Patriot Day – Remembering September 11, 2001

Now and then an event is so powerful that every detail becomes permanently etched into the minds of the people who experienced it, and every generation to come will be told the story. One such moment began on the quiet morning of September 11, 2001.

People across the United States woke up that morning and heard the terrifying news about commercial airliners being hijacked. Four planes were taken over by Al-Qaeda terrorists: American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, American Airlines Flight 77 and United Airlines Flight 93. Although no one knew the hijackers’ demands, it wouldn’t be long until the devastating truth behind their mission was revealed.

At 8:48am, American Airlines Flight 11 was flown directly into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Less than twenty minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175 struck the south tower. the ferocity of the impacts produced tremendous explosions and weakened the buildings so thoroughly that they both collapsed less than two hours after being hit.

A final plane remained under the terrorist’s control – United Airlines Flight 93. no one was sure what their target was, but there was much speculation that the plane was either being taken towards the White House or Camp David. the passengers of this flight heard about the fate of the other planes, and all of the innocent people who were killed in that morning’s tragedies. they decided to take a stand.

Some of the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 called loved ones and told them that their plane had been hijacked. they said tearful goodbyes and told family members that they loved them. when the time came, the brave victims fought back. they attacked the terrorists who held them captive, and struggled for control of the plane.

Flight 93 crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. there were no survivors, but the bold actions of the passengers helped prevent further destruction and loss of life. they will forever be mourned and honored as heroes.

Immediately, people who were near the attack sites sprang into action. Firefighters rushed into buildings to put out the flames and bring people safely outside. Rescue workers sorted through debris for days in the hopes of finding survivors. People all over the nation stood in line for hours to donate blood for the victims who were injured that morning. In the wake of the worst attack on American soil, the country banded together to help each other and grieve over our losses.

On December 18th, 2001, an amendment was made to the United States Code to memorialize September 11 as Patriot Day. the proclamation called for all local governments to recognize the day, flags to be flown at half-staff and the people of America to observe a moment of silence for the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives that morning.

September 11th is a day that will never be forgotten. we will remember it for the tragedies we witnessed, the devastating loss of innocent lives and the way it united an entire country. People everywhere felt a renewed sense of pride and patriotism for their homeland, and they were reminded about the importance of friends and family who so deeply enrich our lives.

At PeopleFinders we are dedicated to helping people find each other and stay connected through both good times and bad. On Patriot Day we share in the moment of silence for those who died or lost loved ones on September 11, 2001, and we honor the spirit of the people who came together after the attack to become even stronger. we will protect our land more diligently, we will guard over each other more cautiously and we will always remember.

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Web Host Hosting Ireland Launches Reseller Hosting Packages

Hosting Ireland has two levels of reseller hosting packages

(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Web hosting provider Hosting Ireland (hostingireland.ie) announced on Monday that it has launched reseller hosting.

This news comes two months after Hosting Ireland partnered with SpamExperts to offer its customers email security products.

Hosting Ireland says it launched reseller hosting based on the growing demand from small businesses looking to offer hosting and domain registration services.

Hosting Ireland’s reseller package offers a “considerable margin opportunity” from hosting, according to the press release. Resellers can also profit from .ie domain name registration, international domain name registration, SSL certificates, advanced spam filtering, mail backup and anti-virus protection.

“Hosting Ireland is committed to helping businesses get online and many SME’s would rather deal through their preferred local IT provider or web developer,” Jonathan Bate, managing director of Hosting Ireland said in a statement. “SME’s generally like buying from local businesses and these businesses can now offer hosting products and services.”

The web host has two different reseller packages. The basic plan, reseller lite, is ideal for individuals or businesses who want to start offering hosting for the first time. this package includes 100 domains, 40GB disk space, 400GB monthly transfer, control panel, account creation API, dedicated IP addresses, free setup and telephone support and a 10 percent discount on other products including domain names.

The reseller professional package includes the same features at the lite package, but instead hosts 500 domain, 60GB disk space, 600GB monthly transfer and a 15 percent discount on other products.

Both packages are hosted on Irish servers, according to the website.

The web hosting landscape in Ireland has made headlines this month as European data center provider TelecityGroup acquired Irish web host Data Electronics at the beginning of August.

Last week Amazon Web Services provided details of its Dublin data center outage.

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Arian Foster Injury: Texans Should Be Worried About Foster’s Hamstring

Bob Levey/Getty Images

If Houston Texans running back Arian Foster is to repeat as the NFL’s rushing champion this year, he’s going to need to get plenty of breaks.

So far, Foster is not off to a good start in that regard. a left hamstring injury kept him out of action at Texans camp for two weeks, and Foster aggravated that same injury in the first quarter of Houston’s 30-17 win over the San Francisco 49ers on Saturday.

The good news, according to the Houston Chronicle, is that Texans head coach Gary Kubiak said on Sunday that there’s nothing to worry about. Foster is fine.

“Everything’s positive today,” said Kubiak. “It’s the same thing we dealt with at the start of camp. until he’s there, though, there’s going to be a concern. All indications are positive.”

The rough translation: Foster is okay, but not having him is worrisome.

There’s definitely a seed of doubt there. And there should be. despite Kubiak’s insistence that Foster is fine, he has to know that hamstring injuries can be tricky.

The main reason for this, of course, is that they don’t go away very easily. this is twice in the span of a month that Foster’s hamstring has acted up on him. That could be a fluke, but the more likely reality is that it’s the start of a trend.

While not quite a season-ending injury, a recurring hamstring problem is, or at least should be, pretty high on the list of concerns for Foster. We’re talking about a guy who can burst through a hole as well as any back in the league, and a gimpy hamstring is obviously going to effect his ability to do that.

And that’s assuming that Foster is even going to be able to stay on the field. his left hamstring has already sidelined him twice, so what’s to stop it from sidelining him again during the regular season?

All things considered, there are just some bad vibes surrounding Foster right now. many already consider him a one-year wonder, and now he’s become an injury-prone one-year wonder.

That’s definitely bad news for fantasy owners, but it’s even worse news for the Texans. their offense will still be good even if it can’t rely on Foster, but it’s hard to imagine it being as prolific as it was last year.

If so, we’re going to see their revamped defense put to the test.

Most recent updates:

• Michael Vick: Eagles Putting way too much Faith in Vick with new Contract
• Plaxico Burress: new Jet should be in for another big Game vs. Giants
• NFL Cuts 2011: Andre Gurode Cut by Cowboys, Where Will He Land Next?
• View all updates

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Why Many Consider Offshore Web Hosting Solutions

Offshore web hosting solutions seem like a good deal to a great many people because they are typically better priced. However, with everything, you must question whether or not the cheaper service is really worth it. if you aren’t getting what you are expecting and cheap doesn’t work, then cheap really isn’t worth it and you are actually wasting money Offshore web hosting solutions are great for some people, but it is something that you have to consider very carefully before you take the plunge.

You may wonder why people would actually choose offshore web design, development, and hosting options with so many right here at home. Money is what it all comes down to Offshore web design, development, and hosting is usually 3-5 less than it is anywhere else. this can be seen when you look at the hourly rate of web development services in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and then in Ukraine. if you are looking into web development you will find that you will pay anywhere from $35- $75 in the United States, $25- $50 in the United Kingdom, and $5- $20 in Ukraine if you are going for the cheapest service, your choice is obvious

While the price is great, you need to think about quality as well. you want a web host and development company that will provide you with the services that you need, not just some of the services you need at a great price. one of the great things about these offshore web hosting and development companies is that they usually have 24 hour a day customer service because they are dealing with people from all over the world. this can be a huge advantage for you, especially if you are new to the world of web design and hosting and you’ll have many questions.

Therefore, with good customer service and price the only other thing you’ll really have to consider is the cultural differences. you need to consider work ethic as well as the ability to communicate with those that will be doing your work. if you cannot communicate well you’ll find that your website will not run as smoothly or as effectively as you would want. you not only need to be able to communicate your needs, you need to know that they understand what you are saying, what your needs are, and then they need to be able to follow through with this. Outsourcing your web hosting and development needs can be a great as long as you cover your bases and ensure that you are getting exactly what you need and want from the cheaper service.

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The web dev’s intro to the cloud (part 1)

This article first appeared in issue 219 of .net magazine – the world's best-selling magazine for web designers and developers.

You can’t move these days for the word “cloud”. It seems to appear in every marketing slogan or new application. but is it just a buzzword, or is there real magic behind the buzz?

In this four-part series, we’re going to look at how you can use the cloud services on offer to provide your hosting, improve your site and generally make your life better.

Doing cloud hosting is both easy and devilishly difficult. just like everyone can design and build websites but some people create awe-inspiring sites, not all cloud hosting is created the same.

At the moment, there’s more hype around cloud hosting than there is adoption, so why should you adopt it now? very briefly: because it gives you everything that dedicated hosting does and elements of the cloud hosting ecosystem, because there’s more to it than just virtual machines.

SPONSOR OF OUR CLOUD SERIES

First, what is cloud hosting? It sounds like a simple question, but depending on who you ask, you’ll get a different answer. Entire blogs are filled with arguments over the difference between the cloud and service-oriented architecture (SOA), for example. Does it have to be multi-tenant? Does the hardware have to be shared? At times, the debate around these issues verges on holy war, so it’s virtually impossible to give an all-encompassing definition that everyone will be happy with.

However, there are a few important things that we can agree hosting has to have to earn the term ‘cloud’:

The hardware is abstracted If some hardware dies, the hosting company assigns some new hardware to it and the whole swapping process is handled for you.

A good API Everything has an API these days. Entire hackdays are dedicated to mashing together servers with APIs. Cloud hosting APIs mean you can start and stop services as you need them and that means you can script it.

It’s pay-as-you-go Innovation loves cheap. If it’s cheap and easy to try something, what have you got to lose? (And it’s very cheap to start up virtual instances: a few cents up to a few dollars.)

To sum up, when I say ‘cloud hosting’, I mean it has to take advantage of the features of the cloud so it can scale, be redundant and change its configuration as the app’s requirements change. It can’t just be virtual or on-demand hosting.

Not everything involved in getting sites hosted on the cloud is new. much of it has been done by system admins running at a much larger scale for years. but cloud hosting means that it makes sense to learn some new skills … so let’s get started.

Raise your hand if you’ve signed up to Amazon’s EC2 or other cloud hosting solution, fired up an instance and got something running. whenever I ask this at an event, around half of the people put their hands up. Many have fired up cloud servers, tried stuff out … and then gone back to their trusty dedicated boxes wondering what the fuss is about. Don’t be disheartened by a bad experience: not all providers give you the same thing.

Each cloud provider tends to focus on a key value. Some offer great support and management solutions. With these, you can start your instances and have them managed much as if they were dedicated machines. This might be appealing to anyone who likes that level of support on their servers. a good UI lends itself to less experienced sysadmins, but may not provide all of the functionality of other management UIs, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Amazon offers support for $100 a month but by default there’s no direct technical support. its unique selling proposition (USP), for me, is the amazing number of services it has, which are released at a staggering rate. Amazon’s services, which we’ll look at in this series, cover hosting, load balancing, scaling rules, email, messaging and the more esoteric Mechanical Turk.

If you spend some time understanding that transience is good – that is, if you allow for things falling over then your app will work better – then something such as SpotCloud will make your eyes light up.

SpotCloud provides aggregated cloud hosting across multiple data-centres from many providers around the world. If you can build your app so that almost any part of it could run anywhere, you can benefit from very low costs and extremely high availability.

Cloud hosting providers don’t have like-for-like services that dedicated hosting providers have, so it’s worth shopping around or working with someone who’s used one for a while. At my company, 3EV, we use AWS and some others all mashed together, which marketing guys might call a multi-provider cloud.

Before we go any further, let’s look at a brief example of how you go about this stuff in practice. To launch an EC2 instance with Amazon, sign up from aws.amazon.com. Once signed up, log into the AWS console via aws.amazon.com/console and navigate to the EC2 tab.

The big Launch Instance does exactly what it says

Once here, you’re ready to launch your first instance. do this by hitting the Launch Instance button from the dashboard and then click the first option in the quick start list of images. there are hundreds of AMIs available. Each image provides an operating system, applications and config for everything from a Windows desktop and an Oracle database to a good old LAMP stack. We’ll be sticking with the LAMP stack, but have a look around the AMI list.

There's an image for everything – Red Hat, Windows Server, Oracle, Ubuntu and more

The next screen enables you to select the number of instances and the size. If you’ve just signed up, use the micro as you can get this pretty much free. the screen after has several options, the most interesting of which is the User Data, because if you use Ubuntu you can pass magic commands to it that it’ll execute on boot up. We’ll explore this later in the series, but the gist is: you pass it stuff here and it does things when it starts. Have a look at help.ubuntu.com/community/CloudInit if you’re as impatient as you should be.

The available Amazon EC2 instances range from tiny micro ones to High-Memory Quadruple Extra Large Instances

Next comes tags. the time it takes to launch cloud instances on AWS gives you an idea of the richness of the functionality, but it’s worth pushing on through. for now, click Continue and on the next screen Create a new key pair. Give it a name and select Create & download your key pair. You’ll need this later. Click Continue again.

At this stage of the Request Instances Wizard, you can add up to 10 tags, which are human readable

On the next screen, select the default security group and, finally, click Launch. when you’ve closed the window you’ll see the instance plodding away through ‘pending’ until it’s ‘running’.

An Amazon EC2 instance ready to go. just click the Launch button and you're done

To SSH onto it you use the key you downloaded a few steps earlier, called something.pem, and the domain of the new instance, which you can find from selecting it in the list:

ssh -i path/to/the-key.pem ec2-user@ec2-11-11-11- 11.compute-1.amazonaws.com

That’s it … a cloud instance running in some part of Amazon’s infrastructure. Don’t forget to terminate the instance, because you’re being charged for it as long as it’s running.

If starting instances and getting onto them is so easy, what do you need to learn?

Well, cloud hosting introduces a major change to hosting. things move around and they need managing because your server isn’t a big fat beast on floor two of the data-centre; it’s a combination of services that need to work in concert. This is where the cloud management layer comes in.

Anyone used to managing large data centres or virtualised machines will find this more familiar, but with the cloud you need this for even the smallest number of servers, because you want to be able to manage how the servers behave in different circumstances.

What happens when the DB dies? what happens when the database is running at zero per cent for three hours … should you scale down to save money and the environment? you can do this manually, or you can use tools such as Scalr and RightScale, which provide cloud management.

Let’s take a quick tour around the former. you can sign up for a dev account with Scalr and start creating complex cloud configurations in just a few minutes. Sign up at scalr.net/order and begin making your account. Once logged in, start building your first farm from the menu at the top, then add your first role. Scalr, RightScale and most other cloud management systems work through the concept of roles. Each role does something specific: it’s a database, a web server, a proxy or a worker. you can have as many roles as you like and you should get into the habit of breaking your app into as many small roles as possible. but more on that later.

Cloud management systems such as Scalr give you control over the scaling rules and provide a simple way of configuring servers when they start

A typical hosting setup would start with web, DB and proxy, each of which is a role. To create a role you can use the role builder via the Roles menu item, or you can do it manually.

As with any cloud instance, you begin with the machine image, where it should start – on Rackspace, AWS, OVH, GoGrid and so on – and what size it should be. I suggest that you stick to the smaller-sized images to start with because these cost only a dollar or so a day, whereas the Quadruple Extra Large is going to set you back $2 (about £1.20) an hour. It adds up quickly.

Scalr, RightScale and other cloud management platforms run scripts at particular instance events – when it starts, stops, changes IP and so on – which enables the instances to self-configure by installing software, downloading your app and generally doing everything that you’d have to do if someone thrust a shiny new server in your hands.

For example, if you wanted to get a basic site installed from a Git repository you could use the Ubuntu WordPress installation, taken straight from help.ubuntu.com/community/WordPress:

sudo apt-get install wordpress php5-gdsudo ln -s /usr/share/wordpress /var/www/ wordpresssudo bash /usr/share/doc/wordpress/examples/ setup-mysql -n wordpress localhostsudo bash /usr/share/doc/wordpress/examples/ setup-mysql -n wordpress wordpress.mydomain. orgsudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

A rule of thumb is: if you’re doing it for the second time, you should have written a script.

The script leads us nicely on to the next aspect of cloud computing: configuration management. This is very unglamorous – it’s close to change control and other such dull maintenance tasks. but it’s one of the secrets of cloud hosting; it’s what makes things happen by themselves.

As we saw with Scalr, a simple script can turn a vanilla instance into a working app in just a few lines. Imagine that at the scale of tens or hundreds of instances and you’re close to what a solid cloud architecture feels like. Instances fail or instances scale, and when they do the configuration management picks up the task of getting them set up.

Configuration management deals with everything from the OS up to your app, what version of Apache, MySQL and WordPress and how everything should be configured. This is what changes a server crash from something to worry about to something you don’t care about. when a dedicated server crashes, you revert to a backup. when a manually configured cloud instance crashes, you might use a backup or recover by hand. but when an automatically configured server crashes, it self-configures. It comes back by itself.

Config management systems such as Puppet and Chef run on the basis of recipes, or small scripts that install and configure the required software much like the script we saw in Scalr. the difference we’ve found is that these feel more comfortable working across many types of server and cloud, because they’re just built to configure.

You can combine these to build up complex configurations quickly. Suppose you have a recipe for installing your versioning software (which I trust is Git), another that installs your favourite server software, one more that brings in your application and another that runs monitoring software. Each of these recipes can be written separately in small, easily understood scripts that are combined by Chef.

The magic of configuration management is when you can combine several roles into one. Suppose you find that you run a report every night and you update your prices at the same time. these might run on separate servers for a while, but if they’re set up in config management you can mash them together and halve the price of the servers you’re paying for. Bargain.

Config management is often the trickiest part of getting an app running natively in the cloud. Servers have to relaunch repeatedly, never failing, and this takes time to perfect. It shouldn’t be shied away from because this is what makes complex server setups manageable.

We’ve seen an uplift in people wanting to use cloud computing. They ask us about getting the cloud servers configured and how the app will stay up, but configuring the servers isn’t something that comes to mind. We wrote scripts to help us do this, which show us what’s actually installed on existing dedicated servers and get it into the config management. This housekeeping technology very quickly makes the cloud make sense. Have a look at Chef, at wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Recipes.

The important parts of the ecosystem that I’ve outlined here are essential to a good, solid cloud architecture, but they’re often missed by people starting out. Running your hosting on the cloud requires more than just a few EC2 instances or an account with GoGrid. like everything, it involves some careful planning and some trial and error, which can be done quite cheaply thanks to the pay-as-you-go model.

Work out the best way for you to configure your instances, given your expertise at scripting. Scalr is just one example of managing the cloud for you, so don’t be afraid of trying something homespun. more on that in part two, where we look at how some of the more complex features of cloud hosting can help improve your site’s performance.

Getting started with the cloud isn’t as scary as you might think. for instance, Amazon’s signup starts at aws.amazon.com and takes 20 minutes until you’re launching instances.

Signing up for most other cloud hosting package will usually be just as painless and should take no more than 20 minutes.

You can try out Amazon’s services for as little as an hour, which is often the best way to understand what they really offer. Seeing Amazon’s relational database service (RDS) instance running for the first time makes you realise you’ll never have to configure another MySQL server again.

To get cloud management started, create an account with Scalr or RightScale, punch in your AWS details and start configuring your farm. If you start at this level, you’ll probably understand better how the cloud should be configured.

RightScale is pricier, but provides more features, although Scalr is sufficient for most initial cloud projects and will certainly be enough for prototyping your ideas.

To learn more about configuration management, start with either Chef or Puppet. these take more learning than the previous systems, as they’re more generic and require breaking your server and application configuration down into little pieces, but they’re worth it.

Once you’ve tried a few of these routes, or if you think you would rather not do the configuration for production yourself, find a cloud consultant.

It’s important to locate consultants that have done it before; it’s easy to boot cloud instances, but it takes experience to get it right. Amazon runs a partner program, which we’re part of at 3EV.

Immediately accessible resources, full hardware availability, flexible infrastructures… With cloud computing, OVH has created the future of internet hosting. Companies get secure and reliable solutions at their fingertips that are closely aligned to their economic and structural needs. in minutes, you can now have the use of a real datacentre or benefit from flexible hosting. Reliability is second to none, with an availability rate of 99.99%.

To guarantee these results, OVH hasn’t had to compromise its infrastructure – in fact, all physical resources are doubled, whether they’re servers, storage spaces or network hardware. nor has it affected prices, which are some of the lowest on the market. Visit ovh.co.uk or call 020 7357 6616 for details.

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Using a Blog Web Host Vs Free Blogs

There is a wide variety of sites and pages on the Internet that have usually have a single purpose which is to get the users attention. once the attention has been captured, the next step is for the user to act. Some sites are interactive and others are not as they simply provide information. Blogging is a fun way to provide information to internet users; it is easy to do but you’ll need a blog web host first before you can start.

Free Blog?

First let’s think if a free blog would fit the needs and demands or should a little bit of money be spent and a self web hosting would be better. Next step – which program, such as Blogger or WordPress, should be used. after that decision has been made, deciding upon where the blog should be hosted would be the next landmark in having your own blog on the Internet.

I think it’s great that there are hosts that will provide a free blog but if your intentions are to run a business then it would make more sense to pay. my reasoning is because the drawbacks to a free hosting has its limitations that will inhibit your website and therefore minimize your success. these limitations are:

Bottlenecks (your site is on a shared server so there are a LOT of other websites using the same server

Limited disk space and low bandwidth

No option for a personalized domain name

Technical support is limited

Spend the Money

If you are unsure if you really want to blog or not, a free blog is a good testing ground to find that out. Give yourself about a month or so and see how it goes and at the end if you want more then you should change to a blog web host as soon as possible although you will have a time doing so. Why did I just make this sound like a big deal? Because it is – especially if you have a lot of links and followers at this point in time.

If you don’t change, the free hosts’ server won’t be able to handle the load. what then? You’ll have to switch but then you’ve lost a ton of traffic to your blog, any and all search engine traffic that you’ve acquired will be lost, there would be tons of broken links and if anybody bookmarked your site, then those are gone as well.

So what was the alternative? buy It doesn’t cost that much and in the end you will be glad that you did. It doesn’t take long to build up the links and to begin have a lot of readers; once you have an audience then you can build on what you started and know that your money was well spent.

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Saturday’s TV best bets

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Series

“CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”

A college student dies while attending a dinosaur show, and the CSI team must determine whether it was an accident or a case of foul play. Katee Sackhoff (“Battlestar Galactica”) guest stars as a detective who helps the team with a missing persons case. 7 p.m. on CBS and KWCH, Channel 12

“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”

Jeremy Irons (“Brideshead Revisited”) guest stars in this episode as Captain Jackson, whose daughter is in critical condition after being raped by a masked man. As Benson and Stabler (Mariska Hargitay, Christopher Meloni) investigate, they learn he has a history of alcohol and sex addiction, but his new role as a sex therapist is hampering their efforts to get information. A.J. Cook also guest stars. 9 p.m. on NBC and KSNW, Channel 3

Movies

“Phineas and Ferb: The Movie: across the 2nd Dimension”

The mischief-making stepbrothers have an discover their pet platypus, Perry, is actually a secret agent known as Agent P, who takes them on a journey through a parallel universe with alternate versions of themselves, their friends and the dastardly Dr. Doofenshmirtz. and in this dimension, he’s more evil than ever. 7 p.m. on ABC and KAKE, Channel 10

Honor among thieves goes only so far in director F. Gary Gray’s (“The Negotiator”) energetic 2003 update of a 1969 heist tale. mark Wahlberg plays the mastermind behind a Venice gold robbery that goes like clockwork — until one team member (Edward Norton) turns traitor. The others are determined to even the score in Los Angeles, where several small, very speedy cars are pivotal to the plan. Charlize Theron also stars. 7 p.m. on AMC, Channel 55

Denzel Washington has worked several times with action-specialist director Tony Scott (“Crimson Tide”), and they reteam on this effective, fact-inspired 2010 thriller that puts fresh spins on a time-tested premise of a train that’s out of control. Washington plays an experienced engineer who’s training a newcomer (Chris Pine, “Star Trek”) when they become the only hope of stopping a chemical-laden locomotive hurtling toward a town. 7 p.m. on HBO, Channel 17

“A Place in the Sun”

An ambitious young laborer (Montgomery Clift) goes to work in his uncle’s factory and becomes involved with a co-worker (Shelley Winters). but he soon has his eye on a more valuable prize: a wealthy beauty (Elizabeth Taylor) from his uncle’s circle. his factory-girl lover is still in the way — and in the family way — until one fateful afternoon in a boat. This 1951 adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s fact-based novel “An American Tragedy” won six Oscars. 7 p.m. on TCM, Channel 54

This 1989 comedy-drama, adapted from a play by Robert Harling, follows the stories of six Southern women who share a close friendship, as well as the latest gossip. Julia Roberts stars as a young woman determined to live life to the fullest despite suffering from severe diabetes. Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Olympia Dukakis, Shirley MacLaine and Daryl Hannah also star. 7:30 p.m. on CMT, Channel 52

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Islanders fret in wake of deadly shark attacks

 

As officials in the Seychelles hunt to to destroy the vicious shark they think killed two tourists, newlywed Gemma Redmond describes her husband’s “awful” screams before his death. NBC’s Stephanie Gosk reports.

By Kiko Itasaka, NBC News

PRASLIN ISLAND, SEYCHELLES – is this paradise lost? that is the question facing all Seychellois, the people of this island nation who are stunned by two fatal shark attacks in just two weeks.

The most recent victim, British newlywed Ian Redmond, was snorkeling when he was killed. This tragedy took place only days after a French tourist was fatally bitten.

Anse Lazio, on Praslin Island, has long been heralded as one of the best beaches in the world. “It is the most beautiful beach. if you see it, you’ll know that for sure,” says James Lepair, assistant manager at Bonbon Plume, a popular Creole restaurant. He fears that business will dwindle if the shark isn’t caught soon. “Ninety-five percent of our clients are foreigners, we rely on them … to come to Seychelles. We have to find the shark and put an end to the problem.”

Taxi driver Winsley Esther agrees. The shark is the enemy. in his lilting Creole accent, he blurts out: ”We thought we could get it fast. if we do not catch it, we don’t know what will happen next!”

The hunt is on. Local fishermen are setting traps. Helicopters and planes ferrying tourists are diverting from their usual routes to scour the coastlines.

South African shark expert Geremy Clifton arrived to help. There is a military vessel just off the Anse Lazio and extra police are on patrol.

The giant creatures will sometimes literally make eye contact with their human observers. NBC’s Peter Alexander reports.

“We will do everything it takes to catch this shark,” head of Seychelles tourism Alain St. Anges says. “Until now we did not have any experience of shark attacks in the Seychelles. We decided to bring in experts from South Africa so that we can identify and get rid of this shark.”

For now, visitors can only cast longing looks at the turquoise waters and take romantic walks along the pristine shores as swimming is banned.

Kiko Itasaka / NBC News

Christophe Aggase and Laure Celent say the death of a British tourist has left them “very sad” but they would still recommend visiting the Seychelles.

That hasn’t stopped Laure Celent and Christophe Aggase from enjoying their honeymoon. “It is a wonderful place, a paradise,” Christophe said. “The birds, the trees and the beaches are so beautiful.”

But even in their bliss, Aggase says the shadow of the tragedy remains. “Of course, we are here too on our honeymoon … at the same time as this happened and we are very sad,” he said. “Very sad.”

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Adobe Muse Preview

Even since early Internet days, there has been no dearth of “easy website builders.” those who were around surely remember the likes of Geocities, Homestead (now an Intuit app), and even Microsoft’s FrontPage. but those all produced cookie-cutter looking sites. On the Mac side, Apple’s iWeb (part of the $49 iLife suite, 4.5 stars) filled that role, but now that that’s about to be discontinued, where to turn? Adobe offers one option—its just announced “Muse” product (it’s a codename). Muse allows a lot more design creativity than the earlier tools, and takes advantage of new HTML5 Web standards.

Getting Muse installed comes with a prerequisite: you need to have Adobe’s AIR runtime installed on your Windows or Mac PC. but not to worry, if you don’t, the setup program will install it. I installed on a MacBook Air and a 32-bit Windows 7 laptop without incident, and a 64-bit Windows 7 machine without issue. but its dependence on AIR made for a slower startup than a standard app. at startup, a welcome dialog asks you whether you want to begin a new site or open an existing one, but you can disable this dialog.

Muse breaks site creation down into four steps, each accessible from large buttons at the top of the window: Plan, Design, Preview, and Publish. in the first step, you simply create the site structure in a tree or flow-chart view. you link every page on the site, including “master” pages that serve as templates for sub-pages, which can include a common logo, header, and footer.

Double clicking a page’s thumbnail or hitting the Design button opens an InDesign-esque interface, in which you choose colors, enter text areas, and widgets. a toolbar along the top changes based on what you’ve selected–an image, text, or a box—and lets you add links, effects (like fill colors, strokes and drop shadows, and rounded corners). you can also specify opacity, glow, and bevel, or enter exact pixel sizes for page elements. a ruler surrounds the page area, letting designers see where an object lies in number of pixels from the edges. Objects you insert don’t snap to a grid, but guidelines show up to help you align them with others. the ruler and guides, as well as a grid overlay can all be turned off, so the interface has some degree of customizability already.

The design interface is similar to Microsoft Expression Web ($149, 4 stars), though that tool offers more brushes, shapes, and path options, but no widgets. Expression, iWeb and CoffeeCup Visual Site Designer also offer a healthy selection of templates to base your site on. Expression and CoffeeCup even offer galleries user-contributed templates, expanding the choice even further. hopefully Adobe will make such a clearinghouse available for Muse users.

Fidgeting with Widgets you can also insert widget code for objects such as menus, presentations, newsfeeds, menus, and tooltips, or insert HTML you find elsewhere. but there are too few included widgets: iWeb and other tools add widgets for things like YouTube videos, maps, and RSS feeds. and some of them, like the slideshow, aren’t so simple to figure out how to customize at first, though a small arrow pops out a dark menu for customizing widgets. By contrast, iWeb is geared towards inserting a slideshow only from MobileMe (soon to be iCloud)

The Preview feature uses Muse’s built-in WebKit browser rendering engine, so your work should look the same as it does in Safari and Chrome. I also tried viewing my test site in Internet Explorer 9, which worked fine after allowing script running. Firefox also displayed my none-too-professionally designed site perfectly.

Once your site is complete, from the Publish tab, you can have Adobe host a trial version for you to share with colleagues. doing this requires a simple signup for an Adobe Business Catalyst account. after the trial period, designers will be able to either pay Adobe to keep hosting the site, or gather up the generated HTML and CSS code and host it on another server. you can also export the code to HTML, but it makes use of scripts on Adobe’s site, but that’s standard practice, and means you don’t have to host the scripts yourself. I checked my site’s code with the W3C validator, and got the response, “This document was successfully checked as HTML5!”

When you want to move a site to your own host or domain, you can either export the (clean) HTML to your own server, or redirect your domain to the Adobe Business Catalyst site and pay Adobe for hosting. One thing you need to be careful about: when you publish a project to an existing site, that site will be overwritten with the current project. I erased a site I’d built on another computer this way.

Amusing, but is It Ready? Muse takes what-you-see-is-what-you-get Web page creation to a new level, but ,despite that, it’s still not ready to become your primary site building tool. It needs more templates, actually, some templates, and more active content. If you don’t have design chops, Muse is probably not for you. but it is an apt tool for the designer who doesn’t want to mess with the slightest bit of HTML. and we can certainly expect its evolution into a more powerful tool, since it’s still in beta, and hasn’t even been christened with a final name. I look forward to seeing what becomes of Muse when it’s released, but it’s definitely too early to assign it a PCMag rating.

More Web Publishing Software: •   CoffeeCup Visual Site Designer•   Kidlandia•   Tweak.com•   ClipTogether (Beta)•   Adobe Dreamweaver CS5•  more

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OpenSim needs a installer bundle – Hypergrid Business

I attended UMass in the early eighties when access to DARPAnet first became available to students. in the beginning, all we had was terminal-based FTP access to download TeX markup documents that we could send to the batch printers. It wasn’t until almost ten years later that Mosaic based graphical browsers became common on personal computers that were powerful enough to run Windows 3.1.

For people not in the academic community connecting to the Internet meant dialing-up to a large service provider like Prodigy or CompuServe, and later AOL. These service providers offered access to their limited enclave of data, and as a member, this was all you could use. At the time the argument for these closed systems was that they were limiting access to proprietary content. in time, the cost needed to build low cost Internet Service Providers (ISPs) came down, providing anyone with a dial-up modem the inexpensive option of having server space to post their own web pages. in conjunction with this low cost hosting came the development of an improved markup language that allowed hypertext linking, HTML.

This meant that even individuals who created the simplest web pages could link to other sites located anywhere on the Internet. It was this availability of inexpensive web page hosting and unlimited connectivity that spurred the explosive growth of the Internet to become the ubiquitous feature of our technological lives that it is today. further promoting this growth has been the increase in high-speed Internet connectivity and low-cost consumer computer hardware.

Parallel to the growth of the Internet, we can follow the development of virtual worlds. the earliest text based virtual worlds were chat applications that ran across the DARPAnet. Prior to the big ISPs, individuals could build their own dial-up electronic bulletin board systems. many of these systems eventually included chat capability and multiple chat rooms. in time, these chat rooms became more graphical. I remember the excitement I felt when I logged onto my first crude virtual world using my Atari 1040ST on my 320×240 pixel color monitor.

It is clear that Second Life has played the role of AOL in promoting virtual worlds to larger populations. now with the growth of OpenSim, it is possible for anyone with a web server to host a virtual world, similar to the advent of reduced-cost of web page hosting in the past. this now puts us at that familiar juncture where the keepers of enclave-based systems prevent inter-system linking in the name of proprietary content. Worse, there are new owners of virtual worlds with slick front-end web sites that are creating new closed worlds in an attempt to become the successor to Second Life. the collapse of AOL answers the question of how successful this approach will be.

What is needed now is a standard of OpenSim packaging, management, and inter-grid connection that will allow individuals to install and run their own hypergrid connected sites. this package management could be modeled after the refinement and ease that users can install other open source software using scripted installers. with this advancement, current web developers can then extend their services to include the personalization and customization of virtual worlds. For individuals and companies with web sites, having their own virtual world can simply be an extension of their existing web presence.

The specification for this easy-install virtual world is clear. this development effort is at a similar place to where the development of the Apache web server was in its early stages. many of the pieces needed are either under construction or well underway and just need to be assembled together. the final product will be a single package that can be installed by a single click using QuickInstall, or Fantastico De Luxe, the standard installers supplied by many ISPs.

Nine easy pieces

There are nine components that already exist within OpenSim, but are not yet bundled:

1. Mono

Since the cost of Linux-based hosting is lower and more common than Windows-based hosting, a Mono installer needs to be part of the standard package to allow for the Microsoft .NET framework that OpenSim is now written on to run on Linux servers. For widest distribution, OpenSim needs to run through this emulation layer since most web hosting now uses Linux servers. in time, OpenSim will need to be rewritten from the ground up completely Linux-native and open source. this is the most labor intensive item on this list, but is essential for the wider distribution of OpenSim to allow installations to run without the memory or processor boundaries in both private and public clouds imposed by the .NET framework.

2.  Templates

On installation, a virtual world will be provided which will have stock attributes, including a virtual conference space, a virtual social space, and a virtual storefront. a virtual world owner can delete the areas that they don’t need and duplicate the stock buildings as needed. It is almost valueless for a new virtual world owner to arrive to a completely barren space. Most web sites today are built using templates, and so should virtual worlds. in time, there should be web sites of themed virtual worlds as there are now web sites of CMS (Content Management System) graphical front ends.

3. Stock inventory

Every virtual world needs to come with a library of stock open source buildings, furniture, vehicles, avatars, clothing, and textures. further, there needs to be one or more large central repositories of OpenSim objects. what is stifling to new virtual world development is the requirement that every new world needs to create all of their objects for themselves. Access to these open source items needs to be provided out-of-world by file download and in-world by standard zero cost purchase.

4. Backup & migration tools

A built in Second-Inventory type tool needs to be included with OpenSim to allow users to download their inventories, and to be able to download items from a variety of websites and upload them as needed to their virtual worlds. Inventory backup and maintenance needs to be provided to users on their own computers. Limiting control of inventory only to in-world is part of the non-distributed virtual world model of Second Life.

5. Easy control panel

It is essential that virtual world owners be provided with an easy to use virtual world control panel. without this control panel, management of virtual grids will be limited to people who have the interest and skill to adjust user rights by navigating the layers of a Microsoft SQL database and editing values in the tables. the best control panel that I have seen has been distributed by PioneerX. this will either need to be licensed or rewritten as open source. the best scenario will be for a version of this control panel to be released for free to grid owners who don’t need to collect in-world rent, and for a commercial version to be licensed for grids that need recurring billing options.

6. Browser-based viewer

The threshold to new virtual world visitors needs to be reduced. For many software developers, it is hard to keep in mind that most computer users still feel uncomfortable or are unwilling to install new software on their machines. the requirement that virtual worlds can only be accessed by installing a standalone browser creates too high a barrier to entry for many would-be virtual world visitors. At least the initial access to virtual worlds needs to be web browser-based. Second Life is currently in beta for a browser-based viewer and the version that I tested worked well. SpotON3D has an interesting workaround that makes it look to the user as if they are only installing a browser plug-in when they are actually installing a virtual world browser and a utility that allows for a Windows-based application to be viewed through a window in a browser. whatever the solution, virtual worlds need to become part of the standard web browser interface, not relegated to their own software installations like computer games.

7. Built-in voice

To secure OpenSim as another viable social media service, it needs to provide voice communication. There are a couple of OpenSim add-on voice options available, however both of them require licensing. as with the PioneerX control panel, there need to be free versions of this software available with the stock OpenSim install, and there also need to be licensed versions available to commercial vendors. If entirely open source versions of this software cannot be made available, in time there will need to be ground-up rewrites of OpenSim that include voice. one recommendation I have is that these in-world voice functions need to work uniformly as they do in Second Life, with proximity allowing voice communication. one OpenSim grid that I visited had voice that was region-wide, making it hard to know who was speaking when disembodied voices could be heard out of mini-map range.

8. Web front end

New OpenSim installations need to come with a stock web site front end. For virtual worlds to be an extension of web sites, the barriers between in-world and out-of-world communication need to be brought down. the best solution would be an integration with existing and well established Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress or Drupal as the PioneerX currently is. Ideally the web-based control panel for the virtual world management would be plug-ins for these standard CMS tools. These plug-ins could include functions like avatar creation and the ability to see who is in-world from the web site front end. this would allow users who were installing new virtual worlds to have access to the huge existing libraries of front-end site templates, helping them create out-of-world look and feel, and giving them access to well-defined plug-ins. If OpenSim plug-ins could be made available for WordPress, the 55,000,000+ users of this CMS could then develop front-ends to their own virtual worlds.

9. Hypergrid access

It is essential that every grid provide hypergrid transport. many current grids consider that by providing hypergrid transport, they are leaving themselves open to claims of supporting intellectual property theft. however, by failing to provide this support, they are defeating the purpose of the Internet itself. Web pages would be fairly valueless if they had no external links, and search engines would not exist. For each new grid, there needs to be an option of joining a centralized hypergrid listing, and this list needs to be made available to all grids, both in-world and out-of-world. further, this hypergrid listing needs to have a rating system that describes quality of the grids, based on available bandwidth and popularity. of course there will always be the option of having completely private grids that are not linked to the system, in the same way that there are web pages that are only used internally within companies. this would be a good use of Google’s existing search engine indexing, a technology that they already have a clear licensing model for.

Three harder pieces

There are three components that do not yet exist and will need to be incorporated into OpenSim:

1. Distributed inventories

Inventory control needs to be distributed among many grids. with the current big grid model, assets are kept in one location and are generally not accessible through the hypergrid system. My proposal is that assets for each avatar be kept in a home grid and then referenced wherever that avatar travels by hypergrid. this would mean that inventory pointers would not point to local SQL databases, but would point to inventories stored on remote machines. These inventories could be backed up by the user and be moved to another home grid if needed. this would also solve licensing issues. All objects would be paid for and owned by the avatar, and would not be the responsibility of the specific grid. Owners of the grids would not be responsible for any inventory not on their server, allowing universal hypergrid transport without risk.

2. Multi-grid currency

There needs to be a universal handling of currency. this is essential for all in-world transactions, such as tip-based activities in music venues. Universal currency handling is also essential for the purchase of real world products sold through a virtual world interface. I can imagine an in-world clothing store where an avatar can try on items and then have this merchandise sent to them in real life. rather than creating universal currency specifically for OpenSim, I propose using the existing Google Checkout. this already existing infrastructure allows shoppers to visit various e-commerce web sites, collect items in their cart, and pay in one centralized location. I would imagine that Google would be interested in participating in this integration.

3. Cloud plugin

Finally, with the completely open source rewrite of OpenSim, there should be a restructuring of the underlying databases so that resources can be made cloud-based. Using a cloud-based computing environment, OpenSim installs could use little resources when not in use and then have near infinite resources when needed. SpotOn3D is offering this technology in-world, but I have not tested this feature of their grid. For stand-alone grid installations, I am proposing that there be a CMS plug-in that would enable commercial cloud access. I have been impressed with the power and flexibility of Amazon Web Services and would recommend that when OpenSim is restructured to function better on distributed systems, there be standard controls incorporated to link directly to such commercial clouds.

Keeping it open

Several people with whom I have shared these ideas have proposed that I develop these projects as a private commercial venture. I feel, however, that this is antithetical to the growth of OpenSim.

The growth of the Internet was based on inexpensive, open, and unregulated communication. when open source projects have become regulated and commercial, the open source community has quickly abandoned them.

What I have proposed here is the development of OpenSim as I would like to see it. If and when this virtual world infrastructure is created, it will be determined by the OpenSim community, not by one enterprising individual. I look forward to hearing people’s comments and discussion on these ideas.

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