Reverse IP Lookup: How Many Neighbors You Have?
March 18, 2008
Just recently I changed web hosts. While doing my research to find a reliable company, one of the parameters I wanted to investigate was how many and what kind of sites were hosted on the same server.
Many companies try to stuff as many customers as they can into the same machine to save costs. This became specially noticeable in the last few years with the advent of the big “overseller” companies promising enormous amounts of disk space and bandwidth at impossible low prices. Everyone has seen those offerings: “1 TB disk space and unlimited bandwidth for just US$ 5 / month!”, etc. Their reasoning is that since most users have low demands or inactive accounts, it doesn’t make a difference to pack a truckload of them in the same space as long as the average is not significantly affected.
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Thumbnail Creator for the Revolution Pro Theme
February 20, 2008
I’ve been unsuccessfully looking for a way to automate the creation of thumbnails for use in the home page of the Revolution Pro Media Theme. After trying dozens of shareware and freeware titles, each one with its own limitations, I’ve decided to write an Automator plugin to generate resized images that fit the slots in theme’s front page. The major problem with the lightweight shareware programs was either the lack of presets for specifying multiple dimensions for the icons, or the inconvenience of accessing those presets. A large program like Photoshop seemed an overkill for such a trivial and often repeated task.
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Apple Releases Aperture 2.0 Upgrade
February 12, 2008
Apple has just released a major upgrade to its professional photo software, Aperture. The new version comes with more than 100 improvements covering user interface, RAW image quality, compare and select tools, image processing tools, photo management, print and web publishing, workflow, and AppleScript. [Read more]
Apple Releases Mac OS 10.5.2 Update
February 12, 2008
The new update to Leopard has just been released. The 343 MB 10.5.2 patch is available from the built-in Software Update utility, or as a separate download from Apple’s site. According to the site, the update is recommended to all users and includes general fixes that enhance stability, compatibility and security.
More details can be found at the Apple Support section. The changes listed include: AirPort fixes; Back to my Mac support for third-party routers; Dashbord improvements; Dock changes for Stacks; Desktop, iChat, iCal, iSync, Finder, and Mail received numerous fixes and improvements; new cameras supported in RAW Image; Safari, printing, Time Machine, improved and several bugs squashed.
Many other improvements are listed in the official document: About the Mac OS X 10.5.2 Update.
The standalone download can be found at: Mac OS X 10.5.2 Combo Update.
QuickTime Updated, Security Fix
February 6, 2008
Apple has released a security update to QuickTime, bringing it to version 7.4.1. The software can be downloaded using the Mac OS built-in Software Update, or from the Apple website: “Apple Downloads.”
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