Bitcoin is a new currency which has no physical form, but can be considered Internet cash. If you want more information on Bitcoin in general, take a look at the We Use Coins website, which has a great introductory video and articles/links to other useful Bitcoin resources.

Bitcoin Helper 0.1 Released

As part of my interest in Bitcoin, I’ve decided to start a mini-project in the form of Bitcoin Helper, a PHP class which will contain multiple methods to aid web site/application developers in integrating Bitcoin related functionality into their systems. The first function, which comes in Bitcoin Helper 0.1, is a really easy to use converter that can convert non Bitcoin currencies into the equivalent Bitcoin value and return the result.

To see how simple it is to use, see the following code snippet.

include "bitcoin_helper.php";
$bh = new bitcoin_helper;
echo $bh->convert_to_btc("GBP", 10);

This will convert £10 (Great British Pounds) into Bitcoin and echo out the result. The following works for USD and Euros as well.

echo $bh->convert_to_btc("USD", 10);
echo $bh->convert_to_btc("EUR", 10);

The trade data for several other currencies is provided from the external source (see the Bitcoin Charts website). If your currency is listed there, entering its ISO 4217 currency code as the first parameter of the convert_to_btc function should allow you to convert any value of that currency into Bitcoin.

Please note that this is the first release of Bitcoin Helper, so I can not guarantee it is bug free. More checks, validation, improvements and new features will be added in the future versions. Feel free to leave a comment with any suggestions.

I hope this very basic Bitcoin Helper release can assist web developers with some simple Bitcoin conversion in their sites.

Download Bitcoin Helper 0.1

To download this first version of Bitcoin Helper (0.1), please visit the Bitcoin Helper project page.

It is truly awesome to see how far we have come in terms of the Internet and networking computer communication. It is also slightly amusing to see how out of the loop the media was only 30 years ago, and more specifically how they did not, immediately, see the huge potential of networked computers, and how these system could possibly affect home computer users in very near the future.

I feel like a completely moron but I’d never been able to find out where these saved threads were listed until today, when I looked it up. Apparently I am not the only one who has trouble finding it. Many people, including myself, went to my account/profile page on reddit and looked for a ‘saved’ tab of some sorts. It turns out this is not where the saved threads are listed at all.

The link to view saved threads is not stored in your user section, but is shown on the homepage (how did I miss it?) or on the individual subreddit pages. See my screenshot below.

I hope this helps a few people like me, who were looking in completely the wrong place for this link.

Coming back to this year, an appeal from the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has recently gone out. I’ve quoted a part of it below.

I got a lot of funny looks ten years ago when I started talking to people about Wikipedia.

Let’s just say some of the business types were skeptical of the notion that volunteers from all across the world could come together to create a remarkable pool of human knowledge – all for the simple purpose of sharing.

No ads. No profits. No agenda.

A decade after its founding, more than 380 million people use Wikipedia and its sister sites every month – almost a third of the Internet-connected world.

It is the 5th most popular website in the world. The other four have been built and maintained with billions of dollars in investment, huge corporate staffs and relentless marketing.

But, Wikipedia isn’t anything like a commercial website. It is a community creation, written by volunteers making one entry at a time. You are part of our community. And I’m writing today to ask you to protect and sustain Wikipedia.

Together, we can keep it free of charge and free of advertising. We can keep it open – you can use the information in Wikipedia any way you want. We can keep it growing – spreading knowledge everywhere, and inviting participation from everyone.

Each year at this time, we reach out to ask you and others all across the Wikimedia community to help sustain our joint enterprise with a modest donation of £20, £35, £50 or more.

If you value Wikipedia as a source of information – and a source of inspiration – I hope you’ll choose to act right now.

Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Founder

Naturally, I’m donating again. A £50.00 GBP donation to Wikipedia and Wikimedia UK this time.

I encourage anybody who uses Wikipedia significantly, to put forward a donation, of any amount, if at all possible.

I’m not a Windows user primarily. The vast majority of time my computers and laptop boot into Linux, specifically Ubuntu, as of recent. However, I do have several of my machines set-up with both Ubuntu and Windows 7.

One of my major gripes with Windows, which has always been there, is that after a clean reinstall, you have no programs of any real use installed at all. In comparison, a clean install of Ubuntu gives you a graphics editor, photo manager, fully featured e-mail client, personal information management suite and a full office suite. Of course, you now get the Ubuntu Software Centre, which lets you install find and install full size applications with the same ease as using the iPhone App store or Android Marketplace.

Windows has none of this. A brand spanking new Windows install does very little for productivity without a few essential apps installed.

Usually this involves the labourious task of:

1. Manually searching for and/or heading to the website of the program you want to download
2. Finding the current version/build to download, starting the download and waiting for the download to complete
3. Running the installer and waiting for its completion
4. Repeat steps 1 – 3 for every program you wish to install

Recently, I’ve discovered Ninite, which is a fantastic website/program which lets you cut down the above procedure (which could possible take hours) to a quick procedure that takes a few minutes at most. This is how you’d do the above, with Ninite.

1. Go to https://ninite.com/ and select the programs you want to install.
2. Download the installer it generates
3. Run the installer and wait for its completion.

And then you’re done! No repetition, as Ninite cleverly puts the installation of many, many possible programs behind a single simplistic installer.

It supports installation for the most popular web browsers, messaging applications, media players, imaging programs, document editors/viewers, security software (such as anti-virus and anti-malware software), plug-ins (such as Flash and Java), file sharing applications, general utilities and even certain developer/administration tools.

Basically, after every (annoying) reinstall of Windows that I have to do, the first place I’m heading is to Ninite’s website.

As a final note, I’m really hoping they add official graphics drivers to their list of automatically installed items. That would be very useful for a lot of people I know. Suggesting new apps is a feature they offer right at the bottom of the Ninite website.

Update: Although geolocation is commonly referenced when discussing HTML 5, it is a API which is maintained in a separate specification and is not actually a new feature of HTML 5.

Identifying the physical location of a computer via HTML 5′s geolocation is now incredibly easy and only requires a few lines of JavaScript.

Due to the simplicity of geolocation and its ever growing support in modern browsers, it seems very probable that this could be exploited for malicious purposes. An example scenario of how malware could theoretically track the physical location of infected machine could be as follows.

1. Malware infects system and becomes memory resident.
2. Malware adds malicious website URL to a local web browser’s HTML 5 geolocation white list.
3. Malware launches hidden/backgrounded instance of web browser, navigating to malicious website URL.
4. Malicious website JavaScript utilises HTML 5 geolocation services to track physical location.
5. Physical location is relayed to server via AJAX or other means.
6. Steps 4 and 5 can be repeated as part of a loop containing time delay within the malicious website’s JavaScript.
7. Malware can monitor the memory resident state of the browser within the system’s process list and restart the hidden/backgrounded web browser instance if required.

In this example, the geolocation is all done via a local hidden user agent (web browser) using web technologies. The web part of the system, by its very nature, multi-platform. However, the initial piece of malware which launches the hidden web browser instance will likely be written in a platform specific manner.

Changing this, or writing multiple versions of the ‘browser launcher’ malware would effectively generate a form of malware which could track the physical location of users regardless of their operating system.

Do you think this kind of malware is a reasonable threat now or in the near future? What other potential problems exist for devices that can be identified by geolocation technologies?

In the vast majority of today’s websites, if a program is required to pick out a particular part of a HTML page, such as the main article, the sidebar or the top navigation, it would have to be programmed to do so on a per website and web page basis. This is because every website structures its HTML differently, unless based on an underlying package with a consistent HTML foot print.

Most current websites therefore use a variety of <p>, <div> and <span> tags to surround their content. These tags define style and do not obviously determine whether the contained content is part of the website’s navigation system or whether it is the main article or focus of the web page. The new HTML 5 tags aim to change this by explicitly defining content.

Defining content with specific HTML 5 tags will make websites easier to parse by computer programs. This could benefit accessibility readers for the blind and allow content aggregating systems and ‘mash-up’ websites to easily parse, link to and cite your articles. Content aggregation and automation of web page content retrieval is quite fundamental to some of the newer Web 2.0 sites and social networks. Good examples being Facebook’s automatic retrieval of web page information when a link is entered into a status update, or Reddit’s automatic thumbnail generation based on images found within the linked web page.

Here is a listed on related HTML content tags, as available from the W3C Schools website.

• <article> – Defines a main article on a page. Can include cite (citation) and pubdate (publishing date) attributes.
• <details> – States content details for a specific section. Can include an open attribute defining whether or not the details within are visible to the end-user.
• <figcaption> – States the caption for a figure as defined by the figure tag.
• <figure> – Usually used to group a set of elements.
• <footer> – Footer layout element. This is used to contain the footer content of the page, usually contains the website name, author and copyright information.
• <header> – Header layout element. This tag is designed to contain the top header of a document, usually showing the website logo, page and/or company title and subtitle.
• <hgroup> – A tag used to group together heading tags such as <h1>, <h2>, <h3> and so on.
• <keygen> – A key generation tag which defines a generated (encryption) key that can be associated with a HTML form.
• <meter> – The <meter> tag contains content which is deemed to be a measurement of some sort.
• <nav> – The <nav> tags stands for navigation and is designed to surround navigation links, such as those present in a sidebar bar or navigational header/footer.
• <summary> – The <summary> tag defines the title of a <details> element.
• <time> – This tags contains content which is a statement or measurement of time and/or date/time.

Unfortunately, it is likely that HTML 5 content tags with not be adopted completely for quite some time and there will likely continued use of existing HTML mark up and related styling of <div> and <span> tags for quite some time.

The inclusion of C:\\fakepath\\ is a security feature of Internet Explorer 8, designed to prevent information regarding the file system structure being exposed when files are selected via a file input box. Current versions of most other web browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, will return the file name without any path (relative or absolute).

The HTML5 specification states that the browser’s implementation of a file upload control should not reveal the true path to the file via its ‘value’ attribute. Internet Explorer, as always, does this differently than other browsers by including ‘fakepath’ rather than just removed the local path in its entirety.

This behaviour of Internet Explorer 8 can be overridden by added the size to the list of trusted sites within Internet Explorer 8 Internet options window. I’d personally only recommend this if the system is an secure internal and/or Intranet web-based system which requires the use of the full path.

Ideally, existing systems should be recoded to either not use the full path or to retrieve the full path via another method, such as manual input into a text input field.

I hope this post helps web developers who have unexpectedly come across this strange ‘fakepath’ and been unaware of where it was coming from.

Graph sourced from Arbor Networks blog entry.

The main reason for Google’s huge increase in general Internet traffic was its acquisition of YouTube in 2007. YouTube delivers huge quantities of streaming video traffic, and the impressive growth of YouTube alone is enough to make a noticeable difference. Other contributing factors are massively increased adoption of other Google applications, such as Google Mail, Docs and Calendar, not only by consumers but also by mass deployment of Google Apps within businesses, as a replacement for local Microsoft exchange server set-ups.

Discretely, whilst doing no ‘evil’ (open to debate), Google has managed to push itself to the forefront of the Internet and is now a household name. Everyone knows Google.

You no longer search the Internet, you Google it.

You can click the above image for an enlarged screenshot. If you’re interested, there is more information about the BBC homepage and the new, re-branded Google homepage.

So, what is new in Contacular since my last post? Quite a bit actually. It is now at version 0.15 and has the following additional features.

1. Fully bespoke, custom contact forms for your websites, allowing to define custom fields for your contact forms
2. File upload field type meaning your users can upload an image or document to your contact form and it will be quickly e-mailed to you
3. Ability to restrict file uploads to specific types for added security
4. Use of a PHP mailer class to increase flexibility instead of using the default PHP mail() function
5. Added multiple preset form types for near instant integrations.
6. Many code improvements and optimisations

For all other changes that have happened in Contacular, take a look at the Contacular change log.

I’m still getting lots of feedback in about Contacular and am continually working to improve it. So tell me what you think in the comments below, or contact me regarding Contacular directly.

“The release of Apple’s ever popular smartphone, the iPhone, back in mid 2007 caused a huge development spike in websites and dynamic web applications designed the mobile devices. Of course, the vast majority of these mobile website were developed specifically with the iPhone in mind, however the results were beneficial to pretty much all smartphones with the capability the browse the web and with some form of web browser application.

So, why do I think the iPad will slow this development in the mobile web market? The iPad is a mobile device itself is it not?

Well, perhaps not. Apple’s iPad does indeed use an operating system very similar to the iPhone, with backwards compatibility with almost all of the iPhone’s downloadable apps, and yes, it is mobile in the true sense of the word – it can be easily carried around unlike a full desktop computer and much more easily than a typically larger and much heavier laptop. However, the one aspect of the iPad which stands out is its native screen resolution of 1024×768″

If you’re interested, feel free to read the full article on how the iPad may affect the development of mobile websites in the near future.

So, what is Contacular?

Contacular is an open source contact form generator and processor written in PHP. It is designed to be used as either a complete PHP contact form solution, with full validation and e-mailing, or as an initial code base for web development to build upon. I’ve designed Contacular to be really simple to get up and running with and yet still be very expandable. The entire system is object-orientated and open source licensed.

A quick overview of the features of Contacular:

1. Fully integrated contact form solution
2. Simple generation of contact forms
3. Many built-in Contacular contact form types
4. Integrated reCAPTCHA human check / spam protection support
5. Adoption of existing website styling (CSS) wherever possible
6. Form field validation in all forms
7. Automatic validation error reporting
8. Advanced validation – e.g. checking submitted e-mail addresses are from real domains
9. E-mailing form results to one or more recipients
10. GPL licensed, open source, object orientated code base
11. Tested in multiple browsers on multiple platforms
12. Seamless upgrading to new versions – just download and replace the files
13. Easily expandable
14. More on the way…

Take a look at the how to use Contacular guide, and if you’re interested, go ahead and download Contacular. The latest version is always at the top, with that download page also containing the Contacular change log.

When starting a new forum board based on the vBulletin forum (or in fact an forum software), one of the most common problem is making the board popular and getting users to register. The problem most people face is that users will not register on a forum board that looks completely empty! I mean, who would?

So, how can you do this? People will not register if a board is empty – that much is obvious. I’ve recently had to artificially inflate the user count and online users for a vBulletin forum, by request of the forum board owner. Luckily, I found an excellent plugin which does just this. Not only does it increase the counts for online members and guests, but it also lists real usernames.

It is implemented by grabbing the existing member names from the database and appending them to user list at the bottom of the forum home. This plugin is very ingenius and pretty believable – good if you are starting up a new vBulletin powered forum board.

If you wish, you can read more about and download the vBulletin Fake User plugin. Note that you will need a vBulletin.org account and a valid vBulletin license to download this plugin.

Retrospectively, I do not believe this is necessarily the best manner in which to entice new users to any form of community for it provides little motivation to join beyond the active community. If the ‘active community’ (which in this case, would not exist) produces no content worthy of the potential member’s time, why would they feel the need to register or sign up?

I have and still do run a few online communities, including vBulletin forum boards. During this time, I have found new and interesting content to the specific niche (if one exists) is the key for all forms of online social activity and indeed, for drawing in new users. If the content is interesting enough, people will come either in surges for time sensitive content or as a new member registration trickle effect over time.

Google Chrome OS is a basic operating system built upon the Linux kernel. It uses a custom graphical user interface which is based around Google’s very fast web browser, Google Chrome. It does away with most of the regular operating system and application usage paradigms and focuses primarily on the web browser and therefore Google’s primary domains in the computer software marketplace, search and web applications.

This new operating system is initially designed to run on net book style hardware. Google have been in talks with a large variety of hardware companies and aim to have Google Chrome OS powered computers released to consumers before the end of 2010.

As emphasised in the video, Google Chrome OS is designed to almost exclusively utilise web applications and thus almost all data, excluding locally stored caches, is held on the Internet, thus promoting the use of cloud computing for data storage. With Google Mail, Google Docs and Google Calendar, Google already has a formidable cloud based productivity suite in the form of  web applications.

It will be very interesting to see how well the open-source Google Chrome OS does and how it helps in the general promotion of alternative open-source operating systems as a whole.

What do you think? Is Google Chrome OS good for Linux?

Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia from the Wikimedia Foundation

I just donated to Wikipedia’s latest fund raising attempt. Being one of my primary resources for information, and an authority on almost any subject under, including and above the Sun, I feel the donation is well worth doing. I recommend anyone who can afford to make the donation and values the information and functionality Wikipedia provides, makes a donation, however small to the Wikimedia Foundation.

I donated £10.00 GBP, and received the following e-mail. I am tempted to donate more.

Dear Jordan,

Thank you for your gift of GBP 10.00 to the Wikimedia Foundation,
received on December 14, 2009.

Your donation celebrates everything Wikipedia stands for: the power of
information, freedom, sharing, learning and discovery.   Thank you so
much for helping keep Wikipedia freely available for its 330 million
readers around the world.

Many people love Wikipedia, but surprisingly few know it’s run by a
non-profit.  Please help us spread the word, by forwarding this e-mail
to a few of your friends.

If you have questions about your donation, please send a message to
donate@wikimedia.org.  To learn more about the Wikimedia Foundation,
visit our blog at http://blog.wikimedia.org/ or our website at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/. Or, follow us at
http://twitter.com/wikimedia, http://identi.ca//wikimedia, or
http://bit.ly/wikiFacebook.

And again, thank you.  I’m really, really happy to have
your help.

Sincerely Yours,

Sue Gardner
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation

When donating, you are asked to provide a public comment to go alongside the record of your donation if you so wish. I, along with many, took this opportunity to state my appreciation and thanks for Wikipedia project, and the Wikimedia Foundation in general.

I use Wikipedia almost daily. It is by far my most used Internet information resource.

Originally released in September of 2008, Dropbox has grown to be an enormously useful and popular online storage solution. Although Dropbox functions as a storage solution, its most welcoming features are the live synchronisation and sharing features the software and service provides.

For those who have been missing out, Dropbox is incredibly simple to use. Essentially, you simply download a small application which runs in the background on your computer. This program creates a ‘Dropbox’ or ‘My Dropbox’ folder on your computer, and any files and/or folders placed within said folder are automatically synchronised to the online Dropbox storage service.

Most importantly, the Dropbox application can be installed on multiple computers allowing your files to be synchronised rapidly and automatically between many different computers. This can be immensely useful to users of multiple different computer systems, such as a home desktop PC, a work PC, a laptop and so on. Dropbox therefore replaces the need to carry around USB sticks and/or e-mailing files to yourself.

With a free account, you get 2 gigabytes of online storage space. Dropbox also includes a full revision control system and backup of deleted files, allowing files that are deleted accidentally to be restored via the web interface from any computer. The revision control system developed by Dropbox also allows you to restore files to earlier versions again using the simple Dropbox web interface.

I have personally been using Dropbox for many months now and can highly recommend it, both as a synchronisation service and a reliable backup system that has saved my important files on at least one occasion in recent memory. If you wish, you can download the Dropbox application here for Windows, Linux or Mac.

Copyright: The image in this article may be copyright to Dropbox, and is used under terms of fair use in good faith.