Etherpad and WebRTC

So, Etherpad is a thing (actually, Etherpad Lite, which is a NodeJS thing). That is, a real-time collaborative editing tool. Essentially the answer collaborative web-based text editors, free and open source. Last year a WebRTC hook and plugin was made available for Etherpad (!!). WebRTC WebRTC is real-time communication for the web. Firefox Hello Earlier ... Read more

fuser and lsof

fuser and lsof are two important tools showing which processes are using what files and/or sockets. Fuser is the simpler one focused on finding out what processes are using a given file (or port), while lsof can list processes without specifying, such as all open sockets Fuser fuser stands for file user and lists process ... Read more

Cloud Security

A development server recently became compromised, and while this isn't necessarily a good thing, it does raise awareness and provides impetus to strengthen security measures. Access Control A few axioms: Access control is better through certificates (what you have) than passwords (what you know) Two-factor authentication is better than both (what you have + new ... Read more

SSL, SNI, Certs

HTTPS Everywhere is a wonderful concept, but of course we need functionality first, which means dealing with the whole PKI issue. So, when stuff is located in countries with limited IPv4 addresses, how can this be accomplished? - Simply put SNI allows for any number of certificates to work on a single IP address. Basically ... Read more

Note on Multidisciplinarity

When I was in a PhD program, and before that an MS, the academic researchers and the administration all talked about how important advances in science and scholarship will come from interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research. Disciplinary boundaries had been mined through the decades and ages, and it is cross-disciplinary research where the findings will be ... Read more

Criteria for Cloud Service Selection

I received an email about Paymo v.3 which was recently released. Paymo is a time-tracking, project management and invoicing cloud-based app (with native applications for desktop and mobile). Paymo has been around a while (hence being on their mailing list), and they have an impressive feature set and really thought through usability. I would recommend ... Read more

Entrepreneur vs. Businessperson

The entrepreneur is a creator. The businessperson is a destroyer. Enough said. This kind of dichotomy is annoying at best and completely fictional at worst. The reality is that the entrepreneur is to the businessperson as public relations is to propaganda. That is, they are the same, just better pr/propaganda. At the same time, there ... Read more

Advances in Education, Professional Development

I've been engaged in thinking about education and professional development since encountering the fantastic difficulties (most vividly displayed as a university lecturer and student advocate in an advanced graduate program in the mid-2000s). Since then, I have developed a fairly good idea of the exact, largely intractable nature of the difficulties specifically in higher education ... Read more

Publishing Workflow

In rough, this is the publishing workflow that gets books from conception/marketing to publishing and distribution. Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Publishing a book or journal is first and foremost a marketing decision. That is, it has to in some way reach and appeal to a readership, and that includes who are the distributors (electronic and print), ... Read more

Mobile Web Best Practices

This is my attempt to give a good set of guidelines based on two sites: Migrationology and Bellroy. What these sites do well and what they do poorly will be discussed, delivering a list of what is important. This post builds on the discussion in Multiplatform Web Design. Summary of Mobile Web Best Practices Here ... Read more