Alex Reid

After two years of beta, Google released mod_pagespeed from beta.

Mod_pagespeed is an open-source Apache HTTP server module developed by Google to automatically optimize web pages and web media assets including images, CSS, and JavaScript – without requiring any changes to the website itself.

Google has said that website speed performance impacts search engine ranking results, however there are dozens of factors for many web sites via a variety of platforms. This new update automates many of Google’s web optimization recommendations.

I’m proud that my company now offers this feature and my own web site is already loading up faster than before. Very slick. If you have a spare hour, you can watch this detailed explanation.

Unfortunately this server module can cause minor conflicts for third party software such as WordPress and some e-commerce software. The most common conflict I’ve seen is with WordPress; specifically that the visual editor in the WordPress dashboard disappears when editing existing posts.

To fix this, add this line to your .htaccess file.

ModPagespeedDisableFilters rewrite_javascript

You can also disable mod_pagespeed all together, by adding this line to your .htaccess file.

ModPagespeed off

Apple announced on Tuesday more details about its planned massive new $1 billion, 500,000-square-foot data centre in North Carolina. This will be their fifth data centre, along with facilities in Cork, Munich, California and another one already in North Carolina. They’ve also recently bought 160 acres of land in Oregon for yet another data centre.

The data centres are being built to maintain their growth into cloud computing with its iCloud storage service.

The new billion-dollar data center will feature a 100-acre solar power field and biofuel burner, which will provide much of the data center’s power needs.

The company has also updated its own environmental policy, which include applying reflective paint to the roofs and windows of their buildings, using disposable tableware in the cafeteria compost, and creating a shared bike program for Cupertino employees.

You can easily have emails sent to you, forward on to your cell phone via text messaging. You just need to know the number and the carrier.

Here is a list of the emails of different carriers:

* Rogers Wireless: [10-digit phone number]@pcs.rogers.com
* Fido: [10-digit phone number]@fido.ca
* Telus: [10-digit phone number]@msg.telus.com
* Bell Mobility: [10-digit phone number]@txt.bell.ca
* Kudo Mobile: [10-digit phone number]@msg.koodomobile.com
* MTS: [10-digit phone number]@text.mtsmobility.com
* President’s Choice: [10-digit phone number]@txt.bell.ca
* Sasktel: [10-digit phone number]@sms.sasktel.com
* Solo: [10-digit phone number]@txt.bell.ca
* Virgin: [10-digit phone number]@vmobile.ca

You need to replace the part [the 10-digit phone number] before the “@” with the number you’re sending the message to.

Most hosting companies offer email forwarding, check to make sure yours does. If not, this hosting company does and this hosting company offers email forwarding as well.

Seagate and Western Digital, the largest hard disk drive (HDD) manufacturers in the world, both announced that they will reduce warranty coverage on some of their hardware in the new year.

The two companies produce the hard drives in most major computer brands, and both companies recently bought out their competition (Western Digital bought Hitachi, and Seagate bought Samsung’s HDD business) making them the two largest HDD companies in the world.

It is believed the recent monsoon floods in Thailand are reason as the floods have crippled industry component factories. Thailand is the world’s 2nd largest producer of hard disk drives accounting for approximately 25% of the world’s production. The floods have impacted the industry greatly with pundits predicting a shortage and a price hike for hard drives in the coming year.

Seagate’s warranties for internal desktop and laptop drives will be reduced from five years to one year. Seagate warranties for hybrid drives will be trimmed from five years to three years. Warranties for Seagate’s external drives and enterprise-oriented drives will remain unchanged.

Western Digital warranties for the Caviar Blue, Caviar Green and Scorpio Blue hard drives will be reduced from three years from two years.

Overall, the maximum life warranty will be three years.

Seagate’s new warranty policies will become effective on Dec. 31, and Western Digital’s changes will begin Jan. 2, 2012. Hard drives bought before those dates will retain their original warranty policies.

The reason I’m writing this post is because this upset means a lot for the future of data use, as there is a growing demand for disk space – cloud or not – and this lack of supply will drive up the cost of HDDs. It may, hopefully, push other technologies such as flash storage.

WordPress now has an upgraded Toolbar (previously known as the admin bar) and a new HTML5 media uploader that uses Plupload, an open source upload handler with drag-and-drop functionality. WordPress now supports RAR and 7z archive formats.

The responsive design usability of HTML5 has been implemented to help WordPress work on small-screen devices like the iPad and tablets. As you reduce the screen size, features such as the side menu automatically collapse.

Users will find a reduction in repetitive clicking with our new flyout submenus. As you hover over each main menu item in your dashboard navigation, the submenus will appear, providing single-click access to any dashboard tool.

For browsers without HTML5 support, it uses fallback methods, which includes Flash and HTML4. There are also improvements to the Metadata, Settings and Editor APIs, and a new tutorial for beginners has been added.

Overall performance of WordPress is improved.

However, one of the best changes is how quickly I can write a new post or enact a new action within the WordPress dashboard.

Another good feature is the tutorial pointers which appear the first time you see the changes in the dashboard. It’s useful for novice WordPress users.

I highly recommend upgrading or using WordPress today.