I’m writing this post because I was not able to find anything remotely close to solving this problem elsewhere.
The goal (for me, but there are other uses): custom theme stacks icons so that dock reflections work properly. There are more reasons to do this though, such as making icons display correctly in categories. You could also use this to fix jailbroken apps which don’t have nice iPhone style icons.
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Howdy folks. Time for some shameless self promotion!
<- Click Here to Enter!
I just got a bunch more Google Wave invites and I’ve decided to give some away! Here’s how it works…
- Retweet this article (make sure you’re retweeting @jeff_way) before December 4th.
Congratulations, you’ve been entered to win one of three Google Wave invite packs! Winners will be chosen on Nov 20, Nov 27, and Dec 4. Each winner will receive the following.
- One direct instant activation link to join Google Wave
- Four Google Wave nominations for your friends (they take a bit longer)
Enter now! I’ll be tweeting the three winners names as I draw them.
As of 2006, the Google SOAP Search API was deprecated. Google stopped giving out developer keys which were required to connect to it, and as of September 7th 2009, SOAP was retired permanently. They say “the new generation is around, has graduated, and has largely taken over already as a better and more versatile solution for the vast majority of use cases.” referring to the AJAX API. I say that the SOAP API was more accurate in most cases and was used in a number of ways that can not (easily) be replaced by the new AJAX API.
The following are the approximate number of results given by a Google search using both the AJAX API and by page scraping. This is a dynamic page, and will refresh to show the most current results so if Google fixes the problem then this page will reflect those changes.
| Keyword
| Results reported by Google API
| Results reported by Google search
| API’s accuracy
|
| “Random Search” |
248,000 |
830,000 |
29.88% |
| Google |
161,000,000 |
2,040,000,000 |
7.89% |
| allintitle:Download Site |
50,100 |
8,960,000 |
0.56% |
| Forum |
150,000,000 |
1,910,000,000 |
7.85% |
Can you believe those figures? 90%-95% accuracy (approximately what the SOAP API had) is acceptable, but anything as low as what’s shown above can be considered useless and meaningless information. What does this mean? It might mean a couple of different things.
- Google may not be providing accurate results to deter the development of tools which rely on fetching and analyzing Google’s data.
- Google may not want developers to use their data to for web marketing tools that find niche markets.
- Google may not be able to provide an accurate service. (doubt it)
The issue of data inaccuracy specifically with the approximate number of results was first reported well over a year ago, and though it is still an accepted open issue there has been no word from Google as to when it will be fixed. It seems to me that with all of the talk of how on-board Google is with net neutrality they should be doing all they can to promote fairness online, but this API is not fair. Google has taken a data source which a lot of people rely on and replaced it with one which intentionally provides statistically irrelevant information.
What do you think?
Something I haven’t talked about a whole lot on here is that I’m actually a professional PHP developer. It’s my job, so usually I don’t mix work and online stuff. This is pretty cool though, so I want people to be able to find it if they’re trying to figure out how to do it. Be warned, if you’re not a PHP coder the following post will make ZERO sense to you 
Before I get into what a “reference array” is (I made that term up) let me guide you through the discovery and some practical uses of the theory around references. A while ago I was looking for a way to do something in code that didn’t seem very possible. I wanted to do this:
$var1 = 'Hello World';
echo $'var1';
Problem is, that doesn’t work.. instead I found that you can use variable variables (also known as dynamic variables)
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The iPhone Dev Team just released a new version of their PwnageTool, which is capable of Jailbreaking the iPhone 2G/3G and iPod Touch 1G. For the rest of us 3GS/iTouch 2G/New iTouch owners (I have both!) we can do nothing but wait for a new version of redsnow. I’m hosting a mirror of the new version of PwnageTool (link later), but please… as the Dev Team reiterates multiple times in their post, read and reread their post and follow it to the letter!
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I would like to set the facts straight on this issue once and for all, even if the only way I can do that is by publishing my own blog post (which no one will read). You can read my response later on in the post.
Yeah, you. In a recent U.S. copyright filing, Apple apparently claims that the jailbreaking of iPhone operating systems leads to problems in the AT&T network, probably helping to explain the general unreliability network users have experienced. If “general unreliability” sounds a little harmless, keep in mind that Apple is also making the case that jailbreaking could make it possible for users to crash cell phone towers.
Of course, you can see why AT&T wouldn’t like this. But there may be more to the story. Apple’s comments apparently also noted that the altering of the baseband processor BBP of the Apple is what would allow people to crash the towers. Maybe not so coincidentally, “unlocking” the iPhone in this manner would also allow consumers to use networks other than AT&T.
Maybe “unlocking,” and not jailbreaking, is simply bad for business.
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Yelp, the community driven website helping people find and review local businesses, as of version 3.0, now includes an interesting easteregg: Augmented reality (AR). Augmented reality wasn’t expected for iPhone at all until at least iPhone OS 3.1 came out sometime in September. In fact, Apple was apparently actively stopping developers from releasing apps which included AR features.
Even more proof that the app store isn’t perfect, Yelp was able to bypass apple’s review panel and sneek add this feature to their app by including it via hidden easteregg which is only activated by running Yelp and shaking your iPhone (3GS only) three times. You know you’ve done it right when a message pops up informing you “The Monocle is activated. Yelp thought reality was boring so we augmented it.” At that point a button appears in the upper right hand corner that says “Monocle”, clicking this activates AR.
The following article is an opinion piece and should be read as such. This post is in no way a personal attack against the subject of this article or his/her company. This post’s purpose is to serve as a consumer alert for those who may be in the position of considering SEO work. All details herein are based on a single experience which occurred long enough in the past that the quotes and the order that the events took place may not be completely accurate.
Based on my experiences (accounted in full later on in this post) I would not do business with the company 1seoExperts for the following reasons. (The “SEO Expert” that I refer to herein is the same one listed at 1seoExperts)
- Their lead SEO Expert does not seem to have a strong enough programming foundation to be effective at his job.
- Their company outsources their web-development to countries such as (but not restricted to) China and India. This means less work for Americans, and that the quality of their work may be questionable.
- Because they outsource web-development and the lead SEO Expert does not do much programming, the security of the sites that they work on may not be up to par with current standards.
- Their lead SEO Expert has a very short temper and does not seem to act in a businesslike manor.
At no point in my visit was I asked to sign a confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement, and the privacy of our conversation was never discussed. As such I feel it is my duty as a concerned consumer to report the following full re-accounting of my experiences meeting with the lead SEO Expert from 1seoExperts.
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This is pretty immature, but I’m going to do it anyways.
T-Mobile/Samsung, would you please release a firmware update for the Samsung Behold?
It’s a buggy phone at best and a brick at worst, but a lot of it’s problems could be fixed relatively simply. The following is a categorized list of problems with the Behold, all non-physical problems could be fixed via a firmware update.
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Yeah, we went down for a while. Here’s what my web-host had to say about it.
1:51 PM Apr 13th – skylark going offline for hardware upgrade.
6:05 PM Apr 13th – skylark going offline for OS reload to be moved to the new platform.
8:48 AM Apr 14th – skylark is offline due to unexpected issues during the recovery process. your data is safe, will be working to get online
11:40 PM Apr 14th - skylark restore should be complete shortly with all accounts back online.
10:48 AM Apr 15th – skylark is still undergoing a restore, some accounts are already active, will be back online 100% soon
6:48 PM Apr 15th – All servers are back online. For individual support issues, please submit a support ticket
Anyways, just thought I’d post about it in case anyone was wondering. Plus I really wanted an excuse to put that image on my site
