something i don’t do as often as i should is talk about security and more specifically vulnerability scanning here on the old neglected blog. but here goes…

i am familiar and have enjoyed using acunetix for the past few years in a corporate environment to look for basic and even more complex web based application vulnerabilities in an automated fashion. however,  i just stumbled across another web vulnerability scanner called netsparker that is worth a look too. i haven’t done any benchmarking between the two and i would probably not have the best test bed to do a valid comparison but i have read several articles speaking well of acunetix and i haven’t read much on netsparker, so i guess only time will tell.  here is one article ranking web vuln scanners by a “reader’s choice” poll.

despite the age of this, i recommend checking out this list for other scanners to try.

iPad + Velcro from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

we purchased a new video camera in preparation for the little guy’s arrival.  we purchased a canon hd m30 with image stabilization (our favorite feature).  we ran it through the paces today and practiced our uploading skills to the internets.  we tried uploading to both youtube and vimeo.  flickr was immediately out of the race due to their 90 second restriction.  both services offered comparable upload speeds.  i personally like the vimeo interface better, but i am liking youtube’s cleaned up interface as of recent.  the software that came with the camera also had a snazy quick “web” upload feature that allowed for quick upload to your youtube account with one click.  so i think youtube might be the winner on our video sharing platform of choice.  let me know what you think of the 2 different videos below (excuse the poop!)…

vimeo

First Video with the Puppies from Derek Davenport on Vimeo.

youtube

pretty cool little iPhone app here where I can write blog posts from the iPhone. unfortunately I might just have to break my no caps rule, since the iPhone likes to auto cap. Oh well. I think the zero readers I have can deal.

Update: this might actually help me keep this blog up to date!

i have been blessed with a google wave invite, so i have been giving it a thorough run through.  i have to say, it was a little awkward at first trying to get use to this new interface and it was abundantly obvious at how lonely it can be in a limited private beta.  there was very little to do, after quickly making the rounds through all the clicks, buttons, and menus i was immediately giving the “ok…what next?” face to my computer screen.  but!  then i found the “with:public” search options.  by typing in any interest and appending “with:public” to the search you are able to query all public waves for your search criteria.  i quickly added myself to a few waves tailored to my local community.  everyone there, 30+ people at the time of this post, was very friendly, sociable and excited about communicating with this revolutionary new communication media.  I quickly began to see the awesomeness of google wave.  seeing the public and community capabilities as well as the robots that i have been learning about and the instant collaboration.

being able to put nearly any content (pictures, video, widgets, documents, voting capabilities, the list goes on) into a wave and keep 1 wave going while you add people, remove people, private chat within a wave, etc is pretty amazing.  its pretty cool only having a few waves in your inbox and they individually grow without the overbearing barrage of messages that pollute your inbox when using email.  i see great potential for this technology and i highly recommend singing up for a wave account (it will probably take some time before you actually receive an account…and, no i don’t have any invites).

oh yeah, i almost forgot about my favorite feature!  drag and drop uploads.  you can literally grab some pictures off your desktop and drop them on the webpage and they upload to the wave…awesome.  this is one small step to the entirely cloud based os.  its coming, its only a matter of time.

how long do you think before something like google wave replaces email?

i don’t necessarily agree with everything 10/gui suggests in their look into the future of multi-touch computing, but i do like the way they take a fresh and somewhat uninhibited re-take on how to interface with the computer.  i agree that things need to change, we have been dealing with the keyboard and mouse for way too long and there is a built up desire for something new and cool.  touch devices were pretty much crappy for the longest time and then the iphone came out and touch/multi-touch took off!  we need someone to step up and take that step into a new realm of interfacing possibilities.  but, 10/gui, i like where your heads at, keep it up!

10/gui from c. miller on vimeo.

happen to catch this commercial in my reader today.  very cool and is definitely showing that sprint is thinking forward.  wimax is going to be a big deal, but will the other cell phone giants be able to come up with something a little better soon enough to rain on sprint’s gigantic investment in wimax?

either way i am excited that soon i will be able to dump my lame wired connection for a super fast wireless connection, completely untethering my house!

one of google’s many secrets has always been their data center and server infrastructure.  how do they deliver such amazing performance from their computing infrastructure so efficiently?

well, for the first time google has opened their data center doors and given the public a look at some of their unique configurations that make it possible for google to deliver that .3 second search query.

having worked in a data center for a brief period of time i have learned a few of the basics regarding data center design, flow, and principle and the things google are doing are very innovative and pretty cool for a geek like me.

check out some of the details here.

then watch this video below that takes a dive into a cheap google server (no frills here…the coolness is in the lack of frills!):

its april and i haven’t posted since the new year…sorry i suck. i’ll try to get better…even though no one reads this anyways

anyways, check out the gmail april fools joke:

http://mail.google.com/mail/help/autopilot/index.html

i recently was doing some work on monkey bread bakery and stumbled across a new flash gallery that i replaced the current one with.  i think it turned out quite nicely.  you can check out the gallery here. i got it from airtight interactive.  they have several pretty  slick flash galleries and other flash goodies for that matter that are easy to install and make for a nice effect.

there is another flash gallery that i like to use.  i have used it on itmdesign and on a few sites in the past.  the only down side to this gallery is that if you don’t let all the images on the page load before clicking on one of the images, the flash effect won’t work.  so be careful when using this one.  i can’t seem to find the original site i got this from, but here is a slight variation…here.