PHP6 has some interesting new features (some of which will be back-ported to PHP5.3), including

• Namespaces
  

  namespace NathanAGood;
  class XMLWriter 
  {
      // Implementation here...
  }
  
  $writer = new NathanAGood::XMLWriter();

• Removal of magic_quotes, register_globals, register_long_arrays, safe_mode

It seems that quite a few people are having issues with opening Excel 2007, Access 2007 after an installation of Vista SP1. I only just experienced this, and a log off / log on will fix this temporarily, but microsoft is aware of the issue and is working on a fix.

PCPro says BT is reportedly testing an 'interstatial plate' which plugs into your BT master socket to help reduce noise (and thus increase your ADSL sync speed!).
We already remove all unneeded phones and use a decent master socket face plate on our BT ADSL lines, so it'll be interesting to see the results!
Updated with some pics:

Switch recently attended the MS Windows Server 2008 launch party in Birmingham, a great event and we can safely say that 2008 will be a fantastic year for providing advanced IT services to all our clients! Read more ...
Continue reading "Windows Server 2008 Launch Party"

Our free public wifi hotspot is currently offline due to hardware failure, we expect to have it back up and running soon!

By using a series of formulae, and a worksheet resized so that each cell represents a pixel, you can get a rudimentary 3d engine out of it:

And by using the Office Graphics Abstraction Layer, we can get shading!

Read more at Gamasutra

A major update to TrueCrypt (the free open source on-the-fly encryption software) has been released with the following juicy updates:

• Ability to encrypt a windows system partition/drive with pre-boot authentication (anyone who wants to gain access and use the system, read and write files, etc., needs to enter the correct password each time before the system starts).
• Pipelined operations increasing read/write speed by up to 100% (Windows)
• Mac OS X version

I'm gonna give the system drive encryption a go and see what the performance/battery life impact is like!

Dell are slashing a shed-load off of their low-end servers, we picked up an Opteron with raid1 for £228 exVAT saving us £261 (the base unit starts at just £99!) The offer expires in two days though.

Ourselves and JJC Design recently collaborated on another web project, and launched www.audisouthwest.com last week. The clients (a collection of Audi dealerships across the south west region) love the self-managing site, we got to write a funky backend (which automagically pulls car data and car images from other systems) and also got to use a nice google maps implementation (see the contact page and click on a marker!)

We're investigating using openVPN to create a fully meshed VPN network across 4 sites. We'll post our findings up on the blog once we've setup the test environment!

Security "guru" Bruce Schneier writes on Wired about how he runs a completely open wireless network. He thinks this is a good idea. Others disagree.

I for one, think he misses the most fundamental flaws in running an open network - the fact that strangers have access to your local network. From there, they can easily scan/exploit your local computers, brute-force your router login credentials, or poisen the ARP cache on your machines to perform man-in-the-middle attacks (to capture passwords, SSL sessions, voip phonecalls, http sessions) and so on.

Similar to the way Jeremy Clarkson didn't think anyone could do anything malicious when he posted his bank account numer and sort code in his newpaper column (he was proved wrong when monies were taken out of his account via a fraudulent direct debit), journalists quite often miss the point completely.

Our wifi hotspot has been upgraded and now is using openDNS for content filtering, ensuring our users a safer browsing experience.
Continue reading "Public Wifi Upgraded"