Hashemian Blog Web Tools, Financial Markets, Technology Monday, November 26, 2007 RSS ATOM Widget Utility  For the longest time, I've been wanting to create a simple feed widget to place on a web page and have it display links from the syndicated site. Easier dreamt than done, until this thanksgiving weekend when I decided to partially put the long holiday to good use and write up a widget tool. It's a weird thing. I get to be away form work for 4 days, yet I spend my free time coding and learning new programming techniques. There was certainly time spent with family, but for me, delving into coding challenges also has a therapeutic effect. Some programmers may understand the absurdity of this. There's that drudgery factor at work that you don't have to deal with when hobby programming. No boss to report to, no business politics, no users interrupting with questions or problems. I get to set the rules from end to end. Not to mention that at work I'm an ASP.NET programmer, and at home I turn into a PHP coder. I realize that there are a bunch of these RSS/ATOM widgets already out there. So mine's another one to add to the list. Partial as I may be, I think it does a decent job and it allow for some basic customizations. Since this is a new utility, consider it in beta mode until I say it's not. If Gmail can be in beta for eternity, why not this one? I've tested it quite a bit, but I'm sure there are still bugs to be fixed. Also I have no idea what impact this may have on my Web hosting account quotas. We'll find out. Documentation is not one of my strengths, but I will eventually produce an FAQ on some of the widget's capabilities, features, and customizations using, for instance, CSS. There are also plans to enhance it further, if there's enough demand for it. For now, feel free to visit the RSS/ATOM widget tool page, create your JavaScript RSS/ATOM widget, and embed it in your Web pages. Let me know if you run into any bugs or have any suggestions. I'll try to address them as time permits. rss,atom,rss widget,xml,web 2.0,ajax,javascript Labels: javascript, web <RSS ATOM Widget Utility> // posted by rh 1 comments Saturday, November 17, 2007 Adobe Flash Cookies, Local Storage  Call me paranoid, but I always like to be clear on what a site is doing on my computer while I have it up on my browser. I don't think I'm that paranoid (okay, maybe a little,) but I think users are entitled to know if a site is storing and reading data to and from their computers. That's an exact description of what browser cookies are used for, but tonight I learned about a new kind of cookie I had been abashedly unaware of. I for one, don't appreciate being followed around while I surf the Net, so I delight in cleaning or modifying my cookies often and throwing off the trackers. But tonight I was stumped by an often visited music site that remembered me steadfastly, even when I deleted my cookies and visited the sites on different browsers. What was going on here? Was the site using my IP address to identify me? I doubted it. IP address tracking is so inexact these days that it's generally only used for geo-location, and even that yields questionable results. After some persistent searching, I finally found the elusive answer, and it was a Flash cookie. I had never known that Flash player could store data on users' computers, so I delved a bit deeper. I found out that they are similar to, but work completely independently from browser cookies. On my Windows XP machine, Flash cookies (known as local storage in Macromedia's jargon) are stored under the "\Documents and Settings\[account]\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\" folder. By default each site is allowed to store and access up to 100KB in the cookies and users are oblivious to this activity the whole time. Way to go Adobe. I don't remember every seeing anything about these cookies when I was installing the Flash player. No doubt it was buried in some privacy legalese. The good news is that once discovered, these cookies can be deleted using Adobe's Website, or by just simply zapping them in the folder mentioned above. Adobe's site also allows users to disable Flash cookies altogether. The caveat is that just like browser cookies, many sites rely on these cookies and probably will not function correctly without them. For me, the happy medium was to configure Flash to alert me every time a site wants to store a Flash cookie on my PC. You can do the same by going to Global Storage Settings panel on Adobe's Flash site and alter your settings to match the figure below. Maybe you can't stop sites from storing and retrieving data from your computer, but at least you know who's tracking you using this type of cookie. flash cookies,flash local storage,adobe,macromedia,flash,cookies,browser cookies,browsers,flash player Labels: browsers, web <Adobe Flash Cookies, Local Storage> // posted by rh 2 comments Tuesday, November 13, 2007 Web Hosting Customer Service  Here's the brilliant idea for today. Why don't the hosting companies let the right representatives answer their customers' questions, instead of letting customers waste time with their less trained agents? I've been helping a friend setup a site on one of the nationally known web hosting sites, and I must say getting the right answer is an exercise in extreme patience. My own site (the one carrying this blog) is hosted with one of the smaller outfits and I've been able to get my technical questions promptly and correctly answered most of the time. That doesn't seem to be the case with the larger companies. I don't even think they read the emails. I ask for something to be disabled, they send instructions back on how to enable it. Even worse, after dealing with so many newbies mindlessly spouting techie jargon, they have developed resistance to anyone trying to get technical with them. It's only after several tries that an issue is escalated to the more knowledgeable staff who can finally help resolve the issue. I'm not sure whom is to blame here. Web hosting must be a cut-throat business and these outfits are just holding the line on expenses. The front-end positions are generally low-paying jobs, so I assume new people are brought in, trained quickly on the web hosting's interface, and then dumped in the call center pool. I wish I could get a sample of the questions these guys field. I can only imagine what absurdities customers throw at them. The front-end agents are probably fine for the amateur callers, but it’s the back-end guys I really need when I call or email for something. I presume I never quite make it to the back, but I would be quite content with the middle-layer without being hassled by the front guys a few times. People tend to note that smaller hosting companies have more informed support personnel. That's certainly true with my hosting service. Perhaps the bigger guys can learn something from their smaller counterparts. web hosting,tech support,call centers,customer service Labels: customer service, web <Web Hosting Customer Service> // posted by rh 2 comments Tuesday, November 06, 2007 Pink Floyd Do Goody-Good Bull-Censor  Being a classic rock fan, when I'm not listening to NPR, my car radio is usually tuned to one of the classic rock stations in the area. A while back I started to notice that a lyric line from the Pink Floyd song, Money, was being censored. You know the line: Money, it's a hit. Don't give me that do goody good bullshit. For years I was able to enjoy this song on the radio uninterrupted, and then suddenly the stations began to silence the "shit" portion of "bullshit", totally ruining the song. Was that really necessary? Surely this is yet another attempt by the FCC to regulate what the public can listen to. And we have the gull to criticize countries like Iran and China for censoring their media. If you ask the moral police, and there are a lot of these hypocrites around, they will retort that those regimes are repressive, stamping down free speech and political dissent. But we only ban profanity, keeping indecent material off the air for the sake of our children. Is the word "shit" that indecent that we need to plug our children's ears every time it's mentioned? Well I have some sobering news for these misguided bunch. Just like you, who heard and used in these "vulgar" words in your youth, your children are not that dumb. They are fully aware of the forbidden words and probably use them on a daily basis. So please, give it a rest and come off your high horses. Mind you, I am not advocating that children should use foul language. I don't allow my children to use obscenity around the house, nor do I use it in front of them. In fact I prefer the word "crap" over "shit", and I even resist using that word. But instead of burying our heads in the sand, or be the hypocrites that most adults are, sound judgment would dictate that one should consider the context in which these words are being used. Pink Floyd bellowing of "Do goody good bullshit" does not lead to moral decay, nor will it rob your children of their childhood. They already know what there is to know about profanity. If your children have lost their moral sense, it's time you look past a few harmless lyrics and seek the real culprits. Looking in the mirror would be a good start. pink floyd,fcc,censorship,indecency,profanity,children,morality Labels: censorship, morality <Pink Floyd Do Goody-Good Bull-Censor> // posted by rh 0 comments

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