Category: Web work

These days, most of my work is very related to the online world. Building web sites, reviewing web applications, integrating with web services, coordinating people who are far away from each other, etc. Whenever I find a new tool or service or an innovative, interesting idea about working online, I share it in this category.

Bitcoin is a money platform with many APIs

Bitcoin is a money platform with many APIs

Bitcoin is much more than just a digital currency. It is a protocol, a network, a currency and a transaction language. Most of all, though, it is an application programming interface (API) for money. Nowadays, bathroom scales and fridges have APIs, so why not money?

Traditional money does have APIs, but they are closed. You can program the merchant API of the VISA network if you are a trusted merchant. You can send and receive FIX messages if you are a stockbroker or exchange. Regular people, however, don’t even have APIs into their bank accounts, let alone the broader economy. Bitcoin changes all that by not only offering an API for accounts (wallets) and transactions, but also making that API available to everyone.

Gmail SSL error and local time

For a few minutes now I had this silly error showing up in my browser:

Gmail SSL certificate error

 

That was really weird.  Especially considering that the time wasn’t set to “Monday, January 1, 2007 2:03:11 AM”.  A few minutes later however, the problem seems to be gone.

VaultPress Lite

VaultPress Lite

VaultPress, “the world’s best WordPress security, backup and support”, has recently introduced a Lite plan.  It’s only $5 per month and it covers most of the essentials:

  • Daily backups that happen automatically, so you can focus on creating, not logistics.
  • Automated site restores, so you can restore your entire site with a single click.
  • Thirty days of saved backups, so you can go back in time to restore the last clean version of your site.

It’s cheap enough for small, personal blogs, and it’s more than perfect for start-ups and small businesses too.  $60 per year for healthy full night sleep is nothing in my book.