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Sauce labs ditches NoSQL CouchDB

An honest write up with first hand details of the shortcomings of couchdb in production. There's a reason to stick with proven technologies and not simply chasing the latest shiny. Not saying sauce labs did that, just sayin'.

Are social referrals killing SEO?

Or is it just pining for the fjords?

I think this is an improvement to how we write for the web. Instead of optimizing for a machine algorithm that can bring traffic to an article, writers must concentrate on making the article interesting so that readers will share it with their friends. Curation is the key, which is also why I hated the "social reader" apps that want to post for me to see everything my friends read. I want to know what they recommend I read.

Apache: Allowing access to subpaths

Its a tricky one.

Seems this is always a tricky one that I run into when setting up a new test site. If you want to lock down the entire site behind a password, but need to allow some unauthenticated requests for external integration, then have a look at the solution below. It uses SetEnvIf to open up access to selected paths. This should work too, if your route most requests through a front controller script using a rewrite rule.

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Fix SSL timeouts with the Facebook PHP-SDK

I ran into SSL timeouts on in local development setup when I was re-factoring some integration code with facebook and using their SDK. It was tricky to diagnose, I was sure that my changes couldn't be the cause, and I finally confirmed it by running our production codebase. Since it was having the same timeout error, I knew the bug had to be in an underlying layer.

For the record, I'm running this version of curl on my Archlinux box:

Start ups are for everybody

I came across Dan Crow's insights into startups and older workers this morning, and I couldn't stop myself from nodding in agreement through out the article. Part of it, surely, is that I am now closer to 40 than 30. But everything he says about the value of spending time with family, the pointlessness of working grueling hours, and the skills that come from experience had an air of "I've been there".

Estimating like an Adult – What to Steal from Agile…

A better way to estimate software development tasks.

See original: Del.icio.us Estimating like an Adult – What to Steal from Agile…

Fixing IE8 font aliasing when using fade effects

Internet Explorer doesn't handle jQuery fade effects well

One of the joys of testing with IE8 is the added google time that I get to spend hunting down bugs and solutions. If you find something mesbehaving in Redmond's browser, then the Internet knows about it and has a fix somewhere.

Cancel button fail

How many people looking to donate accidentally click this? 

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