For People who like Mail: Social Digest

Many people are posting on Social Media, and there are many who don’t want to constantly follow everything live that is said by their friends. For them there is now Social Digest. Social Digest makes it possible to get a full list of all the tweets send by your social group, whether it’s the public stream, DMs or lists – which I’m sure Scoble will like. It also lists the users who were active that day. It’s like having your Facebook wall in your mail, although Facebook support is in the pipeline.

There is also integration for people who want to follow what their friends are listening to on Last.FM. The other service they currently support is Hyves, but I doubt that they will limit their scope to only these services.

For the business users there are plans to make it possible to get digests over multiple Twitter accounts in one digest mail so business users can do the due diligence over their multiple accounts. And after showing them the wonderful features of DataSift they are looking into implementing a similar mark-up language to be able to extract data which can be flagged with in the Digest. And I see further potential for integration with DataSift.

I’m happy to say that as the twitter whale in the pre-alpha I helped them discover many faults with the algorithm and forced them to turn the Twitter API inside out to be able to do some of the requests.

They have plans for a 2011 launch.

Twitter Turn Based Games #twitgam.es #game #social

When I was shown this in January I wasn’t surprised to see a turn based with Twitter as the transport mode appear, I was very happy that turn based social gaming has left Facebook. The first step by twitgam.es was to implement a javascript based chess and checkers client which posts a challenge and the subsequent moves to Twitter via the public stream or via DM. There will be a leader board to track progress in the games.

The public version makes it possible for others to follow the moves of the people they follow by using the short link posted in the message, as seen below. And the private version doesn’t spam your followers with messages for people who don’t want to clutter their public stream with messages.

They have plans to launch in 2011.

Image source: Doug Wheller

Social Permissions for 2013

Social Permissions fo 2013Last year I found myself overwhelmed by changes in the privacy settings in many of my most used Social Media applications. I decided then, what I’m going to tell you now: Just set everything to open, and don’t post stuff you don’t want on your??permanent??record online.If you are rather more lackadaisical to the issue of privacy you might want to try MyPermissions, which has an overview of all the settings. Alternatively you could use PrivacyFix which can automate this for… View or comment on Dani??l Crompton’s photo »

Unless I was Unclear

ThinkGeek Merry Christmas from all of us at ThinkGeek. Now get back to fixing your relatives’ computers! View or comment on Dani??l Crompton’s photo »

XBMC BlastDav by Adrianus Warmenhoven

XBMC BlastDavAdrianus Warmenhoven wondered what the minimum that XBMC needs to use a WebDAV server. So he scaled back all the unneeded functionality to create an easy media server for broadcasting te XBMC on any of your devices. XBMC Blastdav Adrianus Warmenhoven  Company Ever since the original XBox with a modchip was capable of running XBMC I used and recommended XBMC to friends and acquaintances as the nicest media player. Now Android and the Raspberry Pi have come … View or comment on Dani??l Crompton’s post »

Flipboard for Android

Flipboard for AndroidLast week Brad Chasenore asked me to quickly review the new Flipboard for Android. So I briefly wrote it up: I have a cheap, slow Polaroid (MIDC010PR001) tablet I’m trying it on, and on there it’s pretty responsive. The navigation is intuitive within seconds I was zooming out of articles flipping through pages. On the tab I have issues with browsers, they mostly lock up, and that happens here too. It was easy to link Twitter and Facebook to Flipboard, they are presented on the first page. However when I first tried linking Google+ the app crashed, this is could be due to the fact that the tablet is not very good. A restart proved me right, although the app was a little less responsive than while linking FB & TW. The first time I was able to add Google+, logged in, verified, etc, it didn’t add Google+ to FlipBoard. The second attempt at linking them brought up the Google 2 step verification window again, which I had asked it to skip the first time I signed up. On this attempt it linked the accounts. Compared to the other Google+ readers FlipBoard makes it easier for me, FlipBoard plays with layout which allows me to engage with the content, and it doesn’t get in the way of reading which is what I want to do. I did have some other issues, for some reason it had given me the Content Guide Edition for the UK, I assume it read it from my locale – language settings – en_UK. Changing this in the settings to Netherlands didn’t make a difference even though it’s a menu option and I refreshed a number of times and even restarted without result. Changing it to US also doesn’t remove the UK politics from headlining the Politics tab. And as I said I use 2 step verification for Google and despite trusting the computer it didn’t seem to skip step two after adding Google+ a second time, or another Google app to FlipBoard. Browsing Google+ was FlipBoard was refreshing, and I see why Scoble is such a fan of FlipBoard. I am certainly happy with it, although I will have to find the killer reason to use it for more than just browsing headlines on a Sunday afternoon. Nice to play with, will keep. Flipboard: Your News Magazine Flipboard brings together world news and social news in a beautiful magazin… View or comment on Dani??l Crompton’s post »

They tried to make me go to Rehab

They tried to make me goto Rehabhttp://unbounce.com/landing-pages/landing-page-rehab/ View or comment on Dani??l Crompton’s post »

Spreading Passwords over Multiple Locations #security

Spreading Passwords over Multiple Locations #security ??RSA’s new approach is a version of a technique known as threshold cryptography, which has long been explored by researchers. They split the password in chunks and store the chunks over multiple servers. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429498/to-keep-passwords-safe-from-hackers-just-break/ To Keep Passwords Safe from Hackers, Just Break Them into Bits – Technology Review Millions of passwords have been stolen from companies such as LinkedIn and Yahoo. A new approach aims to prevent future heists. View or comment on Dani??l Crompton’s post »

Mac Screen Saver Issue #security

Sometimes I need to use my computer to read things, as somebody who considers himself security conscious it means I need to have my finger at the ready as my computer turns on the screen saver after 3 minutes (180 seconds) and password locks it. However I do need to be able to read something without needing to be sure to interact with my HIDs. My old solution was to set my screensaver to lock after 15 minutes (900 seconds), however this poses a security risk as I can forget to lock my screen using the hot corner (see image) if I were distracted by something.

So I needed a way to automatically reset the screensaver back to the 3 minutes after a grace period. OSX has a tool called default which allows changes to be made to the system settings, and it allows you to change the screensaver like this:


defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver idleTime -int 180


Now the only time I really do this is at home, so I need my computer to be secure before I leave for work in the morning. I decided that 8:30 would certainly be a time that I would still be in the house and my Macbook would be open should I have forgotten to reset the timeout. So I first added this following line using crontab:


30 8 * * * defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver idleTime -int 180


Naturally this is still not very secure, sure the effort is half way there, and it should really reset it more often. Perhaps I would want to set it every 15 minutes, which should give me a maximum grace period of 15 minutes. This would be unhandy in the evening when at home.


0,15,30,45 * * * * defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver idleTime -int 180


Or every 15 minutes only for the period of time you are in an environment where you may not entirely control who has physical access to your machine. This could be on a customer site, at a conference or in a shared office space. Or at home while the kids are still awake.


0,15,30,45 8-21 * * * defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver idleTime -int 180


This says between the hours of 8:00 and 21:45 I want you to set my screen saver to 3 minutes every 15 minutes.

Image source: me, Brian Solis

Continuous Integration vs Continuous Deployment

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery or Deployment are terms which are often heard, and the former is sometimes confused with the later. So what are they and why should you care?

Continuous Integration (CI) is a process of linking the code the code that is being developed in the company into a quality control system. This can be for homogenous or heterogeneous code environments. A simple example is of a tool which is being developed in the company by multiple developers. To ensure that the new code complies with all the new requirements and still works with the existing code or data model, a set of automated unit, functional, integration and verification/validation tests are created to verify that this true. All the test sets can cover different parts of the functionality from low level code tests to the highest level user experience tests. The final acceptance is done by a human and deployed explicitly.

With Continuous Deployment (CD) the philosophy is taken one step further. Rather than having a final acceptance by a human who would deploy the application explicitly, the assumption is made that the level of testing is sufficient that the final manual stage can be automated. This means that the live/production software is continuously replaced with the newest version that passed all the tests.

As I first explain the process of CI most developers, they are quite enthusiastic. Once they realize that it means that they need to write unit tests they suddenly start thinking it sounds quite difficult. They think that they need a well-developed test-suite required to achieve automated testing advantages. This is naturally not true. Just as with writing new code unit tests can be created incrementally for existing code. Before changing any existing code first write a suitable test which ensures that the changed code will perform in the same way as the existing code so as not to break the existing code or any of its dependancies.

Whereas while first explaining the process of CD to most development teams they think that it is impossible to continuously deliver software that could be deployed directly to the live environment or customer. Yet they forget that in many cases they themselves are guilty of deploying less rigorously tested software into a production environment. Many managers usually simply state that it cannot be done. And it usually cannot be done before a CI has been in place for a while, and unlike CI it needs more than just a large set of unit tests. It also needs a test suite of functional, integration and validation tests.

What I consider most important for CD is to change the way bugs or suspected bugs are handled. Currently many bugs are closed with the message “could not reproduce”. In a CD environment there is no reason to not write validation tests for all bug reports. Consider it possible that all bugs, including irreproducible bugs, are suggestions for validation tests, if you believe that a bug should not happen it should be tested for.

Image source: xt0ph3r