QBurst

QBurst introduces “theapps.mobi” which gives you instant access to your favorite iPod/iPhone apps without installing itunes. theapps.mobi brings you a faster and easier to use platform with different categories of iPhone and iPod touch apps, ranging from Education, Business and Entertainment to Travel, Weather, Lifestyle and Games.  (more…)

After months of anxiety and speculation Apple has finally launched their latest creation, the iPad Tablet. Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, unveiled the breakthrough product in a grand meet held at San Francisco on 27th Jan 2010. Apple’s iPad is developed for people on the go to ease their online usage and other PC related tasks.The iPad is neither an iPhone nor a PC but a gadget that bridges the gap between the two. With its small size and touch screen technology, Apple’s iPad  is all set to create a new era of Tablet Computing. Although the device lacks complex functionalities when compared to a PC, it is equipped with much desired functions like web browsing, delivering media, capsuling literature, video gaming etc.
The 9.7 inch device with half an inch thickness weighs just 1.5 pounds. It features a touch screen and is available in 16, 32 or 64 gigabytes of flash memory storage. (more…)

Apple is all set to unveil their breakthrough product Apple Tablet / iSlate. Amidst the  uncertainties and rumors crawling around the product, technology addicts are eagerly waiting to get a glimpse of the device. The launch is planned for 27th January 2010 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco. (more…)

Ever Thought Of Locating Your Twitter On Your Mobile Phone Even Without a GPRS Subscription?

This concept has become a reality in India with the Shorthand mobile SMS browser introduced by the Shorthand Mobile-India(www.shorthandmobile.in), a subsidary of Smarttouch mobile Inc.. The browser once downloaded will connect you to your desired web content just through a text sms. Yes, it’s that simple!

The desired web contents are stored as SMS Apps and are listed in the Shorthand browser for easy scroll and click. The users have to just scroll down to their SMS App and click the same to access the online network. The web content is located as soon as the browser sends the text message. Hence, it does not require an active data plan.

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Make your smartphone work even smarter!

Mophie, the powerhouse of iPhone and iPod gadgets and batteries is unveiling the hottest iPhone-centric Credit Card Reader at the 2010 International CES proposed to be held at Las Vegas from 7th to 10th Jan this year. To gear up for an even smarter shopping experience you just need to swipe your credit card into the Mophies  iphone compatible credit card reader. The transaction will be processed with the help of a third party application.
The Credit Card Reader can be slipped into your iPhone just like the Mophie Juice Pack Air, the external rechargeable battery introduced in the mid 2009. The detailed information including its functioning and pricing is yet to be unveiled at the CES 2010.

Did you ever wish that keeping up with all your favorite websites was as easy as checking into your email? Or that somebody would keep an eye on the Internet for your sake, choosing interesting stuff and placing it where you can find them easily?

Too incredible to be true, right? But that’s exactly what Google Reader does.

Google Reader was introduced way back in 2005, graduating from beta status in 2007.

For anyone who is not yet familiar with Google Reader, and given that RSS feeds are more extensively used, let me explain……

Google Reader is a web-based aggregator that is capable of reading all RSS feeds that you have subscribed to, so that you can  access them all in one place. Google Reader lets you know each time your favorite websites are updated. You can then, if required, organize feeds into folders, label them, and share the most interesting posts with your friends.

Google Reader is located on the Web at reader.google.com. You can access Google Reader using your Google Account.

Let’s now take a quick look at some of the main features that Google Reader has to offer: (more…)

Almost a year back (Aug 15^th, ’08, to be precise), AUTOMATTIC released WordPress 2.6.1 fixing over 60 bugs. Also the version featured with the introduction of ‘right to left’ typing for Hebrew and Farsi language administrators. In a very short period of time (may be around one month), the company alerted 2.6.1 version users of security holes in using the same. Here, in this small article, we are going to analyze those vulnerabilities that made AUTOMATTIC release an upgrade for WordPress version 2.6.1 so soon.

Ok, let’s be clear and to the point. The problem is created by the nature of:

1.    mt_rand () function of PHP and

2.    the truncation method that MySQL adopts

mt_rand ():

PHP has two random number generating functions: rand (), mt_rand (). The former uses GNU C library and the latter uses Mersenne Twister algorithm. Mersenne Twister algorithm was created by Takuji Nishimura and Makoto Matsumoto of Japan. mt_rand () is predominantly used in most of the PHP applications and most importantly, WordPress 2.6.1 uses it.

Normally a seed is used to initiate the generation of random numbers. If it is possible to determine that seed, we will be able to generate the same sequence for any number of times. In other words, we will be able to hack the working of random generation. Seed can be determined using a lookup. Now, once the seed is found, anyone can generate the sequence that the application generates. If you want to know how this is possible, you got to learn random number generation in PHP or there’s an alternative: bow to the fact that it is the nature of mt_rand () function.

Now, make a request for admin password which would send an activation link to the actual admin. But since we have the seed, we will be able to calculate the same activation link by enabling Keep Alive HTTP request.  Activating this link and using a different email ID in the form will allow creation of a new WordPress admin password and thereby complete control.

MySQL Truncation:

Let’s see the next one. When the string input given in a query is longer than the defined maximum length, MySQL, by default, truncates the string to the defined maximum length. For example, if the maximum value of the string column is defined to be 8 then, the input value, “qburst_expressions” will be truncated to “qburst_e”. There will be a warning displayed but, applications are normally not configured to handle those warnings. And importantly, WordPress version 2.6.1 was not.

Suppose I know the WordPress admin name, (let’s say, “godfrey”) and the maximum length of the username in MySQL is set as 32. When I register as a new user with the same name “godfrey”, obviously, MySQL will return an error as there already exists an username godfrey. Now, I try with “godfrey   “(with 2 spaces after the name), MySQL will truncate the string to “godfrey” and again return an error due to the same reason. Suppose I try with “godfrey                         g” (with 25 spaces between godfrey and g) then MySQL will not be able to identify a similar username and also truncate the name to “godfrey” to be inserted into the database column. This happen because the username exceeds the defined maximum length of 32 and the system will not be able to find a match in the database. Now we have 2 admin usernames in the table. This is sufficient to pass the validation and gain access to the password of the original admin, thereby complete control.

These holes in security made AUTOMATTIC to work on an upgrade at the earliest. And the next release fixed all these errors. So if you are planning to use WordPress, make sure you use the latest version and remain safe. WordPress 2.8.4 is available for download now. It is the latest stable version of WordPress according to the AUTOMATTIC’s last release.

Are you a busy Internet professional or website owner who’s finding it difficult to sign into several micro blogging accounts to post your business topics? It can be quite a tedious and time-consuming process to log into each of these accounts and individually post your news.

SPNBabbble solves all that for you. With an SPNBabble account, all you need to do is enter a single posting and voila! It gets published simultaneously in Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, Tumbrl, and Friendfeed. You will of course need to be a member in all these communities.

Well, doesn’t that make social media networking a lot easier for you? What’s more, many of SPNBabble’s features are similar to Twitter. So Twitter users are going to find it quite easy to operate this plugin.

SPNBabble also has other features, which are:

• SMS messaging
• Direct messaging
• IM message
• Hash tag usage
• Search
• Groups

SPNBabble is specially developed for website owners, web masters, web developers, web designers and business professionals. An offshoot of SiteProNews, this site is in the Jayde Online Network and deployed using Laconica software.

More features are planned in the future to give connectivity to other micro blogs. With this, SPNBabble is surely on its way to becoming a hot favorite among web publishers!

Replication has now become an essential feature for most MySQL users. The good news I can share at the same time is that the working and implementation of this concept is also less complicated. It involves a minimum of 2 servers: a master and a slave (in most cases). The slave makes use of the binary logs created by the master to update its database thereby keeping both of them in exact synchronization.

Issues Leading to the Need of Replication

Heavy Load:

Lets consider a website with an exponentially increasing number of users regularly. There will arrive a state in which the single database server could no longer handle the load anymore. If the server receives more number of read queries rather than write queries (which will be the normal case for most of the websites) then, the best choice will be to adopt replication into the current architecture. Here, the read queries refer to SELECT statements and the write queries refer to INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE statements.

Now I am going to explain how replication solves the issue of heavy load. When the concept of replication is implemented we will be having more than one server. Among these servers, the one named as master will receive queries related to write and make changes to its database immediately. Consequently, when the binary log is updated, the slaves update their database reading from the log files. The slaves on the other hand receive all read queries. Depending on the number of queries received, the number of slaves can be increased or decreased. Now by using any scheduling algorithm (Round Robin is an example), we can effectively load balance the incoming read queries to different slave servers so that all of them get equal workloads.

Backup: Anytime and Without Client Disturbance

During backup requirements, we normally stop MySQL or lock the read queries to get an exact backup. This may sometimes result in the annoyance of the clients who access the website during the process. Although there are a few clever techniques with which you may do this without the notice of the clients, things become very simple with replication.

The slaves always remain in exact synchronization with the master. In other words, the slaves will have another copy of the entire repository that the master processes. And hence backing up of a slave is similar and as good as backing up of the master. Also the presence of slaves as exact replicas will in most cases help avoid the need for backup of the master. This is because we always have the slaves as a spare in case of any misfortunes to the master.

Distribution of Data Without Respect to Distance:

Next issue I am to focus on deals with distributing copies of data in various locations that are geographically very apart which is not a trivial task. But the replication factor gives the flexibility that we require to make it trivial.

The master provides no errors even if the slave remains disconnected for some time. So in spite of the poor connection and other factors that may influence the link between the different destinations, a synchronized copy of the master can be made to exist in a geographically distant region.

Architectures of Replication

There are a few rules that I recommend to be kept in mind to better understand the different architectures.

• There needs to be a unique server ID for every slave
• There can be many slaves for a master
• There can be only one master for a slave
• Slaves can also function as masters

Master: Slave

This architecture best suits an environment, which has low number of write queries and high number of read queries. Effective load balance can be achieved by spreading the workload among the different servers. Here is an illustration.

Dual Master:

This kind of architecture is particularly useful when servers are geographically far apart. Although during interruptions, neither will have access to their data both will catch up from each other when the connection is reestablished. An extension of this architecture will be to have a slave on either side that is also diagrammatically shown below.

.

Pyramid:

In a large organization where there is diverse distribution in a hierarchical manner, a possible architecture like this will be the best suit. There is no necessity to configure every slave with the master as the slave above in the hierarchy can act as their master.

Although replication solves problems, it demands so much precision, which if not taken care of, can even result in the crash of the master database. Slaves are not always in synchronized state with their master. But with proper monitoring systems this can be detected. The concept of replication is provided by MySQL and can definitely improve overall performance if dealt with proper caution.

Do you know that software testing can be an art?  Being able to evaluate the capability of a system or application and ensuring it meets with client requirement involves a certain amount of craftsmanship.

This could be a dull chore where you simply perform ad hoc testing or a challenging experience that involves a good deal of planning and designing before testing.

Here are 10 tips that can help to develop good quality software that works according to specifications.

1. Understand the application:  How can you test if you do not know if the application is functioning as designed or if a functionality is missing? You first need to understand and have a good knowledge of the software before you start testing. Understand what the software can do, what external resources it uses to do it, its major behaviors and how it interacts with its environment. This knowledge would help you write effective test cases.

2. Start with a plan:  Strong testing begins with a good test plan.  You need to come up with a good strategy that defines your requirements in terms of tests. This means knowing what you need to test, what constitutes a bug and how to prioritize your work according to associated risks.

3. Write effective test cases: A combination of domain knowledge, prior experience and good writing skills help you to write good test cases. Your test cases should be understandable and repeatable that explains the intention of the tests and the expected results.

4. Ensure maximum coverage: You can never guarantee 100% coverage but you can ensure that every requirement is covered by at least one test case. You can also break your application under test into smaller modules and write individual test cases for each module. This would ensure maximum test coverage.

5. Start early: Writing your test cases in the requirement analysis and design phase ensures that all requirements are testable.  Bugs detected early in the development process are also considered cheaper to fix.

6. Give access to developers: It’s a good idea to give developers access to your test cases before they begin coding. This helps them to understand and analyze your test cases completely and develop good quality software. It also helps them save time on re-working.

7. Test with the right attitude: No software is bug-free. So, test with the intention of finding bugs and you will definitely succeed in finding some. Testing should ensure that the application does what it should and doesn’t do what it should not.

8. Record test results: Besides writing test cases, you should record your test results and provide solutions. This data helps when you do regression testing as probable bugs in the application can now be easily predicted.

9. Test for performance: Many testers tend to ignore performance testing when the volume of data is large. However, testing for performance is very important and you need to find ways to test your application for performance even if it means writing just basic scripts to create test data performance test.

10. Remove changes in code base after testing: For testing, changes are made to the code base.  Don’t forget to note down these changes and remove them from the code base before final release.

To summarize, no matter how much testing you perform, you can never guarantee a bug free application.  What you can ensure is that the basic and crucial functions of the application work well and your customer is happy with the software you deliver.