Chris Meistre

Google announced yesterday that they’ve released a new module for Apache (web server software) which will increase the page load time by up to 50%.  This is awesome news because I’ve been struggling to maintain SA Business Directory for quite some time now.  It’s just a lot more popular than I thought it would be and Drupal isn’t behaving as nicely as I would like it to.

What this module does it take fixes (or filters) that people implement on their sites to increase speed and then apply them to all your pages automatically on the fly.  This means you don’t need to physically go and edit your CMS or your pages.

Google also releases varies install files for the different Linux distributions out there, so it’s very easy to setup.  It literally took me about 15 seconds to get my Apache2 to load the new mod_pagespeed module.

My only concern is how much processing power it will take to apply these filters to each page before it is sent to a client.  I’ll be monitoring the resources over the next couple of days and compare it to previous records.  It has however increased the speed of the pages very noticeably.

To read more about mod_pagespeed visit http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/module.html

After using Paypal’s SA version (thanks to FNB) for a couple of weeks, the time came to make my first withdrawal.  I wondered what the experience would be like, and bumped into problems immediately.

I logged into my FNB account, went to the Paypal options and selected the Withdrawal option.  I followed all the prompts, up to the point where you are supposed to be redirected to Paypal’s website to confirm the transaction.  Nothing happened from here, it just stood still.  I had a look at the Javascript code, and it looked like it didn’t try and execute the command.  So I logged off, and went through the whole process again, just in case there was perhaps a connection dropped during the transaction.  Again, nothing.

Then I do what I normally do when I get these types of problems, I try another web browser.  It’s probably worth noting that I was using Chrome, and then tried Firefox.  With Firefox everything worked as it was supposed to.  Process completed and now we wait to see how long it takes for the money to reflect in my FNB account.

5 days later the money was finally in my account.  This is a step in the right direction, but I really do hope that they start to speed things up!

Strange thing was during the withdrawal process, I was given a $ to R conversion rate, and had 4 minutes to either accept or reject it!  But it takes 5 days to get the money!

Have you ever considered how fast a web browser actually renders a website?  Not download and render, but once the file is local just render.

The guys from Google also wanted to find out  But they did it a long differently than most people would ever think about.

Here’s the Chrome Rendering Speed Tests they did:

And here’s how the made the video clip:

Oh great, another image search engine, do we really need more?  I think TinEye is an awesome little image search engine.  It’s completely different to other search engines.  With normal search engines you type in a keyword and then it shows you images based on that keyword.

With TinEye you can upload an image and ask it to search where on the web this image is located.  It doesn’t just work with the filename either, it analyses the content of the image. It even shows you images that are similar, i.e. including the same words.

Why would this be useful?

For one thing, you can search the Internet to find out who is using your company’s logo or any of your design work.  You can also use it to trace any incrimination pictures that get emailed to you to verify their authenticity.

A complete description of what TinEye can offer you is available.

There is even a Firefox extension available that allows you to just right click on any image and with a click of a button search the web to find more occurrences of the image.

With so much focus being put on social networking on the Internet, a lot more of our personal information is out there for everyone to see. I’m not one to be paranoid about these things, and always try and remember that whatever I’m putting out there will most likely be public knowledge from them on.  Sometimes I do see things that make me wonder though.

We make use of Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and various other forms of blogging and microblogging to let the world know what we’re up to. What we sometimes forget is that whatever we’re broadcasting might not just reach our friends, but in fact the whole world.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read about someone posting something on Facebook, forgetting that they’re “friends” with their boss. You can just search facebook fail in Google and you’ll quickly see loads of funny examples.

People have lost partners, jobs and friends because they post something without realising everyone can see it. Sure you can set privacy settings, but still, you never know what might be accidentally forwarded on.

The reason I’m thinking about this again is that in the last week I’ve seen many mentions of people saying they’re going to go away for the long weekend. It got me thinking that if I wasn’t such a good person I could find out where these people stay. And knowing that someone will not be home I could break in and steal some of their things. Just because I’m thinking it, doesn’t mean I will actually do it. So if you get back Monday and some of your stuff is gone and you read this, don’t come knocking on my door.

Criminals are a lot more clever than we give them credit for. Sometimes I look at ways that people get conned and I’m truly amazed at the methods and equipment used. Imagine where the world would be if they used that power for good? If I could think of this one scenario where someone can use a simple statement like “I’m away for the whole weekend” to break into your house, imagine the stuff they can come up with to watch out for.

I’m not saying start being paranoid and stop using the websites and forums you might be making use of.  Write anything you say on the Internet (and for that matter in email as well) keeping in mind that your words might be available to the whole world.  Think of that before you type any sentence and you’ll probably reduce you risk by 90%.