General IT

Converting Joomla Templates for Right to Left (RTL) Languages.

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There doesn't seem to be much information around the internet on this subject (well at least not in English), so I thought I'd post my notes here. I've been working on a Joomla 1.5 site with a client and they needed an Arabic site put up. I initially tried to do this using Joomfish translation agent, but didn't have much luck, so in the end we decided to put up a separate site. Here's how I did it.

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Free Wireless VPN

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Depending on your background you'll have different reactions to Free Wireless. Most people shout a quick whoopee, and plug right in there. However if your background is in IT security, you take a much dimmer view.

First of all there's the fact that a lot of the traffic you send down the wire can be intercepted ("sniffed") by people on the same network as you. The guy next to you in Starbucks could be snagging all your email passwords, for example. So at a minimum you need to make sure that you're using Secure email protocols (eg Secure POP on port 995 instead of port 110, and Secure SMTP on port 465 instead of port 25), and using https intead of http wherever you get a chance.

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Collanos: in the groove.

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Anyone remember Groove? I first saw it about 6 years ago (can it really be that long?) and I got quite excited. Our peripatetic CEO at the time got enthused because it would let him share files with all of us while he was on the road, which he was for most of the year. But then Microsoft bought the company, and our plan to use it foundered. Recently it popped its head up again in the context of Sharepoint, but I get the feeling that Microsoft has never really pushed it.

So I was quite interested when I found out about Collanos (http://www.collanos.com/), which does the same thing. Even better, it is a cross platform application, running on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I made a note of it and waited for an excuse to try it out. Finally that excuse arrived.

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PrimeTime Linux

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I've been thinking of setting up a company to set people up with Open Source workplaces, and every year that goes past makes me think that the time is almost here.

There are a number of factors which are conspiring to make Linux a viable alternative:

  • The fact that Linux, via distributions such as Ubuntu, Mandriva, Suse et al, are now easy enough to install and intuitive enough for the Everyday User. I set my girlfriend up with an account on a spare laptop and just let her play. Soon enough she was asking for it on her laptop as well.
  • OpenOffice. Enough said. Hardly anyone uses the full feature set of Word, so why do we slavishly upgrade every time a new version comes out? Well actually we don't …

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