Big Hit at Youtube: JK Wedding Entrance Dance

A Big Hit too at Youtube: JK Divorce Entrance Dance

My Home Town, The Truth about Amsterdam :-)

Mobile coming to iPhone

Well I do not need it often my files on the iPhone, but think this is a great addition.

Lightning for Postbox

At home I am using Postbox. Until now I have missed a calendar integration. But Postbox can now run the Lightning 0.9 add-on from the Mozilla Calendar Team. Lightning for Postbox allows you to view your calendar as a separate tab in Postbox. It is as Postbox itself in beta, but seems to be a very nice addition, also the integration with Google Calendar is very interesting.

Tour result

I have been in a Tour pool with some of my co-workers and others, bad result. I had not enough sprinters in my list of cyclists and 3 of the list got out early. But OK, not last at least ..... :-).

House hunting

with a camera that is :-).

Below some examples of nice houses for sale in Amsterdam in an area I could live in, pictures taken today.

Saturday Vimeo Video: Very Graceful

Kuroshio Sea - 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world - (song is Please don't go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.

 

OK, almost done

Changing provider that is ... I really like the support I get at Fatcow.com (at least until now :-)) and although I liked Hostmonster in the past, the last few weeks I have had several (severe) issues with them. I know I can have issues again here of course, but for now I think I have done right to transfer most of my sites to Fatcow.

This will also mean that both yesitsme.info and hpkok.com will be directing to this weblog, so a simpler url is available.

What I experienced is that much more people are now linking to my site, do not know what changed the/their behaviour. Yesterday even Fatcow itself added me to their (long) list of to follow at their Twitter page. Maybe because I wrote positive about them :-)?

As written before I am extremely happy with b2evolution as weblog system, especially the multiblog possibilities are great. It is also very easy to have new entries from the other blogs, like my visit to Canada appear on the main page. So will use that a lot in a few weeks when traveling to British Columbia and Alaska.

Google Wave beta signup

Yes you can now, sign up.

Timelapse again, now with a Nikon D90

Los Angeles: in motion from Michael Marantz on Vimeo.

 

Great interactivity

La Vitrine - Montreal from steven bulhoes on Vimeo.

 

Phishing

Bad, bad, bad .... at my Birthday my account at Hostmonster has been suspended due to a phishing attack. Instead of helping me and perform the necessary work to prevent from happening again, they just sent me this notice (website deactivated) after I asked and after my further inquiries sent me a doc with info on what to do and after I will do it, they will un-suspend me ....

There are several issues here. They state my account was safe at the beginning, but after I installed scripts (by their installation system though) I did not work on safeguarding the environment. Well I am not a system admin, nor do I want to become one, so working with their installations should be ok. At least they should help after this mess up, that is what I think.

I have had now 2 major incidents in the last few weeks at Hostmonster, first no backups available and now this. Chancing all now to Fatcow, although not totally preventing from happening again, is what I will be doing. But it also made me think of how to improve backups and more secure sites. Will work on that.

What is Phishing:

In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT Administrators are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting public. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging, and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Even when using server authentication, it may require tremendous skill to detect that the website is fake. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to fool users, and exploits the poor usability of current web security technologies. Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures.

A phishing technique was described in detail in 1987, and the first recorded use of the term "phishing" was made in 1996. The term is a variant of fishing, probably influenced by phreaking, and alludes to baits used to "catch" financial information and passwords.

Webbased sharing and backup solutions

I checked out online backup or sharing solutions many times, used most and think there are many interesting webbased products out there. To name a few, box.net, wuala.com, diino.com. I am now using 2 more often, Mozy and Dropbox.

To begin with Dropbox, any easier it can not be. Just add your computer (and do with your other computers if you have them). Just drop your files in and they will be automatically available on the the other computer. One of the main advantages though is the speed. Especially when you want to run the same product, like e.g. Pagico, on several computers. Just put the database in your Dropbox and it will always be available and updated on the fly. As a save backup system I think it misses some advanced functionality like many backup providers have.

One of them is Mozy. Backup is again extremely easy, just add a computer, login, select files to backup and that's it. It seems to be rather save, compared e.g. to Google.

Some functionality:

• Open/locked file support: Mozy will back up your documents whether they're open or closed.


• 128-bit SSL encryption: The same technology used by banks secures your data during the backup process.


• 448-bit Blowfish encryption: Secures your files while in storage, providing peace of mind that your private data is safe from hackers.


• Automatic: Schedule the times to back up and MozyHome does the rest.New and changed file detection: MozyHome finds and saves the smallest changes.


• Backs up Outlook files: Disaster-proof email protection.


• Block-level incremental backup: After the initial backup, MozyHome only backs up files that have been added or changed, making subsequent backups lightning fast.

I think both Dropbox for sharing files and Mozy as real backup system are great products. They have free accounts with 2 Gb, so you can test it thoroughly. For more space or unlimited you have to pay, Dropbox is a bit high priced (99$ per year for 50Gb, 199$ for 100Gb), although you can have more computers attached for the same price. Mozy asks 4.95$ per month per computer for unlimited space. For a one year contract get 1 month for free, for a 2 year contract get 2 months for free.

If you want to share pictures, Wuala is perfect. Box.net is more for corporate and groupwork, see it as online SharePoint document sharing.

I know there are many more, of course other systems can have the functionality you need.

Great concept for a "Social" router

Check out the page at Engadget.

I like timelapses

CANARIAS TIMELAPSE from luis garcia de armas on Vimeo.

 

This has been a lot of work

HP - invent from Tom and Matt on Vimeo.

 

Great picture

Was uploaded to a newspaper in the Netherlands, for a Summer Photography contest, by Marjon Teerhuis, Luzern, Zwitserland.

Pagico 4

Pagico

Just got a mail that Pagico 4 is available as a beta. If you do not know Pagico, read about it at pagico.com. In short ...... Pagico keeps track of all your tasks, projects, and contacts. It is available for Apple, Windows, and Ubuntu.

I translated all versions including this one into Dutch. BTW I do not have any commercial interest, I just happen to like the software. You can download the beta now.

Using Wix

I like Wix, although for serious blogging it is not really usable, building nice and Flashy websites is rather easy though.

Check the live one at Wix itself.

Changing provider?

I have had a major issue at Hostmonster and had to re-install a backup. Well they don't do backups, at least not when you have more then 50.000 files. Hm .. this is a serious issues, as no backup was available, not so much for the weblogs I am running as I like to experiment, but more for Moodle setups I have. This made me rethink the provider. I started this one now at Fatcow, it has backups and is also faster. For the rest I think it is more or less the same, although at Hostmonster it is easier to add scripts. At Fatcow you can add some scripts from a list, the rest you should install yourself.

I am now adding stuff into the b2evolution weblog system, which I really like. I think it has more possibilities then Wordpress, although it is also a bit more difficult to use. One of the big advantages is being able to add many different blogs to the same install. One of the disadvantages is the fewer Skins, for Wordpress there are much more and also commercial ones I use at www.hpkok.com, which is really attractive I think.

Interesting … Google Chrome Operating System

From MacRumors:

Google announced that they are getting into the Operating System business with Google Chrome Operating System. The new OS is described as their attempt to "re-think" what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS will be an open source, lightweight operating system that is initially targeted at netbooks.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

The new OS will run on both x86 and ARM chips. The first netbooks will begin shipping with the OS in the second half of 2010. In the long term. Google does expect that Chrome OS will work anywhere from small netbooks to full size desktop machines.

While Microsoft has the most to lose from such direct competition from Google, Apple will also be affected by Google’s move into this space. In fact, Google’s ultimate goal seems to be the same target market as Apple’s. They are specifically shooting for ease of use and accessibility:

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

The Web will be a central part of the new operating system, and demonstrates the importance of supplying a robust browser experience. Google’s work on the Chrome browser will carry over into the new OS.