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.

Reduction of roaming prices in EU

Cyprus Mail shares some good news:

CYPRIOTS and other EU nationals on the move will now enjoy cheaper roaming charges under a deal struck yesterday by the European Commission and its lawmakers.

[…]

Under the new deal, charges on calls made while travelling in other EU countries cannot exceed 29 cents per minute and calls received while outside the home country should cost no more than 8 cents per minute.

Sending a text message while away has a ceiling charge of 9 cents per minute and accessing the internet, 70 cents per megabyte.

Currently under Cyta’s monthly-pay plan, roaming charges within the EU cost 41 cents per minute for an outgoing call, 12 cents per minute for a received call, 12 cents per text message, and 73 cents per megabyte for internet access. The new charges should reduce the cost of a call significantly for people using their mobile phones within the bloc. On outgoing calls alone users will save 12 cents per minute with the charge dropping from 41 cents to 29 cents.
By 2014 yesterday’s newly-agreed caps should go down by almost another third except internet costs, which would drop to 20 cents per megabyte, reports from Brussels said.

Ignoring the actual numbers, that’s music to my ears.  I hope mobile Internet will go cheaper faster than that.

When will Apple learn of online shopping?

I know I am biased when I talk about Apple.  I am a Google fan-boy and an Open Source advocate.  Apple doesn’t go well with it.  But even I’ve been heard giving the credit where it’s due.  In the same way, I’ve been heard criticizing Google at times.  Now, it’s Apple time.  Big time.

People were scared of online shopping back in 1998.  Companies were slow to adopt it, worrying about fraud and such.  But these days, in March of 2012, online shopping is a done deal pretty much.  Everybody who needs it, has it.  Everybody knows how to use it.  And so on and so forth.

One would assume, Apple, being one of the leading technology companies, would be sitting tightly on the bandwagon.  And they do.  A bit.  If you are in the USA.  Or maybe a few other countries.  But if you are in Cyprus, which is, by the way, a member of the European Union, here’s how you do online shopping with Apple.

You donwload a PDF file, print it out, fill the form, and fax (!!!) it to Apple.  And then you wait… Really Apple, fax?  What happened to online purchasing?  After all, there are only $99 and $299 options there.  It’s not like I’m buying an airplane. #FAIL

No more print for Encyclopaedia Britannica

New York Times reports, somewhat sadly, that Encyclopaedia Britannica will not continue with the printed version any more.

After 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print.

[…]

In an acknowledgment of the realities of the digital age — and of competition from the Web site Wikipedia — Encyclopaedia Britannica will focus primarily on its online encyclopedias and educational curriculum for schools. The last print version is the 32-volume 2010 edition, which weighs 129 pounds and includes new entries on global warming and the Human Genome Project.

Via Slashdot.

TripAdviser can be confusing

I’ve heard plenty of good things about the TripAdvisor website.   I’ve never used it myself yet, but I know that a few people that I trust with reviews do.  Today, I was searching for information on a restaurant and Google suggested that I check out this TripAdvisor page.  Looks good, doesn’t it?  Here is a screenshot of it, just in case it will change in the future.

 

Reviews, ratings, and even photos – that is all very useful.  But I needed more.  Given that I had no idea where exactly the restaurant was, I thought the most helpful details would be the address or at least a phone number.  A link with “More restaurant details” only told me that I’d need a reservation.  But again, no information on how to actually make the reservation.

Without that basic info, the rest is pretty much useless.  Gladly, that’s not the only website on the Internet.  This one seems to have both the address and the phone number…

GitHub compromise : lessons to learn

GitHub has been compromised.  That, by itself, is important enough – with millions of projects and developers using it.  But there is more to it.  Have a look at these links:

There is more coverage all over the web, but I’m sure you know how to find your way around.  Now, to the lessons that we can learn from what happened.

  1. “Don’t panic” in big friendly letters, courtesy of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  It’s obvious something out of the ordinary happened in GitHub’s routine life.  While they regained the clarity of mind pretty fast, they were caught off-guard.  Don’t panic is the first rule of panic situations.
  2. Pay attention!  Given the size and active lives of both GitHub and Rails, it’s difficult to pay attention to every little detail.  But you should always weight the “large number of installations” or “large user base” considerations.  Even if there is an issue with a documented feature.  We’ve seen examples of this again and again – something that was a part of original functionality once in a while is turned into a malicious attack vector.  Your answer shouldn’t be the simple “check your code”.
  3. Stay transparent.  As you can see from a few comments in the above links, the actual compromise is not the biggest deal.  People in general and software developers in particular are very much used to security issues in every software.  It happens.  The bigger deal is, of course, how you handle that.  When you obviously have a problem, don’t try to hide it or misinform people who rely on you.  Say it loud and clear.  Or you will lose trust.
  4. Mind the stack.  Today’s computing world is rather complex.  Most projects rely on third-party libraries, tools, and solutions.  And that’s a good thing.  But when you do that, don’t treat the third-party item as a black box.  That is especially frequent in Open Source Software development.  It’s easy to trust something that is open.  It’s free, it’s open, it’s secure and reliable.  Not always the case.  And sometimes it is the case, but you need to read the documentation and think carefully.  As much as you are concerned about the security of your own code, there is no guarantee that the libraries, framework, or even the language compiler that you are using are secure.  Keep that in mind.

With all that, what’s my attitude to GitHub now?  It’s still the same.  I love the service and I trust the company.  Everybody makes mistakes.  Not everybody learns from them.  When things like that happen, I’m always willing to give a second chance (and sometimes even the third).  Maybe I’m just hoping that when I screw up people won’t just turn away.  Maybe I’m just an optimist – who knows.  But GitHub still provides the service that I enjoy using.  No matter the compromise, I (or any of my projects) haven’t been affected.  And I think that GitHub will learn from this experience.  So I don’t see any reason to change my attitude.