Category: Technology

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Technology

PunchTab Loyalty Program – Easy To Use – Easy To Scam :(

I started looking into a loyalty program called PunchTab.com.  It is super easy to install, but it is also super easy to game.  🙁

The fact that the points are generated through JavaScript, means it is super simple to open a javascript console, copy/paste in some code a you have free points.  I don’t know what the answer is, but they want you to have a catalog of “gifts” to give to visitors based on points.  Not a good idea, unless you happen to have money to burn.

Sorry PunchTab, you are a no go at this point in time.

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Technology

The iPhone is and Amazing Device

I know everyone talks about how great Apple’s iPhone is.   I did something different yesterday.

We did our year end inventory yesterday.  We use wireless scanners to control inventory, pick, ship, etc…  We have a limited number of scanners to go around, and to do year end inventory we need every body we can get to count.  This is a big warehouse and it takes time. 

I was able to use SSH on my iPhone to connect to our scanner software that I wrote and was able to count inventory through it.  Granted, it wasn’t quite as fast and convenient as the wireless scanners we use, but in a pinch it was awesome.

It’s just an amazing device that everyone should have.

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Latest Tech Technology

Mosso Cloud Services

I have been using Mosso Cloud Files for a few weeks now and I am very happy with the results. Using their API has been very straight forward and easy to use. Adding my files to their service and then changing the website to use those only took a few hours to do.

They just added a blog post about their speed compared to Amazon’s CloudFront CDN. From two different 3rd party network monitoring and analytics services, they were able to prove they are faster. Twice as fast in most cases.

Read the enire blog entry here: Mosso is Fast… and We’re So Much Faster, it’s Not Even Close!

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Technology

Woot Ads: Funny or Offensive?

TechCrunch has written an article about the new Woot ads that appear when you search for “goog” on google.

Goog is the NYSE code for the google stock.  You can type in stock codes on google to get a quick snapshot of where the stock is at.

Well, Woot has gone pretty far into their sarcastic tool box and pulled out a couple of very funny ads.  Try if for yourself.

Ad 1:

Before you jump out of
that window, why not spend your
last remaining dollars at Woot?

Ad 2:

Losing your house?
Without that mortgage to pay, now
you can buy more of our junk!

Ad 3:

You’re broke.  So what?
You could live without gadgets, but
can you really call that “living”?

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Technology

PHP4 is Officially Dead

Today is the final day of support for PHP4. Luckily I have been using PHP5 for quite a long time and have been happy with it. I do not think I use all of the features that would make it a nasty upgrade, like some people do.

I try my hardest to keep all of my software (especially for bowlingball.com) up to date with the latest release. Knowing that support and upgrades will eventually be dropped, it is important for me to stay current.

This is often easier said than done…. 🙂

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Technology

Revision 3 is Changing The Way We Consume Media

I do not own an iPod, Zune, or any other media player for that matter. I have always been into “tech”, but not much into music, therefore I did not see any need for these devices.

Then in December 2007, I started carpooling with Brian Halstrom and got into a couple of “PodCasts”. I have heard of them before, but never gave them any credit. You may see a couple of low quality ones and assume they are all like that.

Then I find Revision 3. A company started by Kevin Rose and Jay Andelson. And anyone that knows the old Tech TV, will know Kevin Rose. Man do I miss the old Tech TV days, I loved it.

Back to my point. Revision 3 is creating awesome “TV Quality” shows for the Internet. As broadband becomes more available to the masses, we are going to see more and more push to the Internet.

All of the big cable stations are already moving to the Internet as well. They are making there content available online, because that is where we spend huge parts of our day.

Broadcasting will become a thing of the past. There are so many cable channels now, that they are basically Narrowcasting as it is. It is just costing an arm and a leg to be on the cable networks.

The LA Times wrote a great article on this subject. Check it out, it is fascinating.
Revision3’s web TV runs on star power

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Technology

Added Memory to My Server

I just finished a simple upgrade of my server that hosts “My Life as a Programmer” and Cyborg Computing.

I only had one(1) gig of ram hosting this site, my mail, and the backup database of bowlingball.com.

So far I am very pleased with the additional 4 gigs. The response time to my pages appears to have dropped drastically.

Categories
Technology

WordPress Category List Entries

We at bowlingball.com wanted to move our articles into wordpress to use the fantastic functionality already built in. I wanted a way to click on a category and show just a list of article titles, and none of the text.

All you have to do is edit the archive.php file to remove the divs that show the post. It’s simple and easy to do.

Check out our new Bowling Article and Tips pages at bowlingball.com.

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Technology

bowlingball.com’s blog is renamed

bowlingball.com has changed their blog name from “bowlingball.com Corporate Blog” to “bowlingball.com News and Information“.  This name change is trying to bring a little more comfort for visitors that are truned off by the term “Corporate Blog.”  Many customers thought they were in our personal corporate business.

I am hopefule that the name change makes sense and helps more customer visit and leave comments.  We want to build a community of people that want to participate.

This is important to keep in mind for new people wanting to start a blog.  Sometimes the name says everything, both good and bad.

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Technology

SVN – Subversion Version Control

I am a little annoyed with myself.  When I first started at bowlingball.com I made it a point to rewrite their code and use a version control system.  SVN was the one I chose over CVS.  I am not sure why I made this decision, but through the research I did, it was the right choice.

The problem was I maintained my code for quite some time, however I am a person that make changes on the fly.  If someone asked for a change, I would make it to the live code and over time I gradually forgot to make the commits.  Sometimes I would end up doing a mass commit, and the comment would not make sense.  So I just gave up.

I know it was wrong, and I am making it correct.  I just set up new repositories and will make my commits properly from now on.  I have broken my projects into multiple repositories in an effort to make my checkouts and commits move convenient.

Version control is very important.  Being able to turn back time and know for a fact what was changed (if anything) is critical.  You may not know it yet, but a few months down the road you are going to be asked “Did we make any changes that cause sales to increase/decrease on this date?”, you need to be able to give a precise answer.  I feel I have failed in this category on a couple of occasions and I will not let it happen again.

Take it from me, use some form of versioning software.