template with the following tweeks.

• Changed the background to a picture I have been using for years. (It has more sky.)


• Added gray text shadow to the blog title and description. This makes the text pop a little more given the background has similar colors.


• Updated the Mobile template to use the Mobile version of Picture Window. So the site should look a lot beetter on a phone now.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments. Hopefully things looks a little better.

Create your own Evening Newspaper

Ever want to make your own Drudge Report or similar news site? ReadWriteWeb has a story on Mule Design, a web consulting company, that decided to do just that. They wanted to create a daily summary of news that emulated the evening additions published by newspapers. So instead of creating a super busy mess, like most news sites, they created Evening Edition.



Evening Edition is a very simple site with only a handful of stories listed. The excellent design makes the site easy to read. Definitely a concept worth emulating. And heck, anyone could come up with a similar design and start their own evening addition. Which would be kinda cool.



Now I am not convinced this is a huge break-thru that will save all newspapers. However, I think it does highlight the fact that often, less is more. I am struck at how awful most newspaper sites and newspaper apps generally are. The designs are busy with pop overs and pop unders and text everywhere. Just think how much more traffic they could get if they emulated this design.

Everyone Hates Firefox Updates

WebMonkey posted this last week on some of the discussions at Mozilla around updates. The story has links to the original post by developer Jono DiCarlo as well as some links to the discussions surrounding the post. The gist of the post is this, all the constant updates to Firefox, to be more like Google Chrome, is killing Firefox.



I couldn't agree more. Chrome can do all those updates because they take place in the background and seldom make any changes to the UI. By contrast, Firefox constantly asks you to approve the updates and the changes too often include major changes to the UI.



This is a particular pet peeve of mine. Of course software needs updated, but often these updates occur too frequently. Mac OS X, gets updates too often. Just when I get to the point where I start to enjoy a version, I HAVE to upgrade again.



The latest Ubuntu UI update is really irritating. It is not that the new Unity Heads Up Display (HUD) is bad. I just really liked the old version of the UI. Why are you forcing me to switch when I don't want to?



To me a 3 to 5 year cycle on operating system UI updates make a lot more sense, than yearly or even bi-yearly cycles. Plus, can't someone come up with a way so I can keep some of the features I like? That would be truly awesome.

Dropbox Doubles Plan Sizes

Got this story from CNET. Dropbox has doubled the size of their plans. Thus the starter plan goes from 50Meg to 100Meg for $100 a year.



As I suggested in an earlier post, Dropbox would have to eventually answer Google and Microsoft on size or price. Smartly, they have started with size. As a Google Drive user, its a good product, but the feature parity with Dropbox is still not there yet.



I would suggest to Dropbox that they offer an inexpensive smaller option under their two competitors. Once customers try their Dropbox, I think it is unlikely they will switch to something else.

A place to report Phishing Scams

Phishing scams seem to be an epidemic these days. Text messages seem to be just the latest way for crooks to SPAM us. But take heart, CERT has setup an e-mail address for reporting phishing URLs. Send an e-mail to phishing-report@us-cert.gov with the URL in the message. In my case, I seem to have repeatedly won Target.com gift cards!!! Woo hoo!

Your entry in our drawing WON you a FREE $1000 Target Giftcard enter XXX at www.target.com.ppdf.biz/ to claim it and we can ship it to you immediately

For the non-tech savy readers, if you look at the domain name, you will notice instead of it ending in target.com the URL actually ends in target.com.ppdf.biz. This, of course, is not a Target website and is most likely a crook trying to steal your credit card number and/or other information.



It would seem to me that given someone has to actually pay for the domain that law enforcement could follow the money and shutdown these sites quickly. But when I looked at the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) and the FCC website for reporting similar information, filling out the forms was way too difficult. In addition, they wanted way too much information. My guess is these sites are for folks who have already been scammed. But its seems like in this case it would be better to focus on preventing crimes rather than on reporting on crimes that already happened.



For more information, see http://www.us-cert.gov/nav/report_phishing.html

Org charts using only CSS3

Wow, this is crazy stuff! An org chart using CSS3. The code looks relatively simple, but I bet figuring it out was not!

Google Chrome and Drive for iOS

At Google IO this week, Google announced Chrome and Drive for iOS. This is a pretty big deal in my opinion, but there wasn't that must coverage. So I have dug up some links if you are interested.

• Techrunch: Chrome for iOS Review


• CNET: Google Drive for iOS

Chrome on iOS

Why put Chrome on iOS? Well the short answer is money. Google make a lot of money from the Chrome browser as it doesn't have to pay to feature its search engine on the browser. In addition, Chrome uses the same HTML rendering engine, Webkit, that Safari does. So in the end, like all the other iOS browsers, Google is just re-skinning the UI.



So how did they do? Good but not great. They have come up with a very clean Chrome like UI. For me, the most annoying thing is no quick access to bookmarks. The iOS Chrome has an options button like the wrench you have on your desktop versions. So to get to your Bookmarks, you must click Options -> BookMarks -> Your Bookmark. That's 3 clicks every time you want a bookmark!!!! Annoying. Now the new Tab feature does show most commonly used pages so as you use your browser, that should be a good way to get to your favorite sites. But come on Google, three clicks? Give me a bookmark button somewhere and a bookmark bar. It is not gonna take up that much real estate.



Google Drive

Sounds like from the review, this app is pretty much read only. But really, at this point is that at all surprising? App integration will take a while and right now, you just don't create that much stuff on an iPad anyway. Read only should be fine.

960px Grid Design

What is a 960px grid design? I had the same question myself. I stumbled across this concept when a co-worker wrote a post about Twitter Bootstrap. This is a HTML5 and CSS3 framework for developing web applications using 960px width and a 12 column grid. So why 960px and why a 12 column grid? Well the answer to that is a bit complicated. I found the 960 Grid site which provided a little more information.



What is a 960px Grid system?

A process for designing web sites based on classic print typography principles. The width is based on a common minimum laptop display size of 1024x768. The 960px size fits well on that screen size. In addition, 960 gives you a number of options for creating grids to lay out your page on. At least that is my understanding, I have a lot more reading to do.



Why use it?

Bottom line, you get beautiful design. If you go to the 960.gs site, they include a number of examples. It just seems to give sites a nice balance and weight to the layouts.



Site Redesigns

This perked my interest as I am in the process of redesigning my sites for HTML5 and mobile devices. It is still early days, but I have some preliminary stuff up. I have only applied the 960 grid to the Blue Sky example, I have not got to it yet on Abbey Workshop.

• Blue Sky Workshop: Java Pages


• Abbey Workshop: Misc Pages

Anyway, as I make progress I will try to make some additional posts on the subject.

Firefox coming to the iPad

Well not Firefox exactly, but the Verge has a story that the Mozilla foundation is working on a browser for the Ipdad. Based on the article, this sounds very interesting.



Tablet browsers could use a rethink. It seems like gestures usage could be a whole lot better. Their idea of combining tabs with browser history also seems to have some merit. I'm looking forward to at seeing what they come up with.

Nice Web WYSIWYG editor built with JQuery

If you are looking for a nice WYSIWYG editor for site, you may want to check out Redactor. Although it is not free, it is fairly inexpensive and looks nice.

Duck Duck Go, a Retro Search Engine

Do you miss the good old days when your search engine just searched? When it only searched for information on the Internet and didn't try to show you localized information? Or social information?



Then DuckDuckGo.com may be the site for you. It is a retro style search engine that doesn't track you. Simple, easy to use. Check it out, its worth a look.



In fact, the site has been doing well, check out the story on SearchEngineLand.

Want to Develop a Blogger Gadget?

Have you ever considered developing your own gadget for Google Blogger? Well there is a developer guide for that. Get the details here.



Gadgets for Blogger Dev Guide