June 23, 2003
Many Viewpoints All At Once
Blogging is the product of necessity
A couple of weeks ago my ancient (Internet timeline-wise) Web site was terminated by my ISP for excessive bandwidth after the site experienced over 400 visitors who consumed the entire month's (500 MB) bandwidth allocation in a day. I lost a fair amount of data since I used my Web site as a convenient place to save files between work and home. Or when I was on the road. I've since changed providers, and am now hosting with Netfirms, rated the best free Internet host.
I'm sure you're wondering how a simple technology columnist's site could get so much daily traffic. The answer's quite simple: I run a web log (blog). This focuses on content that catches my fancy. Some postings make it into this column. But most don't as they have little weekly value.
Regular readers may have noted my rather extraordinary focus of MyIE2: a free, MDI (multi-document interface) web browser based on IE but with improved security. Free publicity is a two-way street. As part of this quid pro quo, MyIE2's lead developer included a reciprocal link to my web site. My personal blog, Final-É QT? E-Musings about the Web, is the second traffic magnet.
What I Want
I've spent the better part of the last two weeks researching web blog software. And it's been an extraordinary journey. My needs were basic:
Blogger is the most famous of the hosted services. This pioneer of free personal Web logs was acquired by Google in early-2003. And services have begun to go downhill ever since as Blogger's hardware seems unable to keep pace with the substantial increase in traffic. It's now pretty common stance to suffer database-related errors. Luckily for us poor publishers, these don't affect your actual blog which is a generated HTML file stored on your server (via FTP). But one side-effect of Blogger outages has been an inability to auto-update my blogs. Or worse, having 2 identical posts added to the database. But you can't delete the extra one! I've also noticed that new blogs have different features from old blogs; down to the template chosen. Choices?
The second (scripted) category of blog software like Moveable Type (MT), b2 and WordPress are mostly available in PHP and require a MySQL database. Luckily for me there are several CGI-powered scripts including MT and Blosxom. Configuring MT is a nightmare even for very experienced users. And much as I would like to deploy it, the absence of a database remains a problem. The sole free online database host, FreeSQL, has been experiencing hardware problems culminating in a catastrophic (for all its users) disk drive crash last week. But is now up and running again. I'd choose b2 as the easiest-to-deploy Blog script. Unfortunately, Netfirms supports PHP only with its Basic plan. Not for free users. Which left me with CGI. So I deployed Blosxom; even though its really meant for Mac OS and has some of the dirtiest, most convoluted scripting. But I still have time-out issues that seem unresolvable and I'm planning to discard using this script. And remaining for another week with Blogger. Other Stuff: GIF Patent for US expires
In other (good) news, Patent #US4,558,302 expired Friday, June 20, 2003. Officially known as (a) "High speed data compression and decompression apparatus and method," or Unisys's GIF tax, it now enters the public domain. The GIF image format brought image compression to the Internet. Unfortunately, patent-owner UNISYS Corporation rather doggedly insisted that Webmasters pay them royalty to use GIFs on Web sites (few did). The company also blocked all moves to improve the basic algorithm. One fallout has been an increased use of pJPEG (progressive JPEG) and PNG image formats. A detailed chronology is available here. With an anti-view as well. But wait! The European, Canadian, and Japanese patents expire only in 2004: making open-source GIF tools illegal everywhere but in the US! Other Stuff #2: Excellent antivirus wins another award
About a month ago I discarded out my free AVG Antivirus for a more powerful, and free for personal use, virus scanner. As I had lost all confidence in the former. It was unable to scan inbound email effectively. And despite daily signature updates didn't seem all right. Just a gut feeling. But I've learned to trust these hunches. I replaced it with Avast. Which has served me very well. It's caught several infected mails. Including several HTML-format messages with an embedded IFrame! In comparison, AVG (running on a test system) failed to detect if message attachments were infected. So if you are still using AVG Free, discard it. Choose Avast instead. The latest Virus Bulletin test (June 2, 2003, Windows XP), Avast! 4 Pro detected all ItW viruses (known to be 'in the wild'). Other Stuff #3: Software Updates
There are also new versions of Mozilla and MyIE2 (naturally). New in MyIE2.7.1350 is an ability to open multiple Web pages in a single program instance. This results in a lower resource footprint. And supports special plug-ins and IE extensions to let you have an enjoyable surfing experience. My favorite text editor, NoteTab Pro, too has been updated v4.95. The new version is essentially a collection of bug fixes with ongoing process improvements to the code. It adds a quite mode to disable some sound alerts, plus an updated help file and the ability to keep you posted on software updates and other developer news. I have the simplest sound control program: I keep my PC speakers almost permanently switched off! Office 2003 Beta 2 Refresh has also been released via Microsoft's BetaPlace site. The updates comprise multiple individual downloadable patches for each Office System component. The excellent Metaproducts Download Express has become pain-ware. This new term (coined by me) is for software that still free but times-out after an indeterminate period. Necessitating frequent downloads of updated versions. Download Express is also crippled-ware. With some advance features only available if you register. I'm sticking with LeechGet 2002 and the excellent Download Expert for now. I've also been giving Blog (a software mentioned in a previous column) a detailed run through. Unfortunately, unlike in previous versions there are still stability issues. I've been experiencing constant database-related problems when updating web pages that the developer says are being fixed in the next release. I've also been unable to But at the end of the day Security Stuff
As for the bad news, there's none. With no new worms looming on the horizon. Just lots of older worms and viruses still attempting to gain access to your computers, your data and your credibility. But In no particular order. The only other security-related update has been to Zone Alarm. This now includes a hacker attacker (sorry, hacker identification center). As well as a cache cleaner and even outbound mail scanner. If you are one of many surfers using a pirated serial number watch out. Existing key generators I hear don't work with ZoneAlarm 4. And the copy "phones home" to verify the serial entered is a legitimate one. I'm also quite certain that the new features added to the basic firewall won't improve things. Adding new features not part of the original mandate is a marketing-driven strategy. But my fear is that the best firewall will soon become the worst. With the core diluted with add-ons. I prefer the single task software approach as it works better. That's it from me. Stay safe 'n secure. G Menon Click Here to Email Me
I've spent the better part of the last two weeks researching web blog software. And it's been an extraordinary journey. My needs were basic:
- Preferably free
- Simple to deploy and configure
- Worked with my site hosting plan
- Offered admin privileges
- Blocked unapproved users from posting
Blogger is the most famous of the hosted services. This pioneer of free personal Web logs was acquired by Google in early-2003. And services have begun to go downhill ever since as Blogger's hardware seems unable to keep pace with the substantial increase in traffic. It's now pretty common stance to suffer database-related errors. Luckily for us poor publishers, these don't affect your actual blog which is a generated HTML file stored on your server (via FTP). But one side-effect of Blogger outages has been an inability to auto-update my blogs. Or worse, having 2 identical posts added to the database. But you can't delete the extra one! I've also noticed that new blogs have different features from old blogs; down to the template chosen. Choices?
The second (scripted) category of blog software like Moveable Type (MT), b2 and WordPress are mostly available in PHP and require a MySQL database. Luckily for me there are several CGI-powered scripts including MT and Blosxom. Configuring MT is a nightmare even for very experienced users. And much as I would like to deploy it, the absence of a database remains a problem. The sole free online database host, FreeSQL, has been experiencing hardware problems culminating in a catastrophic (for all its users) disk drive crash last week. But is now up and running again. I'd choose b2 as the easiest-to-deploy Blog script. Unfortunately, Netfirms supports PHP only with its Basic plan. Not for free users. Which left me with CGI. So I deployed Blosxom; even though its really meant for Mac OS and has some of the dirtiest, most convoluted scripting. But I still have time-out issues that seem unresolvable and I'm planning to discard using this script. And remaining for another week with Blogger. Other Stuff: GIF Patent for US expires
In other (good) news, Patent #US4,558,302 expired Friday, June 20, 2003. Officially known as (a) "High speed data compression and decompression apparatus and method," or Unisys's GIF tax, it now enters the public domain. The GIF image format brought image compression to the Internet. Unfortunately, patent-owner UNISYS Corporation rather doggedly insisted that Webmasters pay them royalty to use GIFs on Web sites (few did). The company also blocked all moves to improve the basic algorithm. One fallout has been an increased use of pJPEG (progressive JPEG) and PNG image formats. A detailed chronology is available here. With an anti-view as well. But wait! The European, Canadian, and Japanese patents expire only in 2004: making open-source GIF tools illegal everywhere but in the US! Other Stuff #2: Excellent antivirus wins another award
About a month ago I discarded out my free AVG Antivirus for a more powerful, and free for personal use, virus scanner. As I had lost all confidence in the former. It was unable to scan inbound email effectively. And despite daily signature updates didn't seem all right. Just a gut feeling. But I've learned to trust these hunches. I replaced it with Avast. Which has served me very well. It's caught several infected mails. Including several HTML-format messages with an embedded IFrame! In comparison, AVG (running on a test system) failed to detect if message attachments were infected. So if you are still using AVG Free, discard it. Choose Avast instead. The latest Virus Bulletin test (June 2, 2003, Windows XP), Avast! 4 Pro detected all ItW viruses (known to be 'in the wild'). Other Stuff #3: Software Updates
There are also new versions of Mozilla and MyIE2 (naturally). New in MyIE2.7.1350 is an ability to open multiple Web pages in a single program instance. This results in a lower resource footprint. And supports special plug-ins and IE extensions to let you have an enjoyable surfing experience. My favorite text editor, NoteTab Pro, too has been updated v4.95. The new version is essentially a collection of bug fixes with ongoing process improvements to the code. It adds a quite mode to disable some sound alerts, plus an updated help file and the ability to keep you posted on software updates and other developer news. I have the simplest sound control program: I keep my PC speakers almost permanently switched off! Office 2003 Beta 2 Refresh has also been released via Microsoft's BetaPlace site. The updates comprise multiple individual downloadable patches for each Office System component. The excellent Metaproducts Download Express has become pain-ware. This new term (coined by me) is for software that still free but times-out after an indeterminate period. Necessitating frequent downloads of updated versions. Download Express is also crippled-ware. With some advance features only available if you register. I'm sticking with LeechGet 2002 and the excellent Download Expert for now. I've also been giving Blog (a software mentioned in a previous column) a detailed run through. Unfortunately, unlike in previous versions there are still stability issues. I've been experiencing constant database-related problems when updating web pages that the developer says are being fixed in the next release. I've also been unable to But at the end of the day Security Stuff
As for the bad news, there's none. With no new worms looming on the horizon. Just lots of older worms and viruses still attempting to gain access to your computers, your data and your credibility. But In no particular order. The only other security-related update has been to Zone Alarm. This now includes a hacker attacker (sorry, hacker identification center). As well as a cache cleaner and even outbound mail scanner. If you are one of many surfers using a pirated serial number watch out. Existing key generators I hear don't work with ZoneAlarm 4. And the copy "phones home" to verify the serial entered is a legitimate one. I'm also quite certain that the new features added to the basic firewall won't improve things. Adding new features not part of the original mandate is a marketing-driven strategy. But my fear is that the best firewall will soon become the worst. With the core diluted with add-ons. I prefer the single task software approach as it works better. That's it from me. Stay safe 'n secure. G Menon Click Here to Email Me
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