Aja Lapus

Category: WWW

  • Internet Connection Problem Resolved?

    I would have blogged the buggy Internet connection I was experiencing since December 26 after I heard from my father news about the Taiwan earthquake that damaged undersea communication lines, but it was all over the Philippine Blogosphere with news from Jhay, Yuga, et al. that I decided to stay quiet instead—its no use blogging the same entry all over again.

    The early times during the lowered bandwidth period, I ,as well as my friend Jayson, noticed that we could still connect to our ISP, but it cannot resolve host names. I immediately turned my PC on and searched my browsing history for IP addresses. Alas! I found a Google cache URI of my site where Google used its IP address instead of its domain name. Great Google! Since it is a search engine in itself, I immediately searched for a Google cache of OpenDNS—I could not open its homepage in itself as my ISP currently could not resolve its domain name to the IP address—thus a cache is more than sufficient. My [and Jayson’s] DNS issues are resolved.

    Though I sometimes experience the reduced bandwidth and intermittent disconnections, I guess it’s still enough to say that it could have gotten worse than that, and I still feel somehow satisfied. But after reading Euri’s recent rant about crappy Internet connections from a café, I decided to test my own connection.

    Results from testmy.net

    I was shocked with the results considering I was downloading bittorrent files at 30-40 kBps, I’m on PLDT‘s slowest myDSL, plan 999, and test results from testmy.net prior to this one never reached 400 kbps! I even tried the Speakeasy Speed Test but got these lower but similar results from its Seattle, WA server:

    Last Result:
    Download Speed: 502 kbps (62.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
    Upload Speed: 114 kbps (14.3 KB/sec transfer rate)

    I really can’t tell whether or not I am the only one experiencing this, but I know the intermittent connections would likely last for several weeks. Was it really resolved so fast this time?

  • Giving Up on Social Bookmarking

    In many occasions, I’ve considered placing link buttons or icons to social bookmarking Web sites since many users of such services could save a couple of clicks and page loads if ever they want to share my entries to other users. Most of the time when I go scouring the Web for interesting articles, I see more or less than a dozen link icons to those sites within the blog entries. But, I ask myself: Do I really need to place all these links just for users to select which one they’d prefer to use?

    The primary concept of social bookmarking seemed better than those of search engines with Web spiders doing the hunting for articles compared to the hunting done by people, thus, the content would most likely be useful.

    But the present situation of multiple users and multiple services all acting on a single entity [i.e., a blog entry, an article] can be quite messy to deal with especially since it does not conform to the social aspect of social bookmarking.

    One major point of this is the emergence of all other bookmarking sites just after del.icio.us became popular. Since then, the aggregation of content [i.e., article bookmarks] became difficult because the proprietary nature of different social bookmarking sites prevents [e.g.] diggs and spurls from being counted together.

    For example, if there are fifty different persons with each using a different social bookmarking Web site and they all bookmarked this page once on their respective service, it will still rank lower than a page marked only twice on just a single bookmarking site by only two people.

    With all of these thoughts on how impure the social bookmarking trend came to be, I really could not come up with a decision whether or not I would be placing bookmark links on my entries. Currently, I still won’t be. But, if ever I will in the near future, I’d most probably use just one or two of the most popular services where you could:

    More info about social bookmarking on Wikipedia with a list of more than 5 dozen social bookmarking Web sites.

  • Was the Messenger Virus Controlled?

    For those using Yahoo! Messenger like I do, you could have encountered a friend sending links to some cool pics (s)he would like to show you. I wouldn’t have blogged this as my friend Nicole already did. But, it seems that those at Yahoo! have already controlled the spread by blocking the links causing them to just show up as “http://” and not the whole URI to the infected Web site.

    I happened to encounter those messages weeks before I knew it was a virus but I use Firefox, and when I went to the Web site, it didn’t infect me at all.

    I just hope other messenger programs implement a block for those infectious messages as well in one way or another if it would not be like the system Yahoo! is already using. Besides, not only Yahoo! Messenger is vulnerable to this, but also AOL Instant Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. If you use these two other messaging services, please tell me if they’re also properly responding to these attacks. More info about the virus can be found at the Trend Micro Virus Encyclopedia entry for WORM_SOHANAD.I

    Happy IMing to you all! 🙂

    Update: The spammers apparently knew about what Yahoo! has been doing to block the URL to their malware site as I’ve just received another spam message from a contact with the address still intact. They now encode a portion of the domain to circumvent the filters of Yahoo! Messenger servers. For example, instead of thecoolpics.com which is blocked by server filters, they now send addresses as thec%6folpics.com with %6f being a URL-encoded version of the letter o.

    Get free Norton Antivirus software.

  • The Second Browser War Round 2

    Upgrade to Firefox 2 Now! Though Windows Internet Explorer 7 came out earlier than Mozilla Firefox 2 for about a couple of weeks, I could not help but to announce that my favorite Web browser just released its second major update. But do not forget Opera 9 as it offers a faster and lighter browser for someone who would just want to surf the Web.

    The browser wars have just stepped up to the next level. For now, here are some comparisons with my own opinions and rankings:

    Web Standards Compliance

    1. Firefox 2 and Opera 9

      Though Opera 9 has been the only browser on the Windows platform to pass the WaSP Acid2 test, Firefox 2 is the only browser to ever support JavaScript 1.7. Both have considerable support for Web standards on XHTML and CSS under most circumstances (as Acid2 tests for uncommonly used standards support).

    2. Internet Explorer 7

      They say that they have improved support for standards on Internet Explorer 7 but when I test sites that break on Internet Explorer 6, they still break on version 7. Besides, support for the proper XHTML media type, application/xhtml+xml, would cause Internet Explorer 7 (as well as earlier versions) to look for an external application that supports it.

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    Customizability

    1. Firefox 2

      With so many user-contributed addons, from Web development tools, custom toolbars and multimedia entertainment addons to usability, accessibility and Web services integration tools, the possibilities are endless.

    2. Internet Explorer 7

      The only thing that I think would work on Internet Explorer 7 is the ability to add custom toolbars which are usually from search engine and portal companies such as Google and Yahoo!

    3. Opera 9

      I really do not know how we could customize Opera though its suite of applications such as a good download manager, mail/newsgroups and BitTorrent clients all in a lightweight package contribute to its popularity.

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    Security

    1. Firefox 2 and Opera 9

      I haven’t researched much about the security differences of both these browsers, but I know since the majority of users are using Internet Explorer (with the automatic update to 7 on the start of November) they are more likely to be targetted that way. Both have good popup blockers and Firefox 2 has a phishing checker.

    2. Internet Explorer 7

      Still is the most widely used (or will be with automatic updates) browser and the most vulnerable to attacks. Though the integration with Windows has been cut off, support for ActiveX controls remains as an opt-in feature. It’s much better than Internet Explorer 6 though. It has a popup blocker and it has (currently) a better phishing checker than Firefox 2 has, according to some site. (I can’t seem to find the link right now, to be posted as an edit later.)

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    Page Load

    1. Firefox 2 and Opera 9

      Based on my experience, both of these browsers load pages faster than Internet Explorer 7 though I still haven’t compared them to one another.

    2. Internet Explorer 7

      Even with Internet Explorer 6, whenever I switch from Firefox to Internet Explorer (for Web page layout rendering), the latter would load a page slower. I think the phishing checker of Internet Explorer 7 made it worse as it always waits for it to finish (and it’s not that fast) before starting to load a page.

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    System Performance

    1. Opera 9

      Loads up on your system much faster than Firefox 2 though I still haven’t compared it to Internet Explorer 7 for they are both perceivably fast to load on my system.

    2. Internet Explorer 7

      Loads up faster than Firefox 2 though the Scobleizer says that it consumes more memory than Firefox 2 without even finishing to load the same pages Firefox 2 has. The Lifehacker also published another comparison.

    3. Firefox 2

      Loads for the longest time compared to the other two but the said reason for this is the different language used to render its chrome to provide support for its themes/skins. It also receives criticisms for high memory usage.

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    Interface

    1. Firefox 2

      Cleanest and simplest interface [but with elegant looking buttons] to get you started surfing right away. Just lacks the default new tab button to familiarize new users with tabbed browsing though it can be added with toolbar customization. It’s skinnable as well.

    2. Opera 9

      Feels very much like a standard Web browser interface [as with Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 6] though some search boxes are more suitable for Web shoppers rather than the average Web surfer or Web developer. It also offers color schemes to suit every user’s taste.

    3. Internet Explorer 7

      Very compact, works without a menu bar, but just plain confusing with a very far stop and refresh button especially when you are used to Internet Explorer 6—users could be more familiar with Firefox 2 and/or Opera 9 this way.

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    Other Features

    1. Firefox 2 and Opera 9

      I could not seem to summarize them all, just take a look at the Mozilla Firefox 2 features page and the Opera 9 features page.

    2. Internet Explorer 7

      It features many things that makes it better compared to Internet Explorer 6 than to Firefox 2 and Opera 9 since both the latter browsers offer these features new to Internet Explorer 7. The complete list can be found on the Internet Explorer 7 features page.

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  • PayPal for Philippines Initialized

    Support Paypal for the Philippines Just two days ago, I’ve signed up for the PayPal Now! advocacy for the availability of PayPal to Filipinos thinking that the widely used online money transfer service would be beneficial to me and all other Filipino Web designers/developers who are into freelancing.

    The guys from PayPal heard us. Now, our wishes came true! Well, partially …

    I’ve just got news from the PayPal Now! Blog that PayPal would be offering a limited send-only service to Philippine customers. That’s a start. But we want more!

    Hmm … might as well erase that first. *scratches off the our wishes came true part*

    Add your signature on the list!

    Note: Read the article from the PayPal Now! Blog (link above) for more information.