Sometimes thing happens unexpectedly

Though, little can be said about the kids. Just a few days back, one of the kids went surfing on the internet only to run into an unwanted web link that when clicked would run a install feature which would have been disastrous to our very own TechieDan. It would have installed the dreaded Trojan horse file that could have most of the information leaked.

Seriously, Dan has thought that this needs to have a filtering ability. Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox have their own filtering technique to prevent kids from accessing sites like pornography. We all thought that this would be enough. No matter how, the inbuilt detection from the browser still has its limitations. It is also a problem for the average surfers where websites which deemed normal suddenly turn up to be a problematic website and as such it is also not only a problem for the kids but also for the average public that surf the internet.

What steps could be taken?

So it is time to look for some other sources of internet filtering. One such example would be NetSpective. Well, third party internet filtering appliance like NetSpective seems to be a swift solution for most of these problems. We might be IT pros but once again it would be better to be safe than sorry. It would be unbelievable if TechieDan would have failed because of situations like these.

If up till now you have been unsure as to what internet filtering meant, have a look at the brief description here.

Internet filters protect children and teens from questionable and malicious internet content, which makes them a must for schools, libraries, rec centers, churches or any place with child care or after school programs.

An advanced web filtering solution can also help your business increase employee productivity, decrease security risks and threats and maximize your network’s capacity.

I want to protect the organization

As above I believe most readers here would have been from an organization looking for solutions to their problems. Remember that employers should learn to minimize risks for their organization and thus it is important to obtain a security feature as such. Just a simple mistake by one employee could jeopardize the whole intranet in the company. As an employer we would not want this to happen right?

So what about your thoughts then? Still considering whether to have an internet filter installed on the network? Consider no more, time to eliminate those pesky problems.

In short, internet filtering is not only for the kids, it also applies to us adults in our every daily life. Time for some filtering to be done. Get rid of those pesky annoying ads, pornograhy websites and malicious malwares and spywares.

Systems integrate internal and external management information across an entire organization, embracing finance/accounting, manufacturing, sales and service, customer relationship management, etc. ERP systems automate this activity with an integrated software application. Their purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the organization and manage the connections to outside stakeholders

Of course in simple terms it is just a software to manage the resources in the company in terms of finance, human resource management, project management and so forth. This is what exactly a company needs. Of course, if TechieDan plans to start a company too, it might not be feasible but once he is stable getting a ERP software like this would be simply worth it.

Suffice to say, there are few ERP Software around the Internet. If you are the CEO or the managing director of your company, how do you manage without it? Here is one such software from TGI.

This software allows these few characteristics to be done as below.

One is able to view account information, download documentation and system updates, track open issues, view E21 modification history.

E21?

Well, let’s just say it is a special name for its software. With a software name Enterprise 21 ERP System, it might have 21 functions? Well, what I got from the website though is that there are tonnes of function such as viewing account information, download documentation and system updates, track open issues, view E21 modification history and many more.

There is that E21 again. Well, it looks like I have to try it to know what it means.

There are lots of other ERP software of course, there is no harm trying this one first though. At least the background check was the company involved in developing this software was founder in 1990. Now that is about 21 years of software development.

The browser looks promising as Firefox greeted its users with a new splash screen which is more of their color. What is new?

• Added Type Inference, significantly improving JavaScript performance
• Improved theme integration for Mac OS X Lion
• Added two finger swipe navigation for Mac OS X Lion
• Added support for querying Do Not Track status via JavaScript
• Added support for font-stretch
• Improved support for text-overflow
• Improved standards support for HTML5, MathML, and CSS
• Fixed several stability issues
• Fixed several security issues

What features TechieDan was more concerned of was the one highlighted in bold. With the surprising new HTML5 garnering more support, it will be great when one day we can make do with all the obsolete HTML code style.

Up till now Firefox has been the most used browser for developers due to its capabilities to incorporate plugins like Firebug (help designers to locate CSS, Javascript problem), Youtube Downloader (plugin to download movies from the web) and many more. It has been a major year as the year 2011 will close in another 2 days time and thank you Mozilla for finally releasing the latest release before the close.

Once again, Happy New Year to all the readers here.

A blog can be a great tool for emphasizing what one wanted their readers to read, to learn and to entertain. Here in TechieDan, this blog aims to help its readers to learn about technology and also problem solving that the writer of this blog is facing on his everyday technical life which could be applied to others.

Though when TechieDan was first started, it needed the exposure and one of the ways to do that is to use a social networking tool to enhance its stature amongst other blogs out there. This also helps to drive the traffic towards the blog. In the first few years of opening this blog, there were no prominent social networking tools. Those days, relying on SEO is a major way of getting the proper scoop of the public.

One of tools that I would recommend is http://www.rockthepost.com. After browsing through the site, other than the normal usual blogger tool, it also helps both beginning online and offline entrepreneurs to gain the necessary . One of the highlights of this portal is its potential to reach out to people without the necessity of going through another middle party, thus removing the underlying cost that comes with it. Unlike some tools which I have used and are biased towards traffic and page ranks of the specific sites, this mentioned tool is great as it creates equal opportunities to everyone who is in.

Now what do I mean by that? In order to start a project, one needs a group of people to make it work. This is where I think that RockThePost.com excels. Team members are grouped together from this site and then slowly the project grows (of course some just given up the project) and that is how this is not only a social networking tool, it is also a business networking tool. Of course, if you need anyone to help to formulate something for your site, this is also one of the best places to look for. Though one thing about this, is that sometimes it will get too cluttered.

Who knows, maybe in the future TechieDan.com could be a site to relate to each other technical people out there. Who knows? If I really do that, I might need to assemble a team, so I guessed this is the platform which I would most likely use.

Though an issue arose which I would like to address. Seemingly MySQL queries like this happen sometimes.

“SELECT card_name FROM cards WHERE card_name like %some kind of string%”;

In the older php mysql we would just replace the string into the syntax. For the improved mysqli, we would use the question mark (?) instead.

“SELECT card_name FROM cards WHERE card_name LIKE %?%”;

From the syntax it should work right? Here is the initial program in php.

$con = mysqli_connect($nameIp,$nameAdmin,$namePass,$nameDataB);
$card2Name = $_REQUEST["cardName"];
$query = "select card_name from mtg_card where card_name like %?%";
$stmt = mysqli_prepare($con,$query);
$stmt->bind_param("s",$card2Name);
$stmt->execute();
$stmt->bind_result($abc);

Running this though has given the following errors though.

Fatal error: Call to a member function bind_param() on a non-object

Was there something wrong? So trying to figure it out, here was another way that TechieDan tried.

$query = "select card_name from mtg_card where card_name like ?";
$stmt = mysqli_prepare($con,$query);
$stmt->bind_param("s","%".$card2Name."%");

Another way, though after testing it produced this error.

Fatal error: Cannot pass parameter 2 by reference

Seems like it is getting error after error even though the syntax should be correct!

After going through the Internet on what certain error meant and also some play testing it looks like someone has mentioned that mysqli does not parse the query properly. We would have to use CONCAT to solve it.

$query = "select card_name from mtg_card where card_name like CONCAT('%',?,'%')";
$stmt = mysqli_prepare($con,$query);
$stmt->bind_param("s",$card2Name);
$stmt->execute();
$stmt->bind_result($abc);

Look at the syntax. What was changed was just the $query line. It seems it is the LIKE clause for mysqli should be used this way.

This is where TechieDan will roughly teach you how to abuse this script sending to form. Utilizing Internet Explorer (IE) and vbscript, I will automate sending a login to GMail.

Create an empty text document as name it anything you like ex: gmail-automate.vbs
Let’s begin with the vbscript opening an Internet Explorer application to run it.

Set IE = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")

Now we have to designate the URL the Internet Explorer needed to run.

IE.Navigate "http://www.gmail.com"
IE.Visible = True

Surprise? It opens up an Internet Explorer at the page we are looking at. Now for each form, it is understood that all of them have different property names and that is where we have to first do a manual investigation of the form properties.

Added a timer so that the form would be able to take some time to load before it submits. Also if you wanted to, you can use IE.Busy to check if it finished loading

Wscript.Sleep 6000

Finally it is time to put in your details and this will work.

IE.Document.All.Item("Email").Value = "youremail"
IE.Document.All.Item("Passwd").Value = "yourpassword"
IE.Document.All.Item("signIn").Click

Thoughts
Using the above method works. Of course by understanding this concept, one could actually write a script which might subsequently try to login as many times by doing a loop function (after submit – reload form – and so on). We are getting lazier by the moment but sometimes it is the convenience of just a click and we are in.
For those still clueless, below is the final script.

Set IE = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
IE.Navigate "http://www.gmail.com"
IE.Visible = True
Wscript.Sleep 6000
IE.Document.All.Item("Email").Value = "youremail"
IE.Document.All.Item("Passwd").Value = "yourpassword"
IE.Document.All.Item("signIn").Click

Do note that you should use this wisely.

#page {
width: 800px;
margin: auto;
}

Surprisingly most of my developments and testing were done on Mozilla’s very own Firefox. After finishing the testing and procedures it was time to put it online to the World Wide Web. Little did TechieDan know, something was practically wrong when I have comments saying that the web page looks out of place and not in order?

This baffled TechieDan for some time until he tried using Internet Explorer to view the desired page. It was freaking out of place. Looks like some modifications were needed. It seems that IE does not really render the CSS given properly and needed some IE hack to help resolve this CSS issue.

Here is how to resolve the centering of a page or a div or anything you wanted which also would display properly in Internet Explorer.
Add this to your CSS.

body {
text-align: center;
}

It seems that IE has very weird way of solving this issue. Of course, by doing so in the body, everything else would also be centered. This is where you would only want the page to be centered but not the text or the elements in it.

#page {
width: 800px;
margin: auto;
text-align: left; //add this part too
}

From the desired element, put text-align: left; and it now should work very well. EGADS!!!! It has been awhile since a new post.

Now after downloading Android SDK (for Android developers and also initially for those wanting to root their Android phones), this is the initial screen.

Following that, click the Next button which the following screen should appear.

What is happening? After checking, it looks like the JDK was already installed on the machine. Something is not right here. Now here comes the fun part, click the Back button which should appear to the first screen and then click Next again. The screen which initially showed theJava SE Development Kit (JDK) not found is different now.

Oh, it is a bug in Android SDK Installer. This has got to be a funny mishap in the programming codes but then it is not something to be going gaga over though.

After this phase, just follow the screen and everything should be done.

Summary of the installation

Simple steps to follow.

Click Next > Back > Next

So in short, what can one do to clear the unnecessary usage of space. Do a factory reset? Well, it works but maybe just before you do that you would want to backup your contacts that are on the phone (yes, as some saved their contacts on the phone.. one of them would be me).

Surprisingly, after searching the web for solutions, most gave solutions of downloading an application which to me is tedious and unnecessary. The simplest way would be as followed

1. On your menu, select People
2. Press MENU and select IMPORT/EXPORT
3. Export the phone contacts to SD card  (You can choose the option from your phone or your SIM)

That is all there is to it. Saving your contacts is easy. Now just backup your contacts and get it ready for import the next time you wanted to.

Of course, unlike the Beta version, most plugin writers has already updated their version to support this new browser and version. Even Echofon and Firebug now fully compatible with Firefox 5.0 which is definitely a plus as that was what kept TechieDan from using Firefox 5 until these plugins are compatible.