“Open Source” collection
Discover the best in free, community-driven software and transparent digital platforms. These evaluations focus on versatile, accessible tools that empower users through open collaboration and innovative digital freedom.
HTD Tech Briefs
View all →September 18, 2007
WordPress: People can view your Plugin Folder unless you fix!
As I was working on the update to my blog theme, I found a security hole that I think has existed for a long time in WordPress. While not incredibly devastating, nor directly tied to "code" within WordPress, it is a hole that is very easy to fix. The concern is more with KNOWING the types of plugins that a…
Read more →September 18, 2007
Blog: New theme, new functionality, new bugs
I have just recently applied a new theme to my blog, trying to keep many of the color schemes from before but also trying to help readability. However, it is still a work in progress as I test out many new plugins and style changes. I ask that if there are any readers out there of my writing, that you…
Read more →September 13, 2007
iPhone: Rumor – iUnlock and AppInstaller incompatible
I received a report from a reader (Nick) that he is having issues with his AppInstaller after installing iUnlock. Essentially, he could not install and uninstall applications on his iPhone after using iUnlock. So, thinking this through, it made sense that this would not work. AppInstaller pushes a customized version of the Firmware to your iPhone. iUnlock modifies some of…
Read more →September 12, 2007
iPhone: Brief Reviews of ApolloIM, MobileChat, Summerboard, MobileTwitterific, Mines, iBlackjack, and MobileToDoList
It's nice that, for now, Apple seems to be "okay" with allowing third-party applications to be installed on the iPhone (although now there seems to be some backtracking by Apple with a new statement that "software updates will most likely break" native apps). Despite this, the movement is growing, especially with the combined forces of Nullriver Software and PXL Package…
Read more →
September 10, 2007
WordPress update: Version 2.2.3 released with Security Fix
Just updated my blog with WordPress version 2.2.3 (haven't taken the plunge with the beta version 2.3 yet but I am working on a new theme). The 2.2.3 version is just a security release that they recommend people upgrade to, especially regarding two high-priority bugs. The following bugs were closed: 3002 - On Windows machines register_activation_hook() does not work if…
Read more →August 30, 2007
iPhone app: ApolloIM version updated to -0.9 with connection persistence
As mentioned previously, ApolloIM has been updated from version -1 to -0.9 and now includes partial "suspend mode." I have installed and tested it and it seems to work ok. However, the author clearly notes on his development site that there are some limitations to how well this works. If, for example, your iPhone enters a low-power mode (e.g., if…
Read more →August 29, 2007
iPhone App: ApolloIM update on its way
I have reinstalled the Apptapp Installer mentioned in my previous post and it seems to be more stable now (of course I am not monkeying around in the bowels of my directory structure this time). It was updated to version 2.4 as of this writing. There are plenty of new applications now available for install including the first Instant Messaging…
Read more →August 15, 2007
iPhone App: Telekinesis – remote access your Mac through mini web apps on iPhone
Now this code creation really wow-ed me! I was searching to find out if LogMeIn worked on the iPhone. (It does, sort of, but impossible to mimic button clicks...yet. But that is another story.) So I found a really interesting application called telekinesis (hosted at Google code) that truly impressed me. It doesn't profess to be a Remote Control application…
Read more →
June 19, 2007
Family Tech: Easily manage what sites your kids see with Glubble
Finally I have come across something to write about that truly talks to my site motto "where technology and fatherhood collide." It is not very often that I can write about a new service or piece of software that can help a family. Computers are now as common as TVs and now kids have computers in their rooms, at schools,…
Read more →
May 26, 2007
reCaptcha – post comments and help digitize old text
I'm sure that a lot of people have heard about Captcha...if you have downloaded files from RapidShare or tried to post comments on a blog (like mine) or register for a new site service or something like that, you have probably come across Captcha. Captcha stands for Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart. It is design…
Read more →May 23, 2007
Working with Pheedo, Feedburner and Wordpress
I have been playing around with Feedburner, Pheedo and my blog's feeds and somewhere in the process, something got confused (or maybe I did, who knows). My old feed started showing rows and rows of the "email this * save to del.icio.us * add to del.icio.us..." etc. (See the image below) My intention was to see how I could get…
Read more →
May 16, 2007
WordPress updates code to 2.2…and I follow
First post under WordPress 2.2. Did some rookie moves when I did the upgrade (thought I remember what I needed to do) and forgot to push the wp-includes directory. Here are highlights of what changed (aside from the 200+ bug fixes/feature upgrades). Widgets - you can get rid of your Sidebar Widgets plug-in by Automattic, Inc., it's now included. Widgets…
Read more →
