Emergency Droid

Today I got a phone call from work (I'm in holiday). It seemed no one was able to run the sorveillance software and export a recording (bah...). The nice part was that I was finally able to test my phone for what it was bought for - and never managed to do with WM6 on it - remote access our servers from it. The hardware on HD2 is quite good, enough to run a decent remote desktop and a SSH session. The main problem I had on WM6 was finding a OpenVPN client, a decent RDP application, and most of

Joomla 1.7.0 Released

Joomla 1.7 (stable) is out. The new relese policy of the CMS will release a new version every six months, with a LTS release avery three. That means it will be hard to stay up to date if the new release will not support previous releases plugins and templates - at least starting from 1.6, or 1.7.   It should be easier now to perform an update, but that will be true only for thoose using the CMS as is, no plugins or extensions. Otherwise, probabily, it will be a nightmare - a six month cycling

Apache mod_proxy and image leech

lately I faced the problem to publish the cam application on a public IP address, to be accessible from outside the company. Obviously the access had to be password protected.   First I installed mod_proxy and I configured it to make the internal site published. But I suddenly realized it wasn't enough - the site referenced many images using absolute URLs, and that URLs were not accessible from outside. So I had to translate them to the right path, through the proxy. Inside VirtualHost, I had:

Free email

Probably everyone has a free email address - someone more than one. And many of us has some very old one, that has become the "official one", the one used to register in our main interests service sites (electricity, phone, ISP provider, social networks,...) and the one all our friends use to communicate with us. And many people are recently facing some "little problem", in handling all communications using web mail. Yes, web mail. Noy many providers give free access to your accounts using POP3

WebCams

Recently I had to work with some IP cameras and surveillance systems, and I played around with software and hardware making some tests here at the company before doing the real stuff. I first got some documentation about the cameras I had here available, some old Intellinet IP cameras 550550 and 550710. They have no mjpeg streaming, and images are accesible using a java or activex plugin. Luckily there's the possibility to use javascript to retreive the images and have a live image from the

Posting from Android

Today I discovered Joooid, a Joomla extension paired with an Android app that let you publish and manage articles directly from your Android device. That means I'll have a simple way to updated my site, using a clean interface. Joooid has been developed by Stefano Norcia, and since 20 June 2011 there's a 1.2 beta version that works with Joomla 1.6. ![Joooid QR Code](assets/images/posts/qr_joooid.png)The application is downloadable from the developer site, here: www.joooid.com or you can use the

HTC HD2

The HTC HD2, manufactured by HTC, is the first smartphone with a 4.3 inches touchscreen, and the first Windows Mobile phone with capacitive multi-touch capabilities. Released with Windows Mobile 6.5 in September 2009, it's a long-lasting smartphone on the market, due to the large amounts of modded ROM and Operating Systems made available by third part developers for it. Actually are available many Windows Mobile versions (6.5, 6.5.3, 6.5.5), Windows Phone 7 (albeit illegally - Microsoft

Terramara

Terramara was an ancient structure dating back to the Bronze Age, built by people living in the central Po Valley, in northern Italy. When my sons asked for a treehouse, I thought it would be too dangerous for their age and the height involved. So, I proposed an alternative: a "terramara." Essentially, it’s a stilt house, but I simplified the concept into a structure more like a balcony, perfect for birdwatching. :) For my sons, though, it’s still a "terramara." Approaching it with an