by: Chris Hudson
22 July, 2009
WordPress version 2.8.2 upgrade is now available; it is a security release to fix a XSS vulnerability.
Comment author URLs were not fully sanitised when displayed in the admin which could be exploited to redirect you away from the admin to another site.
To upgrade either download version 2.8.2 or automatically upgrade from the Tools->Upgrade page of your WordPress blog’s admin area.
by: Chris Hudson
17 July, 2009
A few weeks ago we saw the news of Michael Jackson’s death disseminated largely via Twitter users and social media sites before Google and the mainstream news media got hold of the story.
Then yesterday we had Daniel Tumiwa breaking the story of the Jakarta bombings from the scene via Twitter and his Blackberry. Pictures of the atrocity appeared on Twitpic shortly afterwards.
It is hard to believe that Twitter’s founder would ever have imagined that its service would be used for frontline reporting of breaking news of world terrorism, rather than, “should I have a bagel or doughnut for breakfast?”.
Social media has come a long way already but are there any limits to what it can do in the future?
Will Twitter users replace the majority of professional journalists ultimately? What is the point of a hack turning up to a crime scene, press card in hand if the news has been tweeted and posted on Facebook and pictures have been taken and posted to Twitpic?
Analysis and investigation of the news stories maybe the answer for journalists but once the story has been broken on social media sites there are plenty of intelligent and articulate bloggers on the Internet who can provide the background to any story.
When the Web 2.0 Internet gets hold of the information from the social media sites there are also millions of people online able to provide immediate analysis and input expert background knowledge into a story rather than a handful of journalists in a newsroom.
Have journalists any real defence against an army of citizen news gatherers or a horde of knowledgeable bloggers?
What are your thoughts?
by: Chris Hudson
Mozilla have today released an update to Firefox, their cross-platform browser.
Firefox 3.5 was only released three weeks ago, and Mozilla announced almost immediately that there would be a quick release of the 3.5.1 update as there were a couple of topcrashes that had not been eliminated before 3.5 was released.
However, the discovery earlier this week that there was a critical vulnerability in Firefox 3.5’s Just-In-Time Javascript compiler has meant that 3.5.1 has been released even earlier than intended to fix the vulnerability and restore full Javascript capability to Firefox users.
(Mozilla had advised disabling the JIT Javascript compiler as a temporary cure to the vulnerability. We show you how to turn the JIT Javascript back on here).
In addition to the security fix, the Firefox 3.5.1 update cures a number of topcrashes or stability issues and supplies a few bugfixes. You can find a list of Firefox 3.5.1 bugfixes here.
You can download the Firefox browser for Mac, Windows or Linux here
by: Chris Hudson
Australian ABCNews is reporting that news of the bombs at the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton Hotels in Jakarta was first posted by Twitter user Daniel Tumiwa from his Blackberry:
“Bom @ marriot and ritz Carlton kuningan jakarta
2 boms go off at marriot hotel ad ritz carlton jakarta
2 boms go off inside Ritz Carlton and Marriott coffee shops! Not kidding. Am here.
Left location.Shocked. Lots of blood. Breakfast meetings at coffee shops while bombs went off.
Thanks for all the concern. Back home. Safe. Shocked. Blood…smoke…glass…everywhere…prayers to the victims….”
Simple, immediate and graphic. Pictures of the outrage also rapidly appeared on Twitpic.
You can follow Intrahost on Twitter, although we tend to tweet about online web design resources and such like rather than terrorism; but I guess you can never know whether or not today is the day that YOU will be a breaking news story to the world via Twitter?
by: Chris Hudson
15 July, 2009
Microsoft have launched a stunning pre-order deal on Windows 7 as a “token of our appreciation” for the feedback and help given by users.
You can pre-order Windows 7 from just £49.99 for the Windows 7 Home Premium E. That is a staggering £100 of the standard pricing. If you want the Windows 7 Professional then it’ll cost you just £99.99, an even bigger saving.
Now there’s two reasons not to hang around; this offer is only available from July 15th until August 9th 2009, and the Microsoft site says that “quantities are limited”.
After 9th August the Windows 7 prices will return to £149.99 for Home Premium E, £219.99 for Professional E, and £229.99 for Ultimate E.
Although Microsoft say that technical requirements may change, here are the current minimum recommended specifications:
Here in the UK, Windows 7 will not come complete with a browser - not just IE8, but any browser! So remember you will need to have a browser saved to a CD/DVD or USB memory plug-in before you start installing a Windows 7 upgrade.
Browser-less versions of Windows 7 have names ending in a capital “E” to distinguish them from the rest of the world versions.
Here are the release dates for Windows 7
by: Chris Hudson
Mozilla has announced a critical vulnerability in the newly released Firefox 3.5
It is possible that other versions of Firefox have this vulnerability which allows a user’s computer to be exploited by others executing code on it.
The Firefox 3.5 vulnerability arises through a bug in the Just-in-time (JIT) JavaScript compiler. This causes memory corruption by a Javascript code-handling error when faced with certain HTML tags.
To reduce the risk of exploitation it is advised that you disable the JIT for now. Here’s how:
(Or you could use Safari…)
Anyway, as this will cause performance loss, once a bugfix is released you should swith the JIT back on by:
UPDATE: 09:45hrs 17th July 2009: This critical vulnerability has now been fixed with the release of Firefox 3.5.1
by: Chris Hudson
14 July, 2009
Mention a Virtual Dedicated Server and many people will struggle to explain what one is let alone the advantages of one. (This problem is further exacerbated by the fact that they can also be referred to as a VDS, a Virtual Private Server, or a VPS)
However, most people are familiar with the concept a dedicated server; a computer that you share with no one else; to which you have root or superadmin access and can install on it whatever software you what and can reboot it at any time.
The benefits of a dedicated server are clear when compared to shared web hosting; no sharing it with other users’ websites to slow down your website(s), no dodgy websites sharing your IP address, having the ability to install your own SSL certificate for e-commerce and the generally higher level of security that comes with having your own server rather than the traditional shared web hosting where you may be one of hundreds sharing a server.
The major downside to a dedicated server is simply one of cost; all that speed, security and exclusivity comes at a relatively high price.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a compromise where you had most of the benefits of a dedicated server but much less of the cost?
Well there is: that where a virtual dedicated server comes into its own.
HP ProLiant DL360 G6
Essentially, what we do here at Intrahost is take a well-specified dedicated server, the HP ProLiant DL360 G6, and install the VMWare virtualization software on it. This software enables the creation of a number of separate virtual servers on this one computer. Each one of these virtual servers can run its own different OS i.e. Windows or Linux, each can reboot individually as needed, each user has root access to the virtual server so you can install the software that you want on your virtual server.
Perhaps most most importantly, unlike shared web hosting (the most common kind), each virtual server has a guaranteed share of the resources of the underlying physical server, i.e., CPU processing time, RAM, hard disk space, and even bandwidth. Just like a dedicated server you can be sure that when you need them the resources that you have paid for are ready and waiting for you. Thus, each virtual server is prevented from hampering the performance of another virtual server on the same host machine.
Security of a virtual dedicated server or VPS is like that of a physical dedicated server. Each virtual server is separate for the others and even if a VDS on your physical server were hacked your VDS would remain untouched.
The cost benefit? Here at Intrahost a Virtual Dedicated Server is available for around a third of the cost of Dedicated Server. Direct comparisons are difficult because of the many options available but suffice to say that the existence of VDSs means that many more businesses, web designers and their customers can enjoy the benefits of a dedicated server without the substantial monthly overhead.
Someone asked me why, instead of creating a VDS, didn’t hosting companies buy less powerful and cheaper servers so that customers could have a server each instead of sharing one physical server as several VDSs?
There are two main reasons: firstly, that approach would still produce an expensive dedicated server rental because that low-powered dedicated server would still cost the hosting company the data centre’s rackspace rental and power charges but those would fall on the just the one dedicated server owner. Whereas, by buying and virtualizing big powerful servers the hosting company will face the same data center rackspace and power costs but those would be now shared by more users and so the monthly rental per user comes down substantially.
Secondly, the more expensive servers used as VDS host machines are far more technologically advanced, powerful and greener than the cut-price, end-of-line, cheap dedicated servers offered by many companies based outside the UK and EU. However, the capital cost of the top-of-the range servers is again shared by a number of VDS clients which keeps the cost down per user when compared to funding the capital cost of even a relatively cheap web server by one user.
by: Chris Hudson
10 July, 2009
Microsoft have released both the end-user runtime version and Software Developer’s Kit of Silverlight 3 earlier than expected; ahead of today’s official launch product in San Francisco at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.
Microsoft’s Silverlight 3 media player is seen as their answer to Adobe’s Flash.
However, just as important is that Silverlight 3 will enable the web-based version of Microsoft Office which will be released next week for testing by Microsoft Partners.
The online version of Microsoft Office is called Microsoft Web Office and will be part of Microsoft Office’s 2010 version.
Given this week’s news that Google are releasing a PC OS, Silverlight 3 is even more important as Web Office is effectively Microsoft’s challenge to Google’s online applications suite, Google Apps.
Silverlight 3 is available for Mac and Windows.
by: Chris Hudson
In short, you wont be able to add any additional files, and log file creation will be hindered potentially affecting the performance of any websites hosted within your package.
Before this limit is reached a warning email will be sent to you to notify you of the even. Keeping track of log files and any ftp folders you use should prevent this from being too much of an issue. If it does become an issue review our knowledge base, or contact our support teams to discuss your options.
Of course, you can upgrade your account to one that provides more disk space - our upper limit on UK web host accounts is 20Gb (20,000Mb).
by: Chris Hudson
No.
If you want to take out a web hosting account with Intrahost to host existing domain names it is NOT necessary to transfer the domains and use Intrahost as their registrar.
Once you have a web host account with Intrahost you can simply go back to the domain registrar’s website, log into your domain name control panel and change the DNS records to point to the IP address of your Intrahost account.
