My First Blog Post
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Apple approves 'Knocking' app for iPhone - bambuser dev test using same method
I currently only have the iphone 3G. I'll probably be waiting till apple announce the date/release of the next one and sidestep the 3gs all together, just not worth finding that level of cash/contract for what it has which would only be the video feature in my mind. But it was nice to get an email from bambuser with a developer for beta testing version with the same kind of method enabled. I think the standard iphone 3G probably is a little too slow and the iphone 3GS will perform better. Weird, i still never think of the iphone as a videoblogging device really yet. Some of the new android ones look tasty!
Google Public DNS Speed Test
One major culprit of slow browsing speed on the Internet, other than your connection speed and latency (the time it takes for a packet to travel from your computer to a server), is the Domain Name System (DNS). Each machine on the Internet has a unique number assigned to it by an Internet Service Provider (ISP), an Internet protocol address, commonly known as IP address, such as 74.125.67.100, which is the IP address for Google. If you type http://74.125.67.100 in your browser URL bar, it will take you to the same Google search page as http://google.com. Since IP addresses are very hard to retain and share, DNS was created. When you type google.com in your browser, a request is sent to a DNS server. The DNS server looks up the domain name in a table and returns the IP address. Then the browser connects to the Google server. Think of it as a telephone. You say or select “Bob”. Then the phone looks up Bob’s number in the address book then calls 123-555-4567.
Most likely, you are using your ISP’s default DNS server, and it is most likely pathetic if you are on Comcast, Charter, or AT&T. They can be slow, time out, or go down often. If, for example, you cannot browse any websites, but iChat works, you are having a DNS problem. iChat doesn’t use domains; it uses IP address directly.
Your ISP’s DNS server most likely connects to a higher DNS server and caches the result. It is best to replace your ISP’s DNS server with one higher up the food chain. There are a few choices. Two of the most popular are Level 3 and OpenDNS. They are not created equal. Level 3 is a major communications company, they run backbones (very big pipes) and supply to bandwidth to ISP’s, such as Comcast. Their DNS servers, 4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3, 4.2.2.4, 4.2.2.5, 4.2.2.6 are very fast for people in United States, but can be quite slow for the rest of the world. OpenDNS provide many features, such as parental control, logging, usage graphs, keyword shortcuts, phishing protection. However, their DNS servers, 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220, can be fluctuating in reliability and speed.
Google has now released Google Public DNS, with servers 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4 for free. Sometimes, they are faster than Level 3. Other times they are not. They are certainly faster for those outside of the United States. Besides speed, they also have security improvements compared to other servers. If your ISP has a miserable DNS server, and you type your bank’s address, you may go to a phishing site that is made to look identical to your bank’s real site, where you will voluntarily give away your username and password, and potentially your money.
I have written a script called time_dns that by default takes the 100 most trafficked websites, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, etc. aggregated by Alexa and looks up their IP address against each DNS server and calculates an average. Run the script once or multiple times when you are most active on the Internet. Then choose the first 2 fastest servers under Results. Instructions on how to change your DNS servers is beyond the goal of this article. Each router is different.
Testing GReader-to-Posterous forwarding
via google.com
Hmm this was a note I pushed here from Google Reader using GReader's 'Send To' feature, but the text of what I wrote seems not to have made it through.
Perhaps I ought to test the feature on a regular 'shared item' instead of a 'note'? I'll do that now.
Update:
Well I did but the results were not pretty. I was transported to a Posterous page asking me which of 3 excerpts of the shared item I would like to publish here. It also gave me the option of editing said except.
Forget excepts, what I want is a quick way of pushing just a link to any GReader shared item (plus full text of any comment I write on GReader) over to this end. My posterous could then become a linkblog.Update-update:
The ways to share help page describes the URL for sharing links, which notably gives control (via the 'selection' parameter) over exactly what ends up in the Posterous post. Unfortunately GReader provides no URL-substitution for taking comments from GReader and dumping them into the selection parameter.
Gophers vs. Cal - a set on Flickr
via flickr.com
test sending an album
