iOS Archives

These posts are syndicated from my iOS Dev Diary over at pinkstone.co.uk.

The format is slightly different with more code snippets and less explanations. I had originally designed it as a notebook in iOS Development – now you can follow along if you’re interested.

Which blogging platform should I go with?

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There are so many content management systems (or blogging platforms) on the market, many of them offer a free service. Some of them that spring to mind are these:

  • Blogger (by Google)
  • WordPress
  • Live Spaces (by Microsoft, now defunct)
  • Movable Type
  • Type Pad
  • Joomla
  • Drupal

The choice is endless and the list could go on – but only two are serious candidates, at least for me. This comes down to personal preference and I encourage you to try them all… but who has the time to do that?

Let me explain the differences.

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How to find a user’s Twitter RSS Feed

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Twitter recently made some changes to their API. One of them has an impact if you’re trying to access someone’s Twitter RSS Feed.

This used to work extremely well: on every user’s Twitter page there was an RSS Icon in your browser bar. We sued click on it and saw the feed. Well not anymore 🙁

But help is at hand – thanks to The Sociable who have kindly explained how to access it post May 2011.

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The “Comber 38” Viagra Hack

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Just when I though the Drunkjeans Hack had passed over, there’s another attack on a couple of my sites. I’ll call it the “Comber 38” hack. These hacks are most likely related.

What does this hack do?

With Comber 38, your sites are turned into Viagra Promo sites. Search for “viagra hack” and you’ll see how common this problem is.

Even though your home page may still work, the hackers use your site as a storage for images that can be pulled in from other sites, hence poncing off your server’s bandwidth.

If these files are linked to, your site is redirecting to some viagra site. It gioves the hackers and spammers direct link to a clean site rather than having to use their spam domains directly. If it wouldn’t be so evil, you ould argue it’s a pretty bright idea…

In fact, here’s what’s in one of those files:

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What is a “Point Release”?

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With the arrival of WordPress 2.8.5, I mentioned to my good friend Dave Lee that this is a “point release”. He didn’t quite know what that meant, so I thought maybe I’ll share the knowledge. Many if not all software projects have regular improvements that the coders come up with. Usually for reasons for security … Read more