» Smart Phones, Web Design, Google or whatever
Archive for April, 2010
PHP: Find Server and Domain Paths
Apr 27th
For building sites that can more easily be moved from one server to another, and allows simpler updating of common information like email address and phone number of the client.
Here’s some PHP to generate paths: both server paths and domain paths good for use in all sorts of ways for include and require statements.
<?
// for INCLUDE statements – this is the local server path
$urlPATH = “http://” . $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'];
$srvPATH = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];
include ($srvPATH.”/config-settings.php”);
?>
More later.
Gmail Drag-n-Drop Attachments
Apr 19th
Beginning 4/15/2010 if you use Firefox or the Google Chrome browser you can drag and drop attachments into your email. Drag and drop attachments onto messages on the Gmail blog has some nice screenshots (minis below) of exactly how simple the new process is.
Its not working in FF 3.6.x for me, but I do have lots of add-ons. It worked great in Chrome, though. Great thing is that you don’t need to go into Gmail Labs or settings, its already activated.
PHP Do Until – Do While
Apr 16th
The PHP Do While, just a quick post so I can find this later without Googling…
<?
$i = 0;
do
{
// do something
}
while ($i > 0);
i++;
?>
MORE
PHP Do While on PHP.net
‘Google Cloud Print’ Replacing Print Drivers?
Apr 16th
So the Google fan that I am I see ZDnet article today called Printer drivers: A thing of the past? Google, HP seem to think so and start reading, then start getting concerned – concerned enough about the future of my files to go searching for the original Google post on the Chromium blog. So let’s get started with a visual of how Google Cloud Print would work.
To understand where Google is coming from, let’s grab this bit of text from their post explaining the WHY of cloud printing…
While the emergence of cloud and mobile computing has provided users with access to information and personal documents from virtually any device, today’s printers still require installing drivers which makes printing impossible from most of these new devices. Developing and maintaining print subsystems for every combination of hardware and operating system– from desktops to netbooks to mobile devices — simply isn’t feasible.
- Chromium blog, A New Approach to Printing
April 15, 2010
So the main point Google is emphasizing is that due to the fact that all Chrome OS application are web-based, and they evidently don’t feel like porting like a million different print drivers and thus bloating the OS, and since everything else is web-based anyway – why not run printing jobs through the web.
Well, here are my concerns…
- about to print an important document on your Chrome OS computer and Comcast (or whatever ISP) goes out, no printing!
- printing first thing in the AM when “everyone” is on the Internet
- printing @ lunch when “everyone” is on the Internet
- printing @ the end of the work day when “everyone” is on the Internet
- privacy concerns
I love Google, and I think Chrome OS would be pretty cool, but I just don’t know about this cloud printing thing. What do you think, please drop a comment.
MORE ON CHROME OS
Video: What is Chrome OS?
Video: Chrome OS Demo
About Chrome OS (Chrome OS website)
Gmail April Fool’s Joke – vowel outage and Topeka!
Apr 1st
There’s a vowel outage on the Gmail sign in page today! No surprise there. Playful and fun Google is experiencing a vowel outage. Google Analytics and Google Adsense login pages are “unaffected” by this outage.
At 6:01 am Pacific Time, during routine maintenance at one of our datacenters, the frontend web servers in that particular datacenter started failing to render the letter ‘a’ for a subset of users. As error rates escalated, the strain spread to other datacenters. We worked quickly to avoid a cascading failure of the entire alphabet by implementing a stopgap solution that limited the damage to the letters ‘a,’ ‘e,’ ‘i,’ ‘o,’ and ‘u.’ As a result, we’re experiencing Gmail’s first temporary vowel outage. (We’re still investigating whether the letter ‘y’ is impacted and will post an update here shortly.)
Oh, and more cool news on April Fool’s day, Google has changed its name to Topeka! For more details visit either of the links here and check out the fun.
Early last month the mayor of Topeka, Kansas stunned the world by announcing that his city was changing its name to Google. We’ve been wondering ever since how best to honor that moving gesture. Today we are pleased to announce that as of 1AM (Central Daylight Time) April 1st, Google has officially changed our name to Topeka.
Enjoy your April Fools!
