George's Technology Blog
» Smart Phones, Web Design, Google or whatever
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!
Gmail, China and Security
Mar 25th
Gmail has beefed up account security a little recently, possibly in part due to the recent China hacking and phishing attacks and intrusions. Now, detecting suspicious account activity has gotten a little simpler.
You may remember Gmail’s 2008 Remote Sign Out and Info post where they announced the then new remote sign out and info feature which allowed you to see from what IP, and at what time your past several logins occurred in your Gmail account. You can access the Activity on This Account info window when logged into Gmail by scrolling to the bottom and clicking the Details link you can see in the screenshot below.
Now, if Gmail notices logins from different locations and figures you aren’t likely to have accessed your account from those locations, you will see a notice when you login next.
For example, you aren’t likely to be able to access your account from Canada and Mexico within 15 minutes of one another.
Now, if it looks like something unusual is going on with your account, we’ll also alert you by posting a warning message saying, “Warning: We believe your account was last accessed from…” along with the geographic region that we can best associate with the access.
- Google’s Pavni Diwanji, Engineering Director
The Activity on This Account info window has been changed to reflect new information now available to you as a result of this latest security change. Here’s what it looks like now.
Now you can more easily detect if your account has been accessed without your permission or knowledge more easily. If you think your account has been compromised you should change your password, and it won’t hurt to check your Google Account settings to make sure that your secondary email address has not been changed – or in the case you don’t have one making sure that one has not been added. I’d guess that in the future it will only get easier to determine if someone has been tampering with your Gmail account.
RELATED READING
Google and China, New Approach No Censoring
Mar 22nd
Today, 3/22/2010, Google stopped censoring Chinese search results as a result of continued hacking/phishing attacks and intrusions against Google and other companies as also noted in their earlier post from January, 2010 – A New Approach to China.
The search engine & web applications giant has redirected visits at Google.cn (Google China) to Google.hk (Google Hong Kong). Google has tried it the Chinese government’s way, now they are taking their new approach. Google says:
So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong.
- A new approach to China: an update (Google Blog)
Concerning the increased traffic at Google Hong Kong, Google says:
Due to the increased load on our Hong Kong servers and the complicated nature of these changes, users may see some slowdown in service or find some products temporarily inaccessible as we switch everything over.
- A new approach to China: an update (Google Blog)
Smart Rescheduler in Google Calendar
Mar 22nd
GCalendar Smart Rescheduler
Google has added another new feature in Google Calendar labs called Smart Rescheduler. If you are a heavy user of Google Calendar and schedule your meetings with others who also use GCalendar than this nifty feature might be right up your alley.
Instead of spending time researching everyone’s schedule manually Google says this new feature will:
apply some of Google’s search experience to the problem of scheduling… Just like Google search ranks the web, our scheduling search algorithm returns a ranked set of the best candidate dates and times… You’ll see ranked list of possible times for your meeting. By investigating the calendars others have shared with you, Google Calendar can make some educated guesses about how easy it might be to reschedule a conflicting meeting…
Sound worth a try? Go ahead and turn on Smart Rescheduler now!
