Most Recent Stories & Articles for July 2006
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THAT'S RIGHT! School!
- Posted On: 7/27/2006
For those of you who know me, you may be pleasantly surprised to read that I am re-investing my time and money into a formal education with Western International University. BIG "props" to my wife for backing my decision and a HUGE thank you to my employer Blue Cross® Blue Shield® of Arizona for the partial tuition reimbursement. I will be pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Business with a minor in E-Business. My first 2 classes start next week, so I am certain you'll see some moans and groans posts in the coming weeks. ;) In related news, my employer is submitting a budget request for technical training, so I may be taking classes toward a certification in the near future as well. Fun stuff!From WIU's Parent Organization:
"Today, Apollo Group, Inc., through its subsidiaries, the University of Phoenix (including University of Phoenix Online), the Institute for Professional Development, the College for Financial Planning, and Western International University, has established itself as a leading provider of higher education programs for working adults by focusing on servicing the needs of the working adult."
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I Survived Being Hacked!
- Posted On: 7/13/2006
My website was attacked between the hours of 11 and 12 PM this morning here in Phoenix, AZ by the IP address 85.255.117.222. They quite obviously came across a couple of my pages where I had not properly handled the omission of a query string parameter (the thing in a url that looks like "webpage.aspx?parameter=somevalue"). When you removed the parameter from the query string on the 2 pages ("webpage.aspx"), it puked a nasty .NET error. The "hacker" (not really deserving of the name in this case) attempted to work their way deeper into the error, creating more than 3,500 web page hits on my website in 1 hour. So, I blocked the range of IPs from this host. The website inhoster.com owns these IPs and is directly associated with spyware activity.
In the past 7 days, the attacking IP, in 1 hour, ranks 2nd just below traffic from GoogleBot.
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Understanding Search Engine Optimization
- Posted On: 7/12/2006
I must admit that after working closely with ZTMC, a firm that prided themselves as search engine experts, I thought I new a little something about optimizing a website for top-notch ranking and placement. However, I'm confused by the decision Google Search has made to continue listing my old MSN Spaces' blog in search results, like "eric swanson". I removed all content and updated all links to point to my new blog website and despite the severely trimmed and lacking content of the current version of the old blog, it continues to be ranked and placed highly.
Industry's concept of "content is king" may cease to apply to established urls. In other words, if you build a content-rich website and establish a high-value link network (lots of focused inbound links from other websites) and then simply remove the value content, it looks like Google will still consider you an ideal resource, despite your web pages consisting of only out-bound links. Now, this theory I've devised may not be entirely precise, since my old blog is really a sub-domain of a single, larger domain (a network of websites under one umbrella). I have not researched how engines like Google have effectively managed the use of sub-domains and if they can accurately identify them as seperate websites, or if they all fall in the same pool of related content. I can say with certainty that my early experiments showed that targeting search engines with content on sub-domains of extremely large domains did help ranking. So, I wouldn't be surpised if the affiliation with other sub-domains is negating the impact of my lack of content on my Google placement. Time will tell...
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Spy on the Wild
- Posted On: 7/7/2006
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Reach Out and Help Someone
- Posted On: 7/7/2006
I actually helped a fellow developer enough that they commented! That feels good. It's like the feeling you get when you volunteer for a good cause. You get the "I should do that more often" idea in your head, but, for the majority of the population, you never get around to it until it's overdue. Hmm... maybe I should be making more donations or feeding the hungry or clothing the poor or giving toys to children in need or visiting the hospitalized or... Or, maybe I should do what I have the time to do and be happy with my life, doing whatever I can extra when I can. I'm completely random at the moment, but I'm a firm believer that much of life is respecting the underprivileged enough to appreciate what you have and to show that appreciation by 1) enjoying it for yourself and 2) sharing it with others (when it can be shared). Of course, this includes things we usually take for granted: health, walking, electricity, food, driving, special talents, love, security, paying to have someone serve you, freedom, life, and people in your life that help you on any level that often go unnoticed or even unackowledged... the list goes on. Tell someone how much you appreciate something they did for you today!
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Foundations of AJAX
- Posted On: 7/6/2006
I finished the book Foundations of AJAX by Apress today at lunch and I am at a loss. I thought I had an AJAX book in my hands and with respect to the authors, they did float around the topic through the entire book. Now, to be completely fair, I am very "worn out" by technology advancements in the past couple of years, so I am probably quick on the trigger...
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Software Configuration
- Posted On: 7/6/2006
I have configured a lot of software in my career and I have learned a great deal that could probably be of some benefit to someone out there... As always, my knowledge will represent that of a programming god to 1 or 2 people, guru to few, an expert to some, average to many, and a novice to my peers. I will attempt to document all of my personal computer settings, including operating systems, internet browsers, development environments, web servers, database servers, etc. *This will be an on-going attempt, so check back if you find it at all helpful.
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Officially Unfocused
- Posted On: 7/6/2006
I'm tired of hearing web architects preach about content focus and target audiences. They are preaching the truth, but I'm the choir and I'm tired of hearing the same ol' sermon. Besides, my website is the exception. Perhaps my website's focus is simply me, which would explain why everything is so random and stream-of-consciousness. My target audience? Everyone that might find my website whether they know me or not. My website's goal isn't to capture an audience of regular readers who interact with my content on a daily basis... not even weekly or monthly. Well... maybe monthly. Occasionally family, friends, coworkers, peer developers, my step-son's friends, my wife's extended family and friends, strangers who find their way here, people who read one of my forum posts or saw a bit of my code... These are all drastically different audiences who are coming to this website for different reasons and they will each find 1 or more aspects of my experience (dare I suggest even my personality?) interesting. Or, not. Whether they do or do not, they've hopefully had the opportunity to enjoy something that relates to them. Yes, that includes enjoying being negative about something too (you odd, MySpace SPAM lovers who I think either 1) don't understand what I'm attempting to teach [so, I'm a bad teacher to them] or 2) represent the spamming community and are mad at me).
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They Keep Coming!
- Posted On: 7/6/2006
Many of these technologies have been out for a while, but I thought that I would officially acknowledge them:
- .NET LINQ (XLinq, DLinq, BLINQ)
- .NET Atlas (AJAX)
- .NET Robotics
- Adobe FLEX *VERY COOL!
- Microsoft XAML (guess Microsoft couldn't buy XUL...)
- Mozilla XUL
- Java ZK
- JSON - JavaScript Object Notation
- OlyMars - *unsupported beta (SQL Server Centric .NET Code Generator)
- List of other UI languages
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Adobe Flash's FLEX 2.0
- Posted On: 7/4/2006
I recently listened to a podcast interview (php|architect) with Mike Potter, an Adobe employee, about the release of FLEX 2.0 for Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia). FLEX is a framework for building rich internet applications (RIAs) using Flash. The most fantastic element of this interview was that, for the first time in Flash's history, Adobe has released a free SDK for the FLEX framework! This is a tremendous, positive step forward from Adobe with the developer community and I can't wait to try out the technology once I get my new server up and running...
