The Housewife and the Mine Owner

Cloud Computing with Amazon and Drupal
Powered By Amazon Web Services Recently I’ve been moving the Nullvariable web servers into the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. This means our customers will be getting some great benefits in increaced speed, better backups and future scalability. AWS is a fantastic platform but it’s not for just anyone. Recently I wrote a couple of tutorials on s

Do you know where that short link goes?
It used to be a problem when short links (tinyurl, bit.ly and other services that shorten URLs) were first introduced. People would hide affiliate links, goatse pictures and all sorts of stuff using them. We trained ourselves just not to click on those links and they quickly dissipated when people learned we didn’t trust them. Now with the advent of Twitter and other services that similarly limit posting size, shortened urls have surged in popularity. They often offer cool features like stats tracking (see my post about Understanding Bit.ly) and

Fixing security issues for Twitter
Sorry if there are spelling errors, I’m writing this from the road, some where in Mississippi, but I think it’s important to make some points about security. Just saw that MSNBC appeared to have had their Twitter account hacked. Two things I want to say about security. First be very careful where you use your password. Better yet insist on using services that use OAuth. OAuth means you tell Twitter to allow an application access to your account instead of giving the application your password. This means you and Twitter can both easily shut down an offending application more easily. It’s very similar to how facebooks system for applications works.

Twitter Zombies
It’s straight out of the movies. Mindless mobs of people, dead to the world hobbling around trying to eat your brains. That’s right, zombies have made their way to Twitter. As my friend Freddy Nager outlines in his post “Hypocritical Mass: The Big Lie About Twitter” people have become obsessed with numbers on Twitter. This obs

Understanding Bit.ly Stats
Recently a friend asked why one of his Twitter accounts with 3 followers had 18 clicks on a bit.ly link. There are several reasons for that and a few other things to explain if you’re new to URL shortening with bit.ly Bit.ly is a common URL shortening service. There used to be just one or two of these and they weren’t very commonly used