Infi-Zeal's Blog

Website Backup with Rsyn If you pay for web hosting in order to run any kind of web-based application—from your WordPress blog to a nameplate site to a file-sharing service to a social media data archive—you need to back up your web server's data the same way you back up your computer's data. On database-driven web sites, there are two kinds of data you want to preserve and restore in case of disaster: the files that make up your site (the PHP/Perl/Python, JavaScript, CSS files, etc), and the contents of your database. Further, any good backup system should make both a local copy and a remote copy of the backed-up data. I run several database-driven sites and applications, including this blog, so my backup system has to be solid. Here's how I have it set up. This method assumes a few things: You're running a LAMP-based web site (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl/Python). You have command line access to your web server via SSH. You know how to make ne...

Facebook's new Timeline feature   is rolling out to all users, and while we think it's pretty awesome—not  to mention ripe for customization there are a lot of people who aren't  big fans. If you don't really like the Timeline view, here's how to get  rid of it. This method won't take you back to the old layout, but it will get rid  of some of Timeline's clutter, like the  cover photo, friends box, and  two-column view. The layout will still be different and timeline-y, but it will be much cleaner. It won't change anything about how other  people see your profile—just how you view Facebook on your machine. All  you need is an extension called Social Fixer. Here's what you need to  do. Head to Socialfixer.com and install the extension for your browser. It's available for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, and any browser that supports Greasemonkey. Sadly, Internet Explorer is not supported.  Once you've ins...

 Game Capture from Roxio can do even more: record in-game XBOX360 and/or PS3 to your PC while you play it on your TV and it even includes a video editing software to spice up your homemade videos. The Roxio Game Capture includes a hardware box in which you need to plug and setup so you can capture all the inputs (video and audio) and record them into a video file. The component includes all the RCA, audio, and USB cables so you are good to set it up from the go. Roxio Game Capture records the video to your PC in 480p and supports these following formats: AVI, WMV, DivX, and also MP4. You can also take XBOX360 and PS3 in-game screenshots with Roxio Game Capture and the files will be saved in one of these following formats: JPG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, or GIF. Not just that, you can even edit your videos using the included software, so you can add transitions, commentary, subtitles, background music, effects and more. It makes your videos much more alive and fun, ready to be shared on ...

Test Webpages Using Compat Inspector Website managers who would like to learn whether the latest changes in the Internet Explorer platform also affect their site, can now use the Compat Inspector for IE10 to take a look into the matter.  Compat Inspector can be easily run on a page that has problems, regardless of whether developers are getting ready for the release of the upcoming Internet Explorer 10 or they are simply upgrading to IE9. If there are issues, the Compat Inspector will deliver messages explaining them and will also provide details on what needs to be done to resolve these problems. Released as a JavaScript-based testing tool meant to analyze the website while it runs, the Compat Inspector will provide reports on patterns of interaction that might cause issues in recent modules. “This allows you to identify problems quickly without memorizing a bunch of documentation or searching through the entirety of your site's code,” Tony Ross, program manager, In...

The move to the new rapid release cycle has definitely spurred new blood into Firefox development. Firefox 10 is around the corner, even as Firefox 4 landed less than a year ago. In that time, the browser has evolved, it's faster, less memory hungry and boasts plenty of new features as well as better support for new web standards. But there's one department where Firefox may still be a little behind, security. Firefox is not an unsecure browser, compared the other popular browsers, but it is lacking some big features, especially those that Google Chrome , which has become the gold-standard, boasts, notably sandboxing and JIT hardening. According a recent interview though, Mozilla is working on just those very features, though work is more advanced in some aspects than in others. A recent report, created by an independent company but paid for by Google, found Firefox to be lacking in a couple of areas in particular. One of them is Just-in-Time compiling hardening, ...