I just released a new iPhone SEO app and Android SEO app called SEMTab SEO Pro. The basic idea is to keep a list of domains saved, and check SEO/SEM stats like Google PageRank (PR), backlinks, Alexa rank, etc. and Social share information from Twitter, Facebook, and Delicious. Read More »
Protected vs Private Scope: Arrogance, Fear, and Handcuffs
The age old private vs protected debate has been re-ignited in the PHP community recently following the decision of Doctrine2 and Symfony2 to make all class methods private until there is a very clear and proven reason to change them to protected or public. The intention is a good one – to ensure they are providing a clear and stable API through intentional and known extension points that they can better test and support. Fabien (the creator of Symfony) points to this benefit in an article of his own explaining the thinking behind the decision. The primary started point of Fabien’s article and the driving thought behind this whole change and philosophy is (emphasis his):
Having a few well defined extension points force the developer to extend your library the right way instead of hacking your code.
The problem is that this kind of thinking is a slippery slope that kills the spirit of programming. It alienates the more pragmatic developers within communities. Telling other developers that you are going to force them to work with your code in some pre-determined “right way” is an incredibly arrogant statement to make. Read More »
Self Employed
This post comes with a bit of a delay, as it is already three months into the year, but as of January 2011, I have been full time self-employed. I made the difficult decision to voluntarily leave an excellent job with Company52 at the beginning of the year to venture out on my own. Running my own company with full-time focus has always been one of my dreams, and several side projects I have started and been involved with up until now have built up towards that goal.
There is a lot to consider in a decision like this, and I did not weigh it lightly. Somehow after running through all the options, now still seemed like the best time to take the leap. Here’s to a bright future in 2011 and beyond.
MySQL Error: 1033 Incorrect information in file
I recently encountered this error on Disposeamail – a free disposable email site of mine that uses MySQL heavily for storing all incoming mail through an email pipe script.
I did a lot of researching, and basically, there are a few primary culprits I was able to identify that will hopefully save you some time.
Listing Aliases Inside an Android Keystore File With Keytool
If you lose or forget your Android keystore file alias that is used to build APK files for distribution (like I did when trying to package Autoridge Lite for the Android Market), here is a quick and easy way to see them:
- Open a Terminal Window, Run This Command:
1
keytool -list -keystore /location/of/your/com.example.keystore
Make sure “keytool” is either in your PATH, or “cd” into the “tools” directory where your Android SDK files are.
- Enter your keystore password when prompted (you didn’t forget that too, did you? Did you?)
- See results!
You should see something like the picture below if you did everything right. The alias is circled in yellow. If you have multiple aliases in your keystore, they will all be listed, one per line.
Read More »
Zero to App in Two Weeks with Titanium
Like any web developer who has been sitting on the sidelines watching this mobile explosion happen in front of my eyes, I was eager to find a way to jump in. Up until about a month ago, I was still evaluating various different mobile development platforms – Titanium, PhoneGap, and Rhomobile, trying to decide which one I wanted to use to make my first mobile app. My only selection criteria was that the platform would have to be able to produce both iPhone and Android apps with the same code, because I wanted to be able to develop and release both an Android and iPhone apps without having to learn two completely different programming languages and development environments, and without having to do everything twice. Read More »
Practical Uses for PHP 5.3 Closures
Closures are a new language-level feature that has been added to php 5.3, along with namespaces, late static binding, and a slew of other new features, patches, and updates. If you’re like me, you might be wondering what the practical uses for these new features are before you can rightly justify diving in and using them in new or existing projects. I experimented a lot with closures and possible uses over the past few weeks, and came up with some compelling reasons to start using them.
Read More »
MongoDB Gotchas
Most developers are coming from a background with relational database-specific experience, and then trying out some new NoSQL databases like MongoDB. Here are some “gotchas” I ran into while using MongoDB with my MySQL hat still on. Read More »
NoSQL First Impressions: Object Databases Missed the Boat
I’ve spent the past few weeks here at work researching and playing with NoSQL databases (and especially MongoDB) for a new feature we’re developing that doesn’t easily fit into a relational model. And so far, I really like what I see. The profoundness of the shift away from the relational model and the implications that has just blow my mind. You no longer have to fragment your data to persist it. You just store it. That’s it. No more hours toiling over the design your table schema and how to break apart the data you put together just to fit it into a relational model. You can now store your data exactly how you use it in your application, with no other special needs or impedance mismatches. Going back to an RDBMS system now just seems illogical – it’s like breaking apart a camera tripod just to fit it in the same standard size case you’ve been using for years instead of just collapsing it and finding a different case that fits it better. All that effort you go though tearing down your tripod and putting it back together every time you use it is wasted and unnecessary. It’s a symptom of the larger problem that your case doesn’t fit your tripod. Read More »
MySQL Series: How to Detect UTF-8 and Multi-byte Characters
Multi-byte characters can cause quite a few headaches for the unsuspecting webmaster. Sometimes all you need to do to figure out how to fix the problem is detect which database records have UTF-8 data in them and which ones do not. If you’ve been scanning records manually, stop now. Here’s a quick query to cure your ales:
Return all the rows with multi-byte characters in table posts on field title:
1 2 3 | SELECT * FROM posts WHERE LENGTH(title) <> CHAR_LENGTH(title) |
This does pretty much what it looks like: returns all the rows in the posts table where the title’s character length does not match the title’s length. This works because the LENGTH function returns the number of bytes in the string, while the CHAR_LENGTH function returns the number of characters in the string. If the string contains multi-byte characters (individual characters that are made up of more than one byte) like international UTF-8 characters, the two functions will return different numbers and will not be equal, thus including that row in your results.
