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Critique: Presidential Candidate Websites
2008-01-05 07:40:00
With politics such a hot issue as of late, I’ve decided to critique websites of some of the major political candidates. In order to be fair and unbiased, each website will be considered on the basis of the following criteria: Accessibility: How well does it integrate accessibility tools? Does it have foreign language translations of the ...
More About: Web Design , Presidential , Websites , Critique , Candidate

Obama Ron Paul 2008
2008-01-05 05:06:00
…because we are not a collection of Red States and Blue States, we are the United States of America; and at this moment, in tthis election, we are ready to believe again. Oh boy. Did you notice the similarity in fonts and colors? I also found, purely by accident, that Ron Paul 2008 uses the font AGOpus ...
More About: Obama

2008 - The Year of Online Security?
2008-01-04 20:31:00
I’ve been musing over the past few days about what this upcoming year might be. I’ve tossed out the New Year s resolutions, the predictions about what is to come (hey, Barack is going to win, right?) and all the things the newspapers, the doomsayers, the warmongers, the peacemongers, and the politicians say about 2008. That ...
More About: Security , Web Design , Life , Online

Mobile edition and hosting
2008-01-04 03:08:00
Just a plug - rioleo.org is now available in mobile form for viewing on smaller screens and browsers. Also, if you’re considering hosting, I’m offering an unprecedented promotion: get your setup fee waived (a $49.95 value) or $50.00 free and a free domain (a $9.95 value) when you sign up for DreamHost using promo code rioleo. ...
More About: Mobile , Hosting , Edition

The PageRank Checker Demystified
2008-01-02 23:40:00
I feel as though I cracked a big riddle, but in retrospect I should’ve seen it coming. The problem with the aforementioned PageRank not working on some hosts was not about cURL, not about errors in the script (though I fixed a few). It was about Google, and the host you’re using. See, Google wants to make sure that its PageRank works nicely with the Toolbar they have. A few years ago an intrepid coder by the name of David Cicalo broke apart the toolbar and found the key to the algorithm- a 10 digit value called a checksum, and when that too was changed, Dirson cracked it again. The checksum is unique to each domain query (on the surface level I noted that it starts with ‘6-’ for a domain without the protocol identifier ‘http://’, while it is another different value with it). http://www.google.com/search?client=navcl ient-auto &features=Rank:&q=info:www.rioleo .org&ch=6-2130221911 (Try visiting the page - the last number on that page is t...
More About: Pagerank , Checker

cURL in Ajax PageRank Checker with GoDaddy
2008-01-01 17:41:00
It turns out that Google’s PageRank algorithm is pretty fickle and unreliable- the code below is guaranteed to work, but there are times when Google will flat out deny any queries. I wonder if there’s any way to disguise one’s route to their algorithm? I’m pretty sure sending multiple queries at a time disables the pageRank part for a bit of time. After literally hours spent toiling over this, I have successfully managed to make my Ajax Google PageRank checker work using cURL in GoDaddy’s stupid servers. When you first obtain the script, you’ll see in pagerank.class.php the following code: function getPage ($url) { if (function_exists('curl_init')) { $ch = curl_init($url); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); @curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']); return curl_exec($ch); } else { return file_get_contents($url); } } replace that with functio...
More About: Pagerank , Curl , Checker

Firefighters of Edo
2007-12-31 01:14:00
Firefighting is based upon years of tried and tested experience, building upon prior mistakes in order to safeguard against tomorrow’s disasters. That’s why it’s so interesting to read about the firemen, the hikeshi as they were known, of Edo, what is now Tokyo, during the Edo period (1603-1867). A flagbearer (matoimochi) holding onto his pole as ...

Ten Past Ten?
2007-12-28 19:44:00
In this day in digital age it’s almost too easy to forget that there’s something exquisite about analog devices. There’s a question that many people ask: Why is it that on advertisements and posters relatively expensive watches invariably show ten past ten? Apparently the reason is purely aesthetic, which I’m sure many of you ...
More About: Past

The True Origins of the Telegraph
2007-12-24 23:27:00
Man has sought to communicate between large distances for a long time now, and with the advent of the Internet, email and chat it seems ridiculous to imagine a time when a message of any level of urgency would take four days to travel a distance of 500km. The late 18th century saw the rise ...
More About: True , The Telegraph , Origin

Artificial Artificial Intelligence
2007-12-23 22:10:00
Sometime during the year 1770, author and inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen unveiled the chess-playing automaton called “The Turk” which he claimed incorporated a mechanism that would be a strong opponent to a human player. He had invented it to impress the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, and while it no doubt stupefied her, among other notables ...
More About: Intelligence , Artificial Intelligence