The Soap Box

Welcome to the first edition of the Developer Shed Weekly Newsletter for 2005. With a whole new year stretching out ahead, many of us are looking at our New Year's resolutions with anticipation or dread (if we haven't broken them already). Like you, we're going through some changes that we think will be for the better as the calendar turns.

As with any good New Year's resolution, you probably won't notice the changes right away; it's a gradual process. One thing that won't change is our commitment to give you the best tools to help you get your job done; check out our latest articles. In the coming months, we hope to give you more of what you love to see.

To all of our readers and friends, we extend our hopes and wishes for all of the best in the coming year.-- Terri Wells

Blog Banter

Wow: Just How Fast Did the Human Brain Evolve? Not fast enough to keep up with current technology.

Law: Send Spam to the Netherlands, Pay a Fine Spam crackdown goes worldwide.

Microsoft: Microsoft's Latest Target: Novell MS tries to steal Novell customers.

Old Favorites
		Stump the Crew
		Tips & Tricks

January Giveaway: O'Reilly Security Books!

This year, wouldn't it be nice NOT to have your network hacked? That's why this month we're loading you up with security information as we give away two O'Reilly Media security titles: Network Security Hacks by Andrew Lockart, and Security Warrior by Cyrus Peikari and Anton Chuvakin.

How do you win this awesome book combo? Write a 2000 (or more) word article about subjects related to Web hosting, including load balancing, clustering, server and website administration, security, or even situational stories. Send the article to monthlycontest@developershed.com Finalists will be published on WebHosters.com.

Articles must be submitted as an HTML, DOC, SXW, or RTF file. Judging will be based on subject, quality, and grammar. By submitting the article, you agree to give Developer Shed exclusive publication rights to the article on any of its sites or properties including the Developer Shed Network sites and Plug In.

Contest runs until January 31, 2004. Finalists will have their articles published and voted on by our audience, with the winner announced the second week of February 2005. Start writing and start winning!

A Quick Look at Cross Site Scripting by Alejandro Gervasio, 2005-01-04 -- Secure your site against this JavaScript-based attack. Read the full article here.

Oracle Stored Procedures by Mooh the Cow, 2005-01-03 -- Learn how to create a program in an Oracle database. Read the full article here.

Dynamic Data Analysis on the Web--a Design Approach by developerWorks, 2004-12-29 -- Learn about a way to separate programming tasks from Web page design tasks. Read the full article here.

Cover Story

11. Who Works at These Places, Anyway? by Terri Wells. We finished our holiday shopping for all of our techie friends, but did we really get the help we needed? Or would we have been better off just doing it all online? Our editors went undercover and visited several electronics retailers to find out. Read the full article.

Editor's Corner

02. Going Firefox. by Norbert Cartagena. Open source software is coming on strong, but for the average user, it's better to move slowly. Read the full article here.

MS Tech

04. Understanding the CLR by Dwight Peltzer. The CLR means that COM is dead. Read the full article here.

06. Retribution of the Meek by David Fells. Microsoft burns. Read the full article here.

Open Source

07. What Impact Will Sarbanes-Oxley Have on Open Source? by David Fells. Open source software's latest challenge may be fulfilling corporate needs to follow government-mandated record keeping procedures. Read the full article here.

08. Development Tip: Keeping Data and Presentation Separate With Classes in PHP 4 by Kenneth Clark. Speed up your development time and ease your debugging woes with classes. Read the full article here.

Hardware

14. Top 5 Gadgets of 2004/2005 by Andy Miller. A fond look back -- and an eager look ahead. What did you love in 2004, and what will you be using in 2005? Read the full article here.

Site Promotion

17. Online Sales Growth: Beyond the Home Page by Wayne Hurlbert. Why you're better off when your customers don't come in through the front door. Read the full article here.

18. Who Needs a SEO? by Hugo Guzman. Tired of doing all the work yourself, but don't want to get ripped off? Read the full article here.

Web Services

20. The Battle for Reliable Messaging Supremacy by Krissi Danielsson. It's another standards war. Read the full article here.

Extra Feature

22. The Postal Fix, Part 1 by Thomas Ham. In Plug-In's first venture into fiction, join the Code Slinger as he begins to explore the city inside a computer. Read the full article here.

grep this:

24. News from the weird end of the tech spectrum. Internet hoaxes, Google digitizes Harvard, and more! Read the full article here.

shutdown -h now:

26. Blog Bloggity Blog Blog Blog by Norbert Cartagena. What blogs have in common with a Monty Python sketch. Read the full article here.

Potpourri

- We're Looking for Writers! Why not join us?
- January Contest Details: Win O'Reilly security books!
- Developer Resources Links to Related Resources

.Netterpillars: Artificial Intelligence and Sprites by Apress Publishing, 2005-01-04 -- In this first of a two-part article, you'll learn about artificial intelligence while creating a computer game. Read the full article here.

Introduction to RDBMS, OODBMS and ORDBMS by Jagadish Chaterjee, 2005-01-03 -- Examine the three different models currently in use for database management systems, which have become more important than ever with the explosion of information on the Internet. Read the full article here.

Getting to Know Access, Part 4 by Sage Adams, 2004-12-29 -- Our series explaining the ins and outs of using Access 2003 continues. This installment explains how to enter data, how to work with data, and other basic but important concepts. Read the full article here.

Of Links and Libel by Krissi Danielsson, 2005-01-04 -- If you own a website, you're a publisher -- and could be subject to libel lawsuits. Learn the basics of libel, and how to avoid it. Read the full article here.

Building Rounded Corners With CSS and JavaScript by Alejandro Gervasio, 2005-01-03 -- Here's a clean way to get the rounded corners that give your website a polished, professional look. Read the full article here.

Using HTML QuickfForm to Manage Web Forms, Part 2 by Harish Kamath, 2004-12-29 -- The second part of the HTML_QuickForm primer shows you the advanced features of the package. Read the full article here.

QTechnology 460w Gold Series PSU by KaoMAN, 2005-01-04 -- Is it possible for a strong power supply to also be quiet? Read the full article here.

Into the Itanium, Part 3 by DMOS, 2005-01-03 -- With this Intel chip, we've covered the general history of the design, and the architecture from a programmer's point of view. Now it's time to get deep into the hardware itself. Read the full article here.

64 Bits and AMD, A Year Later by DMOS, 2004-12-29 -- Questions and answers about the 64bit preview of WindowsXP meant for x86-64. Read the full article here.

Ranking Software: Good or Bad? by Dann Bloom, 2005-01-04 -- Ranking software can help you find out if your website optimization is having any effect, but will using it get you banned? Read the full article here.

Google Advertising Professional: How I Did It, and Is It Worth It? by Chris Khoo, 2005-01-03 -- Google started a certification for SEOs. Should you bother to get one? Quite possibly. Read the full article here.

Search Engine Keyword Analysis Pitfalls by Tom Dahm, 2004-12-29 -- There are certain things that keyword analysis tools miss. Learn what you need to watch for. Read the full article here.

Configuring Apache 2.0 -- Beginning by Michael Swanson, 2004-12-29 -- So you're ready to use an HTTP server, and you've chosen Apache 2.0. It's a great choice, but there are some issues you'll need to keep in mind. Read the full article here.

How to Pick a Free Web Host by Krissi Danielsson 2004-12-22 -- There are a lot of free Web hosting firms, each with ups and downs. Read the full article here.

Email Server Setup by Michael Swanson, 2004-12-15 -- Running your own email server gives you a great deal of freedom and control. Read the full article here.

New Year's Netiquette Resolutions (2005-01-04) Life is so much better when people are polite to each other. Read the full article here.

5 Ways to Super Saving Internet Shopping (2005-01-04) Save money when you go shopping on the Internet. Read the full article here.

Relevancy -- the New Black for Online Marketing? (2005-01-04) With information overload, relevancy is the key to effective marketing. Read the full article here.

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Stump the Crew

" Hi Frank, I'm new to PHP/MySQL and was wondering how I can go about designing a section of my site that allows users to register an account and, on subsequent visits, login using his/her account name and password? Any help would be great!" -- Emeka

Hi Emeka,

Setting up your site to take advantage of authentication may seem like a tricky process at first; however, there are various articles available on Dev Articles that can help you get started with authentication. Havard Lindset's article, PHP, MySQL and Authentication 101, is the one I always recommend to developers who are diving into authentication. The article will show you two different ways you can go about setting up user authentication. The first is to use the HTTP authentication method, which prompts the user to enter their username and password into a pop-up box; the second, usually chosen when wanting to customize the look and feel of the login page, allows you to make use of an HTML form to allow users to login to your site.

That's it for this week's edition of Stump The Crew. If you have any questions relating to design, development or marketing that you would like answered, then email me.

Tips & Tricks: Using Various Commands in Google

So, you learned how to use the link: command in Google, and it's so useful that you use it all the time now. In fact, you use it so much that you're wondering what other commands you can use in Google. Say no more:

link:www.domain.com returns a list of backlinks that Google has indexed. Only
a small selection is listed, however.

related:www.domain.com returns a list of sites that Google sees as related
to the topic on your page. At present, it's not very accurate.

allinurl:keyword returns a list of pages and sites that contain the 'keyword'
in their url.

site:www.domain.com returns all pages of the domain that Google has crawled
and indexed.

allinanchor:keyword returns a list of pages and sites that contain the keyword
as anchor text in their backlinks.

cache:www.domain.com will show the current cache that Google has for the page.

info:www.domain.com will return information that Google has for the page.

allintitle:keyword returns webpages that have the specified keywords in the
title.

intitle:keyword returns listings of webpages that have only the specific keyword
as the title.

You can find all the Operators at Google Advanced Operators.

If you have a tip you'd like to share, feel free to email us. Your tip might just appear in the next issue of the Developer Shed Weekly Newsletter!