Xavier Media®

WP-Status.Net – Now with Oauth support

2010-09-05T15:10:15Z

Since Twitter enjoy to make life difficult for developers by forcing them to do more advanced programming we got forced to update our WordPress plugin WP-Status.net. Basically the only change in this version of the plugin is updated support for Twitter (if you haven't noticed they turned off basic authentication in their API just to make life difficult for developers). The plugin is still working with Identi.ca and MyXavier.com!

The social community platform StatusNet still supports the old authentication process (thank God for that ) so if you only use the plugin to post to StatusNet servers you don't need to do anything. If you also use the plugin to post to Twitter, then you have to update your account information in the plugin because otherwise you will not post anything anymore to Twitter.

What you need to do to get the plugin to work with Twitter again is to register your site as an application with Twitter (dev.twitter.com/apps/new) and fill in four set of keys in the application (instead of just the user name and password like you did before). When you register your application you need to make sure you set Application Type to Browser and Default Access type to Read & Write. If you select wrong here you may not get the plugin to work

When registered you get two set of keys: Consumer Key and Consumer Secret. These two needs to be filled in in the correct fields in the plugin. Make sure you copy all characters since if just one is missing or miss-spelled you will not get the plugin working.

Next you need to click on the link called My Access Tokens to get the two other keys you need to use the plugin. These two keys should be filled in in the other two fields in the plugin. Not as easy as before, right?

If you've filled in all the keys correctly you should be able to post to Twitter again. If not check the keys.

Since the above change in the plugin is not really an update (just Twitter-madness), we also added a new feature. It's now possible to also have post suffixes. Previously we had post prefixes (a keyword or hash tag before the post title), but now it's also possible to define something after your post title. You can use both prefix and suffix at the same time or just one of the and as usual you can specify unique values for each server/account

Enjoy the update! To download the plugin please visit WordPress.org.

In the next version we're planning to add support for Oauth also for StatusNet servers (we didn't get it to work properly and since we wanted to release this update we decided to wait with Oauth for StatusNet until next time).

WP-Status.Net – Now with Oauth support from Xavier Media®

Add your own profile attributes in StatusNet

2010-08-30T20:09:39Z

The more I use MyXavier (our own StatusNet server) the less I mis Twitter. I have to say that a StatusNet server is so much more flexible then Twitter since you can follow people on other servers and you don't even have to sign up for an account at the other server.

The latest feature I discovered is a small plugin called Profile Attributes. If the StatusNet server you have your account on got this free plugin activated, then you can add your own attributes (descriptions if you like) to your profile page. As an example see the picture above.

We've activated this plugin at MyXavier.com, so if you have an account there you can test this plugin.

To add a new attribute to your profile page post a status message like this:

Favorite food := Meat

This will create a new attribute called Favorite food and assign the value Meat to it. To replace Meat with for example Pizza, just update your status again with the following:

Favorite food := Pizza

Lets say that you also would like to add Pasta as your favorite food, then just replace : in the status message with a + instead like this:

Favorite food += Pasta

Now you have two values for your attribute Favorite food. If you change your mind and would like to remove Pizza, then you just post a status message with a – instead of the + sign:

Favorite food -= Pizza

To make it possible only for your friends (people you subscribe to) to view an attribute, then just post a status with this:

Favorite food r:= FRIENDS

If you change your mind and would like everyone to see it, then post:

Favorite food r:= ALL

I suggest you try it out and have some fun with the attributes you can add to your profile. If you don't have an account at MyXavier.com get one for free and if you have your own StatusNet community don't forget to activate this fun plugin.

Add your own profile attributes in StatusNet from Xavier Media®

How to add multiple feed in your blog

2010-08-30T19:21:20Z

I guess most of you have seen sites or blogs where you get a list of different feeds to subscribe to when you click on the little feed icon in the browser address bar. The question is how do they do that and also is it useful for you?

Lets start with if you have any use for a function like that, and the answer is simply YES! Of course you do.

Most people to your blog will subscribe to your entire blog feed (where all your posts will end up), but a limited few may only be interested in just one of your blog categories. These people are not interested in subscribing to everything so they may not subscribe if they have to subscribe to your entire blog. Therefore it's a good idea to offer these people some alternatives to your entire blog feed.

Sometimes you may also have a forum, some articles posted to your site and of course your blog. Why not cross-promote all of these things using the feed icon? By offering for example your forum visitors the option to subscribe to your blog or vise versa you could get even more subscribers with very little effort.

To add this nice feature to your blog, you just need to add some HTML code between the <HEAD></HEAD> tags of your template. If you have WordPress you open header.php found in our template folder with any text editor (Notepad for example). Search for some code starting with . You may have several lines, but the line you're looking for is something like this one:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml"
title="Atom 0.3"
href="http://feed.xaviermedia.com/XavierMedia" />

Notice the type="" part, because that specifies what type of this is. In this case it's an Atom feed, but it could also have said "application/rss+xml".

Now just add as many of these lines as you like. Make sure you change the href="" part of the code to the link of you feed and name the feed to something clever in the title="" part. As an example on how you can do it this is how Sitepoint.com have setup their feeds:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
title="RSS - Articles" href="/recent.rdf" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
title="RSS - News" href="/blogs/category/news/feed/" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
title="RSS - Blogs" href="/blogs.rdf" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
title="RSS - Forums" href="/forums/featured.rdf" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
title="RSS - Books" href="/books.rdf" />

Remember to name the feeds to something your visitors would understand.

How to add multiple feed in your blog from Xavier Media®

Promote the cool .CO top level domain

2010-08-25T19:56:42Z

At eXavier.com it's possible to register .CO domains which is the top level domain name for Colombia. A great thing if you have business in Colombia or if you already own the .COM domain name. By registering the same .CO domain as you have under .COM you don't have to worry about losing any traffic because of misspellings of the TLD by the users.

The .CO registrations are open to anyone, so you don't have to worry about getting an address or a company in Colombia. Just register and setup your new site

As an affiliate of our affiliate program you will get commission on all sales made, so why not start promoting the .CO domain? Join the affiliate program at this page.

Here are a couple of the banners you can use as an affiliate (don't forget to replace UserID with your affiliate user id):

<a target="_new" href="http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=247266&u=UserID&m=6586&urllink=&afftrack="><img src="http://www.shareasale.com/image/6586/Welcome_vertical_120x600.png" alt="Get your own .CO domain name" border="0"></a>

<a target="_new" href="http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=247264&u=UserID&m=6586&urllink=&afftrack="><img src="http://www.shareasale.com/image/6586/Welcome_125x125.gif" alt="Get your own .CO domain name" border="0"></a>

<a target="_new" href="http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=247262&u=UserID&m=6586&urllink=&afftrack="><img src="http://www.shareasale.com/image/6586/Next_Address_468x60.png" alt="Get your own .CO domain name" border="0"></a>

<a target="_new" href="http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=247260&u=UserID&m=6586&urllink=&afftrack="><img src="http://www.shareasale.com/image/6586/Next_Address_125x125.png" alt="Get your own .CO domain name" border="0"></a>

Promote the cool .CO top level domain from Xavier Media®

Is unlimited enought for you?

2010-08-22T18:57:47Z

Most of us don't know how popular a new site will be so it's almost impossible to figure out how much bandwidth you need to get for your shared hosting account. Disk space is pretty easy to calculate since most sites wont need more disk space just because they get more visitors.This is why we've upgraded all our hosting accounts at eXavier to include unlimited bandwidth. Now you only need to decide how much of all the other features you need

If you should have problems figuring out how much you need of for example MySQL databases, disk space and other things you can always check out the Ultimate Plan which got unlimited disk space and bandwidth for only $14.99/month.

Some of the features in the Ultimate Plan are:

Unlimited disk space
Unlimited bandwidth
Unlimited number of MySQL Databases*
Unlimited number of external domains*
Unlimited number of subdomains*
Unlimited number of web sites*

Of course free software like blogs, forums and photo albums are included in this plan (like all other at eXavier.com). For a full list of software included, please check out this page.

So is this good enough for you? I guess it is.

* Some restrictions may apply. For full terms and conditions and details on the features included in this package, please see eXavier.com.

Is unlimited enought for you? from Xavier Media®

MyXavier.com upgraded to StatusNet version 0.9.3

2010-08-17T20:16:35Z

If you have an account at our social community MyXavier.com you may already know that during the weekend we upgrade it to version 0.9.3 of the platform StatusNet. You as a user may wonder why you really care about which version MyXavier is using. In fact it's a little bit interesting for you since with this latest upgrade you can use StatusNet Desktop client to monitor timelines and update your status.

The StatusNet Desktop client works on Windows, Max OS and Linux so it doesn't matter which platform you prefer. The client can be downloaded from Status.net's web site and it lets you monitor several accounts, reply to status updates, post your own updates, mark updates as favorites, and delete your own updates.

Since a year or so Twitter has been trying to make life more complicated for their developers and that's really too bad. But for StatusNet communities this has been really good since more and more people discover the freedom by using an open source platform that can interact with users on different servers without having to sign up for a new account on each server. This is because StatusNet allows you to follow/subscribe to users on other servers, and whenever a user you subscribe to post something new the status will show up in yout time line even if you have your account on a completely different server

StatusNet also got many features Twitter don't like for example groups. You can post to a group of members by using a "!" in front of the group name. For example to post to all members of the group xmblogs you just write a message and include "!xmblogs".

Another nice feature you will really love is if you use Spotify to listen to music. Then you can right click on the track/song you like in Spotify, copy the HTTP link and paste it in the MyXavier status update box. When you post MyXavier will convert the link into a link with both the artist and the name of the track in it . Nice isn't it?

Join MyXavier.com today to explore more about the nice features.

MyXavier.com upgraded to StatusNet version 0.9.3 from Xavier Media®

Zeus v3 trojan steals more than £675,000 from UK bank

2010-08-15T18:55:36Z

The latest version of the trojan Zeus has done unauthorized withdrawals from about 3,000 UK bank accounts since the trojan was first discovered on July 5th. According to Computer Weekly the amount that has been transfered to Eastern Europe is about £675,000! The trojan steal victims' online banking ID and hijack their online banking sessions, undetected by traditional anti-virus software.

So far Zeus v3 seams to be focusing on UK bank accounts, but my guess is that it will soon also focus on other banks since it's been pretty successful in stealing money so far. One scary thing is that the trojan will give you false bank web site showing a fake balance on your account so you wont notice any money is gone until it's too late. M86, the company that discovered this trojan, has published detailed information on the attack in an online whitepaper.

Even if you're not in UK you could get into trouble if you get this trojan because according to RemoveVirus.org the Zeus botnet could even steal your Facebook or MySpace login details (and who knows how many other login details the trojan is searching for while it got full access to your computer).

Since this trojan is spread using regular (normally trusted web sites) and not porn/gamling web sites like many other trojans you need to stay alert when you visit web sites(even the once you regularly visit and trust). As a web site owner or blog owner you need to check your web site for strange code you haven't put there to make sure you don't help spread this trojan.

If you use WordPress as your blog platform you can check out WP Security Lock for valuable tips on how to protect your blog. You can of course also get a security consultation for your blog and I think it could be good to get some advice from someone experienced in this are since an infected blog will not only hurt your visitors, but it will also hurt your reputation.

Here are a few tips from the WP Security Lock blog on how to protect your computer from virus/trojans:

Make sure your anti-virus software is up-to-date
Set your firewalls to the highest level
Never open email attachments from people you don't know
Never open a .exe attachments (this is an executable file)
Contact your bank immediately if you're affected

Zeus v3 trojan steals more than £675,000 from UK bank from Xavier Media®

Mobile Internet: Smartphone vs Dongle

2010-07-22T11:41:16Z

Most of us got broadband Internet in our homes and in our offices today, but what if you need to connect to the Internet while out of the office? With the last few years technology development you have several options to stay connected even if you're not in the office and as the title of this post say we will have a look at mobile Internet using smart phones and dongle.

Mobile phones aren't just phones any more, they are mini computers and you can do all the basic things like checking your email, accessing your company blog to post a few notes or to check your latest sales statistics. With the best smartphones you can of course do even more.

Another option would be to bring your laptop and connect to Internet using a dongle. That way you got all the softwares, bookmarks and files you have at the office with you. You just add the Internet connection

So what is the best for you? Smartphone or dongle? It depends a little bit on what kind of work you're planning on doing, so now we will compare these two options.

If you're just going to read and perhaps write a few emails, then there's no need to bring your laptop. And since most of us already got our smartphone with us everywhere we go, the smartphone option is the best option when you just need something connecting you with the rest of the world.

Since the smart phone screen is pretty small (even if they've gotten bigger the last year), which means that working for longer periods can get annoying. Therefore it's of course better to bring your laptop and a dongle. Imaging writing a best selling novel on a smartphone .

You can of course connect your laptop to the Internet using your smartphone, but what if you need to make a call at the same time as you're looking up something on the Internet? Or what if someone calls you while do download some important files? The smartphone and laptop option should really just be used as a temporary solution.

Getting a dongle may not be as expensive as you think. If you don't plan on using it so much there are mobile broadband pay as you go options to choose from. That way you only pay whenever you need to use it. Just have a look at the options from Broadband Genie where you can get both pay per day and pay per Gb options.

So which option is the best? As mentioned earlier it depends on what you're planning on doing. I would however use both options. A smartphone when I just need to check if I got that important confirmation email and a dongle + laptop when I'm writing my best selling novel outside on a sunny day

Mobile Internet: Smartphone vs Dongle from Xavier Media®

Verisign to increase .com prices on 1st of July

2010-06-06T19:44:16Z

On July 1st 2010 Verisign, the registry for .COM and .NET Top Level Domains, will increase their prices by 7% for .COM and by 10% for .NET domains. This increase will be passed on to registrars and later also the customers like you and me. The horrible in this price increase is that you as a customer can't do anything since it will effect all registered .NET and .COM domains no matter where you have registered them. So it doesn't matter if you've registered your domains with Godaddy or anyone else, since everyone will have to pay this price increase

What you can do to save a few bucks if you have many domain names is to renew them for one or two years already today. The years you renew for will be added to the time you have left on your domain names, so you don't have to worry that you may lose some time you already got left on your domain names.

If you transfer your domains to eXavier.com before the 1st of July 2010 you only pay $7.49* for a .COM transfer including a year extension to the time you have left on your domain. For .NET the price is $6.14* for transfers before 1st of July.

This price increase done by Verisign is not the first and it's not the last one we're going to see. In 2007 I wrote about this and the weird thing is that they can increase the prices much more than the average inflation meaning that Verisign are allowed to increase their profits without adding any more value to the domain owners. According to the deal they made in 2007 they can increase the prices two more times if they like

* Plus $0.18 ICANN fee per year

Verisign to increase .com prices on 1st of July from Xavier Media®