Don’t get it? I didn’t either. This video might help:

Today, I found myself cleaning out a site that had been the subject of a malicious attack. And  after securing the site, I came across a new WP plugin that is designed to scan and secure WordPress sites that are being hosted on Rackspace Cloud Sites.

The scanner automatically checks file permissions and provides a on-click correction for permissions. It also scans all of your posts for malicious code such as posts containing base64_decode (or edoced_46esab), script tags, hidden css elements or iframes.

So check out the JW Cloud Sites Scanner and send Jackson Whelan a big thanks (and donation if he gets that going)… thanks Jackson!

Just look at AT&T and Apple (dropped call anyone?) if you want to see how the law of unintended consequences can mess up a perfectly good relationship. But with Engine Yard, it is the unintended consequences that make supporting the company so worthwhile. Yea, there are other solid hosting companies out there, including some damn good Rails hosts. But, Engine Yard (like no one else) supports the Rails community. I for one feel lucky that guys like Yehuda and many others have the opportunity to work in an environment that supports the community so voraciously. Just watch Yehuda’s keynote at RailsConf this year and you’ll know exactly what I mean. Equally important, it’s because of these contributors that Rails developers are able to provide such a compelling service to our clients.

That’s why I’m proud to say that CodeBenders is officially an Engine Yard partner. And, I’m proud to put the EY badge on our site.

Alright, enough with the fanboy talk… back to work.

If you’re a subscriber, you can access the article here. If you’re not, we ripped a copy from their site and posted the complete article here.

After a crazy flight back to the west coast – 15 hours of flying, circling, diverting, waiting, unloading, loading, sitting, waiting for a pilot from Baltimore to Portland – these are the things that stick out in my mind the most…

As I previously tweeted, Yehuda‘s keynote speech was awesome. If you think Ken Kesey new how to mix up a tasty batch of Kool-Aid, you should taste Yehuda’s. Oh, man, was I inspired (and still am)! For all the bravado that is the Rails, Yehuda’s talk defined the moral center of this community. If there’s only one video to watch from the conference. This is it…

A good complement to Wy’s speech was Gary Vee‘s talk on the “Give a Fuck Economy”. Gary bring’s more emotion to his talks than a JV cheerleading squad, not to mention that he drops more f-bombs than Matt. During the Q&A, I got to ask Gary about his interest in social action. Although, I think he initially misunderstood that I was asking about charity, he did express some interest in the shifting world of non-profit, community action. When you combine Wy’s community participation ideology with Gary’s “mom and pop” grow a relationship with your constituents, I see a brighter future. And that future makes me even more optimistic about UniteNow’s mission.

Here’s Gary’s talk…

Lastly, although not a keynote, I really enjoyed Ian McFarland’s talk Agile the Pivotal Way. Whether you are a consultancy, a startup, a non-profit, a government agency or anything in between, these insights are invaluable. The slides and video have not been posted, yet. But I hope they will be uploaded here soon.

Among other things, FanPageAnalaytics.com maps the connections of some 200 million Facebook user profiles and illustrates the “thickness” of those networks between various cities. For example, here is a map of Bend’s social network demonstrating the wide connections ranging from Los Angeles to Seattle.

You can also find other interesting connections for groups, famous people, etc. Who knew that Vermont has the highest per capita number of Jerry Garcia fans in the country?

When I’m working with clients I often find that they are not using some of the tools that I many of us have come to depend upon. Usually, this is because they are comfortable with the old tools like conventional email and instant messaging. So, thought it’d be a good idea to share some of my favorite apps – not all the ones that I’ve used – but the ones that are indispensable to me and my collaborators. Below is my list. Let me know if you have any tools that you can’t live without.

Campfire (with Propane) – from the big brains at 37signals, instant messaging on steroids. Forget about 1-to-1 IM. Campfire let’s you create chat rooms with groups, upload and store files and store transcripts. Create a new room for each of your working groups like Client X or Project Y.  Add Propane (a local app for OS X) so all of your rooms are available all of the time.

Pivotal Tracker – from the folks at Pivotal Labs, PT is a collaborative task management tool for Agile shops. Guess what? It works great as a task manager for any group. Create “stories” (or tasks), assign them to someone, build time estimates, pass tasks from one team member to the next and track progress/velocity of your sprints with burndown charts. Guess what else? It’s completely free – as in beer. Thank you Pivotal!

Dropbox – you still emailing documents or storing shared documents on (the oh so clumsy) Box.net? Dropbox is a freemium web-based storage service with a twist. Download their app to your machine and a local folder on your machine looks and acts just like any other folder with one exception: it automatically syncs with the network and your collaborators. So your files are always local and always available on the network. Did one of your collaborators delete one your documents? No problem visit the Dropbox site and restore it. Want to keep separate repositories? Just create unique folders for each of your groups and invite each group to that folder.

Highrise – another great product from 37signals, Highrise is a simple, but powerful CRM app. Track client contacts, leads and deals with all or some of your team members. And it’s easy to keep Highrise up-to-date: just forward or cc emails to Highrise and the system will automatically attach it to the appropriate contact.

Gliffy – everyone needs a diagram some time. But it’s usually not just for yourself, but rather so you can share your plan/idea with others and get their feedback. Sound familiar? Then check out Gliffy, an online diagramming application that let’s you collaborate and share. Oh yea, it comes with plenty of templates and stock icons for just about every industry.

Google Calendar – coordinating meetings, blocking out “task time” and sharing your calendar with others is a huge pain. I’ve yet to see a calendar app (local or web-based) that’s great. But Google Calendar is probably the best. Create multiple calendars and share some or all of them with those that need to know. Gcal will keep your calendars in a single interface and it’s easy to create events and invite others.

Google Docs – also not the best office suite on the planet, but everyone has a Google account. Easily upload, share and collaborate on docs. Track changes so you can roll them back when you need to. And, Google has recently added Google Drawings a collaborative drawing tool to help groups illustrate things like org charts and visually markup other images.

Skitch – so you’re working on a design – a website, product, marketing piece, whatever. You receive a draft from your designer and want to share your thoughts. One way of commenting is writing text in an email. Another, perhaps better, way is to crack open Skitch and overlay text, arrows and other graphical clues on top of the image. Skitch also lets you grab a screenshot from any app on your computer. So you can easily grab anything on your screen, add comments and share it with your team.

Skype – everyone knows Skype, a simple, cross-platform text and video instant messenger app. It also does super-cheap international calls. If you have a virtual company or have lots of remote workers, using Skype helps to guarantee lots of face time with all your team members. Plus, you get to know your cohorts a lot better when you get to see them working in their pajamas.

Fluid – last but not least, if you use a lot of web apps, you really need Fluid (OS X only; one more reason to leave your Windoze machine). Fluid  is a little app that will make any web-based app feel like a desktop app. So if you use Gmail or Pivotal Tracker all the time, you can keep them available all the time without cluttering up your browser with more tabs.

Did I forget something? Got an app that you can’t live without? Please add a comment.

While I’m delighted to get such a quick reply, I can’t help but to think that the Android development team must have known about the bug for some time. The reply below gives no indication that this is a known issue. But it also does not request any further detail, which I assume they would have requested if they were unfamiliar with the bug. I did search the Android Code site, but I could not find a known issue.

If you’ve seen this occur on your device, please add comments/details to Android Code site here.

“Hello Michael,

Thank you for your email. We understand you are facing issues with your
email app.

To resolve this issue, please try the following:

- Perform a hard reset
1. Remove the battery from your phone.
2. Wait 15 seconds.
3. Replace your battery and try turning on your phone again.

- Clear cache of the Email application
1. Go to Settings > Applications > Manage applications
2. Press the Menu button and select ‘Filter’
3. Select ‘All’
4. Select the problematic application
5. Click ‘Clear data’ and ‘Clear cache’

- Uninstall any third-party applications that might be impacting the Email
application

1. Go to Settings > Applications > Manage applications
2. Press the Menu button and select ‘Filter’
3. Select ‘All’
4. Select the problematic application
5. Click ‘Uninstall’

If are still seeing inclusion of a separate email, you may need to do a
factory data reset

1. Go to Settings > Privacy > Factory data reset
2. Click ‘Reset phone’
3. Your phone will restart
4. After resetting your phone, you will need to re-sign in to your Google
account and re-download all of your apps

Please reply to this email if your issue remains unresolved after these
steps.

Sincerely,

XXXXX
The Google Team”

Since picking up the device I’ve had several complaints about minor bugs. But I was jaw-dropping shocked last week when I discovered an email glitch that should cause any Android user concern if they use their device to send email.

So here’s the details. A week ago, I received an email from “Laura”. I replied to that email and then received another reply from her. When I scrolled down through the body of her reply I found the body of totally different email appended to this email. The appended text was placed inline just after my reply. Where this get really strange is that the appended text came from an email that I sent to another person (i.e., Laura was not a recipient of that email). In essence, Android’s email app is randomly pulling text from email and inserting in to another email.

I wanted to test the bug, so I forwarded an email to Matt and it happened again. Below is a screen shot from Matt’s iPhone showing the email that he received from me. The subject of the email is correct. But the body of the email is the body text from an email that I sent a week or two earlier. Creepy.

What I don’t know is whether this is a pervasive bug across all Android devices or whether this is a problem that is unique to my device. So if you’ve experienced something similar, add a comment here.

Interestingly, when I look at the email in the Sent folder sometimes my device will display the erroneous text and sometimes it displays the text I was trying to send.