Dallas Clark

By July next year we will start to see new domain name extensions on top of the 250 that already exist. Addresses such as .australia, .brisbane, .america, and .newyork will be available for people to register a domain name under.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) have also announced that the regulating body of the new domain names are undecided, whether it will be local government bodies or not is to question. If local governments had control over domain names, they could ensure that the domain 'actually' has significance to that local area.

Large companies such as eBay would also like to have their own domain extension so they could have domains like cars.ebay and storename.ebay. It will create an extremely large volume of work for ICANN to begin with so we will not see some extensions for quite some time, and ICANN have to treat each extension request individually to ensure it doesn't offend different countries and nationalities.

When the domain extensions become available, it will be a guarantee that names like accommodation.australia or cars.america will be the first to go to cyber squatters or anyone lucky enough to beat them.

Firefox is an incredibly flexible browser that has proven popular among many Internet users. Check out our collection of awesome tools you can add on to Firefox. If you're not, take a look at everything you're missing out on.

Communication

Stay in touch with patrons, students, coworkers, and the community with these add-ons.

1. Twitterbar: Tweet from your browser's address bar and share useful links using this add-on.
2. Webmail Notifier: Get notified about unread emails with this add-on.
3. Meebo: This add-on lets you put all of your buddy lists in one convenient place in your browser.
4. FoxLingo: This handy add-on will translate web pages and searches automatically.
5. Shareaholic: Using Shareaholic, you can easily share urls, twitters, bookmarks, and so much more.
6. Facebook Toolbar: Supercharge your library's Facebook experience with this ultraconvenient toolbar.
7. Digg This!: Digg stories from the right-click menu with this add-on.
8. StumbleUpon: Browse reviewed sites and share your favorites with this add-on.
9. ScribeFire: With this blog editing add-on, you can post without ever leaving Firefox.
10. TinyURL Creator: Create tiny URLs quick and easy using this add-on.
11. Email This!: Using this add-on, you'll save time by being able to send highlighted text and links straight from your browser.
12. WordLearner toolbar: Using this toolbar, you'll be able to improve your foreign language vocabulary.

Organization

Keep all of your browser work neat and clean with these add-ons that offer organization.

13. Colorful Tabs: This add-on will make every tab a different color so that you can distinguish between them more easily.
14. Open IT Online: Open your documents and images right in Firefox using this add-on.
15. PermaTabs: Using PermaTabs, you'll have tabs that automatically open every time you launch Firefox.
16. ReminderFox: Save your memory and sanity with this add-on that sends you date-based reminders and to-do list items.
17. Morning Coffee: With this add-on, you can open up pre-set web pages for each day of the week.
18. Vertigo: With Vertigo, you can get more screen size by putting tabs on the side.
19. AutoFill Forms: Use this add-on to have forms automatically filled in for you.

Research & Citation

Corral your notes, get help with answers, and more, all with these useful add-ons.

20. Clipmarks: Capture important bits from around the web using Clipmarks.
21. Google Notebook: Using Google Notebook, you can take notes right in your browser.
22. Fleck: Fleck allows you to add notes and comments on web pages for yourself and others.
23. Googlepedia: When you use Googlepedia, every time you search with Google, you'll see a relevant Wikipedia right alongside your results.
24. Taboo: If you keep lots of tabs open for reference later, use this add-on that allows you to save them elsewhere.
25. Endnote: Endnote allows you to easily download a citation from Firefox.
26. Copy Plain Text: Using this add-on, you can turn all web page text into plain unformatted text.
27. Yoono: Start a scrapbook of resources, or just see what others have discovered by using this add-on.
28. Screengrab: Save pages for archiving and sharing with this add-on that will save entire pages or portions of a page as images.
29. Answers: Get answers as fast as one click using this add-on.
30. Fireshot: Take snapshots of pages, annotate them, and save them in a number of different formats with this add-on.
31. Who is this Person?: Using this add-on, you can highlight any name on a web page and find their information on Wikipedia, LinkedIn, IMDB, and lots more.
32. Surf Canyon Search Engine Assistant: With this add-on, you can find what you're looking for faster.
33. Hyperwords for Firefox: Get access to references, searches, conversions, translations, and lots more using Hyperwords.
34. 1-Click Answers: You can click any word to get definitions, facts, and more using this add-on.
35. Dictionary Search: This add-on looks up selected words in an online dictionary.

Bookmarking

These add-ons will make it easy for you to stay on top of useful web links.

36. del.icio.us Bookmarks: Put your del.icio.us bookmarks right in your browser with this add-on.
37. Bookmarks LinkChecker: Find broken links in your bookmarks with this checker.
38. Zotero: Use Zotero to store citations and notes in Firefox.
39. Column Bookmarks: This add-on allows you to view your bookmark list in a column and avoid excessive scrolling.
40. WebMynd: Record your visual browsing history using WebMynd.
41. Bookmark Duplicate Detector: With this add-on, your bookmarks will be more organized than ever.
42. Copy URL+: With Copy URL+, you can copy a site's URL, title, and lots more.
43. MyPortal: MyPortal will create a page with all of your bookmarks.
44. Enhanced Bookmark Search: This add-on makes the bookmark search much easier to work with.

Development

If you're in charge of maintaining your library's website, you'll get lots of use out of these add-ons.

45. Firebug: Work on CSS, HTML and JavaScript in your browser with Firebug.
46. Web Developer: With this add-on, you'll get a toolbar to help you validate code, edit images, and lots more.
47. Yslow: Find out why the page you're on is slow and with Yslow.
48. CSS Viewer: Use this add-on to view CSS information in your browser.
49. Fire Sizer: See how your pages look in different dimensions using this development add-on.

Media

Take advantage of all that music, video, and other media has to offer, right from your Firefox browser.

50. FoxSaver: This add-on will show digital photos when your browser goes idle, so you can display fun vacation photos or even your library's logo.
51. FoxyTunes: You can listen to music, check out lyrics, and more, all with this add-on.
52. Download Embedded: With this add-on, you can download all embedded files on a web page, including animations, music, and more.

Search

Turn Firefox into a lean, mean, searching machine with the help of these add-ons.

53. CustomizeGoogle: Enhance Google search results with links to Yahoo, MSN, and more, and remove unwanted items like spam using CustomizeGoogle.
54. GoogleTabs: This add-on will open up the first 10 search results in their own tabs.
55. Groowe Search Toolbar: This toolbar bundles functions from lots of diferent search engines, including Google, Wikipedia, and del.icio.us.
56. SEO for Firefox: With this add-on, all of your searches will show Google page rank, age, and more under results.
57. Add to Search Bar: Put the search functionality of any web page on your browser bar with this add-on.
58. GoogleEnhancer: GoogleEnhancer offers icons, numbers, and highlighting embedded in Google search results.
59. Interclue: With this add-on's tooltip windows, you'll get extra information, previews, and loads more.
60. Google Advanced Operations Toolbar: Get shortcuts to some of Google's advanced search functions with this toolbar.
61. Googlebar Lite: This search toolbar adds 12 different search types and more.

Supercharged Browsing

If you spend a lot of time using Firefox, you're sure to appreciate all that these add-ons have to offer.

62. FasterFox: Make your Firefox experience faster using this add-on.
63. Snap Shots for Firefox: Use this add-on to get a preview of any website when you hold your mouse over the link.
64. IE Tab: Embed Internet Explorer in your Firefox browser using this add-on.
65. iMacros for Firefox: With this add-on, you can record and replay repetitious work performed on Firefox.
66. FireGestures: Using FireGestures, you can customize mouse gestures to execute a variety of commands.
67. SessionSaver: Use Session Saver to make sure you never lose your previous tabs.
68. PDF Download: Open up PDF documents as HTML and save yourself some time using this add-on.
69. Faviconize Tab: This add-on reduces your tabs down to favicons so that more will fit.
70. Flashblock: Keep annoying Flash animations at bay with Flashblock.
71. BlueOrganizer: This add-on enhances the content of web pages by turning addresses into Google maps links, book reviews into Amazon Wish List entries, and lots of other functions.
72. Feed Sidebar: Stay on top of your feeds right in your browser using Feed Sidebar.
73. Snap Links: With Snap Links, you can draw a box around links you'd like to open.
74. Tab Scope: Using this add-on, you can hover over a tab for a preview of the web page.
75. Google Preview: See thumbnails of sites you're looking up in Google search.
76. DownThemAll!: This download manager and accelerator will supercharge your browsing experience.
77. Nuke Anything: Hide just about anything via right-click with Nuke Anything.
78. URL Fixer: If you're constantly making URL typos, check out this add-on that will fix them for you.

Privacy & Security

Save yourself from the evils of viruses, phishing, and other Internet maladies by using these add-ons.

79. NoScript: NoScript will help you prevent JavaScript and other executable content from running without your permission.

80. Password Exporter: Keep your passwords safe using this add-on.
81. BlockSite: Prevent yourself from accidentally visiting malicious sites using BlockSite.
82. Add N Edit Cookies: Add and edit session and saved cookies with this add-on.
83. Dr. Web Anti-Virus Link Checker: With Dr. Web's add-on, you can check links for viruses before you visit them.
84. BugMeNot: Avoid having to register for information with this add-on.
85. TabRenamizer: Keep your tab titles private using TabRenamizer.
86. Adblock Plus: Get rid of ads on web pages with Adblock Plus.
87. SiteAdvisor: Find out if a site is safe or not using SiteAdvisor.
88. SplitLink: Using SplitLink, you'll be able to see the true URL you're visiting.
89. TrackMeNot: Use TrackMeNot to protect yourself against search data profiling.
90. FoxyProxy: With FoxyProxy, you'll enjoy advanced proxy management.
91. Sxipper: Let Sxipper accurately fill in forms, passwords, and more for you.

Patrons

These add-ons will help make Firefox more patron-friendly.

92. LibX: LibX allows you to provide library-specific searches right in the Firefox browser.
93. Glubble Family Edition: With this parental control suite, you can ensure that browsing stays appropriate for elementary school age children.
94. Print Preview: Cut down on mistakes and wasted paper by letting patrons preview their prints in Firefox.
95. Public Fox: Make Firefox a public web browser and control preferences, add-ons and other options.
96. Netcraft Toolbar: Block malicious sites using the Netcraft Toolbar.
97. Menu Editor: Cut down on toolbar menus that patrons don't need to use with this add-on.
98. Greasemonkey: Control the way webpages are presented using Greasemonkey.
99. WOT: This useful add-on will warn users about risky websites before visiting them.
100. Image Zoom: Use Image Zoom to make viewing extremely large photos easier for your patrons.

The Google AJAX Libraries API has been created to make AJAX applications that use popular frameworks such as Prototype, Script.aculo.us, jQuery, Dojo, and MooTools faster and easier for developers and the end users.

Whenever a user goes to a AJAX site, they would normally have to download one of the libraries listed above again, and again, and again for each AJAX site they go to. The same file, over, and over, and over again. What a waste of time and speed.

So Google have developed a service for developers to reference these popular AJAX libraries from the Google servers. They have each version of the libraries (incase you want to stick to an older version), and many other benefits such as:-
* Caching can be done correctly, and once, by us... and developers have to do nothing
* Gzip works
* We can serve minified versions
* The files are hosted by Google which has a distributed CDN at various points around the world, so the files are "close" to the user
* The servers are fast
* By using the same URLs, if a critical mass of applications use the Google infrastructure, when someone comes to your application the file may already be loaded!
* A subtle performance (and security) issue revolves around the headers that you send up and down. Since you are using a special domain (NOTE: not google.com!), no cookies or other verbose headers will be sent up, saving precious bytes.

So a message to everyone who has created AJAX applications, to help yourself and the end users, change your references to Google's AJAX Libraries API. For more information check out ajaxian and the Google AJAX Libraries API???????? ????? ???????? and documentation.

It's a good idea as a web developer to try and learn one thing everyday (no matter how small or how big). These sites are a great start to keep an eye to learn something new from web design and coding hints/tips, to new industry features.

* Nettutes
* Woork
* Web Designer Hall
* Smashing Magazine
* Vitamin
* Wake Up Later
* Snook.ca
* Signal vs Noise
* Adaptive Path Blog
* Tutorial Blog
* WebAppers
* Web Resources Depot
* Ajaxian
* dzone
* Design Float
* IBM's developerWorks
* del.icio.us
* Sharebrain
* Style Grind
* PSDTUTS
* Design Reviver
* Blog.SpoonGraphics
* John Resig
* Boxes and Arrows
* PHPDeveloper
* Coding Horror
* O'Reilly Network
* Google doctype
* Web Monkey
* Digital Web Magazine

To keep up with all these sites I suggest you use a RSS Feed application like Particls or Google Reader.

Group Managing Director for Telstra Enterprise and Government, David Thodey (Left) and Telstra Chief Technology Officer, Dr Hugh Bradlow projected as a hologram(Right).

Today, Telstra showed a presentation with one guy in Melbourne and another guy in Adelaide, both sharing the same stage by the use of holograms (as pictured above). This is very exciting to see this technology finally become live as it is the beginning of a new era in Technology, Business and Lifestyle.

It has the look and feel of being in the same room together. Dr Bradlow

How holograms can change the Internet is a never ending list, instead of meeting people one website pages, why not invite their hologram into your room? Brings new meaning to the term "chat room" when the rooms can be physical.

Attending meetings in 2 different countries, one hour apart will become seamless and part of everyday life. The system isn't commercially available yet, but as the speed of Internet increases it will only be a few more years until we start to see this technology.

For more information about the presentation, checkout Brisbane Times.

When Google introduced their Street View feature into Google Maps, I've always said it would be very cool to see a video for directions from one location to another. I've found this site where they've been able to achieve just that.

The web app is available on Google Code so if you wish to look at the code behind it, you can. To view the app in action, visit http://gmaps-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/streetview/streetview_directions.html.

The first thing you're going to notice is that it's slow, even on the fast speed and also you may receive blurry images if you're like me (in Australia). However as you can 'tap' into the Google Maps via their API, you're able to view all their images and functionality in any means you wish to (without violating their terms and services of course).

A user has created a C++/OpenGL application to give you a game-like experience, where you're able to move back and forwards and move around via the mouse. View the You Tube movie below to see this application in action.

For those who want to make their own Google Maps Street View application, this link is a great starting point.

Out with the old, in with the new.

The saying I'm sure we've all heard, but how does this relate to Web Development? Well sometimes we've just got to give up that old treasure of ours, that old website, that old web application, that old Internet application, and especially if your business relies heavily on it. It can come at a cost to your company to upgrade however the long term return is well worth it.

Before you look at upgrading your website or application, you need to research your business and what benefits you can achieve out of new technology services. Before I continue on with this post, I would like to elaborate one thing "sometimes it's best to start over."

You can achieve a really magnificent result from your upgrade, but as most people will tell you, it's cheaper to simply buy brand new then to spend all the $'s on upgrading (especially these days). The same applies with technology, new programming features leaves older features depreciated, and normally time consuming compared to the latest.

Your upgrading and continuous work can only get you so far, but why not go for the full blow and get the latest technology, you'll get more power in less time.

On this note, I'm going to look further into Python and Ruby on Rails (for those who don't know what they are... go Google them).

Australia's biggest datacentre will be coming to Brisbane by Engineering giant Emerson and datacentre company Digital Sense who have signed a deal to build 'what they claim' is Australia's largest high-density datacentre. Totalling 10,000 square metres and drawing a maximum of 196 megawatts of power.

Named "Data Centre City", the datacentre will be built near Kenmore just outside Brisbane, with a maximum capacity of 6,500 watts per square metre. Digital Sense hopes the first parts of Data Centre City will come online late this year.

The company pair are also working on a smaller datacentre in Kenmore, totalling 1,600 square metres and drawing 2000 watts per square metre, which is scheduled for completion this July.

The demand for data centres is in high demand across the world with more and more hosting companies forming, and more people looking at Internet solutions for their business. These new data centres will open Brisbane's perspective further in the IT and Internet industry. Putting Brisbane on the global Internet map, soon to be capital.

Adobe has gone one step further with Flash already in their beta release of version 10. There's a lot of integrations that have been inserted which make Flash a very impressive platform.

The is a huge battle between Microsoft (Silverlight), Adobe (AIR, Flex, and Flash), JavaScript, and Ruby on Rails for developers to choose as their platform. Adobe has definitely positioned itself back up on the podium with it's newest features.

Flash now has native support for 3D which enables developers to make 3D effects on 2D objects. The screenshot below shows 2D mobile phone images that have been placed in a circle, tilted and told to rotate.

There is also the features of the Pixel Bender which enables you to perform image processing effects and filters. Check out some of the photos in the Pixel Bender Gallery to see what Pixel Bender is capable of. It's like having Photoshop image effects right in Photoshop.

I encourage you to check out Adobe Labs about Flash 10 for further details on the next version of Flash 10.

True but I doubt we will ever run out of things to tweet about.

If you still want to use Particls V1 which is un-supported by the way, click on the image below.

This will install Particls V1 onto your computer with my custom configurations, which you can easily modify after you install.

Learn more about Particls here.

User Level: Beginner to Intermediate

 
< ?php
  class MySQLHandler {
     var $mysql_host;
     var $mysql_username;
     var $mysql_password;
     var $mysql_marking_database;
     var $link;
     var $select_db;
 
     function MySQLHandler($database_name) {
        $this->mysql_host = "INSERT_HOST_HERE";
        $this->mysql_username = "INSERT_USERNAME_HERE";
        $this->mysql_password = "INSERT_PASSWORD_HERE";
        $this->mysql_marking_database = $database_name;
     }
 
     function open_mysql_link() {
        $this->link = mysql_connect($this->mysql_host,
           $this->mysql_username, $this->mysql_password);
        $this->select_db = mysql_select_db(
           $this->mysql_marking_database, $this->link);
        return $this->link;
     }
 
     function close_mysql_link() {
        mysql_close($this->link);
     }
  }
?>
 

The above PHP script (mysql_handler.php) can be used to connect to your MySQL database with PHP.

 
< ?php
   include('classes/mysql_handler.php');
   $mysql = new MySQLHandler("database_name");
?>
 

The include line will allow you to make references to the class, the 2nd line will allow you to initiate the class with a database name.

 
   $mysql_link = $mysql->open_mysql_link();
 

Then when you need a link for your MySQL functions, all you need to do is specify the above script and you're connected.

You may want to further secure this file by placing your host, username, and password details elsewhere.

User Level: Intermediate

This article assumes that you already have the following installed and working:-
* Linux
* Subversion (SVN)
* A SVN Repository
* GCC (To compile your C scripts)
* Vi (or another text editor)

You will also need shell access to your server to perform the following functions, either you are directly on the machine or you are using a utility like Putty to access your server.

The idea of this post is to allow you to automatically update your files in a public html directory after you commit to your SVN repository, you may want to create a subdomain like preview.domain-name.com or sandbox.domain-name.com. You may deploy a particular folder from your svn repository or the complete repository.

 
   $ svn checkout /full/path/to/your/svn/db
      /full/path/to/your/public/html/directory
 

To begin this process, login to your server and checkout the SVN repository (svn checkout) to your public html directory, some servers the public html directory will be "/var/www/html", "/var/www/public_html" or "/var/www/vhosts/domain-name.com/httpdocs". There are many different configurations so check where your public html directory is, you may also create a directory under your public html directory to check out the SVN directory to. You will need to remember the directory to which you have checked out your SVN database to for later. This article does assume you already have a SVN database set-up and working.

 
   $ cd /full/svn/path/hooks
 

Change directory (cd) to your SVN database hooks sub-folder.

 
   $ cp post-commit.tmpl post-commit
 

Copy (cp) the template file "post-commit.tmpl" to "post-commit" (without the quotation marks).

 
   $ chmod +x post-commit
 

Change file system mode (chmod) of the "post-commit" file to execute (-x).

 
   $ vi svnupdate.c
 

We need to write a little C program that will do the work. The command above will open up the vi editor to create the "svnupdate.c" file, you may use any text editor of your choice.

 
   #include <stddef .h>
   #include <stdlib .h>
   #include <unistd .h>
 
   int main(void)
   {
      system("svn update
         /full/path/to/your/public/html/svn/directory");
   }
</unistd></stdlib></stddef>

The above script will execute the command to update the SVN repository in the public html directory we created earlier.

 
   $ gcc -o svnupdate svnupdate.c
 

We need to compile our little C program with GCC. The above command will compile our "svnupdate.c" file and output our little program "svnupdate".

 
   $ env - ./svnupdate
 

Lets test our little program, your SVN repository should update with the latest changes. If you receive any errors here then you either a) haven't specified the correct directory in the "svnupdate.c" script or b) you didn't checkout the SVN database properly. If you receive any errors, go back and fix them, there is no use continuing on from here.

 
   $ chown root:root svnupdate
 

Change the owner (chown) of our compiled C program to root.

 
   $ chmod +s svnupdate
 

Change the mode (chmod) of the "svnupdate" file.

 
   $ vi post-commit
 

Now we need to edit our "post-commit" file to execute our "svnupdate" file.

 
   /full/file/path/to/the/file/svnupdate
 

Add the above line to the "post-commit" file and save the file.

Now when you commit files from your SVN directory, the server will update the SVN repository in your public html folder. To protect your files, you may want to protect the public html directory with a login using a .htaccess file.

I'm happy for any suggestions or any corrections, so please don't forget to leave a comment below.

This is one of the most common mistakes developers (of any language) make so I thought I should let you know why you shouldn't use this method.

The Scenario:
You have a page on your site and you don't want people to simply link to this page unless they have clicked on a link from your own site. Lets say your page is called 'page2.php' and it's located at 'www.your-site.com/page2.php.'

When the user enters the 'page2.php' page you can easily determine which page they came from, in PHP you can use the $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] function to determine the referring page. With this function you would check that it contains www.your-site.com in the value.

For what ever reason why you might want to check the referring address to your page, checking the referral address against your own domain name isn't bullet-proof.

Why? The referral address is set by the user's agent (their Internet browser), some browsers have the option for you to edit this value and some browsers don't even set this at all.

There are many solutions to this scenario, but I would recommend using sessions where you can set the a session variable on 'page1.php' which contains the link to 'page2.php.' When the user enters the 'page2.php' page, you can then check to see if that variable has been set, if it hasn't then the user must have come from a different location.

It's a little bit more of a setup, but it's secure.