Web

Internet Explorer (IE) 8 Deadlock

Jan 11th, 2010 | By Christian Donner | Category: Web

I frequently run into this very annoying bug in IE. I configured the browser to ask before writing cookies of unknown sites. When I hit a site that has both a Javascript error and a cookie warning popping up, there is a deadlock situation, since neither of the dialog boxes responds to input. The only [...]



I am scratching my head about Paypal

Jul 21st, 2009 | By Christian Donner | Category: Ebay, Web

A couple of days ago I received a phishing email involving two Russian sites that asked me to reactivate my Paypal account. Dutyfully I went to the Paypal website and found a link labeled “Security Center”. I clicked on it, and the page that was served contained what I was looking for – in a [...]



The Daily Drama’s Online Music Launch Pad

Jun 26th, 2009 | By Christian Donner | Category: Music, Web

Sonett77.com – Electronic music radio (Germany)
Play.fm – DJ sessions (Austria)
Hitradio.de (Germany) – Web radio with special interest streams
Rautemusik.fm – Web radio (Germany)
Quu.fm (Germany)
Byte.fm (Germany) – Online radio with a journalistic touch
Musicovery.com (France) - ”Interactive” web readio
One.fm (USA) – The music starts here
Di.fm (USA) – Digitally imported
Last.fm (USA) – Largest music catalog online
Sky.fm (USA) – Up to 96k free [...]



Godaddy And The Politics Of Mailserver Blacklisting

May 29th, 2009 | By Christian Donner | Category: Security, Web

The effectiveness of black-listing mail servers is questionable. The overall spam volume does not appear to be impacted and keeps going up. The argument that the amount of spam would rise faster without blacklisting is nonsense. Blacklisting affects a very small percentage of emails that are in a gray zone between spam and ham, such as [...]



pod Business Intelligence Showcase

May 27th, 2009 | By Christian Donner | Category: Business Intelligence, SQL Server, Software Engineering, Web

The Business Intelligence Showcase demonstrates our expertise with Microsoft’s business intelligence application suite. These technologies include the SQL Server database, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services. Recently added to the stack was the .Net chart control, a very powerful component that greatly improves productivity for producing visually appealing charts and diagrams on web sites and Windows [...]



Another virus infection, courtesy of Yahoo News

Apr 9th, 2009 | By Christian Donner | Category: Information Technology, Security, Web

Major web sites like Yahoo.com and Boston.com are infecting thousands, if not hundred thousands of computers with trojans, back doors, and other viruses, through some of their ad service providers. When will the people in charge of these web sites wake up and start screening the ads that they are serving?
 
For the 2nd time in [...]



Web Analytics Metrics – Comparing Awstats, Woopra, and Google Analytics

Apr 5th, 2009 | By Christian Donner | Category: Web

Due to a sudden spike in traffic on my blog, I spent more time than usual with Web Analytics tools lately. There is quite  a discrepancy between the numbers that Awstats reports and what Google Analytics and Woopra think. Awstats is a tool that most low-cost hosting providers include in their service offering.
This post is meant to [...]



Godaddy.com/Secureserver.net annoyances

Apr 4th, 2009 | By Christian Donner | Category: Web

I host this blog and a few other personal sites at WebHostingBuzz (WHB), all on Linux. I host the site for the Austrian-American club at Godaddy.com (ASP). Unfortunately, I host the mailing list for the Austrian-American club at WHB as well, requiring frequent emails sent from one domain to the other.
We are paying Godaddy for extra [...]



Mebroot root kit infection (aka Sinowal, aka Torpig)

Apr 3rd, 2009 | By Christian Donner | Category: Information Technology, Security, Software Engineering, Web

I am pretty sure I caught the Mebroot root kit last night, or some variant, and potentially some other things, too.
I was working when all of a sudden the machine rebooted, without a blue screen. It did an orderly shut-down and reboot (XP Pro SP III). I did not allow XP to boot back up, [...]



The HTML <IMG> tag and “Onload” event bugs in IE

Jan 18th, 2009 | By Christian Donner | Category: Software Engineering, Web

The problem: a blog post is supposed to show a temperature chart. The chart is served by a remote server, running SQL Reporting Services. The table with the temperature data contains 100,000s of rows and the server that hosts the SQL database and Reporting Services is an older Athlon box. Serving that image can take [...]