Every Monday through Friday-ish, we post a new Monkey Bite on our frontdoor for your edification. This could be a little news item, a link to a useful site, a handy coding tip, or just some random piece of information we think might be of interest to Web developers. Expired Monkey Bites are stored right here, growing tastier and more sophisticated with each passing day.
This month's Monkey Bites:
02/28/02
Intruder alert! Intruder alert!
If you're running PHP on your Web server, then heads up:
It turns out that there are some serious vulnerabilities in PHP's fileupload, which could potentially let ne'er-do-wells
execute code on your server, all willy-nilly! To protect you and yours, upgrade to version 4.1.2, or just patch things up.
02/27/02
You don't actually need a camera to take cheap and cool photos. Simply build yourself a pinhole camera (out of an oatmeal box, even), download PinHoleCalc (freeware, Mac) to calculate the optimum pinhole diameter and exposure time (or just do your best with this handy, dandy chart), and you just might create some amazing things.
02/26/02
Looking to live large? Get a teensy digital camera and take pics of yourself grabbing a mini Sapporo out of your midget cooler (or do as I do and just run around with a miniature bottle of Tabasco screaming, "I'm a giant! I'm a giant!"). Or if you're feeling too big for your britches, simply slip into a giant shoe chair (this time shout, "I'm shrinking! I'm shrinking!").
02/25/02
Though the just-announced Photoshop 7.0 won't actually ship until second quarter, Webmonkey got its paws on a beta copy, and wowch! The File Browser's batching and viewing technologies are fresh, and the spellchecker should be a relief for those designers who can't spell (i.e., all of them). But the retouching voodoo of the Healing Tool — which lets you smooth wrinkles and tuck chins faster than a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon — is almost frightening.
Hey! At 20:02 tonight, we're going to experience a perfect palindromic (backwards=forwards) moment: 200202202002. I suggest you celebrate the moment by doing something totally wow (go help pin a nipple hog, perhaps?), because that's one noteworthy number. And if interesting integers are your thing, you can count on The Secret Lives of Numbers, which serves up some unexpectedly fascinating data via a stunning interface.
This week a guest at Evany's Dog Day Dinner (Best in Show? A miniature poodle? Named "Spice Girl"? The Canadian/Russian figure skating debacle has nothing on this upset.) let her snap pics, send email, and cruise the Web with his prototype hiptop. Her verdict? "It's sweatered penguin-cute! It plays little songs and the whole thing vibrates in a little dance and the nav-wheel plays a mini light show! And it flashes a different color for each person who calls!" She's just sad her hip must remain topless until summer, which is when Danger plans to finally unleash them.
02/12/02
Just in time for Heart Day! Send your favorite sample perfume sprayer, harpsichord tuner, and/or lüver some very personalized poetry, chocolate, and/or candy hearts.
02/12/02
The "one color per pixel" image sensors found in today's digital cameras pale in comparison to Foveon's new X3 image sensor, which can capture an entire array of color in every pixel. But with the first d-camera to use the sensor (the Sigma SD9 D-SLR) costing almost as much as a used car (US$3000), it's probably going to be some time before there's one in every household.
02/11/02
Handspring's VisorPhone and Visor Handhelds have been ginsu-ed together into a phoning, emailing, organizing, surfing wonderthing called Treo (US$399 with service, $549 sans). [Insert some sort of OREO creamy filling, "hard to hide the kid inside" reference here.]
02/08/02
Introducing the SoloTrek XFV (Exo-Skeletor Flying Vehicle), a step-on-strap-on-and-fly machine that looks very much like a "sold separately" GI Joe accessory, goes over 80 miles per hour, hovers up to two hours, and can land almost anywhere.
02/06/02
The reward for Googlewhacking (finding a two-word search query that yields just one,
lonely result) may be nothing but the warm glow of time well frittered, but win
ning the Go
ogle Programming Contest will line your pockets to the tune of US$10,000 (an
d you also "get" to go on a trip to Mountain View).
02/05/02
Continuing the Apple tradition of sticking a lowercase 'i' in front of every
product name, the cool cats
at Stimpsoft recently launched iHam on iRye, a set
of applications to control iTunes over a LAN — poifectly ideal for MP3
server-type stuff. Other apps from this feline-friendly
freeware concern include
Son of WeatherGrok,
Snapperhead,
and the (anti)Office-Productivity (non)Utility (sub)Suite Cat-In-The-Dock — every one of 'em written in RealBasic.
