I have now decided and started on my first proper iPhone application. So far it has been a fairly steep learning curve as I have not programmed overly in languages such a objective-c in the past. While learning there was also quite a big shift in how you go about things. For example with the release of iOS 5 you should now use the storyboard feature. A bigger change which to be honest that has helped me quite a bit is the introduction of reference counting and a proper garbage collector.

While the language that I use the most is moving more towards the programmer deciding when to clear memory (PHP) objective-c is moving in the opposite direction.

The app I have decided to create first is going to be an app to help administer a cpanel/whm server. At present I am about half way through the coding and have a friend looking into the images for me. Now the decision is should it be free or a nominal fee. Another possibility of course is to have a lite version and a fully featured version.

Hoping to have the a fully functional test app up and running within 2 weeks. Looking forward at seeing what the publishing process for apps is like. I already have plans for a 2nd app.

Logical Operators in PHP

As you can see XOR returns true if only 1 of A or B is true. This is not as commonly used as && or || but still usefull.

Well this year there is another campaign. This year’s campaign is to try and get Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit to the number 1 spot. This year the Christmas charts are actually on Christmas day so any copies of this song bought from now until 23:59 on December the 24th will count towards the campaign

I have bought my copy already. Have you?

Click here for more information on the Nirvana Facebook campaign.

The service sounded great but 1 disappointment I had was that the service was not available in the UK.Well now with unusually underwhelming fanfare from Apple they have now released the service within the UK. There appears to be no mention of this in any press release. Luckily I was just wondering if there was any word of a release date and came across articles by numerous respected news corporations. It apparently got released a couple of days ago.

Now when you log into the iTunes store you will see iTunes Match in the Quick Links box (alternatively click here for iTunes Match, this will open in a new browser and automatically open iTunes).

The cost of the service is £21.99 a year. There is not much information on the page but it does give a couple of limitations. For example there is a limit of 10 devices that can sync up (not many will go over this). There is also a limit of 25,000 songs, this will not be an issue for most but I do envisage me going over this within a year or so.

I plan on giving this service a whirl once I get paid to see how good the service is.

—UPDATED 07/05/2012—

I finally got around to purchasing iTunes Match. Out of the roughly 11500 songs I have in my library I had to upload around 3500. Took some time but it has finally finished.

Once I have used the service for a while I will be carrying out a review of the service.

As well as allowing people to buy books and e-books from their website they also provide another intriguing service. This service is called PacktLib. PacktLib enables you to purchase a monthly subscription to their complete library

The subscription (which is currently £15 a month) allows you to read any book that Packt have ever published (new or old). This month I decided that I would take the plunge and purchase a subscription to the service to see how it is.

On mentioning this to a work colleague he sounded far from impressed with the offering but here are my thought on the service so far.

Instead of allowing you to check out and download an e-book Packt allow you to read the book in a web interface. This has some positive and negative side effects. On the plus side the books are easily searchable and are laid out well. Sometimes the images in the books can have a tendency to be a bit small (you can click on them to have them display in an overlaid pop-up but they can still be too small). The downside however is that to read the book you have to be connected up to the internet so that you can continue reading past the current page you are on (I have not located any offline reading mode). 1 way that could ease this apart from an offline mode would maybe for them to create an app for the android and iPhone (as well as other platforms of course).

The library also has some other great features such as the ability to search the content of all of their books and to jump directly to where in the books the result is for. This also works well when using the similar content tab.

You can also download any associated code that the book has directly from the library without the usual hassle of trying to locate the correct page on their website, entering your email address etc.

1 other great feature that the site has is that you can bookmark a page from within a book. Although this is a great feature this appears to store the bookmark on your PC rather than on their servers. This is fine if you use the same device for accessing the library from anywhere but if you use more than 1 it can be a pain to locate where you previously left off.

An added bonus of the subscription is that every month you receive a credit for a free downloadable e-book that is added to your Packt account just like any other purchased e-book. There appears to be no limitation on what book you can get from this. The token is immediately available as soon as you sign up. The e-book that I chose was actually of higher value than the monthly subscription.

On the whole this is a great service but does have room for improvement. My personal improvement wish list would include:

• Enable an offline reading mode.
• Enable cross device bookmarks.
• Release a smart phone app. This will work better than trying to use a browser.
• Add a feature to mark a book as read.
• Link books by authors.

Overall I am very happy with the subscription that I have taken out but the above enhancements would make the site so much better.

For those of you that are tempted to try out the service you can sign up and try it out on the free e-books that they do offer. This will give you a good understanding on how the system works.

Sign up for PacktLib here.

Back on the 28th of February in 2009 I started to become aware of the theft and attempted sale of some domain names. 1 of these domain names was very good indeed. That domain was rpg.org. By the time the theft came to light it was too late for the rightful owner to do anything about it as the domain had been transferred from GoDaddy to eNom.Over a few weeks I had some communication with the rightful owner and he was quite down hearted as he believed he had lost the domain for good. The registrars involved showed a complete unwillingness to do anything about the theft. Luckily there were some swift actions between the staff at Namepros and DNForum (thanks Johnn) that helped thwart the sale of the domain name. The seller was trying to sell the domain from anything ranging between $100 through too $3,500.

I personally posted reports of the stolen domain on both forums (Namepros, DNForum).

Well now to the good news. Today the original owner of the domain name (ggot) has reported that after a long struggle the domain has finally been returned. Full details of this are not currently at hand but I hope to find out how this was managed.

I am sure you will agree however this is extremely good news.

The domains for sale are:

Domain: DiverseBlog.com
Creation: 14 Dec 2006
Expiry: 14 dec 2011
Registrar: GoDaddy

Name and potential uses speak for themselves. A great little domain for a blog.

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Domain: DomainingArticles.com
Creation: 11 July 2009
Expiry: 11 July 2012
Registrar: GoDaddy

Another name thatspeaks for itself. I had partially created a script for this but thus far had not completed this.

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Domain: LinuxDaemon.com
Creation: 10 May 2008
Expiry: 10 May 2012
Registrar: eNom

I thought of creating a site with information on the common linux daemons. There are some sites that do this already but not have such an apt domain. You could also of course have tutorials detailing how to create a linux daemon.

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Domain: ObscureRecords.com
Creation: 25 Jan 2008
Expiry: 25 Jan 2013
Registrar: eNom

This domain has many possibilities. Obscure or rare LP’s, or maybe showing some of the oddest world records that have been achieved.

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Domain: PHPSecured.com
Creation: 18 June 2008
Expiry: 18 June 2012
Registrar: eNom

A perfect domain for articles or tutorials for showing how to secure PHP or possibly to code with security in mind (something that is often forgotten).

The app I decided to download was SSH Term Pro. As the name suggests this is a SSH terminal app for the iPhone and iPad. Of course this makes it extremely easy to manage your server on the move. The application allows you to add unlimited amount of servers details so you can quickly and easily connect up to a server that you manage. The application also allows you to lock it down so that you can only access the application fully once you have entered a password that you had set up.

Unfortunately on investigation everything is not as good as I had hoped:While browsing through the files on my iPhone I decided to have a look where this apps files were stored. I noticed that there was a file called SSLDB.sqlite. This is of course not unusual as most apps that store data store it within an SQLite database. What is disturbing however is what I found when I opened this file.

The database contains a table called SSLSITE. This table is used to store information such as site host, username, password and port. All of this data is NOT ENCRYPTED. You did read this correctly, the data is not encrypted meaning that it is plain text and can be read by anyone who manages to gain access to your iPhone. Now what I was expecting was that the handy little password that we used earlier was actually an encryption key but unfortunately this is not the case. Regardless of whether you used a password to lock the app or not the SSH password remains unencrypted.

This may be of little concern while the iPhone is under your control however if someone manages to steal your iPhone or if they manage to hook this up to a PC or Mac without your knowledge it would be a trivial task to copy those files.

If you use this app I strongly suggest you keep an eye on the iPhone. If you lose it ensure you change that SSH password immediately. I seriously hope that this issue is fixed in the next version.

On a side note while doing this I used some nifty tools. The first of these was IExplorer. IExplorer allows you to browse the files located within your iPhone with ease (the database file for example was in iPhone/apps/ssh term pro/library/SSLDB.sqlite).

The second tool I used was SQLiteManager which allows you to load an SQLite database into it and to read, modify or create SQLite databases. The tool is not free however you can use it to view the first 20 records in a table using the demo version.

Unfortunately however it appears that Apple have opened up some security implications with this feature.

Usually prior to being able to get any information from a phone you would need to unlock it. 1 of the locking methods that you have with the iPhone is to input a 4 digit code into the phone prior to gaining access. The implementation of Siri allows us to bypass this security.

By simply holding down the home button regardless of whether the iPhone is unlocked or not Siri will be ready for commands. This enables you to dictate many commands most of which are harmless however as the below video demonstrates you can for example obtain phone numbers. he security implications are not limited to actually gaining numbers, you can also make phone calls in a similar fashion.

Luckily enough there is a workaround to resolve this issue. Siri can be disabled if the phone is locked (shame this is not set by default).

As the video demonstrates to disable Siri while the phone is locked you need to go into the settings menu. Once in settings go into general then passcode lock. Once in passcode lock and you have entered your password simply switch Siri off. Once this has been done Siri will no longer work when the iPhone is locked however will work if the iPhone is unlocked.

I hope this is issue will be resolved quickly.

Every now and then you may find that you have a problem with your connection. If you are a webmaster you may on occasion have issues with your website not being accessible or being slow.

On all of these scenario’s there is a very good windows utility that you can use to help track down where the problem lies.

The tool in question is a pathping.

What Is A Pathping

When using a pathping as standard the pathping carries out 2 functions. The first function (which is where path comes into it) is to check the path that you are currently taking through the internet to the desired site. This will be familiar to most as this is what a trace route does.

The seconds more useful function is where ping comes from in the name. Each hop from the path is pinged using ICMP packets 100 times. Now you may wonder why this is so useful. Well usually when you ping a destination you will find out how many of the pings (packets) were dropped however you have no idea where this is occurring. The ping that is carried out as part of a pathping is a more intrusive ping.

Each hop within the route is pinged with 100% packets. This helps you identify where an issue may be originating from.

How You Read The Results From A Pathping

Now running a pathping is a very simple task. On windows, click run within the start menu. Run is only within the start menu by default on versions of windows prior to Windows Vista. If you do not see run simply hold down the windows key on the keyboard (usually to the right of the ctrl button on the left of the keyboard) and press the letter.

Once you have located the run box by either of these methods type cmd into the box. This will present you with the old dos prompt (yes it is still there in windows Vista and Windows 7).

Now that we have the dos prompt we type the following command to carry out the pathping:

pathping mywebsite.com

Of course you need to replace mywebsite.com with a site that you wish to carry out a pathping on. If you are having issues with your site then this would be the address for the site in question. If you are having issues with the internet in general replace it with a site that you know is reliable (google.com for example).

After pressing enter you will start to see a basic trace route being competed. As mentioned this is the route the information is taking when you are attempting to visit the site in question. Once the trace route completes you will see a message that states:

Computing statistics for 400 seconds…

The number of seconds will vary and is actually a rough estimate of the time it will take for the ping section to complete.

Now you will notice that 2 lines have had the IP blanked out. I have done this to stop my IP being public.

After a patient wait we will slowly be presented with the ping section which will look like the following:

Now the output we have may be overwhelming when first looking at this but it is easy to fathom.

As you can see along the top there are column headers which have the following meanings:

• Hop – The number of the hop. This corresponds with the hop number in the trace route section.
• RTT – Round trip time. This is the average time taken for a packet to be sent and in turn a response received (so the time taken for them to receive the information is actually half the displayed figure). This is measured in milliseconds.
• Source to Here Lost – The number of packets that a response was never received for.
• Source to Here Sent – The total number of packets sent to this particular destination. This will usually be 100.
• Source to Here Pct – The percentage of packets that were lost.
• Address – If 1 is available this will show the hostname for the device followed by its IP in square brackets. If no hostname is available this will simply be the IP.

Now you may notice that I have missed out the This Node section. Do not worry about this section as it is not necessary for our needs.

On hop 5 you will notice that hop 5 displays “100/ 100 = 100%”. This indicates that none of the packets that we sent this device gave us a response. Now you might be concerned about this and believe that this is a cause for issue. This is not the case. Any row that displays 0% or 100% should not be a problem. The only time 100% would be a problem is if no further hops occurred (and this hop was not that of the website, if you are not sure ping the website address and this will tell you the IP. Compare this IP with that of the hop in question).

Now on my sample pathping you will see that on hop 13 we see “2/ 100 = 2%”. This is telling us that out of a total of 100 packets that were sent for 2 of those we never received a response. You will also notice that hop 14 and 15 also display loss. Any issues like this are called packet loss.

So now you may be wondering how we would identify the issue at hand. The hop in this case that is potentially causing an issue is hop 13. Any later hop that displays packet loss will be caused by an earlier hop that has packet loss (all traffic to the later hop is passing through the earlier hop. If the earlier hop has loss then 1 of the packets of the later hop could also be affected).

Now who would you contact to rectify this issue? This is where you need to carry out some investigatory work. If the packet loss starts to occur on your network unfortunately this is your issue.

If the packet loss starts at the 1st hop past your router again this could be your problem (carry out usual diagnostics, replace cables, router, filters etc).

If the packet loss occurs on an IP within your ISP area (usually identifiable by the host name, you will see hop 7, 8 and 9 show bt.net. My ISP is BT so I know these are my ISP. This also tells me that 2,3,4,5 and 6 must also be my ISP) then you should contact your ISP to report the problem. Depending on your ISP the people at the call centre may not be aware of what packet loss is so you may need to describe the issue in more relative detail (for example if it is causing slow speeds tell them you have a slow speed issue).

If you are experiencing issues with your own website and there is no packet loss until it leaves your ISP then unfortunately they may not be able to do anything about it. This is where it gets a bit trickier. You need to work out if the IP belongs to your host. If it does then great, contact your host and provide proof of the issue.

If the issue is outside both of these realms then unfortunately you have an issue on your hands. Nobody that you have contact with (or that will really rake any notice of you) will be able to help much. Depending on your host or ISP they may be able to chase this up and liaise with that party but they would need to have good reason to do so (a lot of customers affected for example).

If you would like to learn more about the more advanced features of pathping take a look at this Microsoft Pathping guide.

I hope you enjoyed this article. If you have any questions feel free to ask. I will no doubt tidy this article up over time and make amendments.