Below is a few more links from my latest tweets from the end of October. As always, you can follow me as @michaelmior on Twitter. For a list of all the links I’ve shared, you can view my delicious page. This list is generated by the wonderful Packrati.us app.
Octobot - High Throughput Distributed Task Queue
I will admit that this one makes the list partially because the project’s awesome URL. But of course, it’s also very useful. Octobot is capable of connecting to several task queues to process jobs with high throughput. This is great for those of you developing web apps. Task queues are one the best ways to hide high-latency operations from your users. One of the great things about Octobot is that it supports so many different message queues. Definitely worth a look.
15 useful WordPress Functions you probably don’t know
I certainly didn’t know many of the useful functions from this list. It’s a great read for avid WordPress developers. You may just discover an easier way to implement a feature you’ve been looking for.
This short but clever piece by Ted Dziuba advocates the revival of the Unix tool philosophy for modern tasks. His brief example uses find and xargs to process a tree of files in parallel. While I don’t think we need to start writing web apps using awk scripts, some of the ideas he mentioned could save you a lot of time in the future.
Firesheep in Wolves’ Clothing: Extension Lets You Hack Into Twitter, Facebook Accounts Easily Session hijacking is nothing new, but it’s almost scary how easy Firesheep exploits this attack vector. Many sites have begun to patch themselves to prevent this attack. Initially, connecting to a public Wi-Fi network would allow you to see who is logged in to various popular websites and with a single click, steal their login information. Check out BlackSheep for a way to keep yourself safe by detecting FireSheep.
Typography on the Web has long been a complicated art. Unpredictable font stacks could create a different viewing experience depending on the browser and operating system visitors used. Fortunately, web fonts now allow Web designers to use almost any font they desire. Check out this great showcase of Web typography!