Follow up to my Gmail third-party access post

My previous post about a possible intrusion by non-authorized parties on my Gmail account has received a lot of attention on Hacker News, and was even linked to from LifeHacker. There were a lot of questions, concerns, and critics that quickly surfaced, and in this post I’ll address most of them. Given the volume of heterogeneous points at hand, I will present this post in an informal FAQ manner. Image ©...

Who is accessing your Gmail account?

The Gmail team recently introduced a new feature (in the footer) that enables account holders to verify the latest login activities on their account. I routinely check mine and the results are usually boring, reminding me I check my email way too often (and I do so mostly via browser, through my Canadian IP). An unwelcome surprise If you don’t check yours regularly, you should (my version of Google Apps...

The world according to Android

Apple is receiving copious amounts of bad press due to their somewhat arbitrary and restrictive App Store policies. This isn’t going to change a thing at Apple, but the complaints are warranted. Android on the other hand is touted as being “the open platform”, and developers are invited to develop and sell their apps on the Android Market, rather than investing in a proprietary platform like the...

Upgrading to Rails 3

Rails 3 is a major upgrade; using it almost feels like working with an entirely new framework. Porting existing applications and acquiring the skills required to build new ones entails a significant amount of effort. You could scout the net for bits and pieces of information, but that would be time consuming and possibly frustrating. Thankfully there are resources available that have done the work for you, so you...

Web or iPhone OS applications to make money?

If you are a developer who’s interested in starting a new business or even just earning extra cash on the side, you have a few options that can lead to scalable profits and passive income. The most popular choices these days are SaaS (Software as a Service) and iPhone/iPad development. Choosing web application or iPhone OS development is a matter of personal taste, skills, goals, technical requirements, and...

Benchmarking MacRuby 0.6

Recently MacRuby 0.6 was released. The development team put a lot of emphasis on improving compatibility with Ruby 1.9, and the viability of MacRuby as a tool for developing Mac OS X applications. Focus on these aspects took precedence over performance, but I was still curious to see how well it performed when compared to Ruby 1.8.7 and Ruby 1.9, respectively. This article showcases the results of a small Ruby...

The most important programming language today

“What programming language should I study next? What framework?” I occasionally receive emails from younger — and not so young — readers alike asking me for guidance about such matters. “Use the right tool for the job” is the correct answer, but it’s cheap advice when there are a plethora of tools seemingly right for the job. For most people these days the job at hand is of course...

On the iPhone, iPad and Android Market Share

There has been quite a bit of discussion over the market share of mobile devices today (arguably, for the past few years). It all started with a link on TechCrunch, claiming that Android overtook the iPhone in terms of US traffic (according to AdMob). This being a clear case of selection bias, I set about to figure out the mobile devices used by the visitors of some of my sites during the past month. As these...

Rails, DB2 and the Enterprise

Recently Matt Aimonetti wrote an insightful article about Rails and the Enterprise. In it he identifies five core Enterprise application needs: Reliability Support Performance Advantage over the competition Integration and transition path Matt then proceeds to illustrate how Rails does a good job in regards to most of these points, despite a few existing challenges. Among these challenges, I can clearly see the...

A tale of two search engines

Remember when Altavista seemed good enough? Then along came Google and seemingly overnight everything changed. We didn’t even know that it was possible to receive such good link suggestions from a search engine. Yet there, right before our very eyes, it happened. These days, highly popular search engines are worth billions of dollars, mainly thanks to the massive advertisement businesses that can be built on...

My kingdom for an iPad

Tomorrow the iPad goes on sale in the States. Announced in January, the iPad sits squarely between a laptop and an iPod Touch. Large lines are expected to form in front of Apple Stores across America; ants scurrying to grab their crumbs. What is uncertain is whether this release is going to be much ado about nothing or more an event that will revolutionize the computer market. Among the iPad shortcomings are the...