Most browsers (if they comply with the RFC) will open a maximum of 4 HTTP connections to a single URL, that is to say that it is able to load 4 assets simultaneously from a URL – this behaviour is easy to see if you use the Net panel of Firebug, you see the assets ’stair stepping’ as they load.

Now the easiest way to boost your page load time is to create (assuming you have the necessary access to the server) a new virtual server pointing at your assets folder and have it setup with host headers like assets0.yourdomain.com, assets1.yourdomain.com and then ensure that your assets load from http://assets0.yourdomain.com etc…but this still means that it’s coming from the same server.

Enter Amazon S3. It’s marketed as ’storage for the internet’. It’s cheap storage with cheap access rates which can be public or private – to give you some idea of price I store about 25Gb of photos up there and my last bill was about $3 – granted those photos are not accessed so I’m not paying for GET requests since I’m not requesting the data but I sleep soundly knowing all my photos are safely backed up out of my house (I use JungleDisk on my Mac/PC to perform this backup for me!) Anyhow, I digress.

Amazon S3 can be accessed in a variety of ways – the simplest is to use the S3FOX plugin for Firefox. With S3 you start off creating a ‘bucket’. Whilst you can name a bucket anything, it’s best to keep it globally unique using a FQDN, such as assets0.mydomain.com. Amazon will let you create a none globally unique bucket name but behind the scenes it would have been made unique. There are infact different rules for buckets stored in the EU, these must be DNS compatible

Buckets by default are private along with anything you place in the bucket – to allow the assets to be public you need to edit the ACL for the bucket and allow ‘Everyone’ read access and apply this to the subfolders too. Assuming you’ve done that then your assets would now be accessible via http://s3.amazonaws.com/assets0.mydomain.com/ and also via http://assets0.mydomain.com.s3.amazonaws.com/.

But it doesn’t stop there – assuming you’ve setup a FQDN name for your bucket, eg assets0.mydomain.com then you can create a CNAME record in your own DNS for your domain named assets0.mydomain.com and set the value to assets0.mydomain.com.s3.amazonaws.com and then load the assets directly from http://assets0.mydomain.com.

For a more detailed instruction set on Amazon S3 consult the Amazon documentation.

So where to start – well at first glance it seemed like it was going to be troublesome but it turns out it’s not that bad thanks to ActiveRecord. First up, we need to create a connection to a mySQL server – we’ll do this via database.yml (fortunately you can have multiple db connections per application);

# database.yml
legacy:
adapter: mysql
database:
host: 127.0.0.1
username:
password:

Then we essentially needed to ‘ActiveRecord-ify’ the legacy models coming from the mySQL database – fortunately ActiveRecord makes this super simple. So we created a Legacy:Base class which extended ActiveRecord base classes;

# legacy.rb
class Legacy::Base < ActiveRecord::Base
self.abstract_class = true
establish_connection "legacy"
end

The we simply created legacy models for each model in the mySQL database extending our legacy base class – the only thing these needed to know was the name of the table they corresponded to – just to make sure ActiveRecord was happy. (It turns out that our tables used an ‘id’ column akin to AR so didn’t need to explicitly set this on each model)

...
# legacy.rb
class Legacy::ForumCategory < Legacy::Base
set_table_name 'forum_categories'
#set_primary_key 'id'
end

This now meant we could do the following in script/console;

By extending the legacy base class which extended ActiveRecord our legacy models get full ActiveRecord support rolled into them – so it’s then super simple to iterate over the data and create a new model object for use in the new application, populate the object and then save it. And of course, since it’s ActiveRecord we don’t care what the target database is.

In the end, we created a rake task to create a repeatable process for importing the users from the DB – which also allowed us to handle any situations where the data we were trying to insert into our new models was failing validation.

Monitoring is done via an agent (written in python) installed on the server to give access to various standard metrics as well as stats exposed by mod_status on Apache. At the moment it’s only supported on Linux/OSX but they are working on a Windows agent.

Server Density provides both a web based dashboard as well as an iPhone application (free). The dashboard displays summary data as well as various graphs which reveal what’s going on on your server. Alerts can be configured against metrics and delivered via email, sms as well as iPhone notifications! My first iPhone application which uses notifications! Woohoo!

You’re able to trial the full service for 30 days, after which you can continue to monitor a single server but without the pleasure of the iPhone app, limited alerts and data is only retained for 1 month. After the trial period is over it’s going to cost you £10/$15 a month per server – a tad pricey I think though.

I’ve been using it for a few days now and already have caught 2 instances where my server was overloaded and using overly high amounts of resources – no real bother since I’m running on the Rackspace Cloud so just allocated more resources to my server.

The team behind it also have an excellent blog at http://blog.boxedice.com which has some *REALLY* insightful posts into how they outgrew Virtual Servers, moving from a relational DB to a non relational DB (MongoDB) and how they implemented iPhone push notifications – it’s well worth subscribing too!

If you’re in the market for server monitoring then it’s worth taking a look at!

As a result of this weeks FLOSS which had Eric Jung author of FoxyProxy on the show, he also spoke about his other tool PasswordMaker which really attracted my attention.

PasswordMaker does exactly what it says on the tin, makes passwords. It exists in a variety of formats, a Firefox extension, an OSX desktop widget, an online version (with code available as download) and many more! But where PasswordMaker differs is that it will generate you a complex password for each site/resource you visit and you don’t need to store them anywhere – you only need to remember one password – “One password to rule them all!”

It works by taking your master password along with the address of a website (usually just the domain bit or any other string) and generating you a complex password using a one way hash – it will generate the same password every time if you enter the same master password, account settings and address/text string so you don’t ever need to store the generated passwords, you simply regenerate them each time – and with the multitude of methods available to generate passwords it’s made really simple. There are many different encryption algorithms to choose from, password lengths, password characters so provided you use the same settings whenever you want to retrieve your password then you’ll always get the same password returned.

The Firefox extension makes it really simple – on clicking the icon you are presented with a screen to enter your master password, the ‘using text’ field will have been prefilled with the domain of the site (configurable to use subdomain, query string etc too via options) you are visiting. Once you enter your master password, the extension will generate a password which you can copy to the clipboard and use it from there – it even clears it after a set amount of time.

Should you need to generate a password for say MSN, then you can override the address with a simple string of text say ‘msnmessenger’ which will then be used to produce a password for you – equally server logins, FTP accounts, DB connections – provided you have a master password and a memorable unique identifier for the thing being secured then it will work for you – provided you can accept a minor inconvenience to have to enter your master password each time you need to use it.

It’s really worth checking out! Why not try it on a few sites and set how you get on…surely being safer on the internet is worth a little inconvenience?

ps If you have room for another podcast then add FLOSS to your pod catcher – it stands for Free Libre Open Source Software.

The guys also spoke about Mapstraction. This is REALLY interesting. Rather than coding your maps to a specific mapping API, mapstraction provides an API to 11 of the major mapping providers allowing you to switch providers at will! Granted you would need to wait for the mapstraction API to catch up with a providers API but removing lockin to a certain provider can only be a good thing. We have a number of sites implemented with different mapping providers so being able to use a common API would be damn handy!

Camera app bug seems to have been fixed – taking a picture now the taken image minimises to the bottom left corner as it should do.

The sync bug seems to be fixed too – previously after plugging in my iPhone into not my usual sync’ed MAC would cause the current play position to be reset to when it was last synced with master but now it does seem to retain the position correctly.

Update 2nd Sept – It turns out this bug is not fixed!!

Apps seem to load faster than on 3.0 rather than the slight pause that existed prior but it does screen that the pause on the black screen still occurs when you reboot the phone.

Any other fixes or new bugs introduced found?

In IIS when configuring a custom error page for say a 404 error you have the option of specifying a URL or a File (via an absolute path) to the friendly error page you wish to display.

As obvious as it seems now but if you specify a URL say /errors/404.htm then you will not get a 404 header returned by the webserver instead you get a 200 ok – which in hind sight makes total sense. To get a correct 404 header returned you need to use the file option and browse to the file you wish to display.

In the Camera application in the bottom left corner is (I guess) your latest picture in your Camera Roll except the picture I’m being shown is about 6 pictures ago and not updating.

I sync my iPhone to my iMac at home but as is often the case when I arrive at the office my battery is flat so need to charge. Usually I’ll have listened to podcasts on the way into way, perhaps finishing some and perhaps part way through another, what I’m finding is that if i plugin to my MacBook to charge then the play position is being lost as well as the play counts on podcasts I may have already listened to so when I return home they are not being auto deleted as having been listened to.

Any one else found anything odd so far?

So what’s new in the iPhone 3.0 software that as a phone user you’re actually going to find useful? Here’s some of the stuff I’ve found so far in no particular order:

Cut & Paste

Not a feature I’ve missed but now that I’ve got it I love it. The implementation is super simple, double tap in text, drag the selection dots around the text you want to clip and then tap either copy or cut. To paste, again double tap and select paste. What could be simpler? It’s implemented system wide so none Apple apps can benefit straight away. In Safari you’re also able to select blocks of text by holding your finger on the screen and moving it down the screen so a selection box appears (probably around the container elements) allowing you to copy the text.

MMS

MMS has been added at long last implemented tightly into the existing Message application – provided of course your carrier supports it (eh AT&T?). Once you have iPhone 3.0 software your o2 account will be updated – I received a number of messages saying I had to send a text to activate but didn’t bother and a few days after getting 3.0 I received an ‘All done. Picture messaging is ready to use’ MMS from o2.

SMS Forwarding

I knew this one was in the software but it was pretty well hidden and not something I really cared about. From the Messaging application enter a conversation thread tap the ‘Edit’ button and you’ll get the ability to select individual messages and choose forward – this just creates a new message with the selected messages as the body. Of course, with the new cut & paste feature you can achieve the same functionality by double tapping the text of a message and choosing copy, creating a new message, double tapping and clicking paste.

Shared Contacts

Contacts can be shared via email/mms, simply locate a contact and tap ‘Share Contact’ and select whether to share the contact by either email or MMS – still no bluetooth option here.

Calendar

A few cosmetic tweaks here and improved Exchange functionality with the ability to create meetings via Active Sync, invitees can be added to events and availability status set. Seems like the Day view has changed to to make it easier to move between days.

Autofill

Via Settings > Safari, Safari can autofill form fields using your selected contact as well as names and passwords – I presume they mean usernames here, anyhow it’s one less thing to be typing.

Spotlight

aka Search. Accessed by a left to right swipe of the home page or a single press of the bottom button, Spotlight provides search across contacts, audio, podcasts and probably a few more things. In the iPod menu dragging down the screen reveals a search box tucked away at the top to provide search within the application.

Tethering

The tethering menu is accessed from Settings > General > Network and requires additional subscriptions in order to activate. In the UK o2 (details here) want an extra £14.68 a month out of you for 3Gb and £29.36 for 10Gb of data. They advertise this as also giving you access to 5,000 ‘The Cloud’ wifi hot spots but I’m pretty sure iPhone users already get that.

iTunes

A new ‘Video’ tab has been added to allow the purchase of Films (and rent), TV Programmes and Music Videos has been added – bound to be handy just before you board a flight. Via the ‘More’ tab, options have been added to purchase Audiobooks and content (free?) from iTunes U.

App Store

Nothing major here, a few cosmetic differences to how you browse screenshots for an application and now the ability to redeem iTunes gift cards and certificates so now there’s more than 5 tabs so a ‘more’ has been added to replace the usual ‘Updates’ tab.

iPod

Let’s not forget that the iPhone is still an iPod too. Something I’ve always wanted to see is speed control in podcasts just like in audiobooks and with 3.0 you can now listen to them at half and double speed as well as a 30 second review button which means I can listen to twice as many podcasts in the same amount of time!!! Another frustration with previous software versions was the ability to forward/rewind through audio via the scrubbing bar at the top, if you had ‘large’ fingers then it was a bit of a fiddle forwarding through those ads (ahem, Leo Laporte!). iPhone 3.0 now allows much more granular control over the playing position. By selecting the current position on the scrubbing bar and pulling your finger further down the screen you can ’scrub’ though the audio at high, half, quarter and fine speed by then moving your finger left or right – neat feature Apple!

Akin to the iPod nano, the iPhone now gets a ‘Shake to Shuffle’ option enabled by default, controlled via Settings > iPod.

Other random findings

Landscape keyboard now in Mail, Messages, Notes & Safari

Settings > Messages now let’s you control message preview and the repeat alert when text messages arrive so no embarassing messages flashing up on your screen.

Settings > Home gives you more options double tapping the home button and which content to include in Spotlight searches.

Settings > Mail ability to prevent loading of remote images

Settings > Safari Plugins switch (present in v2.0 software too) hmmm what plugins?

Voice Memos app – audio recording on the on the go and sync’ed via iTunes.

Notes can be sync’ed back to iTunes on desktop (iTunes 8.2)

YouTube application now allows you to sign in to your YouTube account to access your videos, subscriptions and playlists.

Phone recent screen shows icons to identify which number type you called a contact on, ie mobile, home, office etc

Stereo Bluetooth

Niggles

We’re still forced to endure the Yahoo Stocks (but it was ‘enhanced’ in 3.0- turn phone landscape) and Weather applications – why can’t we remove (or at least hide) them Apple?

So there you go, there’s everything I could spot different in iPhone 3.0 on the surface at least. If you find anything else then drop me a line.

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