John Beales » Miscellaneous

Demoing Drape: a Multiple URL Shortener

John — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:06:36 +0000

One of the projects that I’ve been involved with has a new product out: Drape. Drape is a multiple URL shortener, and I’ve prepared a demo. Here’s a drape that I created of some interesting blogs about living with less impact on the planet.

And, here’s what the cut & paste button looks like:

Interesting Living on the way to Living Green

Switching to an External DNS Provider

John — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:05:19 +0000

The other day I discovered, and tweeted, that Bell Canada, my ISP, has started doing DNS Redirection. That is, if I try to visit a domain that does not exist, they send me to a page of search results for whatever I typed. This can be considered convenient, but it is kind of like connecting you to 411 if you misdial a telephone number – not exactly what I want. Bell offers an “opt-out”, but despite the name it it’s not an opt-out. They simply set a cookie in your browser that redirects you to yet another webpage that they attempted to make look like the error page from your browser, (and failed).

This wouldn’t really be a problem if I wasn’t developing a program for BonzoBox right now that checks to see if user-entered URLs really exist. All of the sudden I can’t test my work because no matter what domain name a URL starts with, it resolves, and returns a 200 status code to boot! This will not do.

I needed a new DNS provider, however, who do you trust? I tried out OpenDNS, but they do the same thing as Bell just started doing, (except, they’ve been doing it for a while, maybe always, and they’re up front about it). I read about how Level3 has great DNS servers, but if you look at level3.com it doesn’t mention it anywhere, (it’s not exactly what they’re known for).

I did run across some Level3 DNS Server addresses on DSLReports.com, but are they really Level3′s servers, or are they some hacker’s servers that has seeded the forum with some bogus info in order to capture my banking info? Well, a whois lookup told me that they do belong to Level3, so my new DNS servers are now 4.2.2.1 – 4.2.2.4. They’re even easy to type!

FYI: This does not appear to be a paid service from Level3, but if it was, it is something that I would be willing to pay a few dollars a year for.

Bell, on the other hand, is barely hanging on to my business. The only reasons I am still with them is 1) I am too lazy to research the alternatives, and 2) I have an old account with no monthly bandwidth cap. If I can find another service that is reliable and has no bandwidth cap, I may very well consider switching.

Captioned!

John — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 03:59:05 +0000

So, TechCrunch posted a few minutes ago with a funny photo begging for a caption. There you go.

Entrepreneurs Can Change the World

John — Wed, 20 May 2009 17:36:27 +0000

Now I’m inspired. (From Austin Hill).

MyMap Explorer 1.2

John — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:12:47 +0000

Last night I updated MyMap Explorer for Google Maps to make it more future-proof and improve KML support. The most recent version is available on the project website.

The most important changes that were made are:

MyMap Explorer is now locked to Google Maps API version 2.150, so version 1.2 will not break on July 1 when API versions prior to 2.140 are depreciated
MyMap Explorer now supports area overlays on the maps, not simply points as before
There is some improved error-checking

This update was initiated by a fellow named Joel asking questions and reporting bugs. Thanks Joel!

Looking for FlashLite 3.1 devices

John — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:24:06 +0000

I’m trying to assemble a list of devices that run FlashLite 3.1. If there’s anyone out there who knows of, (or owns), a device running, or capable of running FlashLite 3.1 please let me know in the comments.

Once a list is compiled, (if there even are any such devices yet), I will publish it.

Help the BC Children’s Hospital

John — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:31:29 +0000

I had a link E-mailed to me today: http://wwe5.bchydro.com/2008holiday/ You can play a quick Christmas game, and BC Hydro will donate to the BC Children’s Hospital. It’s fast, fun, and brings some holiday cheer to both you and the residents of the hospital. My brother was in this hospital over Christmas one year and they did a great job bringing Christmas to the hospital. They deserve all the help they can get.

If anyone knows of other similar campaigns online, feel free to link them up in the comments.

The Road to Genetically Modified Chocolate

John — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 02:20:59 +0000

The BBC is reporting that Mars is working with IBM and the US Department of Agriculture to map the genome of Chocolate. That’s pretty cool.

However, the Chocolate Genome Project could lead to genetically modified chocolate, so we will have to be careful what we do with this new knowledge.

Joust!

John — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 01:53:52 +0000

I learned yesterday that people still joust. Check out this photo from the Medieval Festival at Upper Canada Village.

Aluminum is Soylent Green?

John — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 08:32:53 +0000

I keep seeing this ad for Alcoa on TV. It’s well done, but every time I see it I think of Soylent Green.