ChrisDevBox

The api key and a secret is used for authenticating and preventing spam against your servers. For this example the the key and the secret are lowecased GUIDs.  So here they are:

API Key: a060d1b6c42311dd9f94c60056d89593

Secret: 9425505ec42611ddb415962356d89593

Now hackers can easily tamper with the key if it is passed via HTTP without masking it, so to prevent that, you’ll have to do the following:

• Create a Raw URL and concatenate the api key and the secret
• MD5 Hash the entire URL.  The result is the signature.
• Create a new URL with only the api key and a signature at the end.
• Make the call to the server.

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If you are looking to do some video encoding the “cheap” way, then you need to install FFMPEG. If you are a CentOS junkie like me, then this is how you do it:

vi /etc/yum.repos.d/dag.repo

Insert

[dag]
name=Dag RPM Repository for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
baseurl=http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el$releasever/en/$basearch/dag
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1

Now run yum update

After that look for ffmpeg (yum list ffmpeg) and install it… (yum install ffmpeg)

That’s it! On my next post I’ll add some ffmpeg tricks and tips.

So, I’m researching video comments… I ran into Riffly.  They happen to have a plugin for Wordpress.  The only drawback is that little ad at the bottom and the super pixelated output… but is FREE, so who cares. 

TO test, please add a comment.  

http://riffly.com/

Since the creation and launch of Wikipedia back in 2001 many people from all over the world have been busy collaborating, adding and updating content on this very popular wiki web.

The wiki concept started a long time ago back in the early 1990’s, nevertheless, Wikipedia, even though it hasn’t been around too long, it is by far the biggest and most active wiki on the web.

The amount of valuable data that has been accumulating on Wikipedia is already in the millions. The biggest challenge now is making all of that data relevant and meaningful to users exploring and searching for information.

Most people arrive into Wikipedia via Google… for example, if you do a quick google search on pretty much anything you’ll most likely get Wikipedia at the very top of the search results. That’s due to Wikipedia’s huge link popularity and page ranking (Different topic).

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In order to make Apache .htaccess work on your servers you also need to add the AllowOverride directive inside

The first of these is performance. When AllowOverride is set to allow the use of .htaccess files, Apache will look in every directory for .htaccess files. Thus, permitting .htaccess files causes a performance hit, whether or not you actually even use them! Also, the .htaccess file is loaded every time a document is requested.

If you are running a big site and you are concern about performance then you should start by removing .htaccess files and moving them to your config director.

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I know, is not an easy thing, just don’t go with your gut feeling, make a solid assessment based your own experience, market, location and type of project (Just to keep it simple).

Most programmers will lean towards their favorite programming language and will give you a biased opinion. Some are more objective and willing to see beyond their comfort zone.

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Earlier post: http://www.chrisdevbox.com/blog/2008/06/09/youtube-video-downloader/

This is a simple and easy tutorial on how to retrieve (in real-time) all your videos from break.com and put them on your website using JavaScript.

In real-time meaning a call to break.com’s WEB API will be made every time you reload the page.

Now, this is not a feature they have exposed to the public yet, but it is there in case you are nerdy enough to figure it out. So this is really a good ol’ innocent hack

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Cookies are great, I eat them all the time, however, this article is about a different type of cookie. Browser /HTTP cookies. The big question is: Are HTTP cookies good or bad. I keep getting this question from non-techy people and some techy people “think” they know the answer… (Including me! jk)

I don’t have the right answer, but I’ll clarify things for you, and then you can make your own judgement whether cookies are good or bad.

Is really how you used them. In the hands of a sloppy programmer HTTP cookies can be VERY bad, but if you are a good and detailed-oriented programmer, cookies are going to be VERY good (sometimes!)

“The term “cookie” is derived from “magic cookie,” a well-known concept in UNIX computing which inspired both the idea and the name of HTTP cookies”. - Wikipedia In a nutshell, cookies are text files stored in your computer containing data that’s typically set by a server.

In order to truly understand cookies you also need to understand HTTP packets and a little bit of how the internet works. I’ll cover a little bit of everything here.

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PHP has a built-in function that can decode a JSON string and turn into an object or an object tree and is called PHP-JSON. This is very helpful for when you need to integrate or mashup with other application such as the google APIs. Here is a quick simple example:

<?php
$json_str = ‘{ “name” : “chris”}’;
$obj = json_decode($json_str);
echo $obj->name;
echo “\n”;

The above will return:

chris

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