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Did you ever sit at the airport or at a cafe and there was a unencrypted wireless access point nearby, but whenever you wanted to visit a site their website would pop up asking for a fee to use the internet through their AccessPoint (aka. Captive Portal)?

In most cases you are able to look up arbitrary hostnames, ie. google.com. That is because if you cannot resolve a host name your browser won’t display any site. So these providers usually allow to look up hostnames to then filter whether they are allowed to access the site or not. In the latter case, their pay-to-get-access site pops up.

But you can use the fact that you can resolve arbitrary hostnames to gain free connection to the internet. Not a very fast one, though, but still a free internet connection.

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Human beings love to argue. Whether the argument is about boxers vs. briefs, ketchup vs. mustard, or Ginger vs. Mary Ann, people will take a position and argue.

This trait is particularly common among programmers. Classic arguments include big endian versus little endian, indexing arrays beginning with 1 or 0, and which language is best. While the other debates have subsided a bit, the argument over which language is best seems to have heated up.

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And here’s a good article about ‘Code reuse’

Code reuse highly overrate

Here are a couple of links to help:

Top 10 “top 10 SEO tips” from Google

30 SEO Tips from the Matt Cutts Videos

Technorati Profile

http://osflash.org/red5

Also, Check Adobe Open Sources Parts Of Flex Platform

Processing is a context for exploring the emerging conceptual space enabled by electronic media.

It is an environment for learning the fundamentals of computer programming within the context of the electronic arts and it is an electronic sketchbook for developing ideas.

Check their website: proce55ing.net or processing.org

Proce55ing tutorial for macromedia minds:

http://jtnimoy.com/itp/p5/workshop/

Here’s an ex-collegue talking about Processing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDeT6RPstbI

“There’s been a lot of media attention directed at the iPhone recently. Some of it has been positive, some negative, but none have come forth to acknowledge the obvious, sinister context of Apple’s latest toy. This device, portrayed as a harmless product of science, is obviously designed to introduce our children to witchcraft and sorcery.”

Dissection.

http://www.mizpee.com/

Article from TechCrunch (read the comments).

Application Program Interface

A set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications

Practically, an API is any interface that enables one program to use facilities provided by another

A good API makes it easier to develop a program by providing all the building blocks

Check these sites for great APIs and some good tutorials:

http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2005/01/20/beautiful-api/

http://www.flickr.com/services/api/

http://www.programmableweb.com/apis

1) Blog Alone or Together with Writely
2) Automatically Post Your Daily del.icio.us Links
3) Auto-Insert Technorati Tags Using ecto
4) Blog from Your Cell Phone
5) Get a Cool Icon for Your Blog
6) Tell the World Where They Can Find You
7) Meet Your Blog Neighbor
8) Make Money with Your Own Blog Schwag Store
9) Create a Blogroll in One Click
10) Give Readers the Option to Subscribe to Updates via Email

From Micro Persuasion. Written by Steve Rubel.

Read the full article here.