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Boston.com Supports SOPA, a rant on SOPA
For those of you who don’t know what SOPA is, it’s the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261) introduced in the House of Representatives by Lamar Smith (R-TX).
I just saw that Boston.com has an article posted on December 26, 2011 titled Removing the legal eye patch, announcing why it is in support of SOPA. Their main argument is that law enforcement needs more tools to stop piracy, and is summarized in this paragraph:
The Stop Online Piracy Act currently before Congress would finally give law enforcement the tools to crack down on the websites that enable Internet piracy. Currently, one can use Google to quickly jump to a site that offers pirated HBO shows or bootlegs of the latest hit album, or go on YouTube and watch television shows or music videos uploaded illegally, actions for which neither website faces repercussions. (YouTube has a policy against posting pirated material, but no legal obligation to police its site.)
Over the past few months, activists on the internet (most prominently on Reddit, Reddit Targets Alleged SOPA Supporters) have been voicing serious concern over this bill. The concern isn’t over protecting piracy (although I’m sure some are hoping to protect that0. The major concern is over the way in which the bill was put together.
The most dangerous parts of this bill, are sections that force website owners to be responsible for the content published by it’s users. Site’s like Google’s YouTube, Facebook, and almost any other site that allows user submitted content would essentially have to shut down.
Help: My iPhone/iPad is SLOW, how can I make it FAST?
When you first got your iPhone it was fast, and now … not so much.
Sometimes it just takes a few seconds for the keyboard to start working, or for an app to work when you launch it.
What can you do to speed up your iPhone or iPad?
- Make sure you have the updated Firmware
Connect your device, and open up iTunes. Under devices, click your devices and click “Check for Update”. - You should regularly reset your iPhone
To restart the iPhone, you press and hold the power button (up top) and the home button for a few seconds. You will see it go black, and the Apple icon pop back up. - You should close out your apps
Yup, every app you ever opened is still “running”. If you double click your home button you’ll get the taskbar. You can scroll right to see all the applications you have ever used. To “close” the apps, hold down one of the apps until it starts to shake and gets that red sign in the top left corner. To close the app, tap that close button. Your apps will still be on your phone, and keep their data, they just won’t be stored in memory. I do this every few days to keep my iPhone going fast. - If all else fails .. you can reset your iPhone settings
Check out my post from a year ago, Help: My iPhone 3G or 3GS is slow, how do I fix it? It will tell you how to reset your settings to speed up your iPhone
That should at least speed up your iPhone or iPad a bit.
Happy New Year 2012
I wish you readers all the best in 2012.
If you haven’t seen it, check out the imgur Best of 2011. 11 of the most viewed image collections on imgur.com. One of my annual favorites to check out.
What do I expect in the next year?
- Much more WordPress work (on more complex and demanding sites)
- A trip somewhere, maybe Europe.
- To redo seangw.com at some point. The site is becoming more popular (we get thousands of visitors every day) — and the site now deserves some love. What web developer/blogger websites do you like most?
- To actually use my SEO knowledge on my own sites!
- Introduce an “Ask A Question” button on the site. If you don’t know, I welcome any and all feedback. You can Contact Me anytime if you have a questions not answered on the site.
- New monitors (I’ve had my 3 monitors since 2003?) — it’s time.
- Even more social interactions! The facebook and Google Plus buttons have been popular this year. Next year I will build dedicated brand pages (and maybe a Twitter brand page, if they open it up)
- I may even migrate this “blog” out from under the “wordpress” directory and to the root of my site! Craziness.
Finally, I want to thank all the people that have shared this site in 2011.
Some viewership numbers:
December 2008 – 200 readers/week
December 2009 – 1000 readers / week
December 2010 – 1,800 readers / week
December 2011 – 9,000 readers / week
So I appreciate all those Facebook likes, those tweets, and links to some of my posts.
If there’s anything you’d like to see covered in 2012, please shoot me a message.
Happy New Year
- Sean
iPhone Lost Contacts – Windows Address Book Fix
Many people have visited my iPhone Lost Contacts post (5 solutions to the problem) from a few months ago. Apparently everyone still has iPhone issues.
A recent visitor (thanks garykob!) to the site posted a possible “Solution #6″ that involves Windows XP and leverages the Windows Address Book. You can see his solution on the Apple Support Forums, or you can follow his steps below.
As a note, I believe this only worked because at some point, the contacts were stored in Windows Address Book. It’s very likely that your contacts might be there, and you may not even know it:
- iTunes -> Devices -> My phone -> Summary Tab -> change [ ] Back up to iCloud to [x] Back up to this computer
- iTunes -> Devices -> My phone -> Info Tab -> [x] Sync contacts with Windows address book -> Apply/Sync -> Success!
The discoverer of this fix says that Windows address book was never synced to, and this worked. Again, I expect at some point something sync’d with Windows address book (and the fix isn’t complete).
Please let me know how it works for you!
John Resig’s thoughts on Javascript as a First Language
John Resig posted on his site today, Javascript as a First Language.
His thoughts on why Javascript is a good fundamental programming language are interesting. This is in reference to using it at Khan Academy to introduce computer programming. For those who don’t know, Khan Academy is an amazing tool (Bill Gates is a fan of Khan Academy’s approach) for educating students. There are many examples of students learning at significantly increased rates.
Watch the video John Resig (of jQuery fame) posted, and my notes and thoughts are below.
I had a traditional Computer Science background. My first computer language was Basic on the Apple IIGS (thanks Apple for including Basic on your computers). I learned HTML on my own very early on (back when LYNX was the typical browser). It is weird to think of Javascript as a first language.
Javascript is an excellent, although controversial, choice to teach introductory computer programming in.
HTTP Archive: Average Webpage now 965 KB (up 30%) in 2011
ExtremeTech published an article, The web in 2011: HTML5 dominates Flash, trouble for data capped mobile surfers.
From the article:
According to new research from HTTP Archive, which regularly scans the internet’s most popular destinations, the average size of a single web page is now 965 kilobytes (KB), up more than 30% from last year’s average of 702KB.
Wow. That is huge growth. I still complain to web designers who want to include a 650KB photo.
Facebook Timeline Launches Worldwide
Everyone, not just Australia, can get their Facebook Timeline setup.
To get started, you just need to go to FaceBook.com/Timeline and sign up (in the lower right corner).
Once you start, you’ll have time to review and tweak your Facebook Timeline before you launch it.
Please let me know what you think of it (since I don’t use Facebook much, though I am getting on it to try this out).
Help: WordPress broke after 3.3 Upgrade
I just ran into a client who’s WordPress installation broke due to the 3.3 upgrade.
The symptom was the WYSIWYG editor didn’t load (which was just a big Javascript error loading supporting scripts). This could manifest itself in any Javascript functionality (admin bar, popup menus, etc) not working.
The Fix
The fix is easy, you need to install WordPress 3.3.1 (when it comes out). For those of you who need this fixed immediately, you can install the Hotfix 0.8 plugin. It will disable the JSON support that is breaking in 3.3.
UPDATE – 2012-01-03
WordPress has released version 3.3.1 which is supposed to fix this issue.
Why you should add Facebook like buttons
I still think at some point, Facebook will fade into our memories. It’s a safe bet.. given enough time.
For now it’s time to embrace it. Until this past summer, I hadn’t added Facebook like buttons to my site. This was done because I was opposed to having those irritating social media icons all over my site. I thought maybe I was missing out on a few percentage points of hits.
Today, and for the past few days, I’ve gotten more page views on my site from Facebook than from Google search. This is according to the WordPress Jetpack by the way, Google Analytics still says I get more from Google (but I’m inclined to have suspicions).
There are about 50 pages / articles on my site that people have “liked” on Facebook (go ahead and try it… ). A few of my posts have hundreds of likes.
This is currently generating about 500-1000 page views a day for me. I would have never though adding a stupid Facebook Like button could do that for my site.
Add them to your site, you won’t regret it.
Please share, it makes me happy:
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