Author Archive

Christian Mattix

Knowledge Nuggets

Friday, January 20th, 2012 by Christian Mattix

Anyone who has done development, design, or IT knows that over the course of working on a project, you collect various “nuggets” of knowledge that you ever learn or find. Here I’m going to share some of what I’ve discovered that may be able to help you in your own projects. I have cited the original source of the information if I have that available. If there is something that I’ve left out, feel free to add it in the comments.

“Fatal error: Out of memory…” occurring when PHP and Apache memory limits seem fine

This problem drove me crazy for a little while. I did everything that I thought I needed to do, I changed the php.ini file to increase the php memory available until I ran across this link which provided the answer. We are using WiredTree as our hosting provider, for their servers, the problem was fixed by simply adding: RLimitMem 128000000 to the .htaccess file in the www root directory. After doing this, it fixed everything.

I keep getting Notice: Undefined offset: 1 in views_block_view() in Drupal 7

After doing a bunch of operations during prototyping a Drupal 7 site we kept this error. There wasn’t anything that we seemed to be able to do to eliminate it from the Drupal administrative interface. After searching the web for quite some time I came across this page: http://objitsu.com/node/29 which gave me all of the information I need. From the article:

It’s caused by stale records in the block table that then fail to resolve. There’s plenty of reading material out there and suggested fixes etc. that I am sure work but once I knew what the problem was I applied *my process* for all Drupal problems like this.

  1. Find the code that issues the message..
  2. Trap the code and drupal_set_message() the offending item
  3. Use that information to fix-up the database / code as required.

Here’s how the fix works for this particular problem. In my case I edited views.module, line 569, here’s the code that was causing the notice to be show:

list($name, $display_id) = explode('-', $delta);

and here is what I added to the code to find out what the duff delta in question was…

if (count(explode('-',$delta)) == 1) {
  drupal_set_message($delta);
}
list($name, $display_id) = explode('-', $delta);

All I did then was refresh the page, take a note of hash value that was displayed and then cutting-and-pasting it into a command line MySQL session I issued this query:

mysql> DELETE FROM block WHERE delta = 'd98a0bfa5a33e7d8bab0fc0670bdc9fd';
Query OK, 4 ROWS affected (0.01 sec)

Which took out all four problem pages at once.

What are the command line commands for git?

We use git for source control of our iOS projects. I found a great cheat sheet of git commands here:
Git Cheat Sheet.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Technology | No Comments »

Christian Mattix

Netflix takes over the Internet

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011 by Christian Mattix

According to a report by Sandvine, Netflix is now the largest source of internet traffic in North America during peak hours. Netflix streaming video service now accounts fro about 29% of peak traffic, overtaking P2P, Bittorrent, and Social Networking.

Network Traffic Graph

Almost half of internet traffic is Real-Time Entertainment

Internet Application Traffic Sources

Netflix accounts for 29.7% of Downtream traffic (provided by Sandvine)

These numbers show a distinct shift in media consumer behavior. More and more of people’s entertainment is coming from OnDemand sources. Below is an interview with Netflix CEO given by TechCrunch talking about the future of his company. He says “Streaming is at the core of our business,” and it seems that he is very much correct.

Source: TechCrunch.com

While this is great for consumers, where does it leave advertisers? The rise of on-demand media has made the time honored tradition of a “time slot” in advertising more and more obsolete.

What do you think? Is the internet going to fully replace our TVs? Is the generation that grew up with “on-demand” entertainment at their fingertips going to continue to consume media like the cable and networks provide? Where exactly do advertisers fit? We at Force 5 would love to speak with you about video opportunities, cutting edge marketing, or internet strategies to bring your brand to new customers. Just give us a call or fill out our Force 5 contact form and we will be happy to speak with you.

Now pass the popcorn. . . . lets see what is on the Internet.

Posted in Life, Marketing, Technology | No Comments »

Christian Mattix

Plymouth Indiana Riverside Intermediate School 6th Graders rank #1 in the nation on FBI contest

Friday, May 13th, 2011 by Christian Mattix

FBI-SOS Internet Challenge Seal

In a world where we often hear about “these kids these days” it is great to hear about those doing very well. This spring the 6th graders from Riverside Intermediate School in Plymouth, IN for scoring highest in the nation for April 2011 on the FBI-SOS Internet Safety Challenge. From the FBI-SOS Internet Safety Challenge website:

The mission of the FBI-SOS Internet Challenge is to promote cyber citizenship among students by engaging them in a fun, age-appropriate, competitive online program where they learn how to safely and responsibly use the internet.
Source: www.fbi-sos.org

Amy Gerard, the Computer Applications teacher at the school should be very proud of her accomplishments with her students.

“They had the highest score in the nation for the month of April,” said Gerard. “The FBI office in Indianapolis will be sending a representative later in the month to talk to the students about internet safety, about what it’s like to work at the FBI and present us with a trophy.”

“That technology offers all sorts of exciting opportunities but our kids need to be aware that it also has possible dangers. You see news stories all the time about bad things that can happen to kids who aren’t careful. It’s very important they be aware of possible dangers and make good decisions.”
Source: Plymouth Schools’ Alumni Association

With the commitment to security that we have at Force 5 it is great to see area schools instilling the same values into their students. What to all you readers think? Should computer security and and online safety be added to the core curriculum of our schools?

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Life, Technology | No Comments »

Christian Mattix

How-To: Create a Simple Slideshow Header in Drupal 7

Thursday, May 5th, 2011 by Christian Mattix

UPDATE: Since the posting of this article there has been dramatic improvements by the community and now this is no longer the best way to implement this feature. We now use the “Views Slideshow,” found at: http://drupal.org/project/views_slideshow. We have used this method to create the various slideshows for the City of South Bend at www.SouthBendOn.com.

One of the more common design elements of modern webpage design is a large content area on the landing page of a website. Though there are some Drupal 7 themes that have this feature already (Marinelli comes to mind), what if you want to use a different base theme (like Zen)? In this How-To I will discuss how to create a simple slideshow that can be used in any theme.

The first thing that needs to be done is to ensure that your Drupal 7 environment is set up to support the slideshow. The following Drupal 7 modules need to be installed:

The WYSIWYG module (http://drupal.org/project/wysiwyg) also can be installed to make editing the content easier, but it is not necessary.

Theme “.info” and supporting files

In order to incorporate the slideshow into your theme you will need to reference some external resources in your theme.info file. You will need to add a stylesheet that defines the UI and the JavaScript libraries necessary to make it work. First obtain the following jQuery libraries and place them in the “js” directory of your theme (or other directory that holds the themes external JavaScript files):

  • jquery.cycle.all.min.js
  • jquery.easing.1.3.js

Once you have those files where they need to be, then create a new JavaScript file in the “js” directory. For the purpose of this article, we will name it utility.js. In that file place the following code:

jQuery(document).ready(function() {
	jQuery('.slides').cycle({
		fx: 		'fade',
   		speed:       500, 
    	        timeout:     6000, 
    	        pager:      '.slidenav', 
   		pagerEvent: 'click', 
   		pauseOnPagerHover: true,
		pause:		true
	})
});

Once those files have been placed where they need to go, add the following to your themes “.info” file (assuming the files are in the “js” directory):

scripts[] = js/jquery.cycle.all.min.js
scripts[] = js/jquery.easing.1.3.js
scripts[] = js/utility.js

Now that you have the necessary JavaScript linked, you need to define the visual appearance and structure of the slideshow. The following is in the file slides.css that is located in my theme’s css directory.

@charset "UTF-8";
/* CSS Document */
 
.slideshow-container {
	height: 340px;
}
 
.slides {
	width: 970px;
	height: 340px;
	overflow: hidden;
	position: absolute;
	background: white;
}
 
.slides .slide {
	height: 340px;
}
 
.sdw-l, .sdw-r {
	background-repeat: no-repeat;
	width: 30px;
	height: 485px;
	position: absolute;
	z-index: 99;
}
 
.sdw-r {
	background-image: url(../images/sdw-r.png);
	margin: -155px 0 0 978px;
}
 
.sdw-l {
	background-image: url(../images/sdw-l.png);
	margin: -155px 0 0 -30px;
}
 
.slides .slide .text {
	float: left;
	width: 450px;
	padding: 10px 15px;
}
 
.slides .slide .text p {
	line-height: 1.5em;
}
 
.slides .slide .text p a {
	color: #4a64aa;
	text-decoration: none;
}
 
.slides .slide .text p a:hover {
	text-decoration: underline;
}
 
.slides .slide .photo {
	overflow: hidden;
	width: 480px;
	height: 280px;
	text-align: center;
	vertical-align: middle;
	float: right;
}
 
.slides .slide .photo img {
	margin: 20px auto;
}
 
.slideshow-container .slidenav {
	position: relative;
	margin: 280px 55px 0 0;
	z-index: 100;
	float: right;
}
 
.slideshow-container .slidenav a {
	display: block;
	height: 30px;
	width: 30px;
	text-align: center;
	margin: 0 8px;
	float: left;
	background-color: #e5e2df;
	color: #a1988c;
	text-decoration: none;
	line-height: 30px;
}
 
.slideshow-container .slidenav a:hover {
	background-color: #4a64aa;
	color: white;
}
 
.slideshow-container .slidenav a.activeSlide {
	color: #4a64aa;
}
 
.slideshow-container .slidenav a.activeSlide:hover {
	color: white;
}

Of course the colors and other design related items will be changed to match the visual look and feel of the theme that you are creating. Once the CSS file is created and in the necessary directory, the theme needs to be informed of its existence. Simply add the following line to your themes “.info” file.

stylesheets[all][]        = css/slides.css

One last item needs to be added to the themes “.info” file. The region needs to be defined for the location of the slideshow. I have created a region named “slideshow”. To add this add the following in the regions section of the .info file.

regions[slideshow]      = Slideshow

The final structural item that needs to be modified is the page.tpl.php template file. The template needs to be modified to render the slideshow content. Below is a snippet of the template that is necessary. Notice that the only thing necessary to display the slideshow contents in the print render... call for the slideshow region.

<div class="sdw-l"></div><div class="sdw-r"></div>
<?php print render($page['slideshow']); ?>

Slide Show Content type

Once the structural elements are taken care of now you need to create a “Slide Show Content” content type so that the items can be easily added.

  1. In the “Content Types” section of the Drupal administrative interface create the type. In this type a 3 fields:

    • Title
    • Body Text
    • Slide Image
  2. In the “Manage Display” tab move both “Body Text” and “Slide Image” to be hidden. Also, the comments for this content type should be disabled.
  3. Once you have the content type, you can create a new slide using the “Add Content” links and populating the form fields.

Creating the Slideshow View

Much of the power of this approach comes from the View module. In order to correctly gather the slides that are to be displayed and then render them on the properly a new view needs to be created. In the administrative interface select Structure->Views and create a new view. I named mine “Front Page Slide Show Content”. Do the following to create the view block:

  1. Create a “Block” display for the view
  2. Under Format, select “Unformatted list”
  3. Under Format -> Settings, select “None” for the Grouping Field, and enter “slide” for the Row Class
  4. Under Show->Settings check all “Content: Title”, “Content: Body”, and “Content: Slide Image” as inline fields
  5. In order for the correct XHTML to be generated the output of the fields needs to be added and then modified. User the Views admin UI to add the Title, Body, and Slide Image fields within the “FIELDS” section. Once you have done so make the following changes to the fields.
    • Content: Title=> Under “Rewrite Results,” check the “Rewrite the output” box and use the following in the text:

      <div class="text"><h2>[title]</h2>
    • Content: Body=>Under “Rewrite Results,” check the “Rewrite the output” box and use the following in the text: 
      <p>[body]</p></div>
    • Content: Slide Image=>Under “Style Settings,” check the box for “Wrap field in HTML,” choose “DIV” for the HTML element. Check the “Create a CSS class” box and enter “photo” for the CSS class.
  6. Add “Content: Type = Slide Show Conent” to the View’s filter criteria.
  7. Under Block Name enter a name that you will reference when you add the block to the page’s structure
  8. Save the view

View Block Template File

Now that we have the view and the content type for the slideshow, we need to make sure that the block will render properly within the page. To do that I have a custom template file for this view’s block. For this article the name of this file is views-view--slide-show-content.tpl.php. Below is the contents of the file:

<div class="<?php print $classes; ?>">
<div class="slideshow-container">
<div class="slidenav"></div>
<div class="slides">
  <?php if ($rows) { ?>
      <?php print $rows; ?>
  <?php } ?>
</div> <!-- //slides -->
</div> <!-- //slideshow-container -->
</div> <!-- //classes -->

Adding the Slideshow and wrapping up

The final step is adding the block to the page design. To do that, go to the Structure->Blocks section of the Administrative interface. From there add the View Block that you just created to the “Slideshow” region that you defined earlier. Now once you refresh your cache and look at your page you will see the slideshow.

We at Force 5 are always looking for ways to improve, so I welcome any comments or suggestions that you might have. Since Drupal 7 is so new and there is little documentation on many of the features I look forward to hearing the community’s voice for suggestions. If you would like to hear more about Force 5 Drupal development, feel free to Contact us and we would be happy to discuss them with you. In the meantime feel free to read our blog or read other How-Tos

Tags: , , ,
Posted in How-To, Technology | 17 Comments »

Christian Mattix

Tags Give Starcraft Marine a Place in the Sun…

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011 by Christian Mattix

In the dreary days of January and February, many of us find a boat show on the weekend—letting us dream of warmer days, sand and sun filled holidays, and hours on the nearest lake.

Sitting on a boat inside a convention center doesn’t quite fill the bill—does it? This year, Starcraft Marine decided to help boating enthusiast get to that “happy place” in their mind a little quicker… with the help smart phone technology and QR codes. When the Starcraft marine marketing staff planned their new product launch and winter show activities, Peter Barrett, Executive Vice President of Marketing wanted Starcraft customers to experience the joys of boating by showing them beautiful video footage of their boats on the water while highlighting the numerous Starcraft features that had received high marks in independent tests. To convey the most current videos and information to their customers, Starcraft decided to use smart tag codes in their promotional materials. Steve Huber, Marketing coordinator at Starcraft considered QR codes and Microsoft tags as potential ways to do this. Steve asked Force 5 to help investigate the viability of the code/tag process.

In our investigation, Force 5 web developers found that both QR codes and the Microsoft tag manager have their pros and cons. The tag manager has a very nice reporting feature built into its application that steered them towards using this system. However, any tag/code system is limited to doing only a few things—direct a viewer to a web site, dial a phone number, or send a text response. The interactivity with the viewer is limited beyond that. In order to fully engage the consumer and capture as much information as allowed, Force 5 decided to enhance the interaction by developing a small, web-based app that enables Starcraft to customize the customer options based on the application.

This interface allows for a very robust customer experience. With the help of Microsoft tags, Starcraft lets their boat show attendees, those viewing a brochure, or even reading an ad in a boating magazine watch fun and informative video about their favorite boat—then take action.

Viewer Scanning a BoaTAG™
Starcraft BoaTAG™ in Action

Force 5 directs the Microsoft tag to a URL which is customized per the requirements of that particular tag. As a part of general functionality, the viewer can watch a video, then share that with a friend, continue on to a web site, look up a marine dealer, or order a brochure. Additional interactions can be added as needed. Through Force 5’s administration, the viewer can be allowed to have any or all of the interactions. For example, someone scanning the tag from a magazine ad could see all the options—someone scanning the tag on a boat may only be given the video, brochure or web option – someone scanning the brochure will see the video, but will not need the link to the brochure, etc.

BoaTAG™ being Scanned
Starcraft BoaTAG™ being Scanned

The analytics/metrics for the Force 5 combined system are phenomenal. Microsoft offers hits and geo tracking per tag, and because Force 5 serves the videos and the additional pages, they can track video views, directs to form pages, etc.—this acts as a verification of the Microsoft reporting accuracy, and provides Starcraft with excellent metrics for ad efficiency and conversions.

Here are the details:

System Architecture

The Smoker BoaTAG™ system is comprised of three primary parts on the server side (the 2d-barcode interface, the landing page manager, and the reporting and analytics engine) and the tag scanning software on the mobile device.

2-D Barcode Interface Engine

The team at Force 5 found that the Microsoft TAG system (http://tag.microsoft.com) proved to be the most robust and elegant solution for Starcraft The ability to administer this portion of the system by novice users; generate and print tags in multiple formats, change the URL of the target of a tag; coupled with the non-invasive tracking of mobile devices; and the excellent metrics and reporting were all key in Force 5’s decision to recommend it as the barcode management system.

Each BoaTAG™ is defined within the Microsoft TAG system. The Microsoft system is very easy to administer, providing the user with many options for generating both black and white as well as color Tags.

Color Microsoft Tag

Rendered in Color

Black and White Microsoft Tag

Rendered in Black and White

Microsoft has been very generous in the free functionality that the system provides. Anyone with a Microsoft LiveID can log into the Microsoft system and start creating TAGs.

Microsoft TAG Admin
Microsoft TAG Admin

From the administrative interface, the user can select a variety of ways to render and download the TAG image. The options cover both color and greyscale renderings as well as a variety of raster and vector image formats.

The Microsoft system allows for a variety of TAG types. The most common are dialer (used to tell the phone to dial a certain number), vCard (used to store a contact entry to be used as a digital business card) and the URL. The URL tag provides the system builder with the most power. From within the Microsoft interface the user can assign the tag to target any URL. This allows for a large amount of customization for the system designer as well as the ability to make modifications as needed as the system evolves (without having to reprint the TAGs themselves). Within that URL Microsoft exposes a token that allows that particular device to be uniquely identified within this system.

Microsoft TAG Admin

Editing Microsoft TAG details

Microsoft has included privacy controls which allow the device to be uniquely identified only within a single Tag account. This means that different organizations cannot share or sell identifiable information to other organizations using the identifier defined within the TAG system. More information about the Microsoft TAG system can be found at their site at: http://tag.microsoft.com.

Landing Page Management System

Once the user scans a tag, and the Tag management system has registered it, the user needs to be directed to a location. This is where Force 5’s Landing Page Management system comes into play. In order for the tag to be interesting and interactive for the end user, there has to be good content on the “other end” of it. This can be a webpage, video, or any other type of media. Force 5 recommended that Starcraft offer a variety of options available to the customer. They also suggested that when a user scans the tag, that they be given the opportunity to view the media (a video hosted on the Smoker YouTube channel), share the media page (via email), click a link to be able to request more information, and click a link to request the location of the nearest dealer. In order to support this functionality, Force 5 created a dynamic, database driven, system to provide landing pages depending on the tag that was scanned, and the options selected to show the viewer for that tag.

BoaTAG™ Landing Page

BoaTAG™ Landing Page

When a TAG is set up within the barcode management system, the URL field of that tag points to a single landing page. That page URL contains the tag “ID” and the unique device ID, as query string parameters. From that information a landing page is built and rendered for the user on their mobile device.

The selected information provided to the user is easily understood. The user can view the video (optionally in full screen mode) as well as select the operations like sharing and requesting more information. Additional “buttons” are easily added from within the administrative interface, as they are simply database records tied to that tag “ID.”

The Landing Page Management system also includes more detailed analytic information that is not provided by the 2d barcode system. The unique identifier is stored and associated data can then be reported on based on the unique ID or in aggregate.

BoaTAG™ Heat Map

BoaTAG™ Heat Map

Reporting and Analytics

Now that customers have been scanning the tag and data has been collected, how do you know if your campaign has been a success and how much “traffic” has been generated? This is where the reporting side of the system shines. Both the 2d Barcode Management system from Microsoft as well as Force 5’s Landing Page Management system includes information that can be used to measure success. Microsoft has provided several reports with their TAG system. These reports include the scan “hit counts,” both by day and category defined within the system. It also includes a “Heat Map” that can report to the campaign administrator where, geographically, the most number of scans have been accessed.

BoaTAG™ Scan Chart

BoaTAG™ Scan Chart

The Landing Page Management system includes other metrics as well. Since the customer is simply accessing a webpage, the full suite of web analytic tools is at the system designer’s disposal. This allows reports based on device types and unique identifier to be generated. For example, the administrator can see which users are the most active in the system, what devices they should target, as well as the click rates for the additional “buttons” on the landing page.

QR codes and other scan-able tags are here to stay- at least for a while. Better, faster types of interactive codes are on their way. Digital invisible watermarks for ads and digital audio tags are being developed as you read this. All of these will provide a rich media experience for the viewer and allow the advertiser to obtain better viewer metrics. Tags are enhancements to the experience. The key is to formulate workable marketing solutions using these tools. We at Force 5 would love to help you achieve your vision. For more information, visit www.discoverforce5.com, and fill out the contact form. We would love to hear from you.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Force 5, Marketing, News, Technology | No Comments »

Christian Mattix

Google Chrome OS CR-48 First Impressions

Friday, January 28th, 2011 by Christian Mattix

The day before yesterday I got home from work and was greeted by a plain brown box, correctly addressed to me, on my front porch. I thought this was rather curious, as I had not ordered anything. I brought the box in from the cold (it was about 12 degrees outside). My kids were with me and they were just as curious as I was, asking “What did you order?” “Nothing that I’m aware of,” I answered, but it was certainly addressed to me. The return address didn’t have a company or name on it, just an address. Well, since it did have my name on it, I opened it, to be greeted by another box, this one less plain.

Google CR-48 Packaging

Google ChromeOS CR-48 packaging

Now I was incredibly curious. As you can see, the box has no brand, label, or even words. At this point, my curiosity was completely piqued. After taking that box out, I notice the back of it has the “Lithium-Ion” battery warning on it. And judging from the shape and the weight I though, “ok, is this a laptop?”

It is indeed. It seems that I was one of the people chosen to take part in the Google ChromeOS Pilot program. I opened the “mouse box” to find a “shiny” new Google CR-48 Chrome OS Notebook. Now this was an incredibly surprise to me. I watched the announcement of the pilot program back in December as it was happening. As soon as they announced that the website was up to sign up, I did, and then didn’t think about it again. I figured I was among the 32897298346734678346 other people to sign up for the same program. Well much to my surprise, I was chosen to take part. (Maybe it was because my previous blog post about using Chrome, but I doubt it). I un-boxed the notebook, and followed the (very brief) instructions on how to get started, and within 5 minutes, I was online, connected to my wireless network and able to have access to the web.

Google ChromeOS CR-48

Google ChromeOS CR-48

I have now been using the notebook for a couple of days. I would like to have been able to use it more fully for my work as well as entertainment. Unfortunately, not all of my work translates well to a device like this. There are a few things to keep in mind with this computer.

First, EVERYTHING is based in the Cloud. In order for this device to function it needs to have a network connection. On first thought, this seems like a significant limitation, but with the fact that Wi-Fi is becoming more and more ubiquitous (you can get wireless access anyplace from your Starbucks, to McDonalds, to even my kids’ school now), it is much less of a problem than you would think. And for those times that you are not within range of an access point, and you NEED to get online, Google has thrown in 100MB/Month of Verizon Wireless 3G access for the first two years. That isn’t a ton of data, but if you need to get your email, or find directions, it is enough for a casual user. If you need more than that, then there are other options to purchase more data.

Second, EVERYTHING is based in the Cloud. This means no local storage. No flash drives. No CD drives. No software installs. Everything comes from the web. Software is installed via the Chrome Web Store. From there you can install a variety of apps, from things that you would expect like Google Docs, to utilities like Quick Note, to HTML5 based games. There are even some development tools, such as PHPanywhere (a completely cloud based PHP development environment that has support for in browser FTP). The user experience of installing the apps is great. There is very little to do other than just click “install” within the store. There are not a ton of apps built for ChromeOS yet, but I can imagine the quantity rapidly increasing as the pilot program continues. There is one thing that I don’t like about this environment: printing. In order to print from the device you have to use the Google Cloud-Print service. While the idea sounds good (the ability to print from any device, any place, to your printer) it just doesn’t seem very elegant. I don’t necessarily like the idea of having to send my print jobs to the internet in order to print to a printer that is 2 feet away from me, and connected to the same network as my notebook. This may be more of an “in my head” complaint, however, as I have net had to need to print anything.

The notebook hardware has a very solid feel to it. It doesn’t feel “chincy” or “Plasticy” like some inexpensive devices feel. The keyboard has very good “action”. You will notice that there are some changes to the “normal” keyboard though. Along the top, where the function (“F”) keys normally are, there are operation keys.

Also, instead of the Caps-Lock key, there is the the “Search” key. This opens up a new tab and puts focus on the “Magic Bar” (the address bar that also acts as a search box).

There is 1 VGA port, for connecting external monitors/projectors, 1 USB port (primarily for external mice), 1 headphone jack, 1 SD Memory card slot (for uploading files to the Cloud), and the power adapter connector. Also embedded in the display bezel is a webcam and microphone.

I have yet to fully test the battery life, but others have reported that the battery life is about 8 hours.

I plan on continuing to give my impressions of both the device and the software on it as I use it for my own and Force 5 work. Check back later for more!

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Technology | 1 Comment »

Christian Mattix

Switching to Chrome or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Ads

Friday, January 21st, 2011 by Christian Mattix

A few weeks ago I was reading the usual list of technology sites and came across an interesting debate on how Microsoft is planning to embed ad blocking technology into its browser, while Google and Mozilla will not. The items that were discussed got be thinking about what I use and how that relates to the Web as a whole.

I have been using ad-blocking software since it because available. According my my perception it sped up my browsing experience, and improved my security. (Not to mention I didn’t have to see a million ads asking me to punch a monkey or lower my mortgage interest rate). To me this was great! It was like being on a freeway or limited access highway: I didn’t have to worry about interruptions, or other people getting in the way of my car causing an accident. However, I didn’t think about one thing: LOTS of the websites that I rely on as a developer for technical resources, tools or documentation rely on ad revenue for operations. This is especially true for open source software.

Now I use many tools and reference sites while I am working and I started thinking: what if they went away? Would I be willing to “subscribe” to the site? What is the value of the information? Those questions, as well as the release of the new-er versions of Chrome led me to the decision to switch to Chrome as my primary instrument for browsing the web.

This took a few days to get used to, as one can imagine. Some of the sites that I go to regularly suddenly got a lot more “noisy”. I had to deal with a few pop-under ads (which I hate). I have had to learn to deal with the “creepy” factor of getting custom ads delivered to me across multiple sites based on my browsing history or email contents. Overall, however, my “web” experience has not been significantly hindered.

Now I do still use AdBlocking software when I am doing research into some of the more “grey” areas of the internet (security research, etc), but overall for 90% of my web usage now, I am free and open to be marketed to. In many ways it has been beneficial, as I am getting informed of products or services that I may actually be interested in.

All in all, I’m now a Chrome user. Of course, we at Force 5, design our solutions to be used by all technologies, but for me personally I’m enjoying the speed and other features that Chrome gives me.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Marketing, Technology | No Comments »

Christian Mattix

How-To: Use Wget to Automate the Karamasoft UltimateSearch Indexing Process for Your Website

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011 by Christian Mattix

Almost every modern website has a “search my site” module of some sort added to it. In this How-To I’m going to explain how to set up Karamasoft UltimateSearch to automatically rebuild its index on a repeating scheduled basis in a Microsoft Windows hosted environment.

First, you will need to obtain the UltimateSearch software from the Karamasoft site, found at: http://www.karamasoft.com/UltimateSearch/Features.aspx. Follow the directions provided to get the tool installed into your particular hosting environment. For this How-To I’m going to assume that you have a website www.example.com that you have the tool installed in. The process for starting the indexing process is as simple as accessing a particular webpage on your site and passing it a particular operation code in the query string. To start the full indexing process for our example site you would navigate to:

http://www.example.com/UltimateSearchInclude/Admin/UltimateSearch.admin.aspx?cmd=IndexFull

We want to be able to call this process via a script, so we will need something lightweight and easily used from within a scripting language. A perfect tool for this is the Open Source GNU Wget utility. From the GNU Wget site:

GNU Wget is a free software package for retrieving files using HTTP, HTTPS and FTP, the most widely-used Internet protocols. It is a non-interactive commandline tool, so it may easily be called from scripts, cron jobs, terminals without X-Windows support, etc.

Download and install the GNU Wget utility. The Windows port can be downloaded from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm. Download the setup program, follow the setup wizard, and install the utility to your server. After the installation process has completed, add the directory that you installed wget.exe into to the PATH environment variable.

Once you have UltimateSearch and Wget installed on your server you are now ready to set up the indexing job. In order to have the site be indexed based on a schedule, the admin link needs to be visited on a scheduled basis. In order to do this, we are going to use the Wget utility that we just downloaded in a batch file. That batch file will then be called as a scheduled task by Windows.

The batch file that I created is named USearchIndexTask.bat. In it is the following:

@echo off
wget -O - http://www.example.com/UltimateSearchInclude/Admin/UltimageSearch.admin.aspx?cmd=IndexIncremental > nul 2> nul

I have saved this file in c:\Program Files\Force5\USearchIndexTask.bat. You can save it where-ever it makes the most sense in your hosting environment.

Once the batch file is saved, then you need to create a scheduled task to run the batch file. In our environment I used Windows Task Scheduler to create the task. Use that tool to create a task to run the USearchIndexTask.bat file. Choose a frequency that makes sense for your environment, based on the quantity of changes for the site. If there are very few changes made on a daily bases, then having it run once a day at midnight is an appropriate setting.

Manually run the scheduled task to verify that it completed successfully, and then go get lunch. You are done!

To see more bright ideas from the Left and Right brains of Force5, check out the rest of our blog as well as our work!

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in How-To, Technology | No Comments »

Christian Mattix

How fast is Internet Explorer 9 compared to Firefox, Chrome, and Opera

Monday, September 20th, 2010 by Christian Mattix

There has been a lot of activity in the browser market over the past few months. The most recent step forward is Microsoft’s release of Internet Explorer (IE) 9. Microsoft is touting improvements with IEs handling of web standards, graphics, and JavaScript. JavaScript has become the de-facto standard for web designers of dynamic and highly interactive websites. Since so many websites use JavaScript, it is very important for browsers to be able to process it very quickly. In this entry I’m going to compare the JavaScript performance of Microsoft IE8, Microsoft IE9, Mozilla Firefox (v3.6), Google Chrome, and Opera using the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark available at: http://www2.webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider.html.

In order to provide the most equal environment for the tests, I ran the benchmarks on the same machine (Windows 7 Ultimate running within a VMWare virtual machine), with no other applications running, right after a fresh reboot. I then directly navigated to the benchmark site. For the purposes of this examination, I’ll only discuss the total results of the benchmark, however, the site gives very fine grain details of the results of the test.

Here are the results of the examination:

Browswer:                     Time To Execute:
===================           =============================
IE 8 (v8.0.7600.16385)        4089.6ms +/-  2.4%
Firefox (v3.6.10)             1186.8ms +/-  7.8%
Opera (v10.62 b3500)          525.4ms +/- 21.9%
Chrome (v6.0.472.62)          370.4ms +/-  4.8%
IE 9 (v9.0.7930.16406)        647.6ms +/-  9.5%

From these results, we can see that Microsoft has greatly improved the performance of its JavaScript engine (they have cut the benchmark time in half). Though not as fast as Opera or Chrome, which are both highly optimized for JavaScript performance, IE9 has made significant inroads. The release of IE9 has raised the bar for the Mozilla community to continue to improve Firefox. Considering IE9 is still in a beta state, one can only imagine that the performance will only improve.

How did Microsoft improve its JavaScript Engine? According to Microsoft, they were able to make the improvements by using the following techniques:

JavaScript Background Compilation: Many script engines today start with an optimized interpreter, and compile individual sections or methods into machine code to run faster. Others always compile JavaScript into machine code before running it, often compiling each method as it is needed. Both these approaches have to trade off quality or quantity of compiled code against execution speed. Generating high-quality code for today’s applications requires time to optimize the compiled code.

IE9 includes a fast interpreter for running pages quickly on startup. For compilation, we have a background code generator that compiles script code, and we push compiled methods back into the application. Because the code generator runs in the background, it can take advantage of today’s advanced multi-core machines and generate higher-quality code, while not blocking initial execution of the application.

Type Optimizations: One of the most important aspects of enabling performance on JavaScript is to create an efficient type system. The IE9 script engine uses many of the techniques common in modern dynamic language implementations, including type representation, polymorphic inline caching (also called type evolution or hidden classes), and efficient implementation of machine types.

Fast Interpreter: For pages where immediate execution in the interpreter is important, IE9 includes a new interpreter which uses a register-based layout, efficient opcode, and use of type optimizations.

Library Optimizations: The performance of JavaScript pages and applications depends heavily on key aspects of the script runtime library: strings, arrays, objects, and regular expressions. We are investing in these areas for IE9. These libraries require careful tuning for the real Web – one example is the execution of regular expressions. Most script engines today use compilation and optimization techniques to run regular expressions faster, and IE9 includes an improved regular expression implementation. In analyzing real world Web sites, we find a set of patterns used frequently, but we also find unique cases – for example, a site that creates hundreds of regular expressions and uses very few of them – we will continue to use this data to tune our regular expression implementation and other library features for IE9.

Considering IE9′s support for modern standards such as HTML5 and CSS3, and GPU support for graphics Microsoft has made a great step forward in the “Browser wars.”

To learn how to take best advantage of the use of modern technology combined with inspired ideas to bring your business to the next level, contact us at Force 5. We’d be happy to help!

 

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Technology | No Comments »