The new Timestamp feature allows you to start each episode at any point in the video.
New Feature:
Do you run a blog and want to link to specific portions of a Category5 Technology TV episode? Or just want to share a specific clip with your family or friends?
Now you can! Just append the timestamp to the URL as follows:
I have used Google Hosted Libraries for as long as I can remember, and it’s what we use on Category5.TV to accelerate the javascript end of our site. For all the javascript and CSS (plus images and so-on) we use that aren’t available through Google’s hosted solution, I use Amazon S3 and distribute it through Cloudflare to make it load quickly for our viewers.
CDNJS boasts that it is in fact much faster than Google Hosted Libraries.
Neah… that can’t be true! Google’s the “big dog”… Cloudflare is still relatively new.
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So I took a look. The first thing that shocked me was the absolute magnitude of how many javascript tools are available through CDNJS. Gone is the need to (for example) load jQuery from Google Hosted Libraries but then have to download and deploy a copy of Fancybox 2 locally or on your own CDN. CDNJS seems to have it all. Or at least a great selection, plus the ability to add a library yourself via GitHub.
Sorry, what? Yeah, baby.
So I thought, let’s run the world’s simplest test: how fast does wget receive the jQuery library on Linux? It may not be a realistic benchmark in all cases, but it gives us a bit of a look at how quickly each service delivers the js.
Here are those simple (but amazing) results from my location in Ontario, Canada:
Google Hosted Libaries
robbie@robbie-debian:/tmp$ wget http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js
–2013-03-22 13:50:47– http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js
Resolving ajax.googleapis.com… 74.125.133.95, 2607:f8b0:4001:c02::5f
Connecting to ajax.googleapis.com|74.125.133.95|:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
Length: unspecified [text/javascript]
Saving to: `jquery.min.js.1′ [ <=> ] 92,629 –.-K/s in 0.1s
Note the filesize (92,629) is exactly the same; we’re dealing with the same version of jQuery here–identical files. Also note that I’ve used a non-secure (http) connection for each. The difference in speed is incredible.
Now, for a basic site, the fraction-of-a-second difference may not matter to you. But for a big site like mine, this kind of difference could mean a full second off the load time–possibly more! That’s unheard of for a simple copy-and-paste change in code.
Time to update Category5.TV. What about your site? Please comment below.
Update: Garbee made a great point in our IRC room: You’re only seeing results from my location. Fair enough. We want to make sure this isn’t justme that is experiencing such a massive difference. Therefore, please run this exact test yourself, and post your results below in a comment. I’m in Ontario, Canada. Where are you? Thanks!
First Day Results Extracted from Reader Comments:
Me: Ontario Canada – Google @ 798 KB/s, CDNJS @ 2.21 MB/s, CDNJS is 2.77x the speed of Google. Brea California – Google @ 2.27 MB/s, CDNJS @ 14.5 MB/s, CDNJS is 6.39x the speed of Google.
Garbee: Virginia USA – Google @ 429 KB/s, CDNJS @ 496 KB/s, CDNJS is 1.16x the speed of Google. New Jersey USA – Google @ 104 KB/s, CDNJS @ 2.60 MB/s, CDNJS is 25x the speed of Google.
Chris Neves: Montana USA – Google @ 123 KB/s, CDNJS @ 300 KB/s, CDNJS is 2.44x the speed of Google.
Alan Pope: Farnborough UK – Google @ 1.26 MB/s, CDNJS @ 1.16 MB/s, Google is 1.08x the speed of CDNJS. London England – Google @ 6.79 MB/s, CDNJS @ 4.72 MB/s, Google is 1.44x the speed of CDNJS.
steve5: Leeds UK – Google @ 153 KB/s, CDNJS @ 178 KB/s, CDNJS is 1.16x the speed of Google.
Bryce: Seattle Washington – Google @ 1.83 MB/s, CDNJS @ 659 KB/s, Google is 2.78x the speed of CDNJS.
Calvin: Massachusetts USA
Test 1: Unsecure Connection – Google @ 810 KB/s, CDNJS @ 876 KB/s, CDNJS is 1.08x the speed of Google. Test 2: Secure Connection – Google @ 721 KB/s, CDNJS @ 1.08 MB/s, CDNJS is 1.5x the speed of Google.
As a technical support company, we have used LogMeIn for years to help us remotely administer client systems. Many of those clients have 20-30 computers, or more, and we had loaded them all into our LogMeIn account for easy access by our technical support team.
We have many “free” accounts connected to it, and many “paid” accounts. Some of our customers needed the “paid” features such as printer support, so we set them up with a paid account.
So our account, over the years, became a well-organized assortment of both paid and free LogMeIn accounts. And we had a lot of them.
And then on March 5, 2013, LogMeIn sent the following email (excerpt):
“For nearly a decade, LogMeIn Free has provided unlimited free remote access to users on as many computers as they wish. In order to ensure that we can continue providing this free service and make meaningful improvements to it, we will be limiting the number of accessible Free computers in all remote access accounts to 10.”
We stopped reading around there. But it goes on…
“Should you choose not to upgrade, only the first 10 Free computers in your account, according to alphabetical order, will be shown as available” … “These changes will take effect in just a few weeks, so act now to take advantage of our special rate.”
Well, we acted. We moved all our customer systems (including the paid ones) onto our own hosted support solution and left LogMeIn a distant memory. Didn’t have to think twice. LogMeIn effectively pulled the plug on our business-customer relationship.
As a business owner, it’s important not to forget your customers. They’re the ones who make your business work after-all. In LogMeIn’s case, they made a stupid move. And unfortunately a lot of it has to do with communication. I now know they are offering a reasonably priced “Central” service to allow the continued use, but their email didn’t mention anything about that in the first paragraph, and in big bold characters it simply stated, and I quote: “Important message: Your account will soon be limited to 10 Free computers.” We didn’t read any further before taking action.
So, in an effort to reduce the number of “free” accounts in use on their system, LogMeIn has also lost all our paid accounts.
It reminds me of when Neighbours (a coffee drive-thru) stopped taking debit as a form of payment. Their focus was entirely on the wrong thing: the fees to run a debit machine. Here’s the ripple effect: I used to get my coffee there each morning, and quite often a breakfast sandwich, but when they made that change, I didn’t waste any time (because I don’t carry cash)… I just drove across the road to Tim Hortons. Stupid move on their part. They’ve since re-introduced debit at their drive-thru. Perhaps someone at the company woke up and realized they just cut out a large chunk of their business to save a few pennies per transaction. Which costs more?
But where does that leave LogMeIn? Their focus is obviously in the wrong place in the same way. And we’ve gone elsewhere.
Own a business? Think about your customer first, and then figure out how to make money while taking good care of your customer. If you can’t be good to your customer, they’ll just go across the road and leave you wondering where all the business went.
The problem with raising children with poor grammar can be summarized in a conversation I had with my 5 year old son tonight. In my efforts to trick him into saying “underwear” in the classic verbal trap, I said to him “What’s under there?” to which he responded, “What’s under what?”
Here’s a new feature of our service which I’m really excited about…
Now, you can receive Category5.TV’s weekly episodes by email!
It looks something like this:
Receive Category5.TV episodes by email.
This is really exciting because it means you can receive this really cool (and non-spammy) reminder each week once an episode is available. It’s not a dumb notice, or a “click here for our web site”. It’s literally an email that gives you 1) a screenshot from the episode, 2) a description of what we did in the episode (the main topic), 3) direct links to download the episode for free and 4) a handy “play now” link which will open a player window and instantly begin streaming the show to your device.
To activate this awesome feature on your free account, simply login at Category5.TV and choose “Members” -> “My Profile”, and you’ll see the new option “Weekly episode by email” as per the above image. Check it off and press Save Settings. Don’t worry, you can turn it off at any time, and we never spam you (it’s against our beliefs as non-spammers)!
Please activate the feature, and once you’ve received your mailout (comes out when each episode becomes available; usually Wednesday mornings), let me know what you think. I would love to hear your comments below.
Thanks for watching Category5 Technology TV! Thanks also to _Jot_ for assisting me with the beta testing.
A customer emailed me, puzzled by why they’re suddenly receiving a bunch of virus emails from friends they haven’t spoken to in a number of years.
These types of mass-mail viruses can be very confusing, since they nearly always appear to come from someone you know.
Here’s why and how that happens…
Let’s say someone who you haven’t talked to in a few years (we’ll call him “Bruce”), who is part of the same “circle of friends”, caught a virus. So the virus goes into their address book and starts mass mailing everyone in the address book, and spoofs who it is from.
Bruce’s address book:
John
Betty
Doug
Bruce gets a virus. The virus sends an email to John pretending to be Betty, and an email to Doug pretending to be John.
Doug replies to John and says “You have a virus!” But John doesn’t have a virus; Bruce does.
It’s often difficult or impossible to track down the true culprit, and that’s why it’s imperative that everyone on Microsoft Windows have an up-to-date Virus Scanner such as ESET Smart Security 6. It is also important on any platform (Windows, Mac, Linux, or even Smart Phone) that you be familiar with phishing scams, and be extra cautious what you open or click.
I got thinking about this question today. Why do hard drive manufacturers add useless hardware encryption to external drives?
“Why, that should be obvious, Robbie; it’s because we are security conscious and want to protect our data from prying eyes,” you say. “And you call yourself a bald nerd!”
First of all, I don’t like your tone.
But second of all, exactly who are we protecting here?
Somewhere inside the chassis of your external hard drive, there is an integrated encryption/decryption chip. It boasts “256-bit AES Encryption”. Wow, sounds safe! So you plug in the drive to your computer, and place your private stuff on there, and feel safe. “It’s encrypted.”
Who is it safe from?
Bret Austen, General Manager of Positive E Solutions Inc., in Barrie, Ontario calls this feature a “false sense of security.” He explained to me that while his company does carry these drives, the encryption features are not a true protection for the users’ data. “That said, we do offer an encryption key solution which encrypts data in such a way that even if the drive is stolen, the data cannot be accessed since they require a literal key.” This key is one that you would keep on your keyring, and take home with you at the end of your shift. If that sounds more like what you’re hoping for, I suggest you get in touch with Mr. Austen to discuss this impressive solution.
So, back to your external hard drive. You placed your private data on it, and then you plugged it back into your computer a week later. Can you read the data? Sure you can. The hard drive is still an internal component of the chassis, which carries the built-in decryption chip. So as long as that drive is inside that chassis, you can read and write the “encrypted” data just as if it were unencrypted.
So exactly when does the encryption protect your data from prying eyes? Why it should be obvious: when the internal hard drive is removed from the external chassis.
When a thief steals your drive, are they going to sit down at your desk, pull out a Phillips screwdriver, and gently remove the internal hard drive from the chassis? Or are they going to grab the whole thing and run off with it, decryption chip and all? Similarly, if you lose the drive, will it still be readable by the finder? Sure, it will.
So when does the encryption actually take effect? When the chassis fails.
If your hard drive gets zapped from a surge, or otherwise the circuit board of the external unit gets damaged, data recovery “may not be possible,” says Phil Priest, a professional data recovery technician from PES Data Recovery in an interview with me this afternoon. “You’d have to track down a decryption chip with exactly the same key in order to access the data from the drive. We can recover the hard drive’s data, but it would be entirely garbled and unusable without the proper key,”
Data recovery may be possible in such a case. Mr. Priest goes on to say, “We had a recovery like that come in a while back. It was a Western Digital drive, and for some reason they had manufactured all the drives of the same model with the same decryption key.” He explained that the customer was fortunate in this case: the data was able to be recovered since a decryption key was readily available. However, the cost to procure the correct decryption key resulted in a notably higher cost of recovery and made expedited service impossible. Mr. Priest also warned, “if the manufacturer uses a different decryption key for each drive manufactured, there is likely no way to recover the data.”
So who is the encryption on your external drive really protecting? It would appear to me that the only person getting locked out of your data… is you.
Mr. Priest ended the conversation saying, “if your external hard drive has built-in encryption, make sure you keep a good backup.”
To protect your company data from accidental data leak or intentional data theft, please take a look at Endpoint Protector. This is the “proper” way to protect your data. www.endpointprotector.ca
I’ve been using noty for quite some time–since Garbee introduced me to it a couple years back in our chat room. It’s been pretty great, but when version 2 came out, I realized that the developer is going a different direction than I am.
When I code my site, I consider “being lightweight” to be one of my top priorities. But I also like things to look cool.
What I liked about noty is that it was pretty quick and easy to deploy, and looks great. But it’s also a bit heavyweight for what it is, and now with version 2, it’s too much of a performance hit for my liking (touches way too many files).
So, I decided to whip out something really quick to replace noty on my site, and thought perhaps there would be other people out there who would like to use it, or at least use it as a base for something of their own. Want to see it in action? Visit the demo here (look at bottom right): http://www.category5.tv/?demo=notifier
Feel free to use, share or edit it. It’s pretty simple, obviously. These things do not have to be overly complicated!
1.0 – Requires jQuery. I built it this way since my site has jQuery. Of course, it could easily be adapted to just use JavaScript, but I didn’t bother; it works for me. Feel free to comment if you really badly need a jQuery-free version. 🙂
Ready for my embarrassing, yet utterly hilarious story from today?
So, I decided it’d be nice to pick up some “Christmas Cheer” on our way home from shopping… sit by the fire tonight once the kids are in bed, with the twinkle of Christmas lights on the new-fallen snow… a perfect evening planned.
It’s a lazy Saturday and I didn’t really “dress nice” or anything… just a track suit, and unshaven face. The snow also came on pretty suddenly (literally overnight), and I haven’t found my winter boots yet since our move in August. Keep all these details in mind. Scruffy looking dude, wearing a track suit with a junky jacket on top, and wearing running shoes in this blustery winter weather.
I’m generally an outgoing person, and I like to make people smile just by being friendly and a little bit charming.
I enter the LCBO up on Bayfield Street, and there’s a lady giving Whiskey samples up at the front. Turn on the charm, I say to her “Boy, am I glad to see you!”, a bit of a joke about her handing out samples of whiskey.
Now, that would have been fine.
BUT…
As the words came out of my mouth, my shoes (yes, running shoes, on this wintery day) slipped as I entered the store. I stumbled, and slammed into the posts that you’re supposed to gracefully spin trough on your way in.
Trying not to lose my cool, I proceeded to walk over to her table, still slipping a little.
She looked at me … and it was clear she was judging me.
OH MY GOSH, I realized; “She thinks I’m DRUNK”. GASP!
She proceeded to pour me a sample, and no word of a lie: 1.5… maybe 2mL in the bottom of the glass! She didn’t want to give me a sample! She literally thought I was entering the store drunk! LOL!
I can’t say I blame her! In walks scruffy guy. “Boy, am I ever glad to see you!”. Trip. Slam into pole. Stumble over. Drink 1.5 mL of Whiskey.
MY GOODNESS, that was about as embarrassed as I’ve ever been (when I realized what she was thinking), and I have no doubt in my mind she has since told people about this “drunk guy” who visited her tonight. My word!
Well, for the record, the whiskey was nice (all 1.5mL of it). I might have bought some if I didn’t feel it important to quickly get away from that table as fast as I could!
Blip.TV, the video provider relied upon by many independent digital shows has been down since a little after 2am PST, according to isitdownrightnow.com.
Because of this, any videos hosted on Blip.TV (for example, Category5 Technology TV on-demand and main RSS feeds) are entirely inaccessible, and even the Blip.tv web site is not available during the outage.
I must say, this is a first that I’ve ever seen such an extended outage for Blip.TV, who have always been pretty reliable in spite of their growth. Their Twitter feed is silent, and since their site is down, we know nothing yet about what’s going on, but we know it’s down, and has been down for several hours.
Update #1 – Auto tweets and blog entries continue to auto-post (albeit, laced with deadlinks), but no sign of any realtime notes from Blip.TV directly.
Update #2 – Tasherre Risay commented below that Blip.TV is located in New York. Absolutely understandable then that there’d be issues. I hope everyone is okay, and our thoughts and prayers go out. Hoping for at least an update as to the status and what’s actually happening.
Update #3 – 11am Eastern: as Peggy George commented, the Error 503 message has been updated on Blip.tv to the following: I received a note from Blip “We are currently experiencing unexpected downtime due to flood water in Manhattan affecting our colocation data center. We expect to be back up within the hour as the generators come online but may experience temporary outages through Friday.” Our thoughts continue to be with the Blip team and all those who are affected by Hurricane Sandy.
Update # 4 – Annie Tsai (Blip.tv’s social media manager) informed us below that she’ll be able to update us via social media now that she has access to power.
Update # 5 – 12:45pm Eastern – Blip.tv is responding and serving up videos!
So, I decided to whip out something really quick to replace noty on my site, and thought perhaps there would be other people out there who would like to use it, or at least use it as a base for something of their own. Want to see it in action? Visit the demo here (look at bottom right): 
